* “Politics makes artists stupid”
* “Corrie, like so many idealists, treated her emotions as facts”
* “Rickman himself ought to know better”
* “I heard one man choking back sobs and another snoring”
CONTENTS
1. “My name is Rachel Corrie” opens in New York
2. “An ill-crafted piece of goopy give-peace-a-chance agitprop”
3. “One man choking back sobs and another snoring”
4. “No attempt to analyze both sides of the situation”
5. North Korea and Rachel Corrie
6. She was no Anne Frank
7. “Bulldozed by naivete” (By Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 2006)
8. “Notes from a young idealist in a world gone awry” (NY Times, Oct. 16, 2006)
9. “Review: ‘Rachel Corrie’ an uneven work” (Associated Press, Oct. 15, 2006)
10. “My name is Rachel Corrie: Off-stage drama” (Broadway World, Oct. 15, 2006)
“WARMLY RECEIVED WITHOUT SETTING OFF POLEMICAL FIREWORKS”
Notes from a young idealist in a world gone awry
By Ben Brantley
The New York Times
October 16, 2006
theater2.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/theater/reviews/16rach.html?8dpc=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1160986402-xNzZqGS4YHIusMzgkc7o8Q
Few plays have traveled to New York with as much excess baggage as “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” which opened last night at the Minetta Lane Theater. This small, intense one-woman drama, first staged last year at the Royal Court Theater in London, makes its delayed American debut freighted with months of angry public argument, condemnation, celebration and prejudgment: all the heavy threads that make up the mantle of a cause cיlטbre.
So how does it stand on its own, this quiet, 90-minute work that has been preceded by so much noise?
Toward the end of the performance I attended, I heard one man choking back sobs and another snoring. I could sympathize with both responses.
I doubt that either was inspired by the sort of partisan politics that have made the play a topic of such bruising debate in New York. Edited by the British actor Alan Rickman and the journalist Katharine Viner, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is assembled from journal entries and e-mail messages written by its title character, a 23-year-old American who was killed in March 2003 by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting the razing of a house in the Gaza Strip.
In its initial London run, the play – which starred the American actress Megan Dodds, who repeats her performance here – was warmly received without setting off polemical fireworks. Those didn’t erupt until the New York Theater Workshop, a nonprofit institution known for championing politically daring work, announced in late February that it would indefinitely delay the play’s American premiere.
Given Ms. Corrie’s lightning-rod status as a pro-Palestinian activist – she has been held up as both a heroic martyr (by Yasir Arafat, among others) and a terminally naןve pawn – the New York Theater Workshop drew accusations of moral cowardice. Theater artists including Vanessa Redgrave, Harold Pinter and the American playwrights Tony Kushner and Christopher Shinn joined the fray. Rachel Corrie became a name best not mentioned at Manhattan dinner parties if you wanted your guests to hold on to their good manners.
Now that the Royal Court production of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” has finally arrived in Manhattan, under the aegis of James Hammerstein Productions, many theatergoers wonder what all the shouting was about, especially in a town where one-person shows expressing extreme points of view are common theatrical fare.
The play, directed by Mr. Rickman, is not an animated recruiting poster for Palestinian activists. Its deeper fascination lies in its invigoratingly detailed portrait of a passionate political idealist in search of a constructive outlet. And its inevitable sentimental power is in its presentation of a blazing young life that you realize is on the verge of being snuffed out. (I kept thinking of the letters from Julian Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War.)
The play’s most obvious hold on the audience’s attention comes from its being structured as a sort of countdown to a tragic death. The very look of the stage at the beginning – in which Rachel’s bedroom in Olympia, Wash., seems to float against a ravaged Middle Eastern townscape – presages a journey we know will be fatal.
It is all the more surprising, then, to discover that for long stretches “Rachel Corrie” feels dramatically flat, even listless. This is not the fault of the text. From earliest adolescence, Ms. Corrie, who wanted to be a poet, had a voice that was unusually and emphatically her own, and a precocious gift for concrete metaphors that give form to nebulous feelings.
To read what she wrote in the last decade of her short life, as assembled by Mr. Rickman and Ms. Viner, is to perceive sometimes eerie patterns of recurring images, with that sense afforded only by hindsight of how each human existence seems to possess its own poetic structure.
From the opening scene, in which Rachel says living in her room in Olympia is like being “inside a terrifying mirror,” an aura of claustrophobia and confinement prevails that must be overcome. The description of a dream of “falling to my death off of something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah,” recorded shortly after she arrived in Gaza in early 2003, acquires a harrowingly prophetic echo. And throughout there is an awareness, uncommon in the young, of how easily a life can be erased.
The production does not belabor the ominous here, and it doesn’t need to. Nor, when Rachel gives voice to her increasingly firm convictions about the Middle East conflict (“What we are paying for here is truly evil”), does Ms. Dodds ever seem to be orating from a platform, bullhorn in hand.
Both her performance and Mr. Rickman’s direction emphasize Rachel as a figure of radiant and unsullied youth, given to striking physical poses (head to the sky, arms extended) that bring to mind movie posters about odds-defying mavericks with big dreams. Sometimes, especially when embodying the pre-Gaza Rachel, Ms. Dodds appears to be merely playing young, with all the attendant cuteness.
Though Ms. Corrie had a streak of preciousness (what poetry-loving teenager does not?), there’s nearly always a redeeming grit in her writing and a feeling of energy that could burn. (You sense that fierceness in photographs of the real Ms. Corrie in demonstrations in Gaza.) These textures are mostly absent from Ms. Dodds’s performance. And when Rachel, describing an encounter with a sometime boyfriend, speaks self-mockingly of acting as if she were in a Mountain Dew commercial, it seems like a reasonable assessment of Ms. Dodds’s performance at that point.
Her Rachel is most compelling after she has arrived in Israel, and later Gaza, when her childhood habit of making lists – of things to do, of items needed – to keep chaos at bay acquires a heartbreaking urgency. No matter what side you come down on politically, Ms. Corrie’s sense of a world gone so awry that it forces her to question her “fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature” is sure to strike sadly familiar chords.
AN UNEVEN WORK
Review: ‘Rachel Corrie’ an uneven work
By Michael Kuchwara
The Associated Press
October 15, 2006
www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/15767697.htm
“My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is theatrically and politically earnest, an uneven scrapbook drama about an idealistic, some might say naive, young woman trying to do good against the backdrop of the swirling, seemingly insolvable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The play, which opened Sunday at off-Broadway’s Minetta Lane Theater, has arrived here with considerable non-theatrical baggage. Amid charges of censorship, a production planned for last spring by New York Theater Workshop never happened. It subsequently was picked up for a limited run this fall by other producers.
You can’t say “Rachel Corrie” doesn’t have a point of view, despite the scattered dramatic trajectory of the evening. “I’ve had this underlying need to go to a place and meet people who are on the other end of the tax money that goes to fund the U.S. military,” Corrie says near the beginning of the 95-minute solo show.
The play, a hit for London’s Royal Court Theater, was put together by British actor Alan Rickman (who also directs this production), and Katherine Viner, features editor of The Guardian newspaper in London. They drew on the diaries, letters and e-mails of Corrie, a 23-year-old activist from Olympia, Wash., who died when struck by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in March 2003 while trying to prevent Israelis from demolishing a Palestinian home. She had gone to the Middle East with the International Solidarity Movement.
The play briefly deals with Corrie’s thoughts on the Israelis. With a nod toward the suffering and oppression of Jewish people, she says, “We still have some responsibility for that, but I think it’s important to draw a firm distinction between the policies of Israel as a state, and Jewish people.”
Yet the heart of the play is about the Palestinians, and its best moments are nonpolitical: Corrie’s descriptions, for example, of living in Gaza, her journalistic impressions of ordinary Palestinians and their families.
To get to Gaza, the authors take us through Corrie growing up in Olympia, giving us the story of an imaginative, maybe precocious girl who writes in her notebook that among the people she would like to hang out with in eternity are Rainer Maria Rilke, Jesus, Gertrude Stein, Zelda Fitzgerald and Charlie Chaplin.
It’s these moments that strain dramatically, taxing actress Megan Dodds to the fullest. Dodds, with her wholesome blond good looks, never quite connects with the character as a little girl. She gives a distant, oddly detached performance that seems more like an acting exercise than a portrait of a passionate young woman.
That passion comes through most forcefully late in the evening, in a raging e-mail Corrie types about the consequences of doing nothing.
“It is my own selfishness and will to optimism that wants to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don’t just idly sit by and watch,” she writes.
Rachel Corrie refused to just watch.
“LACKLUSTER, ULTIMATELY HEAVY-HANDED AND ONE-SIDED”
My name is Rachel Corrie: Off-stage drama
By Michael Dale
Broadwayworld.com
October 15, 2006
www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=12925
Please note: In reviewing My Name Is Rachel Corrie, I found it necessary to describe the final moments of the play in the last few paragraphs.
After all the controversy, the accusations of censorship and the petitions and letters of protest, Britain’s Royal Court Theater production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie has finally made it to New York. Sadly, the off-stage drama far exceeds anything taking place on stage at the Minetta Lane Theater. Journalist Katherine Viner and actor/director Alan Rickman have assembled the solo performance piece from the diaries, emails and letters of the 23-year-old American who was killed in March of 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home in Gaza. Viner and Rickman may have put their hearts and souls into this work, but what they didn’t put into it is dramaturgy. The story of Rachel Corrie may be an important one. Her words may deserve to be heard. But this lackluster and ultimately heavy-handed and one-sided presentation is not the way to do it.
According to published reports earlier this year, James Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop, said his company was considering staging the play’s New York premiere in March, but it was never formally announced as definite. Explaining his reasons for postponing the production, Nicola wrote, “In researching My Name Is Rachel Corrie, we found many distorted accounts of the actual circumstances of Rachel’s death that had resulted in a highly charged, vituperative, and passionate controversy. While our commitment to the play did not waver, our responsibility was not just to produce it, but to produce it in such a way as to prevent false and tangential back-and-forth arguments from interfering with Rachel’s voice. We spoke to friends and colleagues in the artistic community and to religious leaders as well as to representatives of the Jewish community, because the play involved Israeli action.”
Released statements quoted Rickman as saying, “I can only guess at the pressures of funding an independent theater company in New York, but calling this production ‘postponed’ does not disguise the fact that it has been cancelled… This is censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theater Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences – all of us are the losers.”
My own feelings about censorship, the artistic decisions of a theater company and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are, of course, irrelevant here. Those with strong opinions on these issues may certainly have highly emotional and passionate reactions to My Name Is Rachel Corrie, but what follows is a critique on how it stands on its own as a work of theater.
Call it a heartfelt tribute. Call it a sincere memorial. Call it the writings of a dedicated youth fighting for a cause she believes in. But My Name Is Rachel Corrie can barely be called a play. With all due respect to the deceased, her writings, as presented in this edited ninety-minute form, reveal no more of a character than the stereotypical bright, idealistic youth with big dreams:
“Okay, I’m Rachel. Sometimes I wear ripped blue jeans. Sometimes I wear polyester. Sometimes I take off all my clothes and swim naked at the beach. I don’t believe in fate but my astrological sign is Aries, the ram, and my sign on the Chinese zodiac is the sheep, and the name Rachel means sheep but I’ve got a fire in my belly. It used to be such a big, loud blazing fire that I couldn’t hear anybody else over it. So I talked a lot and didn’t listen too much.”
As a fifth grader in Olympia, Washington, when asked to write what she wanted to be when she grew up, Rachel delivered a “five-paragraph manifesto on the million things I wanted to be, from wandering poet to first woman president.” Her lists of “Five People I Wish I’d Met Who Are Dead” and “Five People To Hang Out With In Eternity” are the kinds of things that may be fun to read on a friend’s blog but hardly contribute to an evening of compelling theater.
As a member of the International Solidarity Movement, an organization which is never mentioned by name in the script, Corrie and other Americans and Europeans acted as human shields to help protect Palestinians living in Gaza from the Israeli military; the logic being that an unarmed American in peaceful protest is a dangerous target to eliminate. Though she separates the policies of Israel as a state with the Jewish people as a whole, her descriptions of the conflict, told through correspondence, are a one-sided account of atrocities committed by one people upon another. The piece fails dramatically because the text doesn’t provide basic information about her mission and there is no attempt to analyze both sides of the situation. It’s never mentioned that the Israeli government was bulldozing down certain homes because they were suspected of hiding tunnels used to supply arms to Palestinian terrorists. She goes as a far as writing, “The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance.”
Megan Dodds, who plays Rachel Corrie during evening performances (Bree Elrod plays the role during matinees), gets little support from Rickman’s direction in trying to create an interesting human being from this patched together text. She spends a lot of time standing center stage, speaking out to the audience with little vitality or vocal variety. She also spends a good deal of time sitting upstage behind a computer, typing emails which she narrates in a monotone I-am-typing-an-email voice.
And yet there’s a ten-minute stretch near the end of the evening where My Name Is Rachel Corrie miraculously begins to resemble good theater. In a long letter home to her mother, her language suddenly turns eloquent and mature as Corrie writes of “questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature.” She writes passionately and provocatively of the world’s growing class imbalance and of the rights of those to defend their very chance for a decent survival. If the purpose of My Name Is Rachel Corrie is to humanize a name in a news story, this monologue, sensitively performed by Dodds, is the only instance where it works.
What follows, we’re told, is a recorded transcript of an eyewitness account of Corrie’s death as described by someone named Tom Dale. He tells of a brutal and intentional murder. What we’re not told is that Tom Dale was a colleague of Corrie’s and that the two of them, along with others, had been spending two hours monitoring and obstructing two bulldozers. And though Dale’s description may very well have been accurate and unbiased, there is no mention made that other eyewitness accounts conflict with his report.
The final image we see, on a video monitor, is of a ten year old Rachel Corrie speaking at her fifth grade press conference on world hunger. The moment seems a shameless attempt to send the audience out weeping.
Maybe in the hands of a better dramatist the words of Rachel Corrie could have made powerful theater. But perhaps it would be best to simply read what she wrote, unedited, without involving the interpretations of creative artists.
CONTENTS
1. Human Rights Watch update
2. Relatives of beheaded Iraqi priest say kidnappers demanded apology for pope
3. Sharansky plans to resign from politics; Wiesel for president?
4. Jordan plans new Temple Mount minaret
5. Soros plans an alternative to AIPAC
6. Terrorists with a PR firm
7. Muslims’ anger as London Olympics will clash with Ramadan
8. Syria clamps down on freedom-of-speech students
9. Iran’s clerics caught up in blogging craze
10. Protestors hurl petrol bombs at Danish mission in Iran
11. Dozens killed in Sudanese shootings
12. Another concern within Conservative ranks
13. Israel recalls ambassador to Australia
14. SNCF hit with compensation claims over Nazi-camp transport
15. Russian Jews protest over Hitler restaurant
16. Vienna street to be renamed after Simon Wiesenthal
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH UPDATE
The following is an update to yesterday’s dispatch Human Rights Watch confirms: Hizbullah used cluster bombs against Israel.
Professor Gerald Steinberg, a longtime subscriber to this list who among other things runs the important website NGO Monitor, writes:
Human Rights Watch’s short statement on October 18 contrasts with over 30 statements, reports (the longest was 49 pages), op-eds, media interviews, and so on, from July 13 through and beyond the end of the Israel-Hizbullah war that focused primarily on accusing Israel of “war crimes”. A short statement two months after the interest in this issue has largely disappeared, without the usual accompanying PR campaign by HRW is clearly too little, too late. HRW officials, including Ken Roth, are under enormous pressure for their long-running anti-Israel campaigns, and this statement now about Hizbullah is their effort to defend themselves. They have used these tactics before: in November 2002, they issued a report on suicide bombings, and as soon as the pressure eased, they ignored their own report and its implications. All of this is documented on www.ngo-monitor.org.
RELATIVES OF BEHEADED IRAQI PRIEST SAY KIDNAPPERS DEMANDED APOLOGY FOR POPE MUSLIM COMMENTS
Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped last week and found beheaded three days later, said that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope’s recent comments about Islam and pay an enormous $350,000 ransom.
More than 500 people attended a memorial service for father Amer Iskender in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after his decapitated body was found last Wednesday evening in an industrial area of the city. Iskender was a priest at the St. Ephrem Orthodox church in Mosul.
Relatives, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the unidentified group that seized Iskender last week said Pope Benedict XVI bore “sole responsibility” for Iskender’s fate.
SHARANSKY PLANS TO RESIGN FROM POLITICS; WIESEL FOR PRESIDENT?
The human rights activist and former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky, who is now a Likud Member of the Israeli Knesset, is resigning from the Knesset and says he will quit politics.
However, if Moshe Katsav resigns as Israeli president, as he is expected to do after sex crime charges were leveled against him, there is speculation that Sharansky would make a good Israeli president. Sharansky recently marked the 20th anniversary of his 1986 release from a Soviet prison and subsequent immigration to Israel. He used various information from this email list/website for his bestselling book, The Case for Democracy.
Ehud Olmert says he is in favor of (his political ally) Shimon Peres becoming the next Israeli president. The post is supposed to be largely ceremonial. Others have suggested Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel should assume the position so as to restore dignity to the office following the latest scandal.
JORDAN PLANS NEW TEMPLE MOUNT MINARET
Israel says it will not object to Jordanian plans to construct a fifth minaret on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
A senior Jordanian official said the Hashemite Kingdom is planning to construct the minaret early next year. The minaret will be built on the eastern wall of the Temple Mount near the Golden Gate, and at 42 meters it will be the highest of the minarets on the Mount and the first to be built in more than 600 years. Dr. Raief Najim, vice chairman of the committee running the project, toured the intended site with a top Jerusalem police commander, a senior government official and the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority and none of them voiced any opposition, said Najim.
The Temple Mount has been Judaism’s holiest site for thousands of years. The first Muslim minaret was constructed on the southwest corner of the Temple Mount in 1278. The second was built in 1297, the third in 1329, and the last in 1367.
Israeli Jewish groups who also wish to build on the site are expected to voice their outrage at the Israeli government’s decision to instead allow Jordan to build at the site.
SOROS PLANS AN ALTERNATIVE TO AIPAC
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has met with other left-wing Jews to discuss setting up an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Even though AIPAC consistently adopts centrist positions, the leftists regard it as too right-wing.
A source close to Soros said the aim would be to pressure the U.S. government to lean on the Israeli government to make more concessions to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
A follow-up meeting by the leftist Jewish businessmen will take place in New York on October 26, sources tell me. Other major Jewish liberals invited, include Peter Lewis, who like Soros is a major contributor to MoveOn.org, the Web-based anti-Bush group; and Edgar and Charles Bronfman. Several former Clinton administration staffers and Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now, are also expected to attend. There are apparently differences of opinion about the degree to which the new structure should confront AIPAC.
Soros has on numerous occasions been criticized by other Jews for his supposed anti-Jewish positions. For example, after he told a conference in 2003 that Israel bore responsibility for the outbreak of anti-Semitism in Europe because of its response to Palestinian terrorism.
TERRORISTS WITH A PR FIRM
Hizbullah have hang up an advertising poster showing fighters launching Katyusha rockets, with the French words reading: “Divine Victory,” at the highway leading to Beirut’s international airport. The terror group – never short of funds, thanks to western government aid money that finds its way into their hands – paid a public relations firm $140,000 to design a campaign called “Divine Victory,” according to Lebanese media. Hundreds of billboards have sprung up across the country in Arabic, English and French glorifying what many in Lebanon see as a Hizbullah victory over Israel in its 34-day war with Israel in July and August.
MUSLIMS’ ANGER AS LONDON OLYMPICS CLASH WILL WITH RAMADAN
The 2012 London Olympics have been plunged into controversy by the discovery that the Games will clash with the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
The clash will put some Muslim athletes at a disadvantage as they will be expected to fast from sunrise to sunset for the entire duration of the Games.
In 2012, Ramadan will take place from July 21 to August 20, while the Olympics run from July 27 to August 12.
About a quarter of the 11,099 athletes who took part in the 2004 Athens Olympics came from countries with predominantly Muslim populations. It is not known how many observe the fast.
Commentators say the clash will be a huge embarrassment for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who have been keen a keen supporter both of hard-line Muslim groups and of the London Olympic Games.
Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “They would never have dared to organize this at Christmas.”
During Yom Kippur last month, several Jewish soccer players were forced to play matches for their European clubs during the fast, but didn’t complain.
SYRIA CLAMPS DOWN ON FREEDOM-OF-SPEECH STUDENTS
Syria has arrested and continues to hold students who are trying to express views that are not in accordance with those of the regime in Damascus, according to the Arab Organization for Human Rights. Additionally, the AOHR’s staff in Damascus has been arrested and generally finds its work all but impossible to carry out, it told western journalists. Occasional reports from the major human rights organizations point to Damascus’ perceived violations of international laws on subjects including freedom of speech and other basic rights. Most of those human rights organizations spend far more time criticizing Israel.
IRAN’S CLERICS CAUGHT UP IN BLOGGING CRAZE
The craze for blogging in Iran has reached an unlikely set of adherents – the country’s conservative Islamic clerics. Following the example of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ayatollahs, seminary students and theologians are receiving training in setting up their own weblogs.
Courses run by the newly-established Office of Religious Weblog Expansion have begun in the holy city of Qom, the traditional home of Iran’s religious establishment. Students of the Koran will receive instruction on practical matters such as blog content and technical support. Some 300 clerics, religious students and writers have been signed up.
The arrival of the religious ruling class on Iran’s blogosphere is ironic in view of the harsh crackdown launched by the authorities against bloggers who have used it to voice political dissent. Scores of bloggers have been jailed in recent years while many sites have been blocked using U.S.-made filtering technology.
The blogging trend began among the political reformist movement in Iran in 2001 as a response to the closures of dozens of liberal newspapers and magazines on the orders of religious hardliners. Ahmadinejad jumped on the bandwagon last month when he launched a blog attached to his presidential website.
PROTESTORS HURL PETROL BOMBS AT DANISH MISSION IN IRAN
Dozens of protesters pelted the Danish embassy in Teheran last week with stones and petrol bombs after Danish television broadcast new footage deemed insulting to the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, witnesses said.
Denmark’s state TV aired footage of a number of members of the youth wing of the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party (DPP) drawing cartoons in August mocking the Prophet. Reuters reported that protesters hurled stones and petrol bombs into the embassy compound. The crowd chanted, “Down with Zionists” and “God praise the party of God”.
DOZENS KILLED IN SUDANESE SHOOTINGS
Unknown gunmen killed at least 38 people in southern Sudan yesterday. The dead included women, children and male civilians. Southern Sudan has been relatively peaceful for more than a year and these killings are unrelated to the ongoing massacres by Arab Sudanese of non-Arabs in the western province, Darfur, where some 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million made homeless.
Recently, the BBC has finally begun to mention that the killings and ethnic cleansing are being carried out by Arabs. For years, they have strenuously avoided saying this, as I have pointed out in private meetings with senior BBC producers and in published articles such as this. (See the section titled: Is something happening in Sudan?)
ANOTHER CONCERN WITHIN CONSERVATIVE RANKS
The (London) Daily Telegraph reports that a fresh row has broken out after another Conservative MP made inflammatory comments about Israel. In a parliamentary debate last week, Andrew Turner, MP for the Isle of Wight said of Israel’s campaign against Hizbullah two months ago: “Those were the tactics of the Nazis.”
Other Conservatives have been dismayed at recent remarks critical of Israel and America by the party’s new leader David Cameron, and by the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague.
As noted in my article Media missiles, during the recent Israel-Hizbullah war, Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that Israel was committing war crimes “gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.” This article can be read in the dispatch The media war against Israel (Aug. 3, 2006).
ISRAEL RECALLS AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA
Israel has recalled its ambassador to Australia, Naftali Tamir, after Ha’aretz quoted him as saying that Israel and Australia are “like sisters in Asia,” because “we don’t have yellow skin and slanted eyes.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry was checking to see if Tamir’s comments were accurately reported. If they were, Tamir would be dismissed, said a spokesperson. He added that there was no room for racism among Israeli officials.
Tamir, a veteran diplomat who has served in Australia since 2005, was quoted in Ha’aretz as saying, “Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia. We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don’t have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not – we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side.”
Tamir is also Israel’s non-resident ambassador to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
SNCF HIT WITH COMPENSATION CLAIMS OVER NAZI-CAMP TRANSPORT
Some 1,200 claims for compensation have been submitted against the French state rail network (SNCF) for its role in helping transport Jews to Nazi camps during World War II, the railway said last Friday. The 1,200 French, Israeli, American, Belgian and Canadian families are basing their demands on a successful court challenge by French MP Alain Lipietz. In June, a French court ordered the government and SNCF to pay about $77,600 in damages for their role in transporting four of Lipietz’s relatives to a Nazi concentration camp. SNCF loaded Jews like cattle into packed carriages and then tried to charge them third class ticket fares as it transported them to their deaths.
The rail network contests the claims, saying it was under orders from the French authorities at the time and exercised no autonomy under the occupation government.
RUSSIAN JEWS PROTEST HITLER RESTAURANT
Jewish leaders in a Russian region are protesting against the use of Adolf Hitler’s name by a new pub. The pub, set to open soon in the city of Ekaterinburg, is named “Hitler Kaput”. In a letter to the local mayor, leaders of the Jewish community said that any use of Hitler’s name to attract public attention is unacceptable. Authorities haven’t yet responded to the Jewish community. The letter also referred to a similar development in India where a restaurant initially named after Hitler changed its name after protests from the Jewish community.
VIENNA STREET TO BE RENAMED AFTER SIMON WIESENTHAL
Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal is to have a street named in his honor in the Austrian capital Vienna. The Vienna city council’s culture committee has approved a proposal by Leopoldstadt district politicians to rename a lane in the area from Ichmanngasse to Simon-Wiesenthal-Gasse.
The Jewish Community’s wish to have the street named after Wiesenthal, who died last year, was backed by all political parties except the right-wing Freedom Party.
Vienna was once a vibrant hub for Jews in Central Europe. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 200,000 Jews living there. Today about 7,000 Jews live in the Austrian capital. Many Jews say that anti-Semitism is still commonplace in Austria.
-- Tom Gross
“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”
[Note by Tom Gross]
Because this website so often contains very serious, depressing stories, I occasionally send items of light relief.
Here are three videos for your amusement:
* Tony Blair (who is under intense pressure from his own Labor party to resign), singing “Should I stay or should I go?”.
* George Bush, singing “Imagine” (and featuring many other politicians previously mentioned on this email list).
* And for those of you who don’t like George Bush, here he is singing “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.
ENDLESS LOVE
* Here is a “classic” I first sent out in March 2003, shortly before the beginning of the Iraq war: George Bush and Tony Blair singing “Endless Love”.
* And for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here are U.S. baseball commentators giving their views on Mel Gibson’s recent anti-Semitic comments, while commenting on a Boston Red Sox baseball game. (Also available here.)
Enjoy!
-- Tom Gross
ONE OF THESE COUNTRIES GAVE HIZBULLAH CLUSTER BOMBS
[Note by Tom Gross]
There has been an enormous amount of reporting by the international media on the Israeli use of cluster bombs in the recent conflict with Hizbullah. By contrast, there has been virtually no reporting on Hizbullah’s use of cluster bombs, even though Hizbullah (unlike Israel) deliberately aimed them at civilian targets.
Even the mainstream liberal media should have no excuses for their continual refusal to report on Hizbullah’s use of cluster bombs – the first time in the world they have been used by a non-state armed group – following publication yesterday of a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch confirm what Israeli officials have been saying since mid-July: that Hizbullah fired cluster munitions into civilian areas in northern Israel during the recent conflict.
Hizbullah’s deployment of the Chinese-made Type-81 122mm rocket is also the first confirmed use of this particular model of cluster munitions anywhere in the world.
Five countries – China, Egypt, Italy, Russia, and Slovakia – produce nine types of 122mm rockets carrying submunitions. Two other countries, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, also stockpile them.
ISRAELI ARABS AMONG THE VICTIMS
Human Rights Watch documented two Type-81 cluster strikes that took place on July 25 in the Galilee village of Mghar. Each of the Type-81 cluster munition 122mm rockets used by Hizbullah carries 39 Type-90 or MZD submunitions. Each submunition in turn shoots out hundreds of steel spheres, about 3.5mm in diameter, with deadly force.
It is not known when and how Hizbullah obtained these foreign-made cluster munitions. Human Rights Watch say their findings raise serious concerns about the proliferation of these weapons to non-state armed groups. Human Rights Watch has previously reported on Israel’s use of cluster munitions in southern Lebanon during the conflict.
Those injured by Hizbullah’s cluster bombs include both Israeli Jews and Arabs. For example, on July 25, 2006, between 2:15 and 2:30 p.m., a cluster munition landed by the home of Jihad Ghanem in the western part of Mghar village (population 19,000). The attack injured three family members: his son Rami, 8, his brother Ziad, 35, and his sister Suha, 33. Rami’s arms bore irregular scars caused by pieces of shrapnel as well as smaller round marks that Jihad said were caused by steel spheres.
Israeli police say they documented 113 cluster rockets that were fired at Israel during the conflict, causing one death and 12 injuries: in Mghar one death and six injuries, in Karmiel three injuries, in Kiryat Motzkin two injuries, and in Nahariya one injury. The police said they discovered the first of these rockets on July 15 in the Upper Galilee village of Safsufa.
Various governments have used other kinds of cluster weapons in recent conflicts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo.
Human Rights Watch condemn Hizbullah for deliberately attacking civilian areas with these weapons. Will all those international politicians who have been condemning Israel also condemn Hizbullah and those that supplied them with these weapons?
-- Tom Gross
* Hizbullah launches Hebrew-language website
* Islamic Jihad put Hebrew captions on Qassam rockets
* Hamas spokesman questions if violence is a Palestinian “disease”
* Ahmadinejad: “Yes, I have been in touch with God”
CONTENTS
1. “Would-be suicide bomber killed near Karni crossing” (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11, 2006)
2. “Hamas spokesman questions if violence is Palestinian ‘disease’” (Reuters, Oct. 17, 2006)
3. “Intransigent Hamas” (Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2006)
4. “Syria aiding arms smuggling into Lebanon: Israeli official” (AFP, Oct. 15, 2006)
5. “Hamas says aid from Iran is forthcoming” (J. Post, AP & Reuters, Oct. 12, 2006)
6. “Katyusha defense at least 4 years away” (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11, 2006)
7. “New calls by Hamas militants to target the U.S.” (Time magazine, Oct. 13, 2006)
8. “U.S. man pleads guilty to aiding Hamas” (Associated Press, Oct. 13, 2006)
9. “Ahmadinejad: God told me we would win” (Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 16, 2006)
10. “Olmert: Iran nukes could reach Hizbullah” (Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 15, 2006)
11. “New Iranian moderate daily hits newsstands” (AFP, Oct. 16, 2006)
[Note by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns violence and threats of violence against Israeli civilians by Hamas, Iran, Hizbullah and Syria.
An Israeli truck driver was shot and wounded in a terror attack this morning. He was delivering bread to bakeries and supermarkets. The Palestinian gunmen were hiding along the roadside.
HIZBULLAH LAUNCHES HEBREW WEBSITE
Hizbullah has launched a Hebrew-language website in an attempt to cater to “non-Zionist” Israelis opposing Israeli army operations. The website appears to be a translation into Hebrew of an existing Hizbullah website. This marks the organization’s first attempt to address an Israeli audience through the Internet. The site, which is stored at an Iranian address, offers reports on supposed IDF misdeeds, and includes information provided by extreme leftist Jews. It also has news on Israeli domestic politics, including an update on the sex charges leveled against Israeli President Moshe Katsav.
The website’s name means “resistance” in Farsi. The site has many Hebrew-language mistakes and it appears Hizbullah may have used automated translation software rather than a real person to translate much of it
Hizbullah may have taken this idea from Iran, who have since 2001 produced their own official Hebrew website by IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting). This features both news and radio broadcasts. The URL for the Iranian Islamic Hebrew website is: 62.220.120.178/KolDavid. The Hebrew for this site, while not perfect, is good and according to my intelligence sources has been well translated by Iranians that speak Hebrew quite well. It is much more professional than the Hizbullah Hebrew site.
ISLAMIC JIHAD CHALLENGE HAMAS FOR MEDIA COVERAGE
Meanwhile, Palestinian Islamic Jihad is also stepping up its propaganda war on Israelis.
For the first time this week, a Palestinian rocket bearing a Hebrew caption – “al-Quds 3” – landed in Israel. The rocket was fired by Islamic Jihad. The group’s spokesman in Gaza, Abu Abdullah, explained to his friends and contacts at Reuters Gaza bureau that the decision to write the rocket’s name in Hebrew was aimed at ensuring that credit for the attack went to Islamic Jihad. He said Islamic Jihad members were unhappy that the Israeli media refer to all rockets hitting Israel from Gaza as “Qassams,” a name identified with Hamas.
The rocket, which was fired on Monday evening at the southern Israeli town of Sderot, narrowly missed a residential building, housing elderly people. One person was lightly injured and six others received treatment for shock. On Monday, another rocket with Hebrew inscriptions landed in a field near the western Negev kibbutz of Nir Am.
HAMAS SPOKESMAN QUESTIONS IF VIOLENCE IS PALESTINIAN “DISEASE”
The second report below is on an opinion piece in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam by Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Hamad asks whether “violence [has] become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh? … [It] has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms... It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten… Shouldn’t we be ashamed of this ugly behavior which scandalizes us before our people and before the world?”
Hamad urged Palestinians to “disown this disease, this cancer, which has damaged our brains and paralyzed our hearts.” It is not clear whether Hamad feels the same way when Palestinians kill Israeli children.
Throughout the Intifada, many Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians. Yet western news agencies continue to include these among numbers of “Palestinian dead in the Intifada,” wrongly implying that Israel killed them.
They also blur numbers together, obscuring who the perpetrators were. For example, AFP wrote on October 15: “All told, 5,436 people – most of them Palestinians – have died since the Palestinian intifada resumed in 2000, according to an AFP count.”
So far this year alone, according to Hamad (but not mentioned by AFP), 175 Palestinians have been killed by “Palestinian gunfire”.
TAKING ON THE GREAT SATAN
In the seventh article below, “New calls by Hamas militants to target the U.S.,” Tim McGirk of Time magazine reports that Hamas leaders “are locked in a fierce debate over whether to launch terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East. Despite its anti-American rhetoric, Hamas has until now refrained from any known terror strikes against the U.S. – only Israel,” claims the magazine. An Israeli intelligence official says that until now Hamas’s thinking seemed to be: “One enemy – Israel – is enough. Let others in Iraq and Afghanistan take on the Great Satan.”
Last week, Hamas-authorized kidnappers struck again: an American “aid” worker, Michael Philips, 24, from Louisiana was kidnapped from Nablus. Phillips has since been freed and it is not known whether a ransom was paid. (It appears Phillips was freed after he proved to the kidnappers that he was fully supportive of their cause and tactics. He appears to be the same Michael Philips who is an ISM member – the group which Rachel Corrie belonged to – and recently wrote an article for an English-language pro-Jihad website titled “Israeli Occupation Terrorist Forces Reinvade Nablus, Kill One Member of the Resistance.”)
THE WASHINGTON POST: ENOUGH FLOWERY APPEALS
I particularly encourage you to read The Washington Post editorial below. After years of denial, the Post editorial writers finally seem to be asking the right questions: “It’s easy enough for global leaders to issue flowery appeals for action on the Middle East or to imply that progress would be possible if only the United States used its leverage with Israel. But what if Palestinian leaders don’t want it? The stubborn reality is that there can be no movement toward peace until a Palestinian leadership appears that is ready to accept a two-state solution.”
I wonder if The New York Times editorial writers will ever dare to ask themselves the same question?
HAMAS PREPARES FOR WAR
Other articles below include reports on the latest suicide bomb attempt in Israel, and an admission by Hamas that aid from Iran is forthcoming. Previously Hamas called Israeli press reports that Iran was helping Hamas a “Zionist smear campaign”; now a Hamas website admitted such help in the course of a report about the recent visit to Teheran by Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam.
Separately, reports from Teheran suggest the Iranian government is prepared to train Hamas’ armed force. The agreement was reached during a series of meetings there last Thursday between top Iranian officials and Siyam. Hamas’ Executive Force comprises almost 4,000 men, of whom 500 were recruited from what Israel sees as a second terror group – the Popular Resistance Committees.
In addition, since the beginning of the year, more than 20 tons of explosives, anti-aircraft missiles and antitank missiles have been smuggled into Gaza. Israeli Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, said the movement of these weapons could greatly endanger the lives of Israelis, and would require the army to consider a different and stronger approach to its activities in Gaza.
Also, the Fatah movement, bolstered by Western aid, has received new shipments of assault rifles and ammunition. Palestinian sources said Fatah units in the West Bank received thousands of U.S.-origin M-16 assault rifles. They said the rifles were supplied to Fatah units as part of Israeli-approved Western aid to forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
For space reasons, I have included edited down versions of some of the news articles below.
-- Tom Gross
SUICIDE BOMBER THWARTED
Would-be suicide bomber killed near Karni crossing
By Yaakov Katz
The Jerusalem Post
October 11, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193415567&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
A suicide attack was thwarted last Tuesday night when IDF troops shot and killed a Palestinian wearing an explosives belt when he tried to infiltrate into Israel from the Gaza Strip. He was shot after he was spotted by soldiers entering Israel. His body was transferred back to Gaza on Tuesday night.
Another Palestinian was shot and killed overnight Tuesday in Nablus, near the security fence. According to the army, he was armed and had attacked the troops. Relatives identified him as Abdullah Mansour, 31, a member of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was wanted by Israel.
Earlier, IAF aircraft bombed the home of Mariam Farhat, also known as Umm Nidal – literally “mother of the struggle” – a Hamas parliament member and the mother of three sons who were killed during the Intifada.
Residents were warned in advance of the attack and, while the building was severely damaged, no one was injured. The IDF said that the strike was on a building that housed a weapons warehouse and manufacturing facility.
Farhat made headlines when in 2002 she was filmed preparing her 17-year-old son Muhammad for a suicide attack he perpetrated in which five students in the pre-military academy in the Gaza settlement of Atzmona were killed.
“THIS UGLY BEHAVIOR”
Hamas spokesman questions if violence is Palestinian “disease”
Reuters
October 17, 2006
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/775946.html
Ghazi Hamad, a senior figure in Hamas and spokesman for the Hamas-led government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it has become a “Palestinian disease”. Hamad said he was disturbed by growing factionalism in the Palestinian territories, including recent deadly clashes between rival political movements.
“Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?” he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam. “We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere – in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction, and the university.”
It was the second time in recent months that Hamad, who is based in Gaza, had written an opinion piece in al-Ayyam critical of Palestinian in-fighting. In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.
In the article published on Tuesday, Hamad said the presence of armed men on almost every street, and their attendance at every rally, whether political or not, had created an atmosphere of guns and violence that damaged prospects for calm.
It also meant that television pictures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broadcast around the world too often showed armed men and images of violence, casting the Palestinian struggle in a poor light, he suggested.
He wrote that violence “has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms... It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten. Shouldn’t we be ashamed of this ugly behavior which scandalizes us before our people and before the world?” he asked.
Hamad’s article follows a period of intense in-fighting, with some of the worst intra-Palestinian violence since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
Earlier this month, at least 15 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in clashes between armed members of Hamas and gunmen from the rival Fatah movement, prompting fear of an impending civil war.
Hamad wrote that 175 Palestinians had been killed by “Palestinian gunfire” since the beginning of the year. Recently launched talks on forming a unity government have so far failed.
“Are we all responsible? Yes. Do we all participate in this great sin? Yes,” wrote Hamad. “All of us have the desire not to see arms in the streets except with policemen.”
“We want to disown this disease, this cancer, which has damaged our brains and paralyzed our hearts,” he said. “Have mercy on your people. Let us walk in peace, sit in peace, have a dialogue in peace and sleep in calm,” he added.
THE WASHINGTON POST RETHINKS
Intransigent Hamas
It’s easy to call for a Middle East peace. But what if Palestinian leaders don’t want it?
The Washington Post
October 11, 2006
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001241.html?referrer=email
Stirring but thoughtless appeals for a Middle East peace settlement continue to ring out around the world. Just last week a new one appeared, signed by 135 “global leaders,” that called for “a new international conference, ideally held as soon as possible.” Most of the sponsoring statesmen live far from the region – in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia. Their statement asserted that “the injection of new political will” from “the international community” was what is needed to break the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.
In fact, the problem is a lot more specific, and a lot tougher. That’s why it was helpful that the foreign minister of Egypt decided to publicly speak his mind on the subject the other day. Ahmed Aboul Gheit – who has spent the past several months immersed in a failing effort to restore the broken connections between the Palestinian Authority and its international donors, as well as Israel – placed the blame exactly where it belongs: on the Palestinian political leadership. “The Palestinian situation is marred by sharp divisions and battling; it is a misery and shameful for any Arab and any Palestinian,” the minister told the government newspaper al-Ahram.
The Egyptian frustration is understandable. Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, and Western aid to the Palestinian government, can’t go forward because the governing Hamas movement refuses to recognize Israel or previous Israeli-Palestinian accords. It also won’t renounce the use of violence against Israeli soldiers or civilians, or release the soldier its militants abducted from inside Israel in June. Egyptian negotiators have won Israeli agreement to release up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostage, but Hamas won’t go along.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, from the competing Fatah movement, has tried repeatedly to win Hamas’s agreement on a new unity government that would indirectly recognize Israel, a half-step that might lure back some desperately needed European aid. No deal. This week the government of Qatar intervened, sending its foreign minister shuttling around Gaza with a six-point plan under which Hamas and Fatah would unite on the platform of a two-state solution. Once again Hamas said no.
In case there was any doubt, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh spelled out Hamas’s position at a rally last weekend: “I tell you with all honesty, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel.” Mr. Abbas responded by threatening, as he has before, to dissolve the Palestinian government or order a referendum. But he lacks the legal authority either to remove Hamas from power or to schedule a vote of any kind.
It’s easy enough for global leaders to issue flowery appeals for action on the Middle East or to imply that progress would be possible if only the United States used its leverage with Israel. The stubborn reality is that there can be no movement toward peace until a Palestinian leadership appears that is ready to accept a two-state solution. That’s why there need to be fewer manifestos and more frank messages such as the one delivered by Mr. Aboul Gheit: “Those leaders and the Palestinian people will find out that they are losing a chance.”
SYRIA SENDS MORE ARMS TO HAMAS, ISLAMIC JIHAD AND HIZBULLAH
Syria aiding arms smuggling into Lebanon: Israeli official
Agence France Presse (AFP)
October 15, 2006
news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061015/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictisraellebanonsyriaweapons
Syria is aiding arms smuggling into Lebanon in violation of a UN resolution that ended 34 days of war between Israel and Hizbullah this summer, a senior Israeli intelligence officer has said.
“The weapons smuggling from Syria into Lebanon is continuing with official Syrian involvement,” General Yossi Baidatz, head of the intelligence research department, told the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday.
“Syria’s (President Bashar) al-Assad continues to play an active role in the anti-Israel axis and supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah,” a senior government official quoted Baidatz as telling the cabinet. “There is conclusive and decisive evidence,” Baidatz said.
“Syria is continuing to sabotage the implementation of (UN Resolution) 1701 and is playing a conspirator’s role in sabotaging (Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad) Siniora’s ability to carry out his agenda,” he said.
“Syria is trying to create an opposition block in the Lebanese government in order to damage the prime minister.”
IRAN PROMISES TO HELP HAMAS
Hamas says aid from Iran is forthcoming
The Jerusalem Post, AP & Reuters
October 12, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193428310&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Iran has promised to give assistance to the security forces of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, a Hamas Website said Friday. A senior Hamas official said Teheran had promised to give vehicles to the group’s 3,500-member militia.
The promise came during a visit to Teheran by Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam, according to the Website. Siam was accompanied by four of his advisers and the head of the militia.
Siyam met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visited Iran’s security branches and attended a training session at the police academy, the Website said. Senior Iranian officers promised to assist the Palestinians, it said.
“We see the positions of Ahmadinejad as a source of pride for Muslims,” Siyam was quoted as saying on the Hamas Website. “Especially when he challenges the sources of international arrogance,” he said, in an apparent reference to America and Israel.
Ahmadinejad said Iran had no reservations that would stop it from helping the Hamas government, the Website said. “The victories of Hamas and Hizbullah have put the Zionist entity in a difficult situation,” the site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
The Hamas representatives discussed the possibility of training its operatives in Iran, Channel 2 reported.
In 1999, the IDF claimed Iran had been training Hamas guerrillas near Teheran for several years to carry out attacks on Israel, after a military court indicted two Hamas members from Gaza for carrying out illegal activities for the movement that included initiating Iranian training.
Hamas denied at the time that it had any military training camps in Iran, dismissing the reports as part of a smear campaign against the Islamic republic because of its arrest of 13 Jews on spying charges.
MISSILE DEFENSE AT LEAST 4 YEARS AWAY
Katyusha defense at least 4 years away
By Yaakov Katz
The Jerusalem Post
October 11, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1159193420403&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
A missile defense system that can intercept Katyusha rockets and destroy them before striking their targets won’t be ready for at least four years, senior defense and IDF officials told The Jerusalem Post this week.
The prediction by the officials, some of whom are involved in the development of missile defense systems, came two weeks after Defense Minister Amir Peretz declared that such a system would be up and operational within two years. “Nothing will be ready in two years,” said one senior military official this week. “Peretz was mistaken.”
Peretz has appointed Defense Ministry (MOD) Dir.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi to head an internal committee assigned the task of locating and developing a defense system for short-range rockets. During the recent war against Hizbullah in Lebanon, close to 4,000 short-range Katyusha and medium-range rockets landed in northern Israel.
Following the war, the defense establishment’s hunt for a cheap system that would be operational in the near future picked up speed. In an interview published last week, Peretz claimed that Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the Katyushas fired by Hizbullah in the North had turned into “strategic threats” against Israel and were no longer, as they were supposed to be, simple tactical weapons.
“Both Qassams and Katyushas are tactical weapons that have become strategic threats because we have yet to find an answer to them,” he said. “We want to turn the system into a significant system that can operate, and this will happen in no more than two years.”
The MOD is currently interested in two systems, one being developed in the U.S. and one in Israel. The first system, designed to defend against short-range missiles with a range of three to ten kilometers, such as the Qassam or the short-range Katyushas that struck northern towns during the recent war, is a chemical laser cannon called Skyguard under development by the U.S.-based company Northrop Grumman. The second system, under development by an Israeli company, works with an anti-missile missile that uses a kinetic warhead interceptor.
HAMAS DISCUSSING TARGETING THE U.S.
New calls by Hamas militants to target the U.S.
Washington’s efforts to isolate and topple the Islamist government is amplifying calls from its more extreme element to abandon its reluctance to directly attack U.S. interests
By Tim McGirk
Time magazine
October 13, 2006
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1546101,00.html
Commanders of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement elected to power in the Palestinian territories earlier this year, are locked in a fierce debate over whether to launch terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East. Despite its anti-American rhetoric, Hamas has until now refrained from any known terror strikes against the U.S. – only Israel is in its bomb-sights, Hamas says. That position has been reinforced by the argument of more moderate elements in Hamas that if the movement acted in a reasonable manner, the U.S. and Europe would eventually be persuaded to release funds and foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority blocked last March after Hamas assumed office.
But within Hamas, the argument may be tipping the other way. In furtive, underground meetings held in the West Bank and Gaza, a growing number of Hamas commanders say they are running out of patience with the U.S. and want to strike back. Insiders say the radicals are trying to exploit the exasperation within the movement at what they perceive as the Bush Administration’s one-sided support of Israel and its attempts to press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the Hamas cabinet.
The radicals’ gained ground after a visit to the Middle East earlier this month by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who tried to rally “moderate” Arab regimes into a united front against Iran, Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hizbullah. “The U.S. has become very hostile to the Palestinians,” one Hamas field commander told TIME. “We shouldn’t stand by idly while the Americans are plotting against us.”
Israeli intelligence sources say they are aware of the debate within Hamas over whether to target U.S. interests in the region. An Israeli intelligence official says that for now Hamas’s thinking seems to be: “One enemy – Israel – is enough. Let others in Iraq and Afghanistan take on the Great Satan.”
Such restraint may crumble if Abbas moves, as he is expected to do in the coming weeks, to dismiss the Hamas government – a move that would be seen by most Palestinians as doing Washington’s bidding, and might tip the balance inside the Hamas leadership strongly in favor of the more extreme faction. That would likely involve a retreat from Democratic politics and a reemphasis on terrorism, in which the movement may not confine its targets to Israelis. In this scenario, Hamas would likely seek support from Iran and international jihadists, whose anti-American agendas might increasingly shape Hamas’s own. Israeli officials say Iran recently offered to train Hamas in the weapons and tactics used to such lethal effect by the Hizbullah fighters who held their own against Israeli forces in Lebanon over the summer. Israel’s Shin Bet security service also claims that Hamas had smuggled over 19 tons of explosives into Gaza.
Jihadi culture is also taking root in the Palestinian territories, with the Bush Administration routinely denounced in apocalyptic tones during Friday prayers at mosques throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and recordings of Jihadi songs and chants selling briskly at West Bank bazaars. Westerners also face a growing risk of kidnapping, and the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem has warned that Americans traveling in the Palestinian territories are no longer safe. The consulate in mid-August issued kidnap warnings for Gaza and the West Bank after the abduction of two Fox News reporters. On Wednesday, kidnappers struck again: an American aid worker, Michael Philips, 24, from Louisiana was kidnapped from Nablus by a new gang calling itself ‘Jaish al-Sunna’ (the “Sunni Army”) which demanded the release of Palestinian women and minors from Israeli prisons. Palestinian security police freed Phillips, but the identity of his captors is still unknown. According to both Israeli and Palestinian police sources, there is no evidence linking the kidnappers with Hamas or any other known militant group. But as the economic squeeze tightens in the territories, more and more Palestinians are blaming the U.S. for their woes – and are wanting to hit back.
(With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem, and Aaron J. Klein/Tel Aviv)
AMERICAN IMAM PLEADS GUILTY TO AIDING HAMAS
U.S. man pleads guilty to aiding Hamas
The Associated Press
October 13, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193432962&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The imam of a mosque pleaded guilty to providing material support to the militant group Hamas in a case in which the agreement, charges and even the plea hearing were handled in secret.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Friday that the charges and plea agreement involving Mohamed Shorbagi were filed Aug. 28 in a federal court, but were sealed until today. Shorbagi, 42, agreed to a maximum 15 years in prison, prosecutors said. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 3.
According to prosecutors, between 1997 and 2001, Shorbagi provided financial support to Hamas, a group designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. He also was accused of conspiring with unnamed others to provide material support to Hamas.
The donations were through the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, prosecutors said. U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said the prison time could be reduced if Shorbagi cooperates, as he is expected to do.
AHMADINEJAD: “I HAVE BEEN IN TOUCH WITH GOD”
Ahmadinejad: God told me we would win
By Dudi Cohen
Yediot Ahronot
October 16, 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3315855,00.html
While the West is preparing to impose sanctions on Iran, due to the country’s failure to suspend its nuclear activities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still optimistic. “We shall win,” he was quoted in the Iranian media as saying Monday, and added: “One day I will be asked whether I have been in touch with someone who told me we would win, and I will respond: ‘Yes, I have been in touch with God’.”
“We must not be afraid of them,” he stated, hinting to the western countries. Ahmadinejad also noted that although he was at times mocked for his preoccupation with spiritual matters and his use of “divine” words,” he was nevertheless certain that Iran would prevail, after having secured the support of international public opinion for its cause.
Meanwhile, Iranian news agencies reported Monday that Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi addressed the possibility of an attack on Iran and said, “If Americans and Zionists want to try their luck in Iran, they will experience a larger defeat than in Iraq.”
Safavi added during a memorial service held at his headquarters: “We are obligated to our fallen to maintain the readiness and deal a powerful blow on the enemies in case of an attack.
“The Basij (branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Revolutionary Guards are so strong they will not allow the enemy to even think of launching an operation against Iran,” he said.
“The blood of our shahids will bring about not only the liberation of Jerusalem and Karbala (Iraq) but the liberation of all mankind from the evil powers of the world; the blood of our shahids boiled the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, and they will overcome the evil Americans and Israel.”
OLMERT: “IF THE ATOM BOMB REACHES IRANIAN HANDS IT WILL REACH OTHER HANDS”
Olmert: Iran nukes could reach Hizbullah
By Ronny Sofer
Yediot Ahronot
October 15, 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3315165,00.html
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Iran poses a strategic threat to Israel, warning that the Islamic Republic would transfer nuclear weapons to its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah.
“If the atomic bomb reaches Iranian hands it will reach other hands. International fears – not only Israel’s – are that these weapons reach other players like Hizbullah,” Olmert said, adding that the international community should take seriously the North Korea’s claimed nuclear test.
Olmert is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss Iran’s disputed nuclear program and North Korea’s claims that it successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
Speaking about Syria, Olmert accused Damascus of plotting to oust the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. “It is no coincidence that there is a Syrian decision, with Hizbullah, to bring about the fall of the Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora. All those demanding peace with Assad and long for the peace he is offering, should remember that the same Assad is mulling the fall of Siniora, the same Assad we are supposed to negotiate with a political solution when Khaled Mashaal acts freely there,” Olmert said.
Diverting his attention to the internal agenda, Olmert said the Israel Defense Forces have been ordered to continue operations against Qassam attacks from the Gaza Strip and brushed aside claims that his government is not taking the issue seriously.
“We cannot allow ourselves the continuation of Qassam fire at this rate from Gaza. The fact that 17 terror activists were killed in the last couple of days is not a sign of restraint from our side. There is no restraint and there will be no restraint,” he said.
He slammed Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal, who accused the government of not doing enough to halt Qassam fire on the city. “I never saw a bigger gap between capabilities to lip service. Leadership is also about the ability to calm and not only to incite the public,” he said.
Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter called on the government to widen the scope of military operations in the Gaza Strip. “We only hear about surgical operations, and we need to expand the operation,” Dichter said.
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon told Olmert that had Qassams rockets been falling on Tel Aviv, the government would have responded differently.
Olmert said the government is doing more to protect Sderot that other governments did against terror attacks in Tel Aviv.
“I understand well people in Sderot. It is not easy to live in a routine of Qassam fire; we are operating and will continue to operate with all force against Qassam fire until we bring about a drop in this fire,” he said.
NEW IRANIAN MODERATE DAILY, WITHOUT A CARTOON SECTION, HITS NEWSSTANDS
New Iranian moderate daily hits newsstands
Agence France Presse (AFP)
October 16, 2006
www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061016-052320-7504r
A new Iranian moderate daily, Rozegar (Times), was published Monday, nearly a month after the Islamic republic’s conservative press watchdog shut down the leading moderate broadsheet, Shargh.
Bylines on articles in the newspaper’s first edition showed that many of the journalists writing for Rozegar are former Shargh reporters. The format and typeset of the new paper closely resembled that of the shut-down daily.
But in its first issue, the 24-page color broadsheet published articles from across the political spectrum. These included a piece from Abbas Abdi, a leading reformist, alongside an article from Fatemeh Rajabi, a hardline figure and the wife of government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham.
On the international pages, Rozegar published stories about the North Korean nuclear crisis and also about the Turkish winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Orhan Pamuk.
However, the paper does not carry any cartoon section, one of the reasons why Shargh was shut down. A disputed cartoon in Shargh had depicted two chess pieces, a white knight facing a black donkey surrounded by a white halo on a checkboard – perceived by some as an insult to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
With a circulation of around 100,000, Shargh (which means East in Farsi) was the standard-bearer moderate publication among some 40 national dailies, half of which are close to the moderate and reformist camps.
In May, a government daily, Iran, was banned and two of its journalists were arrested for publishing a cartoon that provoked rioting by Iran’s large Azeri community.
The daily has since been given the green light to publish again, although it has yet to reappear on newsstands.
The Iranian press enjoyed some freedom under the previous reformist government of Mohammad Khatami from 1997-2005 but even then the hardline judiciary shut down scores of titles and detained dozens of journalists.
* BBC blocking release of report critical of its own Mideast coverage
* New Statesman invites readers to plant trees for Palestine
* Reuters cameraman arrested for inciting rock attacks on Israelis
CONTENTS
1. “British magazine buys olive trees ‘in Palestine’ for new subscribers” (J. Post, Oct. 16, 2006)
2. “New style guide” (BBC Editors blog, Oct. 13, 2006)
3. “Israel and the Palestinians: Key terms” (BBC, Oct. 12, 2006)
4. “BBC mounts court fight to keep ‘critical’ report secret” (Sunday Telegraph, Oct. 15, 2006)
5. “Evening, infidels! Here is the news from the BBC...” (Daily Mail, Oct. 13, 2006)
6. “BBC: where facts are expensive and comment runs far too free” (The Observer, Oct. 8, 2006)
7. “BBC’s rising star quits for al-Jazeera” (The Guardian, Oct. 5, 2006)
REUTERS CAMERAMAN ARRESTED FOR INCITING ROCK ATTACKS
Reuters cameraman Imad Muhammad Intisar Boghnat was arrested yesterday by Israeli police for his part in rock-throwing attacks on Israelis in the Arab village of Bil’in in the West Bank.
Israel has obtained videotape evidence that on October 6, 2006, Boghnat encouraged and directed rioters in Bil’in to throw large chunks of rock at Israeli vehicles. He is heard shouting “throw, throw!” and “throw towards the little window!” Rocks are then thrown at the drivers’ passenger windows. In the past Israeli drivers and their children have died after rocks were thrown at their moving cars.
Some Reuters employees have a long history of inciting violence against Israel, as documented several times on this website.
NEW STATESMAN READERS PLANT TREES FOR PALESTINE
The once respected British political magazine, The New Statesman, is offering readers the chance to sponsor “the planting of three new olive trees in Palestine,” as an incentive to take out a subscription to the magazine.
Unsurprisingly, The New Statesman neglects to tell readers that if any piece of land is in need of help with tree-planting it is northern Israel. Many thousands of trees were destroyed in northern Israel this summer by thousands of Katyusha rockets fired by Hizbullah from Lebanon.
John Kampfner, editor of the New Statesman, is a leftist Jew who specializes in running extremely anti-Israel pieces in his magazine. Recently, for example, I pointed out that the New Statesman made up racist quotes by Ariel Sharon. For more, please see A colossus of our time (Oct. 3, 2006).
BBC BLOCKING REPORT CRITICAL OF ITS MIDEAST COVERAGE
The BBC is doing its utmost to block the release of a report that is believed to be highly critical of its Mideast coverage. The Sunday Telegraph reports that the corporation has spent thousands of pounds of British license (tax) payers’ money mounting a High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the UK Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the very same Act to pursue their own journalism.
The 20,000-word Balen Report, which is believed to include evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming, was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior BBC journalist and editorial adviser appointed by the BBC in 2004 to monitor BBC Mideast coverage. Balen was appointed following sustained criticism of the BBC’s inflammatory coverage by several people, including myself.
BBC IGNORES OWN RECOMMENDATIONS ON USE OF “TERRORIST”
Writing on the BBC blog, BBC Jerusalem bureau chief Simon Wilson claims “the style guide on Israeli/Palestinian coverage which we’re publishing [but only in an abbreviated form for the public] on the [BBC] website for the first time today is the fruit of hours and hours of hard work by some of the BBC’s most experienced Middle East specialists. The aim is not to be prescriptive, but to give colleagues who can’t reasonably be expected to follow every twist and turn of the conflict some suggestions to deal with the more contentious topics.”
Wilson first claims that the aim of the style guide is to be “careful not to adopt, even inadvertently, the language of one side or the other, which may give an impression of bias.” However, two paragraphs later we are told that “sometimes good journalism requires that we take a position on an issue – even when the facts themselves are under dispute.”
Wilson adds: “Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements [such as ‘terrorist’].”
One reader commented on the BBC blog that “It is also interesting that, in respect of the T [Terrorist]-word, you have ignored entirely the recommendations of the BBC’s own impartiality review panel which recommended the use of the word where circumstances so merited.”
Another reader comments: “Homicide bombings is the correct term, as the intent is to murder people. Suicide bombings would suggest only one person dies.”
“THAT’S OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT – AND, OF COURSE, EVERY OTHER NIGHT”
In his piece attached below about the planned new BBC Arabic and Persian language TV networks, leading British columnist Richard Littlejohn writes that for “Those of us who live in the London area might just as well be watching the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation when it comes to ‘local’ news.”
“One night last week, the first five items on the World’s Worst News Bulletin were all about Muslims. Coverage of the debate over the veil was conducted exclusively from an Islamic viewpoint, from what I could gather.”
Littlejohn (who is a subscriber to this list) goes on to describe what a BBC News bulletin may look like in the future: “Good evening, infidel dogs. I spit on you. The mujahideen are coming to murder you in your beds and the blood of your kafur children and your drunken whores will run through the streets of your decadent, godless cities. That’s our top story tonight – and, of course, every other night. Some breaking news this evening – a plane has crashed into a skyscraper in New York. Unfortunately, only two people were killed…”
Leftist British commentator Nick Cohen, writing in the Observer, also recently criticized the BBC: “Although it is impossible to generalise about such a vast organisation, the bias charge has enough truth in it to stick.” (Article attached below).
Nick Cohen, who is not Jewish, wrote an article last year about how his left-wing readers, assuming he was Jewish, directed anti-Semitic comments at him. This article can be read in the dispatch, “Don’t be silly, Ann, there’s no racism on the left” (Oct. 11, 2005).
BBCZEERA
The final article below reports that Darren Jordon, a BBC newsreader described as one of the rising stars of the organization, is the latest in a series of BBC staff to join al-Jazeera. Some believe the BBC is in any case more anti-Israeli and anti-American in its coverage and manipulation of the facts than al-Jazeera is.
For those interested, it is worth reading several previous dispatches concerning BBC coverage. Among them:
* Israeli soldier kidnapped? Not on the BBC (July 3, 2006).
* “The BBC pro-Israeli? Is the Pope Jewish?” (May 15, 2006).
* New internal BBC memo warns staff over “terrorism” (Dec. 20, 2005).
-- Tom Gross
BRITISH MAGAZINE PLANTS OLIVE TREES “IN PALESTINE”
British magazine buys olive trees ‘in Palestine’ for new subscribers
By Jonny Paul
The Jerusalem Post
October 16, 2006
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193447736&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The New Statesman, a respected weekly current affairs magazine, is offering readers the chance to sponsor “the planting of three new olive trees in Palestine,” as incentive to take out a subscription to the magazine.
Those who participate in the offer will receive a certificate to mark support for the campaign, and the promise that the magazine will provide updates on the progress of the trees.
The offer, in conjunction with a Manchester-based fair trade nonprofit organization called Olive Cooperative, states that “each tree represents a long-term source of income for Palestinian families, who have been harvesting olive oil, fruit and wood for generations.”
Also with subscriptions, the magazine offers membership in a campaign called Trees for Life, which it says aims to “help to repair the enormous destruction years of war have inflicted on the olive groves of Palestine.”
To date, the publication has had 150 responses, which translate into the planting of 300 trees. For seasonal reasons, the trees will be planted in February of next year.
John Kampfner, editor of the New Statesman, said that the offer was just one of the many marketing strategies the magazine provides on a monthly basis.
“Usually it’s books; sometimes it’s activities relating to NGOs. This came about, and I was very happy to support it as it seems to be a very valid economic based initiative with which very few right-minded people could take issue,” he said.
Kampfner, who has just returned to England from a trip to Israel, began editing the publication just over a year ago. He calls himself a strong advocate of the “two-state solution as the core of a bigger Middle East peace settlement.”
BBC PRODUCES NEW MIDEAST STYLE GUIDE
New style guide
By Simon Wilson
BBC Editors blog
October 13, 2006
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/new_style_guide.html
It may not immediately look like it, but the style guide on Israeli/Palestinian coverage which we’re publishing on the website for the first time today is the fruit of hours and hours of hard work by some of the BBC’s most experienced Middle East specialists.
The aim is not to be prescriptive, but to give colleagues who can’t reasonably be expected to follow every twist and turn of the conflict some suggestions to deal with the more contentious topics.
In many cases, it’s about being careful not to adopt, even inadvertently, the language of one side or the other, which may give an impression of bias.
So, for example, we recommend using the term “West Bank Barrier” for the system of fences, walls, ditches and barbed wire which Israel is currently building. The official Israeli term is “Security Fence”, the Palestinians call it an “Apartheid Wall”. Each has their point – but we believe this is the clearest generic term for our audiences. Individual reporters standing in front of a particular section can, of course, still refer to a “fence” or “wall” behind them.
Sometimes good journalism requires that we take a position on an issue – even when the facts themselves are under dispute. The civilian settlements which Israel has built on land it occupied in the 1967 Arab/Israeli war are illegal under international law. That is the position of the UN Security Council, the British government and the Geneva Convention. So it is right that we make that clear in this guide. Israel disputes this and has argued the case legally – and vociferously – on numerous occasions. That’s also important and we recommend that where space allows our language should reflect the Israeli objection as well.
Palestinians and their supporters sometimes take us to task for using the term “suicide bombing” to describe what they view as a “martyrdom attack”. Again, we feel it’s right to take a position and that clear, simple, accurate language is best. In America, some news organisations describe them as “homicide attacks”, a phrase we have discussed and rejected.
Although initially a little sceptical, the more I think about it, the happier I am that we are publishing this guide to the public. BBC journalists, whether they are in Israel, the Palestinian Territories or London, put an enormous amount of thought and effort into trying to get these things right. And if this shows just a glimpse of that to the people we are reporting to, it may prove a very useful exercise.
“OUR RESPONSIBILITY IS TO REMAIN IMPARTIAL”
Israel and the Palestinians: Key terms
BBC Website
October 12, 2006
news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_6040000/newsid_6044000/6044090.stm
(Excerpt)
TERRORISTS
Note the BBC producer guidelines which state: “We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly. We should not adopt other people’s language as our own. Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements. The word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. It is also usually inappropriate to use words like ‘liberate’, ‘court martial’ or ‘execute’ in the absence of a clear judicial process. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them. We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened. We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunmen’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’ or ‘militant.’”
Our responsibility is to remain impartial and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.
BBC GOES TO HIGH COURT TO BLOCK HIGHLY CRITICAL REPORT OF ITS MIDEAST COVERAGE
BBC mounts court fight to keep ‘critical’ report secret
By Chris Hastings and Beth Jones
The Sunday Telegraph
October 15, 2006
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/15/nbeeb15.xml
The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.
The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.
The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.
The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.
Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.
The High Court action is the latest stage of a lengthy and expensive battle by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the document, which was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for the workings of the Act, agreed with the BBC that the document, which examines hundreds of hours of its radio and television broadcasts, could be held back. However, Mr Sugar appealed and, after a two-day hearing at which the BBC was represented by two barristers, the Information Tribunal found in his favour.
Mr Sugar said: “This is a serious report about a serious issue and has been compiled with public money. I lodged the request because I was concerned that the BBC’s reporting of the second intifada was seriously unbalanced against Israel, but I think there are other issues at stake now in the light of the BBC’s reaction.”
The BBC’s coverage of the Middle East has been frequently condemned for a perceived anti-Israeli bias.
In 2004, for example, Barbara Plett, a Middle East correspondent, was criticised for revealing in an episode of Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent that she had been moved to tears by the plight of the dying Yasser Arafat. MPs said it proved that the corporation was incapable of presenting a balanced account of issues in the Middle East.
Figures released by the Information Commissioner’s Office show that there have been 105 complaints about the BBC’s attitude to the Act since it came into force in January 2005. Only four of these have been dismissed and the rest are being examined. The BBC has lodged at least 25 complaints about the way other organisations have dealt with its requests.
The BBC declined to say how much it was spending on the High Court action. “We will be appealing the decision of the Information Tribunal,” a spokesman said. “This case has wider implications relating to the way the Act applies to public broadcasters.”
“GOOD EVENING, INFIDEL DOGS”
Evening, infidels! Here is the news from the BBC...
By Richard Littlejohn
The Daily Mail
October 13, 2006
The BBC is launching two new channels. One, in Arabic, will compete with al-Jazeera. The other, in Farsi, will be beamed into Iran. A spokesman said of the Persian-language venture: ‘The new television service will be editorially independent of the UK government.’
So why is Gordon Brown subsidising it to the tune of £15 million?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to put out the BBC’s domestic service on satellite? No one would notice the difference.
In recent days, Radio 4 has given over a substantial chunk of the flagship Today programme to a party political broadcast by an Islamist maniac.
Those of us who live in the London area might just as well be watching the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation when it comes to ‘local’ news.
One night last week, the first five items on the World’s Worst News Bulletin were all about Muslims.
Coverage of the debate over the veil was conducted exclusively from an Islamic viewpoint, from what I could gather.
First, there was a live vox-pop from a curry house opposite a mosque in Southall, where all those asked to comment had just turned out of Friday prayers. Back in the studio, the two invited guests were a ‘moderate’ Muslim and a bird in a burqa. This is what the BBC calls ‘balance’.
We’ve even had the weatherman standing in the Edgware Road – the famous ‘Arab Street’ – giving us the forecast for Ramadan.
Why don’t they just cut out the middle man and install a studio in Captain Hook’s cell at Belmarsh?
‘Something to look forward to on BBC1 this weekend, a brand new series of Fasting With Frost. Songs Of Praise comes from Regent’s Park Mosque and this week’s What Not To Wear features Jack Straw being given a complete makeover by the fashion editor of al-Mujaharoun. Over on BBC2, in Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson tests the latest range of people-carriers available free of charge to unemployed Muslim clerics. And don’t forget to stay tuned for live beheading from Trafalgar Square, coming up after the latest national and international news, read by Abu Hamza.
(Roll titles)
Good evening, infidel dogs. I spit on you. The mujahideen are coming to murder you in your beds and the blood of your kafur children and your drunken whores will run through the streets of your decadent, godless cities. That’s our top story tonight – and, of course, every other night.
Some breaking news this evening – a plane has crashed into a skyscraper in New York. Unfortunately, only two people were killed.
We also celebrate the fourth anniversary of the glorious Bali martyrdom operation, a shining day in history for all true believers.
In an exclusive interview from Lebanon, the president of Iran tells our diplomatic editor, Sheikh Omar Bakri, of his plans to wipe the pariah, pigs-and-monkeys state of Izza-ray-el off the map in a nuclear holocaust, just as soon as he receives the plutonium from North Korea.
Our crime correspondent, Abu Izzadeen, reports on the progress in the fatwa against the Danish cartoonists who insulted Islam.
Later in the programme, in our consumer affairs slot, I’ll be presenting a special report from West London on how you can become a property tycoon while living on benefits – and, indeed, while in prison.
Our legal aid correspondent, Anjem Choudary, will be bringing you an update on the imposition of Sharia law in East Ham.
There’ll be the latest news on the campaign to have London Underground stations renamed after the four members of the July 7 martyrdom brigade.
We’ve got exclusive footage from our brothers in Iraq showing a Western aid worker slut having her head sawn off. If you can’t wait for that, it is available right now on our website, where you’ll also find easy to-follow instructions on making Ricin in your own kitchen.
Sir Ian Blair apologises to all Muslims for something which hasn’t actually happened yet.
In sport, we ask if England goalkeeper Paul Robinson should have his right leg amputated to punish him for letting in that soft own goal in Croatia.
And coming up after the break, a shocking report from the Great Satan on how, in their latest outrage against Islam, the rapacious, infidel running dogs of the illegitimate and immoral Bush regime have, er, banned online gambling.
COMMENT IS FREE, BUT FACTS ARE EXPENSIVE
The BBC – where facts are expensive and comment runs far too free
By Nick Cohen
The Observer
October 8, 2006
observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1890349,00.html
Clive Anderson recently hosted a private viewing of his Hypotheticals show, in which the experts reacting to a rolling crisis were BBC senior managers. The corporation’s governors had gathered them at the Institute of Physics, near Broadcasting House, to see how their impartiality stood up to the pressures of religious passion and psychopathic terror.
The scenario they faced began pleasantly enough. Anderson told them that the BBC had found a new presenter who was able to read an autocue with the right combination of prettiness and authority television requires. To make matters better, she was a British Muslim and her presence on screen emphasised the managers’ commitment to diversity.
One day, she arrived at work wearing a hijab. Would it be religious discrimination to force her to remove it before she went on air? Or was she trying to make a political statement? While the executives agonised, she invited them to her wedding in a village in the badlands on the Pakistan-Afghan border. After a long flight and dusty car ride, they were enjoying the ceremony when in walks Osama bin Laden. On being told BBC managers were in the room, bin Laden offered an exclusive interview.
They decided to take it and summoned Justin Webb, one of the BBC’s best reporters. Confronted for the first time by a Western journalist who asked hard questions, bin Laden flipped and kidnapped the luckless Webb.
And so it went on. Media grandees who were in the audience told me that the executives were very impressive. They dealt with each dilemma by referring to coherent moral principles and professional standards. Yet they didn’t convince everyone that the BBC was a beacon of journalistic integrity. Jeff Randall, the BBC’s former business editor, described how he was surrounded by intellectuals of the type who ‘would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from a poor box’, as George Orwell put it.
While Randall was at the BBC, two producers tried to stop him wearing his hijab: a pair of Union Jack cufflinks. ‘They said they were a symbol of the BNP and I couldn’t wear them,’ he recalled. He had to explain with some force why they were mistaken.
As you might expect, Janet Daley, a columnist for the Telegraph, denounced the BBC for its bias against conservatives, but then Sue Lawley unexpectedly said the consensus of the meeting was that the BBC had a liberal bias. The BBC managers must have felt unloved. They will have felt more so last week when they heard rumours that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown want to peg the licence fee to inflation. If Alastair Campbell’s attacks on the corporation are a guide, I would guess that a belief in its bias has turned them against the BBC.
Although it is impossible to generalise about such a vast organisation, the bias charge has enough truth in it to stick. If you doubt me, research one opinion outside the liberal consensus. Read up on the arguments for making Britain a fairer country by giving trade unionists more rights, for instance, or saying that abortion is murder or that Tony Blair’s foreign policy is correct in its essentials.
You don’t have to believe it, you just have to convince yourself that serious people can hold it for good reasons. You will then notice something disconcerting about most BBC presenters. Although they subject opponents of, say, abortion to rigorous cross-examination, their lust for ferocious questioning deserts them when supporters of abortion come on air. Far from being tested, they treat upholders of the liberal consensus as purveyors of an incontestable truth.
The way out for the BBC is not to swing to the right – it is not an advance to replace soft interviews for Menzies Campbell with soft interviews for John Reid – but make a tactical withdrawal from the opinion business. Less airtime should be given to talking heads and celebrity interviewers in London studios and more to reporters who leave Television Centre to find out what is happening in the world.
Indeed, the speed with which newspapers and commercial TV companies are declining may mean that the BBC will soon be the only institution with the resources to send large numbers of reporters into the world. Yet for all its advantages, the fashion in the media world its executives inhabit is against journalism.
Producers know that comment is free, but facts are expensive. As well as being cheap, fervent opinions can increase market share because their very vehemence can hold the attention of the channel-hopping audience for a few more minutes.
You can see this Michael Mooronification of journalism everywhere from the success of Fox News to the Independent’s embrace of agitprop. At the BBC’s Hypotheticals meeting, Adam Bolton of Sky praised Fox and Dorothy Byrne of C4 declared that reporting should be ‘passionate’. No it shouldn’t; reporting should be true.
If the BBC governors abandon that principle, they will end up with a corporation which isn’t so much left-wing or right-wing, but irrelevant.
ANOTHER BBC JOURNALIST QUITS FOR AL-JAZEERA
BBC’s rising star quits for al-Jazeera
By Tara Conlan
The Guardian
October 5, 2006
media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,1888251,00.html
BBC newsreader Darren Jordon is leaving to join al-Jazeera International, the corporation confirmed today. Jordon has been a regular face on all the BBC bulletins, particularly the One O’Clock News. He will leave at the end of the month to join the much-delayed English-language service from the pioneering Arab broadcaster.
Jordon has been at the BBC for eight years. It is thought he is being lined up by al-Jazeera as an onscreen partner for former ITN presenter Shiulie Ghosh, who has already signed up.
Jordon said today: “I’ve had a wonderful time at the BBC; I’ve learned an awful lot and worked with some exceptionally talented individuals. The move, however, comes at the right time for me and I look forward to the fresh challenges that it will no doubt present.”
The BBC’s head of television news, Peter Horrocks, said: “I’m sorry to see Darren go. He is an extremely accomplished news presenter – always straightforward in his reporting, and rigorous but fair in his questioning. We wish him all the best for the future.”
Jordon joined BBC Sport as a broadcast journalist in 1998, following a three-year stint as a sports broadcaster in South Africa. He made the move to TV news in 1999, when he became a presenter on BBC News 24.
He was seen as a rising star at the BBC, co-presenting several major events in recent years, most notably the D-Day 60th anniversary celebrations and the Lord Mayor’s Show.
CONTENTS
1. “Beyond the veil” (By Mohammed Galadari, Khaleej Times, Oct. 9, 2006)
2. “Al-Qaeda affiliate burns coffee shop in Gaza Strip” (Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 8, 2006)
3. “Ireland: Pro-Palestinian protesters attack Israeli ambassador” (Yediot, Oct. 8, 2006)
4. “Baghdad’s last rabbi to leave Iraq” (News Agencies, Oct. 4, 2006)
5. “Major chains refuse to play Bush death film” (Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 6, 2006)
6. “‘This is ethnic cleansing’ – Georgia” (Sunday Times, Oct. 8, 2006)
7. “‘Unclean’ guide dog banned by Muslim cab driver” (Daily Mail, Oct. 6, 2006)
[Note by Tom Gross]
Because of other work commitments, I do not have time to summarize these articles, but I would recommend you read them, in particular the first remarkable op-ed from Mohammed A.R. Galadari in yesterday’s Khaleej Times in Dubai.
He writes: “Unfortunately, many British Muslims do not understand that when they choose to become citizens of a country and make it their home, they also embrace its culture, customs, habits and social behavior. This is a reality that is as clear as daylight. Dear readers, in this respect, there are lessons for British Muslims in the example of the British Jewish community… Jews wanted to integrate with the host society and its social values and norms.”
(The Khaleej Times is an English-language daily newspaper read in the Gulf. It should be noted that this article was not produced in Arabic in any paper according to a search conducted specifically for this website/email list.)
The second article concerns al-Qaeda’s rise in strength in Gaza, where pictures of the organization’s former leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are plastered on walls throughout the Strip.
-- Tom Gross
AL-QAEDA AFFILIATE BURNS COFFEE SHOP IN GAZA
Al-Qaeda affiliate burns coffee shop in Gaza Strip
By Ali Waked
Yediot Ahronot
October 8, 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3312455,00.html
After the Palestinian branch of al-Qaeda took responsibility for killing a senior Palestinian intelligence officer and four of his escorts three weeks ago, the group again took responsibility for violence in the Gaza Strip. Early Sunday morning, Gunmen shot and set fire to an internet coffee shop in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, causing massive damage.
Sunday afternoon an announcement was made claiming that the organization Islamic Swords of Justice, identified as an affiliate of al-Qaeda are responsible for the incident.
In the organization’s announcement, it was stated that burning the coffee shop is “part of a series of actions aimed at fighting corruption and the corrupt. During the holy month of Ramadan, our fighters have started operating on the holy land and in the early morning placed a bomb weighing ten kilograms (22 pounds) next to the coffee shop, ridden with corruption and characteristic of the unethical activities that have increased in recent days. Jihad fighters detonated the bomb as a message to all the corrupt people.”
According to the gunmen, the owner of the establishment was pre-warned that his business serves as a center for unethical activity and that he should straighten out the situation before it is too late. The organization warned that they would not spare anyone they deemed unethical and that their “swords will have no mercy on them.”
Last week, a video was published by Palestinian al-Qaeda in which the organization took responsibility for the murder of Colonel Jed Tayya, a senior Palestinian intelligence officer. Tayya, assassinated along with four officers escorting him, was accused in the al-Qaeda video of being an agent of the Mossad and the CIA, who gathered intelligence and tracked down jihad fighters on the land of Palestine.
The organization promised to continue to target collaborators in the Palestinian Authority elite.
In addition to the two announcements, leaflets have been published recently by al-Qaeda and organizations affiliated with al-Qaeda, such was the Islamic Mujjahadin Army that has taken responsibility for firing at Israeli and Palestinian targets and the Army of Islam Organization that purportedly participated in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.
Among the Palestinian elite, there is increasing concern that al-Qaeda is becoming a major actor in the Gaza Strip within the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned a few months ago that he has information indicating that the organization is active within PA territory.
Another sign of al-Qaeda’s rise in strength and popularity is that pictures of the organization’s former leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are plastered on walls throughout the Gaza Strip. After his assassination by the Americans a few months ago, symbolic vigils in his honor have even been erected, and the kind of hat he used to wear has become a real hit among Gazan and West Bank youth.
A Palestinian security figure said to Ynet that the PA is concerned that if the conflict between Fatah and Hamas isn’t solved, the Palestinian leadership and the international community will have to deal with an increased presence of al-Qaeda and its affiliated organizations in the region.
“If there isn’t a diplomatic breakthrough, it is not for sure that Fatah will be the first alternative to the Hamas regime. We see a lot of young people, even those who were in Hamas, getting closer to more extremist organizations and becoming potential candidates for al-Qaeda and its various branches,” the security figure said.
ISRAEL’S AMBASSADOR TO IRELAND ATTACKED AT UNIVERSITY
Ireland: Pro-Palestinian protesters attack Israeli ambassador
By Itamar Eichner
Yediot Ahronot
October 8, 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3312283,00.html
Dozens of enraged pro-Palestinian protestors attacked Israel’s ambassador to Ireland this weekend as he was leaving a university in the city of Galway.
Dr. Zion Evrony, speaking at an open lecture organized by the law school, was first greeted with dozens of shouting protestors waving Palestinian flags. During the speech 20 students attempted to “blow up” the lecture by using an agreed signal and suddenly shouting and waving signs and flags. The protestors were asked to leave the hall.
After the speech and Q&A portion of the 90 minute lecture were over the ambassador exited the hall surrounded by police officers. However as he was leaving the campus grounds several dozen angry protestors attacked his vehicle, pounding their fists against the car and climbing onto the car. No one was arrested.
During the visit to Galway, the third largest city in Ireland, the ambassador met with the mayor and president of the university and was also interviewed at a local radio station. Dr. Evrony said that “despite the incident I intend to continue to speak everywhere. It is important that Israel’s voice be heard and its position clarified.”
BAGHDAD’S LAST RABBI TO LEAVE IRAQ
Baghdad’s last rabbi to leave Iraq
By News Agencies
October 4, 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/770027.html
Baghdad’s last remaining rabbi announced on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar that he plans to leave Iraq.
Rabbi Emad Levy, one of about a dozen remaining members of the city’s Jewish community, which once topped 100,000, compared his life to “living in a prison” as he broke his Yom Kippur fast last Monday evening.
Levy said that his father fled to Israel after Iraq was invaded by the United States in 2003, but he stayed behind to care for a Jewish octogenarian sick with diabetes, The Washington Post reported yesterday. The man is now in the care of friendly Kurds, Levy said, adding he will exit the country as soon as possible.
Levy said that most Iraqi Jews are homebound out of fear of kidnapping or execution. “It’s like I’m living in a prison all the time,” he said. “I have no future here. I must go out to have a life for myself.”
“What should I do?” he continued. “Of course this is not the way Yom Kippur should be. When you are alone, it is very different than when you do it in the synagogue or with a lot of people. It is sad. This is why I must leave for the Holy Land.”
* Tom Gross adds: For more on Iraqi Jews, please see the dispatch Iraq 17: 99-year-old Iraqi Jew reaches Israel at last (July 28, 2003).
BUSH ASSASSINATION FILM REJECTED BY MAJOR THEATER CHAINS
Major chains refuse to play Bush death film
By Nicole Sperling and Anne Thompson
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
October 6, 2006
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061006/en_nm/president_dc
Newmarket Films set itself an unusual challenge when it decided to release the controversial faux investigative documentary “Death of a President” just six weeks after acquiring the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.
But it might face an even more formidable obstacle because several major theater chains are refusing to play the film, which mixes real news footage with dramatized segments depicting the fictional 2007 death of President Bush.
Newmarket, the 12-year-old Los Angeles-based film financing, production and distribution company, plans to open the film October 27, just in time for the November 7 election.
“Yes, it’s controversial,” Newmarket co-founder Chris Ball said. “It’s quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush. It talks about a rush to judgment. In no way is it a call for violence.”
But the country’s largest theater chain, Regal Entertainment Group, has passed on playing the film, citing the subject matter as the primary reason. “We would not be inclined to program this film,” Regal Entertainment Group CEO Mike Campbell said. “We feel it is inappropriate to portray the future assassination of a sitting president, regardless of political affiliation.”
Texas-based Cinemark USA also has declined to play the indie film, corporate spokesman Terrell Falk said. The circuit, which recently completed its acquisition of northern California-based Century Theatres, will not allow the regional player to book the film either. “We’re not playing it on any of our screens,” Falk said. “It’s a subject matter we don’t wish to play. We decided to pass on the film.”
Boston-based National Amusements, controlled by Viacom Inc. chief Sumner Redstone, still is in negotiations as to whether it will play the R-rated film from director Gabriel Range, who reportedly was the subject of death threats before the film’s debut in Toronto.
“We’re currently in discussions with the distributor of the film,” said Wanda Whitson, director of corporate communications at National Amusements. “The availability of the film in our markets is an important factor affecting this discussion. Our film department does consider all films, and we’ve run controversial films in the past.”
Newmarket distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz insisted he was having no trouble booking the film, which initially will open in several hundred locations. “Every day during a busy time we are picking up plenty of screens,” he said, citing the Landmark Theater chain as being supportive.
Abramowitz declined comment on problems with theater bookings. “We’re getting a good reception in a lot of places. No matter how tight the screens are, once a film has success, it’s always easier to get more screens.”
Although a consortium of distributors led by Miramax Films’ Harvey Weinstein pushed the politically polarized “Fahrenheit 9/11” into theaters very quickly in summer 2004, and Paramount Vantage took only four months to open Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” it is rare that a film goes from acquisition to release so quickly.
One distribution executive questioned the wisdom of rushing “President” into cinemas in advance of the election. “In the midst of all the backlash and controversy it seems to make sense to ride the moment,” he said. “The film is so topical and incendiary, you’d think that to wait is to waste it. But the film may not have enough time to gestate and get the best theaters booked. They are finding out how difficult and crazy this timing is.”
“President” marks Newmarket’s bid to reclaim its title as a champion of product other distributors deem untouchable. The distribution arm was built from the ground up in 2000 surrounding the release of Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” when other distributors passed on the film. It eventually took the movie to a $25 million North American gross and went on to a winning streak with “Whale Rider,” “Monster” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
* Tom Gross adds: This film was shown on prime time British television on Monday evening. For more, see the note “New film assassinates President George W. Bush” in the dispatch Ignoring 9/11 and blaming George Bush (Sept. 14, 2006).]
MOSCOW SCHOOLS DRAW UP LISTS OF CHILDREN WITH GEORGIAN NAMES
“This is ethnic cleansing” – Georgia
By Mark Franchetti
The Sunday Times (of London)
October 8, 2006
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2393664.html
The tiny former Soviet republic of Georgia accused Russia of ethnic cleansing yesterday after the Kremlin cut trade, transport and postal links and began to investigate children with Georgian names in Moscow schools. The clampdown came in retaliation for the arrests of four Russian officers in Georgia on spy charges.
“We are not scared. We are not panicking,” said Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president, even though his country faces possible ruin as a result of Russian sanctions.
Saakashvili, speaking in his Soviet-era office, said: “It’s a deliberate policy to make our lives miserable but this is not breaking us. On the contrary it’s making us stronger and more independent. The Kremlin is running out of ammunition.”
The already poisoned relations between the former allies seem set to deteriorate further. Moscow police ordered schools in the Russian capital to provide lists of children with Georgian surnames in what they said was an attempt to root out illegal migrants. Gela Bezhuashvili, Georgia’s foreign minister, accused Moscow of xenophobia and ethnic cleansing.
This week the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, will consider a bill that would stop the flow of funds Georgians send home to their often impoverished families. Worse still, the Kremlin could cut off gas supplies.
Last week Russia deported a planeload of 150 Georgians it accused of violating immigration laws. The deportees were rounded up in police raids, taken under armed escort to a military airport and put on a plane to Tbilisi.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, responded to the arrest of the Russians – who were sent back to Moscow after being paraded in handcuffs – by accusing Saakashvili’s government of “state terrorism” and comparing his methods to those of Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s infamous secret police chief who sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths. The analogy was highly insulting as Beria, like Stalin, was a Georgian.
Saakashvili, who came to power three years ago after a bloodless uprising, is a hate figure for Russia. A fluent English speaker with a Dutch wife, he has made no secret of his ambition to push Georgia closer to the West and join Nato. He has not spoken to Putin since June.
MUSLIM MINICAB DRIVER REFUSES TO TAKE BLIND PASSENGER
“Unclean” guide dog banned by Muslim cab driver
The Daily Mail (UK)
October 6, 2006
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=408912&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
A Muslim minicab driver refused to take a blind passenger because her guide dog was “unclean”.
Abdul Rasheed Majekodumni told Jane Vernon she could not get into his car with the dog because of his religion. Islamic tradition warns Muslims against contact with dogs because they are seen as impure. (*)
The case emerged as Jack Straw was embroiled in a controversy over Muslim women wearing veils and the row continued after a Muslim police officer was excused guard duty at the Israeli embassy. Today Mrs Vernon, 39, from Hammersmith, said: “This experience was very upsetting.
“I was tired and cold and just wanted to get home but this driver made me feel like I was a second-class citizen, like I didn’t count at all.”
Mrs Vernon, who works as a legal officer for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, added: “The owner of the minicab firm, Niven Sinclair, was also very insensitive, telling me that what had happened to me wasn’t really very important, and I should have more respect for other people’s culture. They have shown very little respect for my rights as a disabled person and have never once offered me an apology.”
Niven’s and Co cab company, is contracted by the BBC and the minicab was sent to take her home from a studio after she was invited to appear on News 24.
The driver’s refusal resulted in a court case because the law requires all licensed cab drivers to carry guide dogs. Magistrates at Marylebone fined Mr Majekodumni £200 and ordered him to pay £1,200 for failing to comply with regulations set out under the Disability Discrimination Act. After the case Mr Majekodunmi remained defiant and insisted that he would continue refusing passengers accompanied by guide dogs.
Bill Alker, who works with Mrs Vernon at the RNIB supporting other victims of discrimination, said: “Jane and I have worked together for about 16 months advising and supporting people who have suffered the same crime.
“It is absolutely wrong and must stop. Many drivers, cab company operators and the authorities that provide licences are together flouting a good law that was introduced to help blind and partially sighted people get about more independently.”
Drivers who refuse to take a guide dog can lose their licence or get a fine of up to £1,000 but Mr Alker said cases rarely went to court. “Victims must have the support of the area licensing authority who have the power to bring a prosecution or discipline the driver,” he said. “So many drivers flout the law and get away with it.”
Earlier this month Mrs Vernon supported-another blind woman who was refused a taxi ride take the case to court. Bernie Reddington, 37, had asked driver Basir Miah for a lift home after a hospital appointment at Great Ormond Street but he had refused, calling her dog “dirty”.
Horseferry Magistrates Court found him guilty of breaching the terms of his licence and fined him £150 plus £250 compensation.
Mrs Vernon said: “We need to encourage other licensing authorities around the country to start taking these incidents more seriously.
“Many blind people rely on taxis to get around. Not being able to get access to this kind of service is completely wrong and can affect their independence and confidence. In many cases this causes real problems in their work, educational and social life.” Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society, said: “The clash between religious rights and the human rights of other people will become increasingly an issue as the Government tries to include all forms of discrimination under the same umbrella. Fortunately, in this instance, disability seems to trump religion.”
* Tom Gross adds: For more on Islamic attitudes to dogs, see Saudi police ban the sale of cats and dogs (& Gaddafi’s son: Pope must convert) (Sept. 21, 2006).
* Among the Arab collaborators with the Nazis (there were incredibly sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps in north Africa and Arab interpreters went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived), there were individual Arab “righteous gentiles” too, who helped save Jews from the Nazis. To deny the Holocaust and forget these brave Arabs, Arab leaders today deny their own history
* “Sir” Elie Wiesel
* Ken Livingstone cleared
CONTENTS
1. “Polish righteous Gentile woman recommended for Nobel” (Ha’aretz, Oct. 9, 2006)
2. “French academic again convicted for Holocaust denial” (EJP, Oct. 3, 2006)
3. “Study confirms: Nazis made soap from human bodies” (AFP, Oct. 10, 2006)
4. “London mayor wins court appeal to overturn suspension” (Reuters, Oct. 5, 2006)
5. “Elie Wiesel granted honorary knighthood” (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 5, 2006)
6. “Nazi hunter’s stamp collection fetches one million dollars” (AFP, Sept. 28, 2006)
7. “Islamic extremists planned mass murder of Jews in Prague” (Reuters, Oct. 6, 2006)
8. “Berlin club protests about anti-Semitic abuse” (Reuters, Oct. 7, 2006)
9. “Jewish graves vandalized in Russia” (AP, Oct. 4, 2006)
10. “The Holocaust’s Arab heroes” (Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2006)
SUMMARIES
IRENA SANDLER RECOMMENDED FOR NOBEL PRIZE
“Polish woman recommended for Nobel Prize” (By Amiram Barkat, Ha’aretz, October 9, 2006)
Holocaust survivor groups in Israel have joined the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, in recommending that 96-year-old Irena Sandler be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Sandler was a member of the Polish underground group Zegota that was dedicated to saving Jews. She was recognized as a “Righteous Gentile” by Yad Vashem in 1965 for smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The children received false papers and were either adopted by Christian families or sent to convents. Sandler recorded the real names of up to 2,500 children on lists that she placed in glass jars and buried, with the hope that the youngsters would eventually be returned to their families. The Gestapo arrested Sandler in October 1943. Despite being tortured, she refused to reveal the children’s identities, and was sentenced to death by a Nazi court. The underground group freed her, and she lived in hiding under an assumed identity until the end of the war.
If Sandler, who still lives in Poland, is chosen for the Nobel award, it would be the first time the honor would be bestowed to a Righteous Gentile. The chair of the Association of Cracovians in Israel, Lili Haber, wrote to Kaczynski emphasizing that Sandler had never publicized her actions, but rather shied away from publicity. “She used her wisdom and goodness to save lives and then educate others to understand the difficulties encountered by the survivors,” Haber said.
Some of the children found out their true identities after the war. Others never did.
FAURISSON CONVICTED AGAIN
“French academic again convicted for Holocaust denial” (European Jewish Press, October 3, 2006)
Retired literature professor Robert Faurisson has been convicted for Holocaust denial by a Paris court over remarks he made on Iranian television. Faurisson, 77, is well known for his revisionist views. He was given a three month suspended prison term and fined 7,500 euros.
Speaking on the Sahar 1 Iranian satellite channel in February 2005, Faurisson said “there was never” a single gas chamber under the Germans. “So all those millions of tourists who visit Auschwitz are seeing a lie, a falsification.”
Faurisson was found guilty of “complicity in contesting the existence of a crime against humanity.” It is the fifth time that Faurisson has been sentenced for the same offence. Patrick Gaubert, president of LICRA, the French league against racism and anti-Semitism, welcomed the court decision. “This gives proof that he lies. But I am not satisfied with the three months suspended prison term,” he said.
* For more on Faurisson, please see the dispatch Tehran Times today: The phenomenal lie of the “Holocaust” (& Ha’aretz’s dangerous misreporting) (Nov. 10, 2005).
WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT
“Study confirms: Nazis made soap from human bodies” (Agence France Presse, October 10, 2006)
Poland’s Nazi occupiers used “substances” from the bodies of murdered concentration camp prisoners to make soap, a study carried out by Poland’s National Remembrance Institute (IPN) to counter the arguments of Holocaust deniers, showed Friday.
“We have determined that, without a shadow of a doubt, that soap was produced using substances obtained from human bodies at the anatomical institute of the Medical Academy of Danzig, led by Professor Rudolf Spanner,” Paulina Szumera of the IPN said. [Danzig is the German name for the Polish city of Gdansk – TG.]
For the IPN probe, Polish scientists studied, among other things, a bar of soap that was presented as evidence during the Nuremberg Nazi war crime trials after World War II, that was in the archives of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Several dozen kilograms of soap were produced by the Nazis in Gdansk alone. “We launched our investigation to still the voices denying that this ever happened,” Szumera said.
“SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD”
“London Mayor wins High Court appeal to overturn suspension” (Reuters/ The Guardian, October 5, 2006)
London’s mayor Ken Livingstone won a High Court challenge on Thursday to overturn a four-week suspension from office for likening a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. At the end of a two-day hearing Justice Andrew Collins said he would quash the suspension.
Livingstone has consistently refused to apologize for the remarks and said the panel that suspended him had overstepped its remit. He has also denied any bias against Jews.
Livingstone sparked the rumpus when Finegold identified himself as working for the Evening Standard, a paper loathed by the mayor. Livingstone asked: “What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?”
Finegold said he was Jewish and found the remarks offensive. Livingstone replied that the reporter was “like a concentration camp guard – you are just doing it because you are paid to.” [TG adds: Many Nazi guards killed Jews because they wanted to, not for money.]
Mr Maurici, appearing for Mr Livingstone, told Mr Justice Collins that the panel’s finding should be quashed as it was erroneous in law or failed to draw proper inferences from the evidence. Mr Maurici quoted William Rees-Mogg’s comment in the Times that the panel’s decision was to “inflate trivial disputes of the late evening into matters of state”.
The London assembly chairman, Brian Coleman, said he was disappointed with the court’s decision: “It is deeply regrettable that the London assembly’s work to oppose anti-Semitism is being overshadowed by the mayor’s remarks. It is sad that, for the mayor, sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
* For more on Livingstone, please see London Mayor Ken Livingstone may be Jewish: “I could be a self-hater, couldn’t I?” (Nov. 30, 2005).
“SIR” ELIE WIESEL
“Elie Wiesel granted honorary knighthood” (By Jonny Paul, The Jerusalem Post, October 5, 2006)
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, the author, academic and human rights campaigner, is to be presented with an honorary knighthood by the British Government next month for his services to Holocaust education in the UK.
Professor Wiesel will be presented with the award by Foreign Secretary Margaret Becket at a special ceremony on November 30 at the Foreign Office in London.
Following the award, Prof. Wiesel, who is the vice chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, as well as chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, will be guest of honor at a special dinner hosted by Yad Vashem UK.
Wiesel is a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In 1986 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1985.
STAMP COLLECTION THAT HELPED CATCH EICHMANN SOLD
“Nazi hunter’s stamp collection fetches one million dollars” (Agence France Presse, September 28, 2006)
A collection of rare stamps compiled by the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal fetched 791,000 euros (one million dollars) when it was auctioned in the German city of Wiesbaden on Wednesday.
The sale raised twice as much as auction house Koehler had expected. The single most expensive item was a letter from China, which sold for 41,000 euros, while one of the first stamps ever used in Germany, the Schwarze Einser, went for 5,200 euros.
Wiesenthal, who survived four years in concentration camps and then dedicated his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals, started collecting stamps in the 1950s after his doctor suggested it instead of medication as a cure for sleeplessness.
His passion for stamps helped him to catch Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the transport of Jews to death camps in eastern Europe. Information passed to Wiesenthal from stamp dealers led the Israeli secret service Mossad to Argentina, where agents captured Eichmann in 1960. He was executed two years later.
Wiesenthal died in September last year at the age 96. The proceeds of the auction will go to his daughter, who lives in the United States.
EXTREMISTS PLANNED TO KILL ALL INSIDE PRAGUE SYNAGOGUE
“Islamic extremists planned mass murder of Jews in Prague” (Reuters/Washington Post, October 6, 2006)
Islamic extremists planned to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them, the leading Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported on Friday.
The newspaper quoted unidentified sources close to intelligence agencies as saying the captives would have been held in a Prague synagogue while the captors made broad demands that they knew could not be fulfilled.
When those demands – which were not specified by the sources – were not met, the extremists would blow up the building, killing all who were inside, the paper added. The paper, which gave other few details, did not say whether any arrests were made and did not specify the identities of the Islamic extremists.
On Sept. 23 the government deployed armed guards around dozens of buildings and on the streets in the Czech capital after security services issued a warning that an unspecified attack was imminent.
Prague’s Old Town is the location for the Jewish Quarter where thousands of tourists – many of them Jews – flock to see centuries-old synagogues and graves. The country’s once-flourishing Jewish community was decimated during World War Two.
PLAYERS WALK OFF IN PROTEST AGAINST ANTI-SEMITIC CHANTS
“Berlin club protests about anti-Semitic abuse” (Reuters, October 7, 2006)
A Berlin lower-league soccer club has complained to German soccer authorities about anti-Semitic chants that they faced at a recent match. Players from Jewish club TuS Makkabi in the Berlin district league, five divisions below the Bundesliga, walked off the pitch in protest in the 78th minute of the match at VSG Altglienicke in east Berlin.
They said the referee had refused to intervene when fans and some players chanted “Gas the Jews”, “Auschwitz is back” and “Fuehrer, Fuehrer”. Football Association (FA) President Theo Zwanziger, has vowed to crack down on racism.
MORE JEWISH GRAVES VANDALIZED IN RUSSIA
“Jewish graves vandalized in Russia” (The Associated Press, October 4, 2006)
Vandals painted swastikas on more than 100 Jewish and Tatar gravestones in a central Russian city and overturned many others – the latest in a string of anti-Semitic, racist and hate crimes across the nation, police officials said.
State-run television showed footage of the ransacked Dmitrovo-Cherkasskoye Cemetery in Tver, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Moscow, along with white-and-black paper swastika leaflets scattered about the gravestones. More than 150 gravestones were vandalized.
Russia has seen a notable rise in hate crimes and racist violence in recent years, which rights groups say is fueled in part by the authorities’ reluctance to crack down on extremist organizations. Last month, attackers vandalized two synagogues – one in the Volga River city of Astrakhan and the other in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk – shattering windows at one and setting a door ablaze.
Such Arab viewpoints are not exceptional. A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers. The records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum show that only one Arab leader at or near the highest level of government – a young prince from a Persian Gulf state – has ever made an official visit to the museum in its 13-year history. Not a single official textbook or educational program on the Holocaust exists in an Arab country. In Arab media, literature and popular culture, Holocaust denial is pervasive and legitimized.
Yet when Arab leaders and their people deny the Holocaust, they deny their own history as well – the lost history of the Holocaust in Arab lands. It took me four years of research – scouring dozens of archives and conducting scores of interviews in 11 countries – to unearth this history, one that reveals complicity and indifference on the part of some Arabs during the Holocaust, but also heroism on the part of others who took great risks to save Jewish lives.
Neither Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims, nor any other Holocaust memorial has ever recognized an Arab rescuer. It is time for that to change. It is also time for Arabs to recall and embrace these episodes in their history. That may not change the minds of the most radical Arab leaders or populations, but for some it could make the Holocaust a source of pride, worthy of remembrance – rather than avoidance or denial.
FROM CASABLANCA TO TRIPOLI AND ON TO CAIRO
The Holocaust was an Arab story, too. From the beginning of World War II, Nazi plans to persecute and eventually exterminate Jews extended throughout the area that Germany and its allies hoped to conquer. That included a great Arab expanse, from Casablanca to Tripoli and on to Cairo, home to more than half a million Jews.
Though Germany and its allies controlled this region only briefly, they made substantial headway toward their goal. From June 1940 to May 1943, the Nazis, their Vichy French collaborators and their Italian fascist allies applied in Arab lands many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportation and execution.
There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser’s warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film “Casablanca”: “It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here.” Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.
About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats – not just cattle cars – would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe. But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.
The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews.
Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.
“NOBODY TOLD THEM TO TIE US NAKED TO A POST AND BEAT US AND TO HANG US BY OUR ARMS AND URINATE ON OUR HEADS”
Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. “No, no, no!” he exploded in reply. “Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads.... No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did.”
But not all Arabs joined with the European-spawned campaign against the Jews. The few who risked their lives to save Jews provide inspiration beyond their numbers.
Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews’ valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, “The Arabs watched over the Jews.”
I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.
And there is strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe – Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris – saved as many as 100 Jews by having the mosque’s administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.
According to the Koran: “Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.” This passage echoes the Talmud’s injunction, “If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world.”
Arabs need to hear these stories – both of heroes and of villains. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers and leaders. If they do, they may respond as did that one Arab prince who visited the Holocaust museum. “What we saw today,” he commented after his tour, “must help us change evil into good and hate into love and war into peace.”
* BBC announces new Iranian TV channel, to add to Arabic one
* In the last year, Iran has arrested 25,000 Ahwazis, executed 131 and 150 have disappeared
CONTENTS
1. “Khamenei: Don’t masturbate during Ramadan” (Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 4, 2006)
2. “Iran ‘using British banks to channel money to terrorists’” (Observer, Oct. 8, 2006)
3. “Fury as St Andrews honours Hizbullah backer” (Sunday Times, Oct. 8, 2006)
4. “Iran seeks to fingerprint all U.S. visitors” (Agence France Presse, Oct. 3, 2006)
5. “An old letter casts doubts on Iran’s goal for uranium” (NY Times, Oct. 5, 2006)
6. “Lavrov says Russia still against Iran sanctions” (Reuters, Oct. 5, 2006)
7. “The six-million person question” (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 4, 2006)
8. “Tehran’s secret war against its own people” (Times of London, Oct. 10, 2006)
“TOM & JERRY”
Attached below are eight articles on Iran. There are summaries first for those who don’t have time to read the articles in full. It should also be noted that Iran was the only country in the world that welcomed North Korea’s claim yesterday to have exploded a nuclear device. Two million people have starved to death in North Korea as the Communist government diverted resources into the development of nuclear weapons. This has barely been reported in the mainstream liberal-left western media, which instead scoffs at President Bush’s description of Kim Jong-il’s regime as “evil”.
Meanwhile, while many in the world may be worried about Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is worried about “the Jewish Walt Disney company.” In an Iranian TV broadcast (translated by Memri), the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” was attacked as “ammunition” in Disney’s “Zionist” conspiracy to exert cultural influence. Iran said Walt Disney himself was a “Jewish Zionist,” ignoring the fact that Disney, who was not Jewish, was often condemned for his mild anti-Semitism. Iranian viewers were also told that Disney created “Tom & Jerry” to make “dirty” mice seem clean after Nazis compared Jews to rodents. In fact, Hanna-Barbera, not Walt Disney, created “Tom & Jerry”. But then the truth is not of much concern to the Iranian regime, nor to those who apologize for it in the West, most prominently the BBC, as witnessed by the BBC’s most recent series on Iran.
BBC TV GOES IRANIAN
British Jews last week officially complained to the BBC about “blood libels” about Jews contained in the BBC Radio 4 “Uncovering Iran” series. Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer is Jewish. But then several extreme left-wing Jews in media and universities have helped stir up anti-Semitism recently, though I am not suggesting Damazer is one of them.
A few minutes ago, the BBC world service announced it will set up a new Farsi language TV station, to be funded by the British Foreign office. Plans for a 24-hour BBC Arabic TV station are already well under way. This list/website will monitor the content of the BBC Arab language channel. The BBC already broadcasts extensively on radio and online in Arabic and Farsi; some have accused its broadcasts of inciting hatred of Israel and America while soft peddling the excesses of dictatorships in the Middle East.
Here is the notice posted in Farsi: www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2006/10/061010_mf_tv.shtml
It says that the channel will initially broadcast for eight hours each day – from 1700 to 0100 Iranian time. The BBC claims about 2 million Iranians already listen daily to its existing Farsi radio service, and that its Persian website attracts 19 million page impressions per month.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
KHAMENEI: NO MASTURBATION DURING RAMADAN
“Khamenei: Don’t masturbate during Ramadan” (By Yaakov Lappin, Yediot Ahronot, October 4, 2006)
Responding to a question he was asked on his website, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei has ruled that “masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid.” “It is a ḥaram (forbidden) act,” the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.
Another reader asked: “Once in the holy month of Ramadan, I forgot to brush my teeth, and some tiny bits of food remained in my mouth. I swallowed the bits unintentionally. Do I have to perform the qaḍa (repent) for that day’s fast?”
Khamenei, who is Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure, also tells Iranians on the website that only jockeys are permitted to gamble on horse races.
He is asked too whether it is permissible for a man to marry a woman only in order to be able to live in his wife’s country. “There is no problem in that if they are serious in contracting marriage and it is done with her father’s permission if she is virgin,” Khamenei ruled.
The Iranian leader also told readers they were allowed to “to drink water while standing” at nights. It was “not permissible” to take part in meetings attended by both men and women, he told another reader.
IRAN “USING BRITISH BANKS TO FUND TERRORISTS”
“Iran ‘using British banks to channel money to terrorists’” (By Conal Walsh, The Observer, October 8, 2006)
The Financial Services Authority is urgently scouring Britain’s banking system for evidence of Iranian funding of terrorism following an alert from the U.S. authorities.
The move comes after officials at the FSA were shown American intelligence indicating that suspicious Iranian funds were being funnelled through the City of London and other financial centers. Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, claimed last month that Iran was using the western banking system to sponsor international terrorism and nuclear procurement. Paulson warned that “blue chip banks” were being unwittingly used by a network of “more than 30 front companies” controlled by Tehran…
America also recently accused the Iranian bank Saderat of channelling hundreds of millions of dollars to Hizbullah and Palestinian groups…
NATWEST, CREDIT LYONNAIS, ALSO SUED
Tom Gross adds: relatives and survivors of Palestinian suicide bombs have been granted permission by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Sifton to sue the British bank, NatWest, for enabling UK-based charity Interpal to raise funds for Hamas. The plaintiffs, representing families of 15 Americans killed or injured in Hamas suicide attacks, including the August 2003 bombing of a bus in Jerusalem that killed 20 Jews, alleged that NatWest knew the money was going to Hamas.
Other banks already being sued in the U.S. include Jordanian-based Arab bank and Credit Lyonnais of France.
STUDENTS TO PROTEST ST ANDREWS HONOR FOR KHATAMI
“Fury as St Andrews honours Hizbullah backer” (The London Sunday Times of London, October 8, 2006)
Student leaders are organising a protest over [Scotish] St Andrews University’s decision to award an honorary degree to a former Iranian president who praised Hizbullah.
Muhammad Khatami is to be made an honorary doctor of laws by Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader who is also the university’s chancellor. Khatami will open the university’s Institute for Iranian Studies…
The decision to confer the honour on Khatami has provoked criticism from human rights groups who claim thousands of Iranian citizens were jailed and tortured for their political beliefs during his eight-year term that ended last year with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The National Union of Students wants his invitation withdrawn unless Ahmad Batebi, a student jailed in 1999 during a pro-democracy protest, is freed… The Board of Deputies of British Jews and Lord Janner, its past president, have criticised Campbell for agreeing to meet Khatami, who likened Hizbullah, the Lebanese terror group, to a “shining sun which warms up all oppressed Muslims”…
Iranian exiles are drawing up a petition demanding St Andrews withdraw the invitation. “Thousands of people are seething about this,” said Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a New York-based Iranian organising the petition. “How can a man who imprisoned and oppressed thousands of students in Iran be given a degree by an academic institution?”…
DEFENDING HIZBULLAH
* Tom Gross adds: Khatami is “widely admired” (according to The Guardian’s article, which doesn’t mention his human rights record) in the west for his attempts to liberalize Iran’s theocracy during his eight-year presidency. He will be the most senior Iranian political figure to visit Britain since the last shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, came 34 years ago. Khatami’s visit to Britain follows his trip last month to the U.S. where he met with former President Jimmy Carter. The trip was criticized both by opponents of the Iranian regime and by American Jewish groups. During his visit to the U.S., he gave a 30-minute speech at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he condemned Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings but defended Hizbullah.
Khatami, who spoke in Farsi and had his speech relayed through a translator, described Hizbullah as “a symbol of Lebanese resistance.”
IRAN SEEKS TO FINGERPRINT ALL U.S. VISITORS
“Iran seeks to fingerprint all U.S. visitors” (AFP, October 3, 2006)
Iran’s conservative-controlled parliament is to debate a bill that would make digital fingerprinting compulsory for all U.S. citizens seeking to enter the country, lawmakers said…
“This law comes in response to the American practice of taking digital fingerprints of sportsmen, political officials and other Iranians, sometimes with an insulting attitude,” he added. Until now, only U.S. journalists have been subjected to digital fingerprinting on arrival in Teheran…
LETTER WRITTEN BY KHOMEINI CITES DESIRE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS
“An old letter casts doubts on Iran’s goal for uranium” (By Nazila Fathi, The New York Times, October 5, 2006)
A forgotten letter in which the founder of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, cited a need for nuclear weapons has stoked a debate over whether to negotiate with the West and raised questions about Iran’s nuclear intentions today.
Within hours after the letter appeared Friday on the Web site of the news agency ILNA, the word “nuclear” was removed, apparently after a call from the Iranian National Security Council…
The letter, which had been previously published elsewhere, was written in 1988, near the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. It was brought to light again on Friday by the former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to defend himself against hard-line critics who accuse him of ending the war when Iran was on the brink of victory…
RUSSIA: “IRAN SANCTIONS WOULD BE TOO RADICAL”
“Lavrov says Russia still against Iran sanctions” (Reuters, October 5, 2006)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that his country opposed sanctions against Iran… “I believe that until diplomatic means are exhausted, sanctions would be too radical… The issue needs to be resolved diplomatically”… Iran insists it only wants to master nuclear technology to make electricity.
THE PERSECUTION OF AHWAZI ARABS
“Tehran’s secret war against its own people” (By Peter Tatchell, The Times of London, October 10, 2006)
“Never again” is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon – but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of “ethnic cleansing” by Iran’s Persian majority…
Securing information about the impending hangings has been difficult. The authorities are notoriously secretive, often withholding information about charges, evidence and sentences. Foreign journalists are severely restricted and local reporters are intimidated with threats of imprisonment. Despite this official obfuscation, human rights groups confirm a new wave of repression against Ahwazi Arabs who accuse Tehran of “ethnic cleansing” and racism…
Tehran’s latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies…
Ironically, the Hizbullah in Lebanon – the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East – is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hizbullah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.
Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through “ethnic restructuring”… Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran’s oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues…
Contrary to Tehran’s nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran’s hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle – the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity – is so silent in the face of Iran’s persecution of Arabs.
THE SIX-MILLION PERSON QUESTION
“The six-million person question” (By Mark Bowden, The Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2006)
When Mr. Ahmadinejad visited the U.S. last month, he backed off slightly from his earlier position that the Holocaust was a myth… The president of Iran is a man for whom facts are mere fodder for political purposes, so he has now retreated to the last refuge of all intellectual scoundrels, calling for “more research.” In Time it went like this: “I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only six million?”
Here, if I understand it correctly, he is asking: Why, in a war where 60 million were killed, has the West made such a big deal out of the deaths of six million Jews? Were the other deaths not equally terrible? Was the world not equally impoverished by each of these losses? ...
The Holocaust haunts us more than these others for a good reason. The Final Solution was the deliberate act of a government to exterminate a portion of its own people. It employed the resources of the state – its policy makers, planners, intellectuals, legal system, police and military, industry, transportation system and to a large extent its people – to single out a particular group of citizens, systematically demonize and isolate them, and then count them, label them, strip them of everything, round them up, ship them to concentration camps, kill them and incinerate them. It attempted to squeeze some last value out of the most fit among those doomed, by employing them as slave labor or subjecting them to medical experimentation before killing them, and even then looked for ways to make saleable products out of their remains.
This horror began in peacetime, so the nation was not lashing out in self-defense, nor was it being threatened in any concrete way… The Holocaust disturbs us so deeply because it demonstrates that none of the things we associate with the advancement of civilization – peace, prosperity, industrialization, education, technological achievement – free us from the dark side of the human soul. Just as there is evil in the heart of every man, there is evil at the heart of even the most “civilized” human society…
The lives lost in the firebombing of Dresden or the nuclear flash over Hiroshima are no less significant, and the military choices that brought about those deaths remain profoundly disturbing, but they at least took place in the context of war. Whole societies were caught up in a life-or-death struggle. What the Holocaust demonstrates is the danger of a one-party state… Like, say, the mullahs in Iran.
“ONLY IF SHE IS VIRGIN”
Khameini: Don’t masturbate during Ramadan
Iran’s supreme leader answers questions on masturbation and other topics on his website
By Yaakov Lappin
Yediot Ahronot
October 4, 2006
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3311189,00.html
Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled.
Khameini, who is Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website: “If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?”
“If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥaram (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥaram intentional breaking fasting,” the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.
Another reader asked: “Once in the holy month of Ramadan, I forgot to brush my teeth, and some tiny bits of food remained in my mouth. I swallowed the bits unintentionally. Do I have to perform the qaḍa (repent) for that day’s fast?”
“If you did not know that some bits of food remained between the teeth, or you did not know that they would reach the throat, and they were swallowed unknowingly and unintentionally, then you are not liable to make (repent) of the fast,” said Khameini.
‘Drink water while standing’
On the website, Khameini also tells Iranians that only jockeys are permitted to gamble on horse races.
He is also asked whether it is permissible for a man to marry a woman only in order to be able to live in his wife’s country. “Can a man conclude a marriage contract for a year with a European girl after getting her agreement with the purpose of going to her country?” A reader asked.
“There is no problem in that if they are serious in contracting marriage and it is done with her father’s permission if she is virgin,” Khameini ruled.
The Iranian leader also told readers they were allowed to “to drink water while standing” at nights. It was “not permissible” to take part in meetings attended by both men and women, he told another reader.
“In Islam’s view, rulers and governments exist just to serve people and carry out works in the interest of the public and this is what God demands us, as authorities, to fulfill,” Khamenei was quoted Tuesday telling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
IRAN “USING BRITISH BANKS TO CHANNEL MONEY TO TERRORISTS”
Iran ‘using British banks to channel money to terrorists’
The Financial Services Authority is urgently scouring Britain’s banking system for evidence of Iranian terrorism funding
By Conal Walsh
The Observer (London)
October 8, 2006
observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1889972,00.html
The Financial Services Authority is urgently scouring Britain’s banking system for evidence of Iranian terrorism funding following an alert from the U.S. authorities.
The move comes after officials at the FSA were shown American intelligence indicating that suspicious Iranian funds were being funnelled through the City of London and other financial centres.
Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, claimed last month that Iran was using the western banking system to sponsor international terrorism and nuclear procurement.
Paulson warned that ‘blue chip banks’ were being unwittingly used by a network of ‘more than 30 front companies’ controlled by Teheran. America also recently accused the Iranian bank Saderat of channelling hundreds of millions of dollars to Hizbullah and other violent Palestinian groups.
The FSA declined to comment on its communications with U.S. agencies this weekend, but expressed confidence that its normal regulations were effective in detecting money-laundering.
UBS and Credit Suisse are among the western banks reported to have faced U.S. government pressure to cut their links with Iran, although there is no suggestion that either has been used as a conduit for illegitimate funds. Other international banks and some EU countries are thought to consider Paulson’s warning alarmist.
FURY AS ST ANDREWS HONORS HIZBULLAH BACKER
Fury as St Andrews honours Hizbullah backer
The Sunday Times (of London)
October 8, 2006
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2394209.html
Student leaders are organising a mass protest over St Andrews University’s decision to award an honorary degree to a former Iranian president who praised Hizbullah.
Muhammad Khatami is to be made an honorary doctor of laws by Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader who is also the university’s chancellor.
Khatami will open the university’s Institute for Iranian Studies, which will house 12,000 books donated by Sadegh Kharazi, Iran’s former ambassador to France. The collection of Iranian texts, the largest of its kind in Europe, is estimated to be worth more than £100,000.
The decision to confer the honour on Khatami has provoked criticism from human rights groups who claim thousands of Iranian citizens were jailed and tortured for their political beliefs during his eight-year term that ended last year with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The National Union of Students wants his invitation withdrawn unless Ahmad Batebi, a student jailed in 1999 during a pro-democracy protest, is freed.
“There will definitely be a protest,” said Sofie Buckland of the students’ national executive. “We have a duty of solidarity with the democratic opposition in Iran.”
Stephen Brown, the union’s national secretary, said: “We are appalled that Batebi continues to suffer imprisonment for his role in the student movement. We hope that academics and students at that institution will urge Khatami to use his influence to have Batebi released.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and Lord Janner, its past president, have criticised Campbell for agreeing to meet Khatami, who likened Hizbullah, the Lebanese terror group, to a “shining sun which warms up all oppressed Muslims”.
Although Khatami has a reputation as a reformer, observers say he maintains close links with Ahmadinejad’s hardline regime. “It’s clear Khatami is being used as a tool of diplomacy which is designed to capitalise on his reputation as a reformist president,” said Mark Thomas of the Royal United Services Institute.
Iranian exiles are drawing up a petition demanding St Andrews withdraw the invitation. “Thousands of people are seething about this,” said Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a New York-based Iranian organising the petition. “How can a man who imprisoned and oppressed thousands of students in Iran be given a degree by an academic institution?” Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies, insisted last week that the decision to honour Khatami was in recognition of his efforts to encourage closer relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims.
“I have no problem with him coming. He was toying with the idea of coming to the UK so we invited him because we wanted to tie his visit in with the opening of our institute,” he said.
St Andrews said: “The honour was conferred only after the widest consultation with experts in modern Iran, both in academia and beyond.” Campbell was unavailable to comment.
IRAN SEEKS TO FINGERPRINT ALL U.S. VISITORS
Iran seeks to fingerprint all U.S. visitors
Agence France Presse (AFP)
October 3, 2006
Iran’s conservative-controlled parliament is to debate a bill that would make digital fingerprinting compulsory for all U.S. citizens seeking to enter the country, lawmakers said.
According to the bill, which is expected to be voted on in the next days, “all U.S. citizens should be controlled and subjected to digital fingerprinting when they enter Iran,” said lawmaker Kazem Jalali in a debate broadcast on state radio Tuesday.
“This law comes in response to the American practice of taking digital fingerprints of sportsmen, political officials and other Iranians, sometimes with an insulting attitude,” he added.
Until now, only U.S. journalists have been subjected to digital fingerprinting on arrival in Teheran.
Diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran have been frozen since Washington broke off ties in 1980 in the wake of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Teheran in 1979.
According to Jalali, the bill is also a reaction to the law voted on Saturday by the U.S. Congress for sanctions against foreign countries which assist in Iran’s nuclear programme and supply sophisticated missile technology.
OLD LETTER CASTS DOUBT ON IRANIAN GOAL FOR URANIUM
An old letter casts doubts on Iran’s goal for uranium
By Nazila Fathi
The New York Times
October 5, 2006
A forgotten letter in which the founder of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, cited a need for nuclear weapons has stoked a debate over whether to negotiate with the West and raised questions about Iran’s nuclear intentions today.
Within hours after the letter appeared Friday on the Web site of the news agency ILNA, the word “nuclear” was removed, apparently after a call from the Iranian National Security Council.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly insisted that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, sharply criticized the release of the letter. “Those who think they can weaken the will of the people for construction and development by questioning their values will fail,” he said Sunday, “and they only show their lack of wisdom and commitment.”
The letter, which had been previously published elsewhere, was written in 1988, near the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. It was brought to light again on Friday by the former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to defend himself against hard-line critics who accuse him of ending the war when Iran was on the brink of victory.
But the letter has also been used by moderates to bolster the case for nuclear talks with the West. Iran faces sanctions for defying the United Nations Security Council’s demand that it halt its uranium enrichment, which the United States says is part of a weapons program.
In the letter, Ayatollah Khomeini outlined the reasons Iran had to accept the bitter prospect of a cease-fire in the war, which had ground down to a stalemate, with about 250,000 Iranians dead and 200,000 disabled. It did not specifically call for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but referred indirectly to the matter by citing a letter written by the officer leading the war effort, Mohsen Rezai.
“The commander has said we can have no victory for another five years, and even by then we need to have 350 infantry bridges, 2,500 tanks, 300 fighter planes,” the ayatollah wrote, adding that the officer also said he would need “a considerable number of laser and nuclear weapons to confront the attacks.”
Ayatollah Khomeini determined that the nation could not afford, politically or economically, to continue the war, and in a famous public statement compared the decision to “drinking a chalice of poison.”
ILNA, the Iranian Labor News Agency, removed the word “nuclear” within a few hours of putting the letter on the Web, after receiving a call from the Iranian National Security Council, according to a reporter with the agency. The reporter insisted on anonymity for fear of retribution.
The letter was released as part of a debate about who was most instrumental in persuading Ayatollah Khomeini to end the war. That argument, in turn, reflects growing tensions between moderates, led by Mr. Rafsanjani, and military figures, who are expanding their power in the government of President Ahmadinejad.
“The letter is purely part of a domestic argument,” said Mohammad Atrianfar, the director of the daily Shargh, an opposition paper that was shut down last month, and a close aide to Mr. Rafsanjani. “Mr. Rafsanjani is very worried because he feels that military and intelligence figures are coming to power and want to alienate the clergy by blaming them for the damages caused during the war.”
Hard-liners have criticized Mr. Rafsanjani for disclosing what they said was a classified document and casting doubt over what was termed by many a holy war. He has denied the accusations, saying the letter was made public in 1988 and later published in a book.
But the letter has provided an opportunity for moderate voices to warn about the risks Iran takes in defying the United Nations, comparing the consequences to what happened during the war with Iraq. They argue that, when confronted with the realities of the war, Ayatollah Khomeini decided that the confrontation was not sustainable.
On Saturday the daily Kargozaran, a paper aligned with Mr. Rafsanjani, called the letter evidence of “Iran’s realistic understanding of the international situation,” and concluded that the “experience should become a basis in the decision makings, including Iran’s nuclear plans.”
Mohsen Armin, a reformist politician, said hard-line politicians who welcomed confrontation with the West should learn a lesson from the letter so they would not have to “drink a chalice of poison” themselves, ILNA reported.
LAVROV: RUSSIA STILL AGAINST IRAN SANCTIONS
Lavrov says Russia still against Iran sanctions
Reuters
October 5, 2006
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated on Thursday that his country opposed sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program ahead of a meeting of major powers in London this week.
“I believe that until diplomatic means are exhausted, sanctions would be too radical,” Lavrov told a news conference in Warsaw. “We have to do everything to persuade Iran to begin negotiations... The issue needs to be resolved diplomatically.”
Leaders from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are planning to meet on Friday or Saturday to discuss Iran.
The European Union said on Thursday Iran was close to triggering sanctions by refusing to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for nuclear power plants or material for atomic bombs.
Iran insists it only wants to master nuclear technology to make electricity.
“WHAT THE HOLOCAUST DEMONSTRATES”
The six-million person question
Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust
By Mark Bowden
The Wall Street Journal
October 4, 2006
www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009037
“As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn’t receive any answers to my questions.” – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, interviewed in Time magazine in September 2006.
When Mr. Ahmadinejad visited the U.S. last month, he backed off slightly from his earlier position that the Holocaust was a myth. The systematic extermination of six million Jews by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, an atrocious historical fact that is as thoroughly documented as a fact can be, remains a living memory for thousands of survivors. My guess is that someone in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s circle has pointed this out to him since he publicly doubted it last December.
The president of Iran is a man for whom facts are mere fodder for political purposes, but there is little political advantage in making a fool of yourself on a world stage. So he has now retreated to the last refuge of all intellectual scoundrels, calling for “more research.” And he has adopted a slightly different critical tack, which he repeated in numerous forums during his recent trip to New York. In Time it went like this: “I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only six million?”
Here, if I understand it correctly, he is asking: Why, in a war where 60 million were killed, has the West made such a big deal out of the deaths of six million Jews? Were the other deaths not equally terrible? Was the world not equally impoverished by each of these losses?
This seems a fair question, and I can think of a good answer. I’m sure others can think of even better ones than mine. But since Mr. Ahmadinejad has complained about not receiving any, for what it’s worth, I’m happy to offer this one:
It is a tricky business, rating the moral depredations of the human species, because just when you have settled on the worst, somebody somewhere achieves a new low. In the 20th century alone, communism and its variants in the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia have been responsible for the slow and rapid execution of millions. Millions more perished in the saturation bombing campaigns and the atom bomb blasts of World War II. Conflict and murderously misguided idealism were big players in the atrocity game, and accounted for the deaths of many times more innocents than Adolf Hitler and his Final Solution.
The Holocaust haunts us more than these others for a good reason. The Final Solution was the deliberate act of a government to exterminate a portion of its own people. It employed the resources of the state – its policy makers, planners, intellectuals, legal system, police and military, industry, transportation system and to a large extent its people – to single out a particular group of citizens, systematically demonize and isolate them, and then count them, label them, strip them of everything, round them up, ship them to concentration camps, kill them and incinerate them. It attempted to squeeze some last value out of the most fit among those doomed, by employing them as slave labor or subjecting them to medical experimentation before killing them, and even then looked for ways to make saleable products out of their remains.
This horror began in peacetime, so the nation was not lashing out in self-defense, nor was it being threatened in any concrete way. In the early 1930s, when the state-driven process of isolating and demonizing Jews began, Germany had rebuilt itself after its defeat in World War I, and was the most powerful nation on the European continent. Indeed, it would soon sweep across its borders and conquer every country within its reach. Its science, medical and technological prowess were the envy of the world.
The Holocaust disturbs us so deeply because it demonstrates that none of the things we associate with the advancement of civilization – peace, prosperity, industrialization, education, technological achievement – free us from the dark side of the human soul. Just as there is evil in the heart of every man, there is evil at the heart of even the most “civilized” human society. It is a humbling recognition. Man and society are both capable of the most appallingly depraved behavior. Only in the case of society, it occurs on an industrial scale.
The lives lost in the firebombing of Dresden or the nuclear flash over Hiroshima are no less significant, and the military choices that brought about those deaths remain profoundly disturbing, but they at least took place in the context of war. Whole societies were caught up in a life-or-death struggle.
What the Holocaust demonstrates is the danger of a one-party state. It shows what can happen when a group of true believers, convinced of the superiority of their own ideas, have unchecked power. They are then free to rewrite history to suit their political ends, and crush those who disagree or protest... or who worship God in a different way.
Like, say, the mullahs in Iran.
TEHRAN’S SECRET WAR AGAINST ITS OWN PEOPLE
Tehran’s secret war against its own people
By Peter Tatchell
The persecution of Ahwazi Arabs and the takeover of their land has led to accusations of “ethnic cleansing”
The Times of London
October 10, 2006
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2395978,00.html
“Never again” is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon – but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of “ethnic cleansing” by Iran’s Persian majority.
Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others – Hamza Sawa- eri, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari – say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.
The death sentences seem designed to silence protests by Iran’s persecuted ethnic Arabs. They comprise 70 per cent of the population of the south-west province of Khuzestan, known locally as Ahwaz. Many Ahwazis believe that the 16 were framed and that their real “crime” was campaigning against Tehran’s repression and exploitation of their oil-rich homeland.
Further show trials are planned – 50 Ahwazi Arab activists have been charged with insurgency since last year. They are accused of being mohareb or enemies of God, which is a capital crime. Other allegations include sabotage and possession of home-made bombs. No material evidence has been offered to support the charges. All face possible execution.
Securing information about the impending hangings has been difficult. The authorities are notoriously secretive, often withholding information about charges, evidence and sentences. Foreign journalists are severely restricted and local reporters are intimidated with threats of imprisonment. Despite this official obfuscation, human rights groups confirm a new wave of repression against Ahwazi Arabs who accuse Tehran of “ethnic cleansing” and racism. Ali Afrawi, 17, and Mehdi Nawaseri, 20, were publicly hanged in March for allegedly participating in insurgency. Amnesty International condemned their trial as “unfair”. They were denied access to lawyers. The Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) says that seven other Arab political prisoners were secretly executed at around the same time.
Tehran’s latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies.
Nearly 250,000 Arabs have been displaced from their villages after the Iranian Government’s confiscation of more than 200,000 hectares of farmland for a huge sugar-cane project. Dozens more towns and villages will be erased, making a possible further 400,000 Ahwazis homeless, by the creation of a military-industrial security zone, covering more than 3,000 sq km, along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iraq.
Ironically, the Hezbollah in Lebanon – the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East – is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hezbollah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.
Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through “ethnic restructuring”. Financial incentives, such as zero- interest loans, are given to ethnic Persians to settle in Ahwaz. New townships are planned, which will house 500,000 non-Arabs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced Ahwazis eke out a subsistence existence in shanty towns on the outskirts of Ahwaz city. Others have been forcibly relocated to poverty-stricken, far-flung northern regions of Iran.
Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran’s oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues. An attempt by Ahwaz MPs to secure the repatriation of 1.5 per cent of these earnings back to the region for welfare projects was rejected this year. Yet it is the third poorest region of Iran: 80 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and the unemployment rate of Arabs is more than five times that of Persians.
Arab language newspapers and textbooks have been banned to crush Arab identity further. In Ahwaz schools, all instruction is in Farsi (Persian), resulting in a 30 per cent drop-out rate at primary level and 50 per cent at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
Contrary to Tehran’s nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran’s hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle – the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity – is so silent in the face of Iran’s persecution of Arabs.
CONTENTS
1. Shin Bet seeks computer wizards
2. Zionist founder’s children are buried in Israel
3. British architects call for Venice’s Biennale to ban Israel
4. Israel’s “pink embassy” in Paris
5. Netanyahu favorite for premiership
6. Israel’s economy affected less than expected by war
7. Microsoft buys Israeli start-up Gteko
8. UN troops will limit its actions to a “demonstrating presence”
9. Jane’s: Hizbullah received direct support from Syria during conflict
10. Hizbullah: We’re increasing our arsenal, not decreasing
11. Germany sends troops to Lebanon
12. Israel has abandoned efforts to kill Nasrallah for now
13. Israeli tourists return to the north
14. Canadian prime minister stands up for Israel
15. Thousands rally in Bern to support Israel
SHIN BET SEEKS COMPUTER WIZARDS
The Israeli domestic security service, the Shin Bet, has followed in the footsteps of its external counterpart, the Mossad, in seeking recruits online.
Normally shrouded in secrecy, the Shin Bet (also known as the Shabak) launched its first-ever public recruitment drive last week. It unveiled a slick new website (www.shabak.gov.il/it) and bought online ads in Israel and abroad in a campaign aimed at attracting top-notch computer programmers to its cutting-edge tech division.
As security services increasingly rely on technology for their work, the Shin Bet is trying to attract the best computer programmers to join its ranks, promising “an exciting and challenging environment to work.” The Shin Bet’s main task is to prevent terror attacks inside Israel and the head of the organization, Yuval Diskin, says “computer geeks play a vital role as much as undercover agents and interrogators in preventing attacks.”
In August alone, the Shin Bet thwarted 25 attempted Palestinian suicide attacks and arrested 17 potential bombers, thanks, in large part, to its information technology unit.
The Shin Bet is trying to lure experienced engineers and computer programmers away from high-tech startup ventures by offering competitive salaries and a chance to develop the latest technologies, all for the sake of their country’s security, it says.
High-tech entrepreneur Yossi Vardi has, apparently, already been drafted. Vardi was one of the founders of Mirabilis, the inventors of ICQ (the Internet’s first ever successful chat service), which was later sold to American Online for hundreds of millions of dollars.
For more on the Mossad, please see:
* Munich (3): BBC set to name woman agent who killed Olympics massacre mastermind (Jan. 24, 2006).
* Israel Harel, the man who became the Mossad (Feb. 19, 2003).
ZIONIST FOUNDER’S CHILDREN ARE BURIED IN ISRAEL
The century-old dying wishes of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism, have finally been fulfilled as the remains of two of his three children were brought from France to be reburied in Jerusalem a few days ago. An official ceremony was held at the cemetery on Mount Herzl, the hill in Jerusalem named after Herzl and where his own remains were also buried in 1949, soon after the rebirth of the State of Israel.
The funeral followed years of bureaucratic battles and religious controversy about whether Herzl’s son – who converted to Christianity and later committed suicide – was entitled to a proper Jewish burial. His youngest daughter was killed in the Holocaust and her body was never found.
Herzl lived and worked as a journalist and author in 19th-century Europe. Deeply shocked by the wave of anti-Semitism that accompanied the Dreyfus Affair in 1895, when a French Jewish captain was wrongly accused of espionage, Herzl, a fully assimilated Jew, concluded that neither assimilation nor exclusion would keep Jews safe. In his book, “The Jewish State,” he argued that the best answer would be for the Jews to once again have their own homeland.
BRITISH ARCHITECTS CALL FOR VENICE’S BIENNALE TO BAN ISRAEL
The “British Association of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine” has asked the organizers of the 10th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy, for Israel’s pavilion to be excluded from the exhibition. They claim Israel’s participation is provocative “following an ugly, unnecessary war and wanton destruction in Lebanon” and “a one-sided war” in Gaza, both of which they blamed Israel for.
The Israeli exhibit which they want banned is called “Life Saver: Typology of Commemoration in Israel” and deals with the issue of memory in Israel, depicting 15 commemoration sites, both monuments and buildings, remembering the victims of the Holocaust and of Israel’s wars.
The Biennale is one of the most important international architectural exhibitions and will last until November 19. The organizers did not respond to the calls to ban the Israeli exhibit.
Radical British anti-Zionist Jews, led by architect Abe Hayeem, were at the forefront of the petition to ban Israel.
ISRAEL’S “PINK EMBASSY” IN PARIS
The Israeli Foreign Ministry is considered to be one of the most advanced in the world in terms of recognition of the rights of gay couples. Israel recognizes 10 couples of gay and lesbian diplomats who live with their partners of the same sex as married couples, granting the partners the same rights as heterosexual couples such as a diplomatic passports, insurance and salary benefits.
In Paris, the Israeli embassy has been nicknamed “the pink embassy” by other diplomats as the partners of two envoys enjoy the same rights of married couples.
One reason that gay diplomats from other nations ask for postings to Israel is that they know how tolerant the country is. The Danish ambassador to Israel, Carsten Damsgaard, who is gay and has been married to his partner for 15 years, told the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot: “I really appreciate the openness of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. If I judge by the way we were received over here, and we’ve been here for three years, I can say that Israeli society is very open.”
Even supposedly gay-friendly countries like the United States and France, don’t go so far in helping partners of homosexual diplomats.
For more on gay pride in Israel please see the last two articles in the dispatch Harry Potter taught at Bar-Ilan University (June 24, 2003).
NETANYAHU FAVORITE FOR PREMIERSHIP
According to a major new poll, former Israeli prime minister and current Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu is the preferred candidate for the premiership. The poll shows Netanyahu with a sizeable lead over current prime minister Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and former Labor prime minister Ehud Barak. In second place after Netanyahu, is the rightist Moldavian-born politician, Avigdor Lieberman.
ISRAEL’S ECONOMY AFFECTED LESS THAN EXPECTED BY WAR
The recent Israel-Hizbullah conflict has affected Israel’s economy less than originally projected. The loss of GDP due to the war is expected to be under 1%. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, in spite of the substantial cost of the war and the disruption to civilian life caused by hundreds of thousands of Israelis having to flee their homes or live in bomb shelters, Israel’s GDP will grow by 4.5% in 2006, business productivity will rise by 5.6% and the standard of living will rise by 2.8%, more than the 1.6% increase in 2005.
In the new World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index, Israel has climbed 8 places to occupy the 15th slot worldwide.
Last week business agreements were signed between Israel and Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. It is estimated that the signing will lead to a quadrupling of trade between the countries.
MICROSOFT BUYS ISRAELI START-UP GTEKO
Bill Gates’ U.S. software giant Microsoft has shown its confidence in Israel again, this time by acquiring Hi-Tech start up Gteko for $120m.
Gteko products enable PC and peripherals manufacturers, Internet service providers, software vendors and corporate information technology departments to improve software service quality and reduce call-center costs.
Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired U.S.-Israeli Whale Communications Ltd., which makes secure access products.
A host of American companies continue to invest in Israeli ones. For another example, see the note and article about Warren Buffet in the dispatch Bon Appetite: Buffalo meat declared kosher (& Aliza Olmert’s art quadruples in value) (May 18, 2006).
UN TROOPS WILL LIMIT ITS ACTIONS TO A “DEMONSTRATING PRESENCE”
The Israel Defense Forces have completed their withdrawal from Lebanon, thus fulfilling all of Israel’s commitments under UN Security Council resolution 1701. As Israeli troops leave, their former positions are being taken by Lebanese soldiers, the first time in 40 years that the Lebanese army has been deployed in southern Lebanon.
Yet problems remain with the Lebanese side and Hizbullah have failed to honor their commitments such as the release of the kidnapped Israeli hostages. There are also problems over the rules of engagement regarding the UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Army, stemming from different interpretations of Resolution 1701. According to Israel, the resolution requires UNIFIL and the Lebanese army to actively search for arms depots and to disarm Hizbullah. The UN instead now says it sees its role as firing only in self-defense and limiting its actions to a “demonstrating presence,” without actively intervening in cases of attack by Hizbullah along the border.
The UN resolution in August called for a total of 15,000 UN troops to be in place before Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon, but this has not yet happened, and it remains to be seen whether the UN force will ever actually reach that number.
The Jerusalem Post writes: “Since the ceasefire took effect a month ago in Lebanon, the existing 2,000-member UNIFIL contingent has expanded to about 5,500 troops, and it is expected to grow to 8,000 in November. Time and again, Israel and the U.S. were assured that the new, more robust UNIFIL would be nothing like the old, discredited force, which acted as human shields for the massive Hizbullah weapons buildup that led to the recent war. Signs are already growing, however, that the ‘new’ UNIFIL, though larger and better armed, will not act appreciably differently to the ‘old’ UNIFIL that has existed since 1978. If there is any lesson to be learned from the last war, it is that the only way to prevent a renewed conflict is to prevent Hizbullah from being in a position to start one. This means disarming Hizbullah, and keeping it away from the border, not just ‘sharing’ that border and standing by as it becomes a potential flashpoint.”
JANE’S: HIZBULLAH RECEIVED DIRECT SUPPORT FROM SYRIA DURING THE RECENT CONFLICT
The leading British intelligence and defense magazine, Jane’s International Defense Review, reported yesterday that Hizbullah received direct intelligence support from Syria during the recent conflict, using data collected by listening posts jointly operated by Russian and Syrian crews. Hizbullah was also fed intelligence from new listening posts built on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, which are operated jointly with Iran, Jane’s said.
Israel has also said that Russian anti-tank missiles procured by Syria were reportedly transferred to Hizbullah and used during the war.
The intelligence cooperation agreement between Syria and Iran is part of a broader strategic cooperation accord that was agreed in November 2005 and confirmed during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjead’s visit to Damascus in January 2006.
HIZBULLAH: WE’RE INCREASING OUR ARSENAL, NOT DECREASING
Hizbullah has let it be known that it has no intention of abiding by the section of UN Resolution 1701 that calls for the disarming of “all militias.” Six weeks after the end of the Lebanon war, the militia and terror group said it is facing little on-the-ground pressure to give up its weapons and disarm. Hizbullah claims to have now increased its arsenal to more than 20,000 rockets in Lebanon, most supplied by Iran and Syria.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais on Sunday, Syrian president Bashar Assad said, “If a real will exists to introduce illegal weapons (into Lebanon), neither UN resolutions nor military deployment will be able to stop” (their entry). Assad went on to say that efforts by both Syrian troops and United Nations peacekeepers to stop the movement of contraband arms destined for Hezbollah was “a waste of time.”
Iran again displayed its enhanced Shihab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile during a military parade on Sept. 22 in Teheran. The Shihab-3 is said to have a range of 2,000 kilometers. President Bush on Saturday signed legislation that would impose mandatory sanctions on entities that provide goods or services for Iran’s weapons programs. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, also on Saturday, that Iran would not halt uranium enrichment even for a short period, as hapless EU diplomats have asked.
GERMANY SENDS TROOPS TO LEBANON
German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the approval by the lower house of parliament to send 2,400 German troops to Lebanon to join the UNIFIL forces.
According to Merkel, the mission has a “historical dimension.” Germany, she told the Bundestag, had an obligation to send its soldiers to the Middle East and contribute to peace in the region. Because of the sensitivity surrounding Germany’s Nazi past, and in order to reduce the possibility of any clashes with Israeli soldiers, the German troops will patrol Lebanon’s coastal waters preventing arms being smuggled to Hizbullah.
For more on Germany’s decision to send troops to Lebanon, please see Firm with Nazi past buys 25% of Ha’aretz (& animals recover from Hizbullah) (Aug. 21, 2006).
Despite initial objections from Israel, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Malaysian Prime Minister that his country should send 360 troops to join the UN force stationed on Israel’s borders. Malaysia, which is a mainly Muslim country, refuses to recognize Israel.
ISRAEL HAS ABANDONED EFFORTS TO KILL NASRALLAH FOR NOW
Israel has quietly backed off from its plan to assassinate Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah because of the international condemnation that his killing would create, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported last Friday.
During the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbullah that ended Aug. 14, Israel had targeted the Hizbullah leader for assassination, security officials said, according to Ma’ariv. In a successful effort to evade assassination, Nasrallah went underground, though he repeatedly recorded videos from his hiding place that were broadcast on Lebanese television.
Nasrallah emerged from hiding on Sept. 22 to address a massive rally in Lebanon celebrating Hizbullah’s bombardment of Israel. Ma’ariv reported that Israeli army officials determined that they could successfully assassinate him with an air strike during the rally, but dozens of bystanders might also have been killed so the army called off the mission. The Israeli government declined to comment on the reports.
ISRAELI TOURISTS RETURN TO THE NORTH
Tens of thousands of Israeli tourists visited northern Israel’s parks, natural reserves and villages during the Jewish new year last week, barely a month after the ceasefire which put an end to the missile attacks by Hizbullah. Tourists also visited the sites hit by the missiles and paid visits to memorials for the Israeli victims, while collecting remains of the rockets as souvenirs.
Nevertheless, hoteliers and innkeepers said occupancy rates remained well below average, particularly in locations close to the Lebanese border. They hope that as another Jewish holiday (Sukkot) approaches, more tourists will visit the region.
During the war with Hizbullah, many western news outlets extensively reported on the hardships being suffered by the Lebanese tourist industry, while completely ignoring those of Israel’s tourist industry. For more, see the note “Israel also has a tourist industry” in the dispatch Israel, Lebanon, Hizbullah: 14 more observations on the situation (July 17, 2006).
CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER STANDS UP FOR ISRAEL
At a summit of 53 Francophone countries last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, standing alone on what he called a point of principle, forced the conference to introduce a modicum of balance into its anti-Israel statement on the recent war in Lebanon. Harper insisted that Israeli victims were also recognized too. France reacted with anger to Canada’s stance. President Jacques Chirac said that Harper’s position flew in the face of “the great majority” of countries at the summit.
THOUSANDS RALLY IN BERN TO SUPPORT ISRAEL
Around 3,000 people took part in a pro-Israel demonstration in the Swiss capital, Bern, on September 30, calling on the Swiss government to take a more sympathetic stance towards Israel.
-- Tom Gross
[Note by Tom Gross]
IN DEFIANCE OF THE WHOLE WORLD…
Below, I attach my piece from today’s Wall Street Journal. It is a book review of the first major biography of Ariel Sharon since he withdrew Israeli troops and civilians from Gaza and suffered his overwhelming stroke. (The book is published today).
Among the points I make in it:
* Sharon was raised in impoverished conditions in pre-state Israel: his mother tied strips of leather around her feet as she farmed swampland because she didn’t want to ruin her only pair of shoes.
* In addition to his accomplished military and political careers, Sharon managed to build up Israel’s biggest cattle farm in the spartan Negev desert. He was very attached to his animals and insisted on being called by the ranch if a new calf, kid or lamb was born, even if, when he was prime minister, it meant interrupting him in the middle of a tense cabinet meeting.
* As defense minister in 1981 – and in defiance of the whole world, including the Reagan administration – he persuaded the Israeli government to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor.
* Against the wishes of virtually his entire electoral base, he closed down all the settlements in Gaza and four of those in the West Bank, with the promise of further evacuations to come. He said he wished to do what “no one – not the Turks, British, Egyptians, or Jordanians – had done before, and give the Palestinians the chance to form a state of their own.” Such a reversal wasn’t as strange as it might seem. Sharon had always been driven less by ideology than by a concern for Israel’s security, and security may well mean taking different measures at different times.
THE VILIFICATION OF ARIEL SHARON CONTINUES
How the soldier became a statesman
A new biography of Ariel Sharon
By Tom Gross
The Wall Street Journal
October 3, 2006
ARIEL SHARON: A Life
Published by Random House
www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009032
Even now, as he lies in a stroke-induced coma from which he is not expected to recover, the vilification of Ariel Sharon continues. Last month, for example, one of Britain’s leading magazines, The New Statesman, in the course of attacking Tony Blair for supporting the “racist regime in Tel Aviv,” attributed to Mr. Sharon a series of racist remarks about Arabs. But Mr. Sharon had never said them. They were the words of extremists that he had specifically repudiated. It was the equivalent of taking the words of the Ku Klux Klan and putting them in the mouth of George W. Bush. The New Statesmen eventually printed a letter noting its error, but without offering an apology or official correction.
Mr. Sharon’s long and controversial career – as Israeli general, politician and peacemaker – has inspired so much vituperation and calumny that it has often been difficult, especially for observers outside Israel, to separate fact from fiction. Thus “Ariel Sharon: A Life” is especially welcome. While the authors, Israeli journalists Nir Hefez and Gadi Bloom, clearly hold their subject in high esteem, their tone is far from merely adulatory. They do not shy away from the misdeeds and excesses of which Sharon has often been accused. But they seem intent, most of all, on faithfully describing the full arc of his crowded life.
Mr. Sharon’s supporters have long hailed his tough approach to terrorism and viewed him as a leader who strived to establish peace without sacrificing Israel’s security. His detractors claim that he overstepped the mark and caused unnecessary civilian suffering. All agree that he has played a pivotal role in almost every major event in modern Israeli history, and even his worst enemies acknowledge that he has shown extraordinary courage, both in battle and in politics.
A MASTER TACTICIAN
Inevitably, “Ariel Sharon: A Life” is dense with facts and incident, but it is a lucid read, well translated from the Hebrew by Mitch Ginsburg. The book appeared in Israel last year; the English edition has been updated to provide a full account of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Mr. Sharon spearheaded for the Gaza move in 2004 and 2005, which spurred the formation of a new political party under his leadership. Kadima, as it is called, won the Israeli election in March of this year, even after Mr. Sharon’s stroke, largely on the basis of his popularity.
For all his political mastery, Sharon may ultimately be best remembered as a military man. He fought in all of Israel’s wars or played a major role in leading them. Time and again soldiers who served with him testified to his resilience and resourcefulness.
He was also a master tactician. His assault on Abu Agelia fortress during the 1967 Six Day War is still studied in military academies around the world. His crossing of the Suez Canal, against the orders of his superiors, changed the course of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Afterwards, at home, crowds took to the streets chanting “Arik, King of Israel.” As defense minister in 1981 – and in defiance of the whole world, including Ronald Reagan – he persuaded the Israeli government to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor.
WHAT “NO ONE HAD DONE BEFORE”
Upon retiring from the army, he put equal vigor into pursuing political goals. He forged Israel’s disparate center-right parties into the Likud, the party that dominated Israeli political life for the better part of three decades, until Sharon himself broke it in two late last year. Serving in various political posts, he was reviled by Arab extremists but respected by leading Arab moderates, such as Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein.
After Israel’s 1982 Lebanon war, however, he found the most senior government posts closed to him. Sharon took the rap, as defense minister, for the reprisal massacres that Christian Arabs carried out against Muslim Arabs in Beirut in September of that year. Although a post-massacre inquiry cleared him of any direct wrongdoing, it was acknowledged that the killings had taken place while Israel had troops in Beirut and that Israel’s army could possibly have prevented them.
But he came back, as foreign minister in the 1990s and as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. In 2004, a bribery scandal plagued his administration, implicating his son. But the greatest controversy of his tenure had to do with his policy of “disengagement.”
For much of his career, Mr. Sharon had been a leading proponent of settlement in the West Bank and Gaza. But as prime minister he reversed his views. Against the wishes of virtually his entire electoral base, he closed down all the settlements in Gaza and four of those in the West Bank, with the promise of further evacuations to come. He said he wished to do what “no one – not the Turks, British, Egyptians, or Jordanians – had done before, and give the Palestinians the chance to form a state of their own.”
WITH STRIPS OF LEATHER AROUND HER FEET
Such a reversal wasn’t as strange as it might seem. Mr. Sharon had always been driven less by ideology than by a concern for Israel’s security, and security may well mean taking different measures at different times. Indeed, it had been Mr. Sharon who had forced through the traumatic withdrawal of Israeli citizens from Sinai more than two decades earlier.
While Messrs. Hefez and Bloom naturally concentrate on Mr. Sharon’s public life, they explore his hardly less tumultuous personal life too: his complex relations with his parents; the death of his first wife in 1962 in a car accident; the death of his first son in 1967, at age 11, in an accident while playing with other children; his very close bond with his second wife (who was his first wife’s sister).
We learn about the impoverished conditions in which he was raised in pre-state Israel – his mother tied strips of leather around her feet as she farmed swampland because she didn’t want to ruin her only pair of shoes – and about his later success in building up Israel’s biggest cattle farm in the spartan Negev desert. Mr. Sharon was very proud of his animals, insisting on being called from the ranch if a new calf, kid or lamb was born, even if, when he was prime minister, it meant interrupting him in a tense cabinet meeting.
In the end, to the utter astonishment of Mr. Sharon’s many enemies, opinion polls voted him the most popular prime minister in Israel’s history. Messrs. Hefez and Bloom help to show why. There will no doubt be other accounts of Mr. Sharon’s life – his close friend, the journalist Uri Dan, is bringing one out later this month, and may well offer more personal insights into what made Sharon tick. But “Ariel Sharon: A Life” is as good a place as any to start for those wanting to know more about this colossus of our time.
(Mr. Gross is former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.)
For Tom Gross’s review of a biography of Yasser Arafat, please click here.