* Deliberately blowing up children in cars “is not terrorism”
* Telling the UN the truth, face-to-face, as seen on YouTube
* Saudis prevent entry of Israeli journalist traveling with UN chief
* Live crocodiles seized at Israel-Gaza border crossing
This dispatch mainly concerns the media itself, with an initial item about the United Nations.
CONTENTS
1. Drama at UN Human Rights Council 4th session
2. Editor of French weekly found not guilty of insulting Muslims
3. Taliban demands met for Italian journalist
4. BBC accused of “shameful hypocrisy” for covering up Balen Report
5. Deliberately blowing up children in cars “is not terrorism”
6. How many BBC employees does it take to change a light bulb?
7. U.S. Congress passes resolution for persecuted Bangladeshi journalist
8. Newspaper ad revenues plunge
9. Digital decision threatens job cuts at the Guardian
10. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”
11. And finally... Live crocodiles seized at Israel-Gaza border crossing
12. “BBC pays £200,000 to ‘cover up report on anti-Israel bias’” (Daily Mail, March 23, 2007)
13. “Television Takeover” (Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2007)
14. “Saudi Arabia bars Israeli journalist traveling with U.N. chief” (NY Times, March 24, 2007)
DRAMA AT UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL 4TH SESSION
As a follow up to the dispatch titled Saudi gang-rape victim gets 90 lashes for International Women’s Day (March 8, 2007), it is worth watching the speech delivered by a UN Watch representative to the UN Human Rights Council last Thursday in Geneva.
Finally someone tells the truth directly to the faces of what he calls “the despots who run the UN… who seek to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.”
His short speech can be watched here.
An astonished UN Human Rights Council President Luis Alfonso De Alba then responds as follows:
“For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you’d kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the Council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.”
EDITOR OF FRENCH WEEKLY FOUND NOT GUILTY OF INSULTING MUSLIMS
In what is being hailed as an important victory for freedom of speech, a French court has ruled in favor of a French satirical weekly that faced charges brought by two Muslim groups after it republished Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed.
The charges were brought by the Paris Mosque and by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France. They accused the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and its editor-in-chief, Philippe Val, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion.”
If found guilty, Val could have faced a six-month prison term, and the newspaper would have been fined 22,000 euro ($29,000).
On the cover of its February 8, 2006 edition, Charlie Hebdo republished the twelve Danish Mohammed cartoons and an original drawing by the French cartoonist Cabu depicting a crying Mohammed with his head in his hands, saying, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.” The cartoons were published in solidarity with the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, who published them in September 2005, and whose staff then faced death threats from Muslim radicals.
The French court said that given the context of its publication, it saw no “deliberate intention of directly and gratuitously offending the Muslim community.” Last September, a Danish court rejected a similar lawsuit against Jyllands Posten.
Two leading center-right French presidential candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Bayrou, supported the French weekly, while left-wing candidates stayed mum in a bid to court the Muslim fundamentalist vote in France’s upcoming presidential elections.
To view the Mohammed cartoons, see this page.
TALIBAN DEMANDS MET FOR ITALIAN JOURNALIST
An Italian journalist was freed by the Taliban last week after the Afghan government caved in to the kidnappers’ demands, releasing five Taliban prisoners at the urging of Italy’s left-wing government.
The journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, was freed after two weeks in captivity. The reporter’s Afghan driver, who was also seized, was beheaded, and the fate of his translator is not known.
Mastrogiacomo, who writes for Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, and the two Afghans traveling with him were kidnapped by the Taliban on March 5 in Helmand province.
Mastrogiacomo arrived in Rome on a flight from Kabul last week, and was met at the airport by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The journalist raised his fists in exultation as he stepped off the plane and waved at reporters.
Alfredo Mantovano, an opposition senator and member of a parliamentary committee that oversees Italy’s secret service agencies, commented, “Italy is in Afghanistan... to help with the country’s reconstruction, achieving that also by combating terrorism... Now it turns out that terrorists are released in exchange for the release of an Italian. There are no known precedents for that in Italian missions abroad.”
Mastrogiacomo told RAI Tg3 News this week that whilst in captivity he saw his captors cut off the head of one of the two Afghans kidnapped with him and thought he would be next to die.
BBC ACCUSED OF “SHAMEFUL HYPOCRISY” FOR COVERING UP BALEN REPORT
The first article attached below reports that “The BBC is spending £200,000 [$390,000] trying to prevent publication of a report on alleged bias in its Middle East reporting. It will fight a landmark [British] High Court action [brought by a London solicitor, who is Jewish] appealing against a ruling under the Freedom of Information Act that the findings should be revealed. Last night it faced the twin accusation that it was wasting licence payers’ money and that it was guilty of ‘gross hypocrisy’, having used the Freedom of Information legislation itself many times to break news stories.”
The BBC has hired one of Britain’s top barristers to fight the case. The Balen Report was compiled in 2004 by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen after allegations of pro-Palestinian bias in BBC reporting. It is thought the report runs to 20,000 words and is highly critical of the BBC’s coverage in the region.
Conservative MP David Davies said: “An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using taxpayers’ money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is indefensible.
“I think the BBC is guilty of shameful hypocrisy. What could possibly be in this report that could be worth £200,000 to bury? What is it they feel is so awful in this report?”
The BBC is regularly accused of lying about Israel. For example, last year it made up a story that a Lebanese town had been wiped out.
In 2004 the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing its then Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin of anti-Semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups” in a report on a would-be suicide bomber.
I also attach a selection of readers’ comments after the article below as an indication of how Daily Mail readers – so-called “Middle England” – view the BBC, which is very different from the British elites many of whom love the twisted news about Israel and the U.S. which has become a hallmark of BBC news broadcasts.
The Times of London has also followed up the Daily Mail story in an article today titled “BBC asks court to block Israel report.”
DELIBERATELY BLOWING UP CHILDREN IN CARS “IS NOT TERRORISM”
Both the BBC and Reuters, as has been noted on this email list/website before, do not call a terrorist a terrorist. This has long been the case when busloads of Israeli schoolchildren were targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers. Now it is being applied to Iraq too. Reuters yet again failed to mention the word “terror” after a particularly horrendous attack last week in Iraq, in which terrorists sent a car with children into a crowded market in Baghdad, ran out and then detonated it with the children still inside. (Children in the car had lowered the suspicion of guards at a nearby checkpoint.)
Reuters called the attackers “insurgents” and the attack a “militant” one, but nowhere does the word terrorist appear. Apparently it was not an act of terror, according to Reuters.
For more, see the articles “The Case of Reuters, A news agency that will not call a terrorist a terrorist” and “The BBC discovers ‘terrorism,’ briefly, Suicide bombing seems different when closer to home”.
HOW MANY BBC EMPLOYEES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?
Another waste of British taxpayers’ money has come to light, as BBC staff have been stopped from replacing light bulbs.
The corporation is paying up to £10 ($19) for each replacement bulb to be fitted by an electrician. The farcical situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a project manager with the BBC, complained in a letter to the BBC’s in-house magazine.
“I called up to ask for a new light bulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost £10... On telling them I’d buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of £1 for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations.”
U.S. CONGRESS PASSES RESOLUTION FOR PERSECUTED BANGLADESHI JOURNALIST
In a rare show of bi-partisanship, the U.S. Congress has passed House Resolution 64 which makes it the “sense of the U.S. Congress” that charges against crusading Muslim journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury be dropped and all harassment against him ended.
As explained in previous dispatches on this list, Choudhury is the Bangladeshi Muslim jailed and tortured after urging relations with Israel, advocating interfaith dialogue with Jews, and exposing the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh. He faces a possible death penalty for his “crimes”.
In a message, Choudhury thanked the United States, and said that it will “help Muslims who oppose extremism to stand up against it without fleeing to the West, since they know they will have protectors.”
NEWSPAPER AD REVENUES PLUNGE
While many American newspapers still have healthy profit margins, advertising revenue declined dramatically last month. At USA Today, the U.S.’s biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Ads in the print edition of the New York Times declined 7.5 percent to $93.7 million, and at the Wall Street Journal by 10 percent. Whilst ad spending on newspaper web sites rose, many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening problem.
The newspaper companies blamed the declines on the continuing shift of classified advertisers from print to online, especially to mostly free sites like Craig’s List.
DIGITAL DECISION THREATENS JOB CUTS AT THE GUARDIAN
Job cuts at the Guardian group in Britain have become more likely as it became the latest media company to integrate its print and online operations.
The publisher of The Guardian, The Observer and the Guardian Unlimited website has told employees that the group had to cut costs and modernize to progress. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the company was still run in three “silos” – with the newspapers and website run as separate operations – and was hampered by “an old media mentality”.
Cost cuts will help finance more than 100 new jobs in its digital media operations over the next 12 months as the group prepares for a “24/7 news operation”. The paper is aggressively attempting to expand its presence and political agenda globally through the Internet.
For more on Rusbridger, see: “New Prejudices for Old: The European press and the Intifada”.
“IF YOU HAVE A GOOD PRODUCT, YOU MUST SELL IT IN A GOOD WAY. THE UNITED STATES IS A VERY GOOD PRODUCT”
Attached below are three articles. The second, from the Wall Street Journal, is on the U.S.- taxpayer-financed Arabic television station Al-Hurra. According to Iraqi politician Mithal al-Alousi, and others, the television station is “becoming a platform for terrorists.”
Alousi says “until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore.”
Stories that he believes should be investigated further, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And moderate Arab voices, which used to be given airtime on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent.
“Al-Hurra should have the role of transporting democracy, and to help Iraqis understand freedom,” Alousi says. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”
For more on al-Alousi, see Mithal al-Alousi: Paying a heavy price for recognizing Israel’s existence (Feb. 10, 2005).
***
The final article below reports that Saudi Arabia has barred entry to a Washington-based Israeli journalist traveling with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his current Middle East tour.
Orly Azoulay, the Washington bureau chief of Yediot Ahronot, was unable to obtain a visa to Saudi Arabia despite assurances the Saudi mission in New York gave the United Nations last week, said Michele Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman.
No newspaper columnists have compared Saudi Arabia to apartheid South Africa in recent days even though this Israeli journalist was barred from entering a country simply on the basis of her ethnicity. (Israeli Arabs are allowed into Saudi Arabia but not Israeli Jews.)
AND FINALLY... LIVE CROCODILES SEIZED AT ISRAEL-GAZA CROSSING
On Monday, guards at the Rafah crossing between Israel and Gaza noticed a Palestinian woman who looked “unusually fat,” so she was taken to an examination room to be searched by a female guard. Moments later the female guard ran out of the room screaming. She had found three live crocodiles strapped to the woman’s body. She said she wanted to sell them to private crocodile collectors among Palestinian government officials.
Wael Dahab, a spokesman for the Palestinian guards at the crossing, said another woman recently tried to bring in a monkey tied to her chest, and another traveler tried to smuggle in a tiger cub.
-- Tom Gross
BBC PAYS £200,000 TO “COVER UP REPORT ON ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS”
BBC pays £200,000 to ‘cover up report on anti-Israel bias’
By Paul Revoir
The Daily Mail
March 23, 2007
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444074&in_page_id=1770
The BBC is spending £200,000 trying to prevent publication of a report on alleged bias in its Middle East reporting.
It will fight a landmark High Court action next week appealing against a ruling under the Freedom of Information Act that the findings should be revealed.
Last night it faced the twin accusation that it was wasting licence payers’ money and that it was guilty of “gross hypocrisy”, having used the Freedom of Information legislation itself many times to break news stories.
The Balen Report was compiled in 2004 by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen after allegations of pro-Palestinian bias in BBC reporting.
London solicitor Steven Sugar, who is Jewish, has been fighting ever since to have its findings made public.
The report is believed to run to 20,000 words and to be critical of the corporation’s coverage in the region.
BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that their reporting of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed towards the Palestinian cause.
One particularly controversial incident came when Middle East correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried as Yasser Arafat was close to death in 2004.
But politicians say the corporation’s decision to pursue the case – appealing against a ruling by the Freedom of Information adjudicator – is “absolutely indefensible” on an issue of clear public interest.
They say it also flies in the face of the stated BBC policy of openness and transparency.
The corporation has hired one of the country’s top public law barristers to fight the case, which has the potential to run all the way to the European Court in Strasbourg.
It claims it is defending a principle, that public broadcasters should not have to disclose material that is held for the purposes of “journalism, art or literature” and that it should be allowed to protect the integrity of its journalists.
But its determination to fight has only served to intensify suspicions that Balen was damning in his assessment.
Conservative MP David Davies said: “An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using taxpayers’ money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is indefensible.
“I think the BBC is guilty of shameful hypocrisy. What could possibly be in this report that could be worth £200,000 to bury? What is it they feel is so awful in this report?”
The corporation was accused of anti-Israeli bias last year when it wrongly reported that a Lebanese town had been wiped out. It received a string of complaints but stood by the despatch, arguing that anyone who had seen the pictures would have found it hard to contest the scale of destruction.
In 2004 the Israeli government wrote to the BBC accusing its then Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin of anti-semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups” in a report on a would-be suicide bomber.
She was moved from her role as Middle East correspondent at the end of 2005.
The Israeli government also imposed a boycott on the corporation in 2003 following a documentary about the country’s weapons of mass destruction.
While the BBC did not publish the Balen Report, it did last year make public the findings of an independent panel report into the issue of impartiality on the Middle East.
That report said that the BBC’s approach had at times been “inconsistent”, but that many viewers felt that if there was any bias at all, it was pro-Israel.
Critics, however, claimed that the independent panel report only took a snapshot of the BBC’s activities and should have looked more deeply at the reporting of the worst moments of the conflict.
Mr Sugar said he was prepared to take the case all the way to Europe.
“This is an important document which will give us an insight into what the BBC itself thinks of its own performance,” he said. “I would like to see the BBC facing up to its professed interest in transparency and openness.
DAILY MAIL READERS’ COMMENTS ON THE ABOVE ARTICLE
The BBC’s charter requires accurate, unbiased and independent news reporting. Clearly the BBC doesn’t meet these requirements. BBC license payers should be refunded, with interest, for the failure of the BBC to comply with its charter. The BBC should then be privatised and the license fee scrapped.
- James, St Albans, England
The BBC just falls in line with the one-rule-for-us-another-for-them stance of any dishonest and morally corrupt elitist institution. This excuse for a news organization should be done away with. There is no place for a taxpayer funded government mouthpiece in any true democracy.
- Garry Williams, New York, USA
The BBC has always been anti-Israel. Its reports never call anyone terrorists. They only show one side, the Arab side, in their reports. If and when the Palestinian terrorist murder their recently kidnapped reporter I wonder how they will report such an incident.
- Sam, Essex, UK
The BBC has shown spectacular bias against Israel and have abused their obligations as a publicly funded service. If the report were to come out, it would blow their cover as political organisation rather than a news service.
- Patrick Henry, Bristol, UK
Thats 200,000 less to ransom the BBC man held captive in Gaza.
- Dov Koret
AL-HURRA “IS BECOMING A PLATFORM FOR TERRORISTS”
Television Takeover
U.S.-financed Al-Hurra is becoming a platform for terrorists.
By Joel Mowbray
The Wall Street Journal
March 18, 2007
opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009801
Fighting to create a secular democracy in Iraq, parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi had come to rely on at least one TV network to help further freedom: U.S. taxpayer-financed Al-Hurra.
Now, however, he’s concerned. The broadcaster he had seen as a stalwart ally has done an about-face. “Until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore.”
Stories that he believes cry out for further investigation, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting the terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And Arab voices for freedom, which used to have a home on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent. “They’re driving out the liberals,” he complains.
Mr. Alusi is not the only one concerned about the recent changes at Al-Hurra. Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors – the congressionally-created panel charged with overseeing Al-Hurra, among other government-funded broadcasters – is currently demanding answers about the network’s decision last December to broadcast most of a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.
Sitting up straight and raising his index finger, he states emphatically, “It’s the single worst decision I’ve witnessed in all my years in international broadcasting.”
The airing of the Nasrallah speech is a sign of the network’s new direction since it was taken over by a longtime CNN producer, Larry Register, last November. Launched in February 2004, Al-Hurra broadcasts three separate feeds: to Europe, Arab nations and one for Iraq. The network is supposed to be a key component of our public diplomacy to the Arab world. Its mission statement calls for it to showcase the American political process, and just as important, report on things that get little attention on other Arabic networks, such as human-rights abuses and government corruption.
Within weeks of becoming news director, Mr. Register put his own stamp on the network. Producers and on-air talent quickly understood that change was underway. Investigations into Arab government wrongdoing or oppression were no longer in vogue, and the ban on turning the airwaves over to terrorists was lifted. For those who had chafed under Mr. Register’s predecessor – who curbed the desire of many on staff to make Al-Hurra more like al-Jazeera – the new era was welcomed warmly.
“Everybody feels emboldened. Register changed the atmosphere around here,” notes one staffer. “Register is trying to pander to Arab sympathies,” says another.
The cultural shift inside the newsroom is evident in the on-air product. In the past several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches from Mr. Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, and it broadcast an interview with an alleged al Qaeda operative who expressed joy that 9/11 rubbed “America’s nose in the dust.”
While a handful of unfortunate decisions could be isolated, these actions appear to be part of Mr. Register’s news vision. Former news director Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese-born American citizen, was not shy about his disdain for terrorists and had a firm policy against giving them a platform. But Mr. Register didn’t wait long to allow Hamas officials on the air to discuss Palestinian politics.
At a staff meeting announcing the reversal of the ban on terrorists as guests, Mr. Register “bragged” about his personal relationship with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a top Hamas official, according to someone who was present. Contacted on his cell phone for comment, Mr. Register declined, indicating that he couldn’t spare even two minutes anytime in the coming days.
Perhaps it is because Mr. Register is so casual in his attitude to terrorists that interviewers now toss softball questions to fiery anti-Western guests, while also taking digs at one of America’s closest Middle Eastern allies, Israel.
The new Al-Hurra was on full display Feb. 9, when riots broke out following Israel’s implementation of security measures that limited access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In roughly two hours of breathless live “breaking news” coverage – which outdistanced al-Jazeera by 30 minutes – Al-Hurra’s Muslim guests vilified Israel, and one spun conspiracy theories about the Jewish state’s “plans” to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque. No doubt the Islamic talking heads were egged on by the Al-Hurra anchors asking questions such as, “Do you think that the timing of these actions is as innocent as Israel pretends?” (Translations were provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government official.)
This powder keg of a panel included Ikrima Sabri, imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque, who is best known for his tenure as Yasser Arafat’s hand-picked mufti of Jerusalem. During the broadcast, Mr. Sabri accused Israel of firing guns and throwing bombs into the mosque, then refusing to allow medical care for the wounded.
Mr. Sabri’s propaganda should not have come as a surprise. Just weeks before 9/11, Mr. Sabri delivered a passionate Friday sermon, broadcast nationally on official Palestinian Authority radio. He prayed for the destruction of Israel, Britain and the United States.
If anyone should be savvy about people like Mr. Sabri, it ought to be Mr. Register. With two decades of experience at CNN, including three years running the Jerusalem bureau, he should know that live TV is the wrong venue for firebrands or guests prone to outrageous commentary.
Complicating matters is that once someone is on Al-Hurra live, Mr. Register lacks the basic requirement to stay on top of unfolding coverage; he doesn’t speak Arabic. Had Mr. Register been able to understand Mr. Nasrallah’s Dec. 7 speech, perhaps he would have rushed to cut away early on. Before the five-minute mark, Mr. Nasrallah told the audience to stop their celebratory gun-firing, explaining, “the only place where bullets should be is the chest of the enemies of Lebanon: the Israeli enemy.”
Former Broadcasting Board of Governors member Norman Pattiz understands the perils of turning over the airwaves to the likes of Mr. Nasrallah. Though he wouldn’t comment on anything relating to recent months – he left the board last year, before Mr. Register’s arrival – Mr. Pattiz said bluntly, “Simply handing a microphone over to a terrorist and letting them spew is not what I would call good journalism.”
Though Mr. Pattiz is a well-known Democrat who feuded constantly with Mr. Tomlinson, a Republican, the two men had one area of agreement: Mr. Harb, Al-Hurra’s original news director. Sounding remarkably similar to Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Pattiz said, “The direction Al-Hurra launched in is the direction in which it should continue to go, because it was very successful.”
Mr. Alusi, the Iraqi parliamentarian, agrees. “Al-Hurra should have the role of transporting democracy, and to help Iraqis understand freedom,” he says. “If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product.”
SAUDIS BAR ISRAELI JOURNALIST TRAVELING WITH BAN KI-MOON
Saudi Arabia bars Israeli journalist traveling with U.N. chief
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times
March 24, 2007
Saudi Arabia has barred entry to a Washington-based Israeli journalist traveling with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on his current Middle East tour, the United Nations said today.
Mr. Ban is going to Riyadh on Tuesday for two days of the summit meeting of the League of Arab States.
Orly Azoulay, the Washington bureau chief of Yediot Aharonot, was unable to obtain a visa to Saudi Arabia despite assurances the Saudi mission in New York gave the United Nations last week, said Michéle Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokeswoman.
Ms. Montas said that both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia initially refused to grant Ms. Azoulay a visa, but that Lebanon had dropped its objections last week and given her the needed stamp.
Ms. Azoulay, 53, an Israeli-born dual citizen of France and Israel, sought the visa on her French passport. She said she had traveled during the past two years to Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan and had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2000 with correspondents covering then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
When the Saudi consulate in New York returned the passports of the 11 news reporters and broadcasters to United Nations headquarters on Friday afternoon, only Ms. Azoulay’s bore no Saudi visa. Ms. Montas said this occurred despite repeated appeals to the Saudis during the week from Vijay Nambiar, Mr. Ban’s chief of staff.
Mr. Azoulay joined the trip in London on Thursday, and Ms. Montas said that the United Nations had been told that the visa might come through while the United Nations group proceeded to Cairo and Jordan.
In recent days, though, she said, the Saudi mission did not return calls from United Nations officials, and they have now concluded that Ms. Azoulay will be not be allowed to accompany the United Nations group to Riyadh.
“The Saudis have a lot of countries coming which have no relations to Israel, and it appears they had more concern about that than they did about the United Nations,” said an organization official who asked not to be identified so as to speak frankly.
Mr. Ban will be in Israel on Sunday and then go to Riyadh with only a six-hour stopover in Jordan for a working lunch with King Abdullah II.
Israel granted visas to all 11 news people, including at least 3 who are Arab- or Iranian-born and traveling on European passports.
“When the secretary general decides that he will take under his auspices a group of journalists, then there is some kind of responsibility that he takes upon himself and we respect this and this is the reason Israel granted the visas without hesitation,” said Daniel Carmon, Israel’s deputy United Nations ambassador.
Asked the United Nations’ reaction, Ms. Montas said, “What she was trying to do was to report objectively, which would improve the political climate in the region and would have been an asset to the secretary general’s mission.”
* Contrary to repeated misinformation in the European media, financial aid to the Palestinians rose by 20% in 2006, according to The New York Times, and continues to increase sharply
* Palestinian militants install air-conditioning in preparation for war
This dispatch mainly concerns Palestinian issues.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: “ENGLISH BABES V. ISRAELI BABES”
* As a follow-up to yesterday’s dispatch, titled Why the elites are driving Tony Blair from office (& The Sun’s guide to Tel Aviv), Britain’s most popular daily paper The Sun continues its admiration for Israel in the run up to Saturday’s big Israel-England soccer game.
Today, the paper carries this “slideshow”. (The Sun also invites people to vote on whether England or Israel has the “hottest babes”.)
In an unrelated development, the so-called “beer ‘n’ babes” magazine Maxim will send photographers to Israel next week for a photo shoot of good-looking Israeli women. The Israeli foreign ministry hopes the magazine will help redefine Israel’s image. “All the surveys we have done show that the biggest PR problem Israel has is with males from the age of 18-35,” said Israel’s consul for media and public affairs. “This could all change now.”
The nine-person Maxim team, including photographers, a reporter, hairstylists and make-up people, will arrive for a five-day photo-shoot on Tuesday. The glossy magazine, launched in the U.S. in 1997, boasts a circulation of 2.5 million and claims to be the “#1 men’s lifestyle magazine in the world.”
On a more serious note, a group of England fans in Israel for Saturday’s match will tomorrow morning become the first organized group of soccer supporters to visit Yad Vashem. They plan to lay a St. George Cross wreath with cards from the supporters reading: “Never Forget” and “Never Again.” The London England Fans supporters group will also attend a 16-team children’s soccer tournament tomorrow afternoon in Tel Aviv with teams made up of Arab and Jewish children.
Around 6,000 fans are expected to travel from England to Israel for the match.
CONTENTS
1. “Wasatia” is Arabic for “moderation”
2. UN under threat in Gaza
3. Fatah al-Islam and Fatah-Intifada clash in Lebanon, leaving two dead
4. Islamic Jihad work accident kills one and injures twenty
5. Financial aid to Palestinians rose by 20% in 2006
6. Hamas TV: Gaza evacuation will lead to destruction of Israel
7. New 12th grade Palestinian textbooks say destroying Israel is a religious duty
8. Unreported in the mainstream media: Libya threatens to deport Palestinians
9. Manchester University twinned with “Terror University”
10. “Palestinian militants install air-conditioning in preparation for war”
11. “New Islamic party seeks the center” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 2007)
12. “Straight talk on Palestine” (Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2007)
13. “Children of Palestinian suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi on Hamas TV: Mama killed five Jews and she is in paradise” (MEMRI, March 15, 2007)
14. “Hamas digs in for war in Gaza” (The Australian, March 16, 2007)
“WASATIA” IS ARABIC FOR “MODERATION”
A new Palestinian movement was launched yesterday directed at the more moderate sections of Palestinian society. It is called “Wasatia”, which means “moderation” in Arabic.
As Matthew Kalman writes in an exclusive article for The San Francisco Chronicle (attached below), it “is the first Islamic religious party to advocate a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a tolerant, democratic society at home.”
The new party, created by political science Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of the American Studies Institute at al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, hopes to “foster a culture of moderation and attract Palestinian voters who are moderate in their religious beliefs. The existing Palestinian Islamic parties breed radicalism and fundamentalism.”
They are expected to endorse a founding platform that blends verses from the Quran, extolling the virtues of moderation and tolerance, with calls for a negotiated peace with Israel and solutions to the economic, social and political problems plaguing Palestinian society.
In contrast to all other major Palestinian parties, it does not endorse the return of the descendants of Palestinian refugees to “return” to homes in what is now Israel.
Centrist parties won only six of 132 seats in the January 2006 Palestinian elections.
UN UNDER THREAT IN GAZA
Palestinian Authority officials have admitted that Islamist gunmen have launched a campaign to expel or seize control of the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip. The officials said the militia have driven out nearly all foreign staffers of UNRWA as they seek to control operations in refugee camps in the Palestinian Authority.
On March 16, Palestinian gunmen attempted to abduct UNRWA operations chief John Ging, one of the few senior officials left in the Gaza Strip. The gunmen blocked an armed convoy and fired at least five times at Ging’s vehicle. Nobody was hurt and the gunmen escaped.
It is thought that the terrorists are attempting to gain access to hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and supplies for the refugee camps. The attacks have surprised UNRWA who thought they were immune from Palestinian attack after decades of giving money to Palestinians.
FATAH AL-ISLAM AND FATAH-INTIFADA CLASH IN LEBANON, LEAVING TWO DEAD
Gunbattles broke out between rival Palestinian factions in northern Lebanon on Monday. Lebanon’s state-run news agency said at least two Palestinians were killed and five wounded in the battle.
The clash between Fatah al-Islam and Fatah Intifada started after an argument between members of the two groups in the Nahr al-Bared camp near the northern city of Tripoli.
The situation has been tense since Lebanon’s Interior minister Hassan Sabei last week announced the arrest of four Syrian members of the little-known Fatah al-Islam group – an offshoot of the Damascus-based Palestinian Fatah-Intifada. Sabei said those arrested had confessed to being behind the February 13 bombings of two buses northeast of Beirut that killed three Lebanese people and wounded 20.
ISLAMIC JIHAD WORK ACCIDENT KILLS ONE AND INJURES TWENTY
An explosion tore through the house of an Islamic Jihad terrorist in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, killing him and injuring 20 others. The militant was identified as 30-year-old Ala al-Hessi.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Anass said al-Hessi was killed when explosives he was handling went off. Officials said children were among the wounded in the blast.
Islamic Jihad has continued firing Qassam rockets into Israel from Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire.
The new Palestinian unity government is not expected to prevent Fatah and Hamas from building up their militias. Both movements are rearming and training in expectation of major clashes in the Gaza Strip in the next few weeks. “The unity government will be in name only and meant to satisfy Saudi Arabia, who has promised plenty of money,” a PA security source said. “It will have almost no affect on what is taking place on the ground.”
In the last 24 hours, four Palestinians have been killed and many injured in internal fighting in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources in Gaza said they were unsure if these incidents were all related to factional violence, or family disputes. The clashes were sparked after a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades was murdered.
A few days ago a member of the Palestinian military intelligence died after he was shot directly in the head by unidentified gunmen near Deir al-Balah cemetery in central Gaza.
FINANCIAL AID TO PALESTINIANS ROSE BY 20% IN 2006
One of the main stories in the New York Times (and also in the NY Times-owned International Herald Tribune) yesterday was that “Despite the international embargo on aid to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas came to power a year ago, significantly more aid was delivered to the Palestinians in 2006 than in 2005, according to official figures from the United Nations, United States, European Union and International Monetary Fund.”
It is a welcome surprise that The New York Times, which has traditionally sided with the more corrupt and dictatorial elements in Palestinian society, published this article. The Times went on to say that “While the United States and the European Union have led the boycott, they, too, provided more aid to the Palestinians in 2006 than 2005. Washington increased its aid to $468 million in 2006, from $400 million in 2005.” (Instead of going to the Palestinian Authority, much of the money was given directly to individuals or through independent agencies.)
This conflicts with the misinformation regularly broadcast by European-based media like the BBC, who have repeatedly told viewers that there is great financial hardship in the Palestinian territories.
Interestingly, a senior European diplomat was asked by The New York Times if the European Union would spend any more money on the Palestinians if it recognized the new Palestinian government, and the diplomat laughed and said, “We’d probably spend less.”
Salam Fayyad, the new finance minister in the Palestinian unity government, thinks the Palestinians received at least 250 percent more in direct support when cash from Iran and Arab nations is counted, as well as the amount smuggled in by Hamas officials after trips abroad. “I say the minimum for direct budgetary support was $880 million in 2006 compared to about $350 million the year before,” Fayyad said. He estimates total aid in 2006 was closer to $1.35 billion.
“These numbers are quite stunning,” said Alexander Costy, head of coordination for Álvaro de Soto, the United Nations special Middle East envoy, “given the relatively small size of the population of the Palestinian territory.”
Despite the huge financial aid the Palestinians are already receiving (much of it is being used to buy guns and other weapons), in 2007 the United Nations began a “humanitarian appeal for the Palestinians” doubling the amount requested in 2006 and third only in the world after Sudan and Congo, ahead of 18 other “disasters”.
HAMAS TV: GAZA EVACUATION WILL LEAD TO DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
Palestinian Media Watch reports that Hamas’s new al-Aqsa Satellite TV broadcasts have this month been repeatedly broadcasting a statement made in 2005 by Ahmad Yassin, the founder and former head of Hamas, in response to Israel’s plan to evacuate Israeli towns from Gaza.
Yassin’s message states that since terror was forcing Israel to leave Gaza, the Palestinians would now only have to keep up the terror in Israel’s other cities and Israelis would “run” from those as well.
“If death and murder chase them in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya and everywhere among them, then they will say: ‘I want to flee and go back to Europe and America’,” says Yassin in a message currently being broadcast several times a day on TV in Gaza and the West Bank.
The message can be viewed here.
NEW 12TH GRADE PALESTINIAN TEXTBOOKS SAY DESTROYING ISRAEL IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY
Palestinian Media Watch has also presented to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) Education Committee a report on new Palestinian schoolbooks that say that hating and working to destroy Israel is a religious duty.
The new schoolbooks were written by Fatah-appointed officials at the Palestinian Authority Center for Developing the Palestinian Curricula, and were formally released by the PA Ministry of Higher Education.
The report says that “Instead of seizing the opportunity to educate future generations to live with Israel in peace, the PA schoolbooks glorify terror and teach their children to hate Israel, vilify Israel’s existence and define the battle with Israel as an uncompromising religious war… the new PA curriculum is ingraining [hate] into the next generation’s consciousness, and packaging the war against Israel as existential, mandatory and religious.”
The 35-page report cites many examples of the delegitimization of Israel in the new books. As a result, Knesset Education Committee Chairman Michael Melchior (a member of the leftist Labor-Meimad party) said “You can’t have agreements while this kind of hatred is inculcated in the children… I intend to demand from Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] that he present the findings [of a new report on the textbooks] to Abu Mazen [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] at their next meeting.”
UNREPORTED IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: LIBYA THREATENS TO DEPORT PALESTINIANS
Libya, as a form of protest against the policies of the new Palestinian government, is considering a plan to deport thousands of Palestinians from their homes.
The PA expressed concern about the possible Libyan move. PA Minister for refugee affairs Dr. Atef Adouan told the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi that, “We hope that the Libyan leadership will act wisely and with patience. Deporting the Palestinians from Libya would cause greater suffering.”
As commentator Michael Freund wrote on his blog, “you won’t be reading much about this in the mainstream press, nor will you hear nary a peep of protest from much of the left and its sympathizers over the cruelty and brutality of such a move.”
MANCHESTER UNIVERISTY TWINNED WITH “TERROR UNIVERSITY”
The student union of the University of Manchester (in England) has been twinned with al-Najah University in the West Bank after a motion was passed by the Manchester union last week.
Nineteen Palestinian suicide bombers have originated from al-Najah university, and in 2001, the university organized a display to celebrate and recreate the suicide bomb attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.
As part of the motion, a plaque will be installed at the entrance to Manchester University’s student union building heralding the new relationship with al-Najah. The motion was put together by an alliance of far-right Islamists and far-left socialists.
For more on the Sbarro pizzeria attack, see here.
PALESTINIAN MILITANTS INSTALL AIR-CONDITIONING IN PREPARATION FOR WAR
I attach four articles below. The first, referred to above, is by Matthew Kalman. The second (from The Wall Street Journal) is by Khaled Abu Toameh, the Palestinian affairs editor of The Jerusalem Post. Abu Toameh, who is a longtime subscriber to this email list, comments, on behalf of moderate Palestinians, on the new Palestinian unity government. “The international community must demand an end to the era of ambiguity and double-talk. If the new government is opposed to terror, there is no reason why it should not state this loudly and clearly… There is no point in pouring millions of dollars on the ‘unity’ government as long as it’s not prepared to make a clear and firm commitment to halt terror and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
For more on Abu Toameh, see: When was the last time you saw Khaled Abu Toameh interviewed on BBC or CNN? (Jan. 4, 2006).
The third item below, from MEMRI, is a transcript of an interview with the children of Palestinian suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on March 8, 2007. The interviewer asks the youngest child how many Jews his mother killed. It is worth reading this item in full.
(The MEMRI blog also points to a picture of a young Palestinian girl pictured with explosives on an online forum affiliated with the Hamas Website. The little girl is dressed in a combat vest and an al-Qassam Brigades headband with the caption, “Have you seen the new child martyr who will soon shake Israel [to the core]?” This picture can be seen here.)
The final article below reports that “Hamas is busily fortifying the Gaza Strip with the help of Iranian expertise and funding for what may be the fiercest fighting the embattled enclave has seen.” Abraham Rabinovich, writing in The Australian, says “A major clash with Hamas threatens to be far bloodier than the war with Hezbollah.”
“They’re digging bunkers and tunnels 20m underground equipped with air-conditioning. That’s something the Iranians taught them.”
-- Tom Gross
NEW ISLAMIC PARTY SEEKS THE CENTER GROUND
New Islamic party seeks the center
By Matthew Kalman
San Francisco Chronicle
March 21, 2007
A new Palestinian movement being launched today is aimed at the moderate middle of Muslim politics.
Wasatia – Arabic for “moderation” – is the first Islamic religious party to advocate a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a tolerant, democratic society at home.
The new party is the brainchild of political science Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Dajani hopes to build Wasatia into a movement with a social and political wing that will eventually compete with Hamas for the votes of what he calls the silent majority of Palestinians.
“Wasatia is a term from the Quran which means ‘centrism,’ ‘balance’ or ‘moderation,’” Dajani said. “The new party will foster a culture of moderation and attract Palestinian voters who are moderate in their religious beliefs. The existing Palestinian Islamic parties breed radicalism and fundamentalism.”
Dajani said most Palestinians are proud of their Muslim heritage and respect the religious identity of Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but many are uncomfortable with the fundamentalism of those groups – and after years of disastrous armed resistance, also are tired also of their extreme militarism.
“We want to foster a culture of moderation so that our children do not grow up just with the literature of hate and violence,” he said. “We want our children to grow up in a culture where people can co-exist in peace and harmony.”
Palestinian politics are now dominated by Hamas – a hard-line Islamic party that refuses to recognize Israel – and by Fatah. The two parties have just formed a power-sharing government.
The meeting this evening brings together Islamic religious leaders from several West Bank towns, former prisoners in Israeli jails, women, intellectuals and youth. They are expected to endorse a founding platform that blends verses from the Quran, extolling the virtues of moderation and tolerance, with calls for a negotiated peace with Israel and solutions to the acute economic, social and political crises plaguing Palestinian society.
In common with the mainstream Fatah movement, the Wasatia platform calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But in contrast to all other major Palestinian parties, it does not endorse the return of the estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.
“I would say to the refugees: ‘Move on with your life.’ We cannot let the past bury the future, even though it should always be remembered,” said Dajani.
Among the founders of Wasatia is Bashar Azzeh, a doctoral student in conflict system management who spent seven years studying and working in Kentucky before returning to the West Bank to work for a Palestinian development organization.
“The image of Islam in the United States is that it is extremist, but we have found that hardliners are not the majority among Palestinians,” Azzeh said. “I have been to the villages and talked to people. There is a feeling that people have tried violence, they have tried everything, and this is what we need now. People want a moderate political culture and an end to violence and ignorance. They want a reflection of what we are.”
Surveys suggest that many of those who swept Hamas to power in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections were casting votes against the institutional corruption of Fatah. A poll by Near East Consulting found that 54 percent of Hamas voters also supported the peace process with Israel. “A moderate, centrist Islamic party will take support from Hamas voters who will not vote for secular parties,” said Hanna Siniora, a veteran Palestinian activist and publisher of the Jerusalem Times.
But Mahdi Abdel Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said that centrist parties won only six of 132 seats in last January’s election.
“Without alliances with powerful elites in society, this new initiative will be born dead,” said Abdel Hadi.
Nicolas Pelham, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Jerusalem, agreed that Wasatia faces a major challenge.
“Political power relies on patronage,” said Pelham. “Those factions which do maintain some form of popular allegiance are those which can offer services and jobs and some access to the remaining centers of power or salaries.”
Dajani said that Wasatia will spend the next year building itself as a movement, undertaking voluntary work, creating new jobs and economic opportunities.
“Charity and voluntarism – this is Islam,” he said. “The creation of new jobs does not have to be related to arms and violence.”
STRAIGHT TALK ON PALESTINE, FROM A PALESTINIAN
Straight talk on Palestine
The new government still hasn’t renounced terror or recognized Israel.
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2007
www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009808
Even before the Palestinian “unity” government was sworn in Saturday at least five European countries announced that they would resume their business with the Hamas-led coalition.
The U.S. has endorsed Israel’s position on the Palestinian government--namely, that its political platform does not meet the conditions set by the so-called “Quartet” of the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia for ending the boycott. Washington is now under heavy pressure from its Arab allies in the Middle East to deal with it.
But the U.S. should stand firm. The Palestinian government is not committed to the Quartet’s demands that it renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by agreements signed with Israel in the past. The speeches delivered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his new Hamas partner, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, at Saturday’s parliamentary session show that the Palestinians are determined instead to continue their strategy of double-talk.
Neither the president nor the prime minister openly called for an end to terrorism or for recognizing Israel’s right to exist. And to add to the confusion, the two men came up with a political program that contains many contradictions and ambiguities.
The wording of the program was drafted in such a way as to allow both Hamas and Fatah to argue that neither party had totally abandoned its traditional position. The equivocal tone is also designed to appease the Americans and Europeans. After all, the main goal of the new coalition is to get the international community to resume desperately needed financial aid.
With regard to the three main demands of the Quartet, the program leaves the door wide open for different interpretations.
On the issue of terrorism, the program states that the new government “stresses that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people... and our people have the right to defend themselves against any Israeli aggression.” But the program also says that the new government will “work toward consolidating the tahdiya [period of calm] and extending it [to the West Bank] so that it becomes a comprehensive and mutual truce.”
The program sets a number of conditions for halting the “resistance” – ending the “occupation” and achieving independence and the right of return for Palestinian refugees, as well as an end to Israeli security measures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (including the construction of the security fence). In other words, Fatah and Hamas are saying that the violence will continue as long as Israel does not meet these demands.
Regarding Israel’s right to exist, the program does not even mention the name Israel. Instead, it refers to Israel as “The Occupation.” It also makes no mention of the two-state solution. Rather, it reiterates the Palestinians’ opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders.
Although the document declares that the “key to peace and stability is contingent on ending the occupation of Palestinian lands and recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” it does not specify which “lands” – those captured by Israel in 1967 or 1948.
Fatah representatives, of course, argue that the program refers only to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Hamas, on the other hand, will be able to argue that the phrase “Palestinian lands” applies also to all of Mandatory Palestine.
Referring to the third demand of the Quartet--abiding by agreements between the PLO and Israel – the political program states that the new government will only “respect” agreements signed by the PLO.
Hamas leaders have already explained that there is a huge difference between “respecting” an agreement and making a pledge to fulfill it. In other words, Hamas is saying that while it accepts the agreements with Israel as an established fact, it will not carry them out.
Elsewhere in the program, the new government says that it will abide by unspecified U.N. and Arab summit resolutions, leaving the door open for Fatah to claim that this is tantamount to recognizing the two-state solution and all the agreements with Israel. Fatah will cite the 2002 Arab peace plan that implicitly recognizes Israel.
Hamas, on the other hand, can always claim that among the Arab summit resolutions that it intends to abide by is the one taken in Khartoum, Sudan, in September 1967. The resolution contains what became known as “the three no’s” of Arab-Israel relations: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel.
Although the program makes it clear that the PLO, and not the new Hamas-led coalition, will be responsible for conducting negotiations with Israel, it also seeks to tie the hands of President Abbas by stating that any “fateful” agreement must be approved by the Palestinians in the PA-controlled areas and abroad through a referendum.
The program, moreover, closes the door to any potential concessions on the problem of the refugees by emphasizing their “right of return to their lands and property [inside Israel].”
The international community must demand an end to the era of ambiguity and double-talk. If the new government is opposed to terror, there is no reason why it should not state this loudly and clearly.
If it recognizes Israel--as some of its members claim – then why not announce this in unequivocal language? The international community must insist that the messages coming out of the Palestinian leaders be the same in both English and Arabic.
There is no point in pouring millions of dollars on the “unity” government as long as it’s not prepared to make a clear and firm commitment to halt terror and recognize Israel’s right to exist.
“MAMA KILLED FIVE JEWS AND SHE IS IN PARADISE”
Children of Palestinian suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi on Hamas TV: Mama killed five Jews and she is in paradise
MEMRI
March 15, 2007
www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD150307
The following are excerpts of an interview with the children of Palestinian suicide bomber Rim Al-Riyashi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on March 8, 2007.
To view this clip visit: www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1398.
“How Many Jews Did Mama Kill?”
Interviewer: “Let’s talk with the two children of the jihad-fighting martyrdom-seeker Rim Al-Riyashi, Dhoha and Muhammad. Dhoha, you love Mama, right? Where did Mama go?”
Dhoha: “To Paradise.”
Interviewer: “What did Mama do?”
Dhoha: “She committed martyrdom.”
Interviewer: “She killed Jews, right?”
Interviewer: “How many did she kill, Muhammad?”
Muhammad: “Huh?”
Interviewer: “How many Jews did Mama kill?”
Muhammad: “This many...”
Interviewer: “How many is that?”
Muhammad: “Five.”
Interviewer: “Do you love Mama? Do you miss Mama?
“Where is Mama, Muhammad?”
Muhammad: “In Paradise.”
Interviewer: “Dhoha, what would you like to recite for us?”
Dhoha: “In the name of Allah the Merciful the Compassionate: ‘When comes the help of Allah, and victory, and you see people entering the religion of Allah in troops, then celebrate the praise of your Lord, and ask His forgiveness, for He is ever ready to show mercy.’”
Interviewer: “What else would you like to recite? You have read the surah, ‘When comes the help of Allah, and victory.’ What would you like to recite for us now?”
Dhoha: “‘Mama Rim.’”
Interviewer: “Recite the poem ‘Mama Rim’ for us. Recite anything. What would you like to recite?”
“I Want to Talk About Kindergarten”
Interviewer: “Muhammad, do you know how to recite?”
Muhammad: “Yes.”
Interviewer: “Go on then, recite something for us. What would you like to recite?”
Dhoha: “I just remembered.”
Muhammad: “I am in kindergarten.”
Interviewer: “Are you doing well in kindergarten?”
Muhammad: “Yes.”
Dhoha: “I am in kindergarten, I want to tell.”
Interviewer: “Go on then, tell us. You’re in kindergarten too? Are you in kindergarten, Dhoha? In kindergarten or at school?”
Dhoha: “In kindergarten.”
Interviewer: “That’s great.
“One should talk about the innocence of children...”
Muhammad: “I’m in kindergarten too.”
Interviewer: “You’re in kindergarten too.”
Dhoha: “I want to talk about kindergarten, I want to talk.”
“Rim, You Are a Firebomb, Your Children and Submachine Gun Are Your Motto”
Interviewer: “What would you like to recite for us? Have you heard the poem ‘Mama Rim’? Go on then, recite it for us.”
Dhoha: “Rim, you are a fire bomb.”
Interviewer: “Go on, recite it.”
Dhoha: “‘Your children and submachine gun are your motto.’”
Interviewer: “Muhammad, go ahead and recite...”
Muhammad: “I’m in kindergarten.”
Dhoha: “That’s it, I’m done.”
Interviewer: “OK, do you want to go to Mama?”
Dhoha: “Yes.”
“A MAJOR CLASH WITH HAMAS THREATENS TO BE FAR BLOODIER THAN THE WAR WITH HIZBULLAH”
Hamas digs in for war in Gaza
By Abraham Rabinovich
The Australian
March 16, 2007
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21390536-2703,00.html
Hamas is busily fortifying the Gaza Strip with the help of Iranian expertise and funding for what may be the fiercest fighting the embattled enclave has seen.
“They’re digging bunkers and tunnels 20m underground equipped with airconditioning,” retired Israeli intelligence officer Brigadier General Shalom Harari said this week. “That’s something the Iranians taught them.”
Since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza 18 months ago, hundreds of Hamas fighters have gone to Iran for intensive military training sometimes lasting months, according to Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin. Iranian experts have also reportedly reached Gaza.
Mr Diskin said on Tuesday that militants last year smuggled more than 30 tonnes of explosives into the Strip, mostly through tunnels from Egypt. According to an Israeli assessment, there are 120,000 automatic weapons in Palestinian hands in the 40km-long strip.
Mr Diskin told the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee that Hamas had significantly upgraded its rocket arsenal. Some could now hit Israeli towns 20km away. Hamas had also acquired in recent months Russian missiles capable of penetrating heavily armoured tanks. Newly acquired anti-aircraft missiles would challenge Israel’s domination of the skies over Gaza for the first time.
Brigadier General Harari said: “Hamas and Iran have formed a strategic alliance. Iran sees Hamas as part of a pincer aimed at Israel.”
The other arm of the pincer, in Lebanon, is Hezbollah.
Like Iran, Hezbollah belongs to the Shia branch of Islam. Though Hamas members are Sunni, they share Iran’s fundamentalist ethos and its militancy towards Israel.
Iran is also funding militant groups in the West Bank, which borders Israel’s heartland. However, Israeli forces are still deployed in the West Bank and almost nightly arrests of militants have prevented Hamas from gaining traction.
Israel is closely monitoring developments in Gaza and has drawn up detailed plans for a large-scale incursion that it would like to press home before Hamas reaches Hezbollah’s level of military sophistication.
“Hamas wants quiet now so that it can continue its preparations,” Brigadier General Harari said. “But their build-up will oblige an Israeli operation, probably before the end of the year.”
A major clash with Hamas threatens to be far bloodier than the war with Hezbollah.
South Lebanon, where most of last summer’s war was waged, is a thinly populated rural area. Its residents were warned by Israel through leaflets and radio broadcasts to flee before their villages were bombed or shelled. Gaza, by contrast, is one of the world’s most densely populated areas, with few secure places to which civilians could flee. If Israeli forces wished to root out Hamas armories and rocket workshops, they would have to fight their way into built-up areas.
In all the years of skirmishing, Israeli troops have never engaged in significant house-to-house fighting in Gaza City or other urban locations.
Given the lacklustre showing of the Israeli Defence Force against Hezbollah last year, it is highly motivated to seek a decisive victory against Hamas. But international pressure could prove a restraining force if many civilians were killed.
Hamas has mined the approaches to Gaza’s towns and is expected to mine streets and buildings inside the towns when fighting appears imminent. It is also believed to have dug tunnels under the Israeli border fence to infiltrate fighters behind the Israeli lines.
Israel has drawn up plans for an orderly evacuation of settlements bordering the Gaza Strip when and if fighting starts.
* His crime? Supporting the removal of the fascist dictator Saddam Hussein and of the hellish Taliban regime. Supporting Israel’s right to defend itself
* Why there are “Tony Blair – Wanted” posters on the London underground
* “Great capital city. Shame about the awful BBC”
This dispatch mainly concerns the United Kingdom but the points in it have important implications for the future of the Middle East and the longevity of Western democracy.
CONTENTS
1. The BBC-led elites take aim for Tony Blair
2. “The elites have long loathed the PM (and America and department stores and Israel)”
3. “The Trial of Tony Blair”
4. The Sun’s guide to Tel Aviv
5. “Like Bin Laden accusing Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews”
6. “Blair of the Critics” (National Review, March 5, 2007)
7. “The Biased Broadcasting Corporation” (New York Times, March 15, 2007)
8. “Great capital city. Shame about the awful BBC” (Times of London, March 16, 2007)
[Note by Tom Gross]
Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, is only 53. It is less than two years since he was re-elected by a wide margin (his Labour Party has a comfortable 66 seat majority), and he still has more than three years of his term to run. (The next election doesn’t have to be held until June 3, 2010.) The British economy remains buoyant. And yet within the next few weeks, Blair is likely going to be driven out of office – by his own Labour party.
His crime? Supporting the removal of the fascist dictator Saddam Hussein and the hellish Taliban regime. Supporting Israel’s right to defend itself last summer against attack from the Iranian-controlled Islamic fundamentalists of Hizbullah. Not siding with dictators against America.
The article below, by Jonathan Foreman in the National Review, explains what is puzzling to many outside observers. How the BBC-led elites in the UK have literally driven Tony Blair from office with their incessant propaganda against his foreign policy.
“THE ELITES HAVE LONG LOATHED THE PM (AND AMERICA AND DEPARTMENT STORES AND ISRAEL)”
As Foreman, who is one of the founder subscribers to this email list eight years ago, writes: “Tony Blair is loathed by the British establishment to a degree that is hard for many Americans to appreciate. Unlike the Bush hatred so endemic in Democratic and mainstream-media circles, Blair hatred is not a strictly partisan affair. Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that the prime minister is reviled by most of the political class.
“At the extremes, the left-wing Independent and the right-wing Daily Mail have long loathed the PM (and America and department stores and Israel) with equal passion. But now almost all the papers are frothing at the mouth with anticipation of the prime minister’s supposedly imminent fall… It apparently infuriates the chattering class that Blair remains in power so long after he was declared finished by elite opinion…”
“Bizarrely the visceral hatred of Blair – similar to Thatcher hatred, Clinton obsession, and Bush loathing in its intensity – has little or nothing to do with any of his ill-considered constitutional reforms (a separate legislature for Scotland, etc.) or any of the other failures of his administration…
“No, Tony Blair is hated mostly for the big things that he has done right – the really important, civilization-protecting things like overthrowing Saddam and the Taliban, and intervening in Sierra Leone to stop a savage civil war. Many on the Left hate him for being a liberal interventionist and of course for being such a close ally of Uncle Sam...
“THE TRIAL OF TONY BLAIR”
“How bad is it? Well, to really appreciate elite hatred of Blair you have to check out the London cultural scene.
“A couple of weeks ago Britain’s Channel 4 ran a massively promoted show called ‘The Trial of Tony Blair.’ The program was advertised by ‘Tony Blair – Wanted’ posters on the London underground. It envisioned a 2017 trial of the former PM for ‘War Crimes’. As one leading columnist wrote in anticipation of the program ‘Tomorrow night, we will finally have our revenge.’
“There’s also a new play, or rather a theatrical happening, entitled ‘Called to Account: The indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – a Hearing’…
“January saw the opening of an art exhibition at the Tate Britain museum entitled ‘State Britain’. It recreates the antiwar installation (sample poster: ‘stop genocide of Iraq’) and includes a painting of Blair washing his hands in a bowl filled with blood…
“To most Americans and other fair-minded people there is something bizarre about the notion of Tony Blair as a ‘war criminal’ deserving of the full Nuremberg treatment. After all, if he’s the villain, who then are the good guys, besides Saddam and his supporters, and the fanatics who think it’s O.K. to set off suicide bombs in crowded nightclubs?”
I recommend reading Jonathan Foreman’s piece (below) in full. It has lessons for what the elites may succeed in doing in future in America, Australia and elsewhere, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the future ability of the free world to defend itself.
THE SUN’S GUIDE TO TEL AVIV
In contrast to the elites, Israel remains popular with some working class people in the UK. For example Britain’s most popular newspaper, The Sun, has this positive guide to Tel Aviv, published in advance of Saturday’s crucial Israel-England international soccer match. They even mention Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend Bar Rafaeli who was cited in my last dispatch. The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch and some of its senior editors subscribe to this email list.
The Sun’s positive article about Tel Aviv contrasts greatly with articles in The Guardian in recent days which have demanded that Israel be thrown out of all international sporting events.
“LIKE BIN LADEN ACCUSING AHMADINEJAD OF BEING A BIT HARSH ON THE JEWS”
I also attach below two recent articles on the BBC. The first, from the New York Times, is written by Frank H. Stewart, a visiting scholar at New York University.
Stewart writes that the “BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall… If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.”
Stewart says “The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.”
As a result of Stewart’s article in the New York Times, Gerard Baker published a piece in the Times of London castigating the BBC. “When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.”
-- Tom Gross
“TONY BLAIR IS HATED MOSTLY FOR THE BIG THINGS THAT HE HAS DONE RIGHT”
Blair of the Critics
The British prime minister has been uniformly maligned by ill-informed critics.
By Jonathan Foreman
National Review
March 5, 2007
article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmUyOTlkOTY5ZWU0YjhmNmJlZjNkMzgxODkwY2QxMjc=&w=MA==
Tony Blair is loathed by the British establishment to a degree that is hard for many Americans to appreciate. Unlike the Bush hatred so endemic in Democratic and mainstream-media circles, Blair hatred is not a strictly partisan affair. Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that the prime minister is reviled by most of the political class.
Check out the newspapers. (The British are the biggest newspaper readers of the world and British pols are terrified of the press) At the extremes, the left-wing Independent and the right-wing Daily Mail have long loathed the PM (and America and department stores and Israel) with equal passion. But now almost all the papers are frothing at the mouth with anticipation of the prime minister’s supposedly imminent fall – their columnists fed tidbits by the staff of his would-be successors, the comically treacherous Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Tories’ apostle of political correctness David Cameron. As the dubious police investigation into “cash for honours” scandal gets rapturously overblown coverage, the whole tone has become relentless and shrill, the pundits basically screaming: “Why won’t he go already?”
It apparently infuriates the chattering class that Blair remains in power so long after he was declared finished by elite opinion. More than a year ago Blair was definitively deemed a discredited lame duck by the BBC’s Today Programme, the oracular flagship radio show listened to by every MP and treated with Pravda-like deference by all of Fleet Street. Yet he refuses to resign. Can’t he see that it’s all over? That his “illegal” wars are a disaster? That his slavish deference to Bush has provoked terrorist attacks? That all of us have decided that it’s time for him to go?
Bizarrely the visceral hatred of Blair – similar to Thatcher hatred, Clinton obsession, and Bush loathing in its intensity – has little or nothing to do with any of his ill-considered constitutional reforms (a separate legislature for Scotland, etc.) or any of the other failures of his administration, nor even because of the ghastly youth-worshipping “Cool Britannia” ethos of his early years.
No, Tony Blair is hated mostly for the big things that he has done right – the really important, civilization-protecting things like overthrowing Saddam and the Taliban, and intervening in Sierra Leone to stop a savage civil war. Many on the Left hate him for being a liberal interventionist and of course for being such a close ally of Uncle Sam.
Some of the Right hates him for the same reasons, though others only oppose the war on terror because Tony Blair is for it. This portion of Tory opinion hates him – and this is not a joke – because his government banned fox-hunting on horseback. Anything and everything else he has done since is deemed equally wrongheaded or even evil.
How bad is it? Well, to really appreciate elite hatred of Blair you have to check out the London cultural scene.
A couple of weeks ago Britain’s Channel 4 (the network behind last year’s docudrama fantasy about the assassination of President Bush) ran a massively promoted show called The Trial of Tony Blair. The program was advertised by “Tony Blair – Wanted” posters on the London underground. It envisioned a 2017 trial of the former PM for “War Crimes” against Iraq in the International Court in the Hague. As one leading columnist wrote in anticipation of the program – much praised for its ham-handed, supposedly biting satire – “Tomorrow night, we will finally have our revenge.”
There’s also a new play, or rather a theatrical happening, entitled Called to Account: The indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – a Hearing. It is running at a fashionable London theater called the Tricycle. The professional-class audiences whoop it up as a senior barrister Philippe Sands – a member of the same radical firm as Tony Blair’s wife Cherie – “tries” the prime minister for his alleged crimes.
If that weren’t enough, January saw the opening of an art exhibition at the Tate Britain museum entitled State Britain. It recreates the antiwar installation of well-known Parliament Square protester Brian Haw, (sample poster: “stop genocide of Iraq”) and includes a painting of Blair, Chancellor Brown, and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw washing their hands in a bowl filled with blood and labeled Iraq. It has been widely praised.
To most Americans and other fair-minded people there is something bizarre about the notion of Tony Blair as a “war criminal” deserving of the full Nuremberg treatment. After all, if he’s the villain, who then are the good guys, besides Saddam and his supporters, and the fanatics who think it’s O.K. to set off suicide bombs in crowded nightclubs?
These vengeful fantasies of prosecution for alleged “war crimes” reveal a callow ignorance as to what war crimes really are. They also reflect a European elitism. After all, Blair could not have more democratic legitimacy: he won his last election after the beginning of both “illegal” wars.
It’s obvious that the people who put these shows on – and those who watch them – know little and understand less about the real war in Iraq (as opposed to a fantasy war in which SS-like British and American troops deliberately target Iraqi civilians for murder and torture).
They are as clueless and self-indulgent as the Hollywood actor-activist Tim Robbins and his politically illiterate play Embedded. (Certainly they have no idea that most of the civilian deaths in Iraq have been inflicted by Sunni militants, former regime elements, and Wahhabi volunteers.) Nor do these anti-Blair crusaders believe that there is any real terrorist threat other than that “provoked” by Bush and Blair’s wars.
I have met senior judges and lawyers who really, truly believe that Blair and Bush lied about WMDs. I pointed out to one top barrister that if Saddam’s WMD threat had been a lie rather than an error, then surely the Coalition would have been better prepared for the moment when no WMDs turned up. Or if the Bush-Blair alliance was so evil, would it not have been willing to fake the discovery of the forbidden weapons? It was clear the barrister had never even thought the matter through.
Moreover the British chattering classes are convinced almost to a man (or woman) that Guantanamo is at best a gulag in which all the detainees are innocent victims of paranoia and aggression, and where the quotidian tortures rival those of the Gestapo. They “know” that the war in Iraq is really about stealing oil, doing Israel’s evil bidding, boosting corporate profits, or some vicious combination of all three. The war in Afghanistan is equally “pointless” and “unwinnable.”
They fully buy the media line that radical Islamism is somehow a creation of these wars rather than a phenomenon that predated 9/11, and that solving the Palestinian question will somehow bring peace between Shia and Sunni and end bin Ladenite dreams of restoring the medieval caliphate.
But even if the Blair haters did have a clue about the reality of terrorism and today’s wars, the really important thing about anti-Blairism is that it is a cipher for the envious, ill-informed, elitist, and bigoted anti-Americanism that is endemic among the British upper middle class. Blair is constantly, endlessly condemned as “Bush’s poodle.” Supposedly he is so keen to win Washington’s favor that he has ignored and even endangered British interests. Indeed by (allegedly) uncritically siding with the U.S. on all foreign policy and security questions, he has supposedly provoked Islamist terrorism in the U.K. – as if Islamist extremism didn’t exist here before the Afghan and Iraq wars. There are shades here of the Nuclear Disarmament hysteria of the 1970s when British governments were said to have endangered an otherwise safe island by allowing the basing of U.S. nuclear bombers in the U.K.
The fact that Blair has shown enormous moral courage and not given in to the anti-Americanism of many of his erstwhile friends and colleagues has only made his unpopularity worse. Nor does the fact that many ordinary people, especially the pro-American working class still support Blair and the war, do him any favors. (The proletariat also eat at McDonalds, watch trash TV, and take sweaty vacations at Florida Disneyland instead of Tuscany and the Dordogne — their pro-Americanism is a measure of their vulgar ignorance.) Indeed, each day that he stands his ground in the war against terrorism and for Western democratic values, the more he incurs the loathing of the bien-pensant.
Now that Blair’s days in office are numbered, the papers in London are filled with snide columns about the huge amount of money the former PM may make when he goes on lecture tours in the U.S. One can only hope that the columnists are correct and that a grateful America makes him a very rich man indeed.
THE BIASED BROADCASTING CORPORATION
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation
By Frank H. Stewart
The New York Times
March 15, 2007
www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/opinion/15stewart.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Last summer, the Archbishop of Algeria remarked to this newspaper that when satellite dishes first appeared in Algeria, they were typically positioned to receive French broadcasts. Now the majority receive programming from the Persian Gulf.
“If you watch Western television, you live in one universe,” said the archbishop, “and if you watch Middle Eastern television, you live in another altogether.” The Middle Eastern broadcasts, he added, tended to depict the West in a negative light.
Washington is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it. In 2004, the United States established its own Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra. But Al Hurra has not been a success, and stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, based in the Gulf states, continue to dominate the region.
Those stations will soon face a formidable rival. The BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall, and the BBC knows what it is doing. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a huge audience.
This new television station might sound like good news for America. Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.
For example, a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantánamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to disgusting and horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States.
At the same time, the authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria enjoys similar favor. When a State Department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer immediately interrupted and reprimanded him.
The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of military and security forces, corruption, discrimination against minorities, censorship, poverty and unemployment. When, from time to time, such topics do arise, they are usually dealt with in the most general terms: there may, for instance, be guarded references to “certain Arab countries.”
By contrast, the words and deeds of Western leaders, particularly the American president and the British prime minister, are subject to minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda. Last summer, when the British arrested two dozen people alleged to have been plotting to blow up airplanes crossing the Atlantic, a BBC presenter centered a discussion on the theory that these arrests had taken place because Tony Blair, embarrassed by opposition to Britain’s role in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, wanted to distract the public while at the same time associating Muslims with terrorism.
The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.
GREAT CAPITAL CITY. SHAME ABOUT THE AWFUL BBC
Great capital city. Shame about the awful BBC
By Gerard Baker
The Times of London
March 16, 2007
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1522471.ece
For someone who has not lived in the city for more than a decade, the occasional trip to London is a reminder of how richly it deserves its new reputation as the world’s capital.
As my colleague James Harding wrote in times2 this week, there’s a vibrancy about London these days that easily eclipses New York or Paris or Tokyo. To many residents, perhaps, life in London may be a struggle against rising crime and a crowded Tube and overpriced housing, but from an international perspective, it is truly the world’s preeminent urban locale.
In fact, in anything other than the most literal, geographic expression of the term, London is really no longer an English city at all. Its great economic dynamo, the City, powers corporations from Shanghai to Seattle. Its labour force, drawn to it by the opportunities of its free markets, is much more polyglot and multinational than any other urban concentration in the world.
But there’s salt to this strawberry. London’s political culture has been uprooted from its English heritage. It is run – if you can call it that – by a sort of postmodern communist Mayor, whose political voice – minus the annoying nasal whine – would sound right at home in Paris, Bologna or San Francisco. It hosts a metropolitan elite that loftily gazes three ways: outward, at the supposed superiority of anything not British; inward, at its own ineffable genius; and down its elegantly pampered nose, at the provincial trivialities that consume the dreary lives of the rest of the population.
But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.
On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism (“How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?”) one particular gem caught my attention.
Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an “unsympathetic character” as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn’t find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.
It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.
It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch – or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world – must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.
More than that, the question – all fawning and fraternal and friendly – contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.
You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.
This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world – from colonialism to global warming.
I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.
A necessary word here about our sponsor. Anything critical of the BBC written by an employee of Rupert Murdoch is instantly dismissed. It’s not an unreasonable instinct. Outside Murdochland it is solemnly assumed that each morning the drones of News Corporation are given their marching orders on how to interpret every event so that it conforms precisely to the commercial and political instincts of the proprietor.
In the real world, not only does the Murdoch media have only a fraction of the reach of the BBC, but a casual glance at its output demonstrates it is far less monolithic in its outlook than is the BBC.
Fortunately, in the US this week, I was struck by an article on the oped pages of The New York Times, the very citadel of leftish political correctness. Written by an apparently completely sane professor at a prestigious US university and entitled “Biased Broadcasting Corporation”, it assailed the BBC’s Middle Eastern services for their consistently antiWestern tone and content.
When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.
* Among Israeli Arab college graduates the figure was even higher – 33 percent think Jews made up the Holocaust
* Arab woman to deliver Hebrew news
* Leonardo DiCaprio tours Yad Vashem with his Israeli girlfriend
* Supreme U.S. Commander in Europe: Israel is a “model state”
This dispatch mainly concerns Israel.
CONTENTS
1. Supreme U.S. Commander in Europe: Israel is a “model state”
2. U.S. and IDF hold joint exercise on response to nuclear attack
3. UN to open permanent probe on Israel
4. Tania Reinhardt, campaigner against Israel’s existence, dies
5. Israel singled out by UN as being supposed abuser of women!
6. At start of the Lebanon war, France urged Israel to hit Syria
7. Poll: 28 percent of Israel’s Arabs believe the Holocaust never happened
8. Arab woman to deliver Hebrew news
9. Israel approves Jordan rail link
10. Monument dedicated to 4,000 Ethiopians who died en route to Israel
11. Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Rafaeli tour Yad Vashem
12. Hooters heads for Tel Aviv
13. Israel to start amateur football association
14. “The struggle of free peoples in our age”
15. “Europe’s Israel problem” (Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2007)
16. “Why Europeans should support Israel” (Brussels Journal, March 12, 2007)
17. “Sudanese in Israel hope they have found a home” (NY Times, March 18, 2007)
SUPREME U.S. COMMANDER IN EUROPE: ISRAEL IS A “MODEL STATE”
The supreme commander of NATO operations in Europe and head of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), John Craddock, has called Israel a “model state”.
Speaking before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee in Washington, Craddock said Israel was “a model state that encouraged democratic ideals and pro-Western values and economics.” He also said Israel should remain a prime beneficiary of U.S. security aid funds and was a “critical military partner” in what he called “this entangled seam of the Middle East.” Craddock’s extremely forthright comments (made last Thursday) were unusual for such a senior U.S. military officer.
U.S. AND IDF HOLD JOINT EXERCISE ON RESPONSE TO NUCLEAR ATTACK
Israel and the United States are conducting a joint military exercise the main aim of which, according to military officials in both countries, is to improve the allies’ abilities to fend off missiles equipped with nuclear, biological or chemical warheads.
This drill, however, will not now involve intercepting live missiles due to logistical constraints resulting from last summer’s Lebanon war and from U.S. deployments elsewhere.
Israel is testing the latest version of the Arrow and Patriot PAC-2 anti-missile systems. The Americans are testing, for the first time, the capabilities of their Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot PAC-3 systems. The aim of the exercise is to measure the response time in the event of a missile attack on Israel, the missile interception capabilities and the communications, battle management and command-and-control systems of both countries.
UN TO OPEN PERMANENT PROBE ON ISRAEL
The United Nations’ Human Rights Council is expected to place Israel under permanent investigation for its alleged “violations” of international law. The council is currently in its fourth session which will run until April 5.
The UN body was created last June to replace the Human Rights Commission, which was dismantled upon pressure from former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton because it had a faulty membership composition and repeatedly singled out Israel for attack.
But since it was inaugurated, the 47-member body (which includes such human rights abusers as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China) has continued to single out the Jewish State.
It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.
In the current session, the Human Rights Council is set to hear a report compiled by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard that compares Israel to apartheid South Africa.
* For more on the false comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa, please see “Israeli Apartheid Week” kicks off around the world (Feb. 13, 2007).
TANIA REINHARDT, CAMPAIGNER AGAINST ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE, DIES
Meanwhile Prof. Tania Reinhardt, one of the organizers of the above-mentioned “Israeli Apartheid week,” died yesterday in her sleep in New York, aged 63.
Reinhardt had called for a worldwide boycott of Israel, and had opposed the Oslo accords on the grounds that they were designed to leave a Jewish state in existence next to a Palestinian one.
Her opinions were so extreme that she was shunned even by other far left Israelis such as Uri Avneri. “Compared to her I was a distinguished Zionist. She rejected the existence of the State of Israel,” said Avneri.
Reinhardt, a linguistics researcher, was very close to her doctoral advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Prof. Noam Chomsky. She also subscribed to The Guardian newspaper and urged others to read it for “the truth”.
ISRAEL SINGLED OUT BY UN AS BEING SUPPOSED ABUSER OF WOMEN!
Last Friday, the UN surpassed itself as it finished its annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women by singling out Israel and only Israel (which actually has a very good record on women’s rights) as being the only state “found in violation of women’s rights.”
The hundreds of thousands of women who have been killed, raped, mutilated and displaced in Sudan, the women whipped in Saudi Arabia, hanged for “adultery” in Iran, forced to abort in China, murdered in honor killings in Holland, England and elsewhere, all these were ignored by the UN as it attacked only Israel.
The vote against Israel was 40 for and 2 against, with only the United States and Canada voting against. Amazingly (or perhaps not) Germany, on behalf of the European Union, voted against Israel.
For more, see this excellent article published today on National Review Online by Anne Bayefsky. (Both Anne Bayefsky and the editors at the National Review are longtime subscribers to this list.)
AT START OF THE LEBANON WAR, FRANCE URGED ISRAEL TO HIT SYRIA
According to a report on Israeli army radio yesterday, French President Jacques Chirac told Israel at the start of last year’s war with Hizbullah that France would welcome an Israeli assault on Syria. In a message delivered by Chirac to Israel via a secret channel, the French president suggested that Israel invade Damascus and topple the regime of Bashar Assad. In exchange, Chirac promised that Israel would receive full French support.
Former Israeli ambassador to France Nissim Zvilli told Army Radio, “President Chirac saw Syria as directly responsible for the attempt to undermine the Lebanese regime. He saw them as directly responsible for the murder of [former Lebanese prime minister] Rafik Hariri and directly responsible for arming Hizbullah. Likewise, he saw Syria as the one giving Hizbullah orders on how to operate.”
POLL: 28 PERCENT OF ISRAEL’S ARABS BELIEVE THE HOLOCAUST NEVER HAPPENED
More than a quarter of Israel’s Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened, according to an extensively prepared poll published by the University of Haifa yesterday (Sunday).
The poll, conducted by Sami Smoocha, a prominent sociologist, showed 28 percent of Israeli Arabs believe the Holocaust is a myth, and that among college graduates the figure was even higher – 33 percent.
Asked about last summer’s war with Hizbullah, nearly half of the Israeli Arabs polled – 48 percent – said they believed that Hizbullah’s rocket attacks on northern Israel were justified, even though numerous Arabs were killed and wounded in those attacks.
Half of Israeli Arab respondents said Hizbullah’s abduction of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev from Israeli territory was justified. (For more on Hizbullah, see: www.tomgrossmedia.com/HizbullahIran.html)
Israeli-Arab Member of the Knesset Ahmed Tibi said he was dismayed by the poll findings. He added that the Holocaust was “the worst crime ever against humanity” and that Holocaust denial is “immoral.”
Meantime, Palestinians celebrated the forming of the Hamas-Fatah unity government yesterday by firing five Qassam rockets into Israel in an attempt to murder Israeli civilians. Even though the BBC and others reported the formation of the Palestinian government as their main international news story yesterday, they completely failed to mention the rocket attacks on Israel in news broadcasts.
One of the rockets landed in an industrial zone in southern Ashkelon very close to a strategic facility.
This morning a long-distance Palestinian sniper from Gaza shot and wounded an Israeli repairman working over the border at a gas terminal near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. He has been evacuated to Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital.
Norway has become the first European state to welcome the new extremist Palestinian government.
ARAB WOMAN TO DELIVER HEBREW NEWS
An Arab woman is to be the new Hebrew-language anchor for Israel’s popular Channel 10 television news. Lucy Aharish, an Israeli Arab graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said she was looking forward to the job.
Aharish, 25, told the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv that although she has experienced racism in Israel, she believes Arabs can overcome such challenges and succeed. Having barely survived an attack on her family car when she visited Gaza as a child, she also voiced some antipathy to Palestinian terrorism.
Aharish is the fourth generation of a Muslim family who moved to Nazareth but spent most of her life in the southern town of Dimona, where she celebrated Jewish festivals and served in Gadna, Israel’s paramilitary youth training program.
“The truth is that I don’t regret for a moment that my parents raised me in a Jewish environment. They gave me the privilege to be broad-minded and look at the whole picture. I am grateful for this,” she said.
ISRAEL APPROVES JORDAN RAIL LINK
The Israeli government has approved an extensive regional cooperation project which includes the creation of a railway linking Jordan to the northern Israeli port of Haifa.
The plan, dubbed the “economic peace corridor,” is spearheaded by Minister for Regional Development Shimon Peres, and includes a wide variety of projects between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.
The project includes the construction of a 160-kilometre canal between the Red Sea and the gradually-evaporating Dead Sea, a joint airport for the three countries, and the creation of a regional industrial zone. One of the most ground-breaking projects would be linking Israel’s railway system to Jordan’s railway to allow future transport of goods from Iraq and Jordan to Haifa.
The bulk of the project will be financed by the World Bank and foreign governments, said Peres.
MONUMENT DEDICATED TO 4,000 ETHIOPIANS WHO DIED EN ROUTE TO ISRAEL
A monument commemorating more than 4,000 Ethiopian Jews who died in Sudan while attempting to reach Israel was dedicated at Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem last week.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel via Sudan in the 1970s. In 1984, Operation Moses airlifted thousands more who had been residing in camps in Sudan. However, that operation was halted after details were leaked to the media. While residing in Sudan, the Ethiopians were robbed, murdered and raped, and suffered from hunger and disease. More than 4,000 died.
“Finally, we will have a place of mourning,” said Ethiopian-Israeli Uri Rada, who campaigned for years to have the monument erected. “We will be able to commune with the memories of our loved ones in a dignified place.”
The dedication ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other dignitaries.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND BAR RAFAELI TOUR YAD VASHEM
Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriend, Israeli model Bar Rafaeli, toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum last week, which opened after hours especially for their visit to avoid the venue being disrupted by DiCaprio’s legions of fans.
DiCaprio apparently showed great interest in the tour and was moved by the experience, asking many questions and pausing thoughtfully at various displays, according to staff at Yad Vashem who subscribe to this email list.
HOOTERS HEADS FOR TEL AVIV
Hooters, the U.S. restaurant chain, famous for waitresses in low-cut blouses and short skirts, and for its spicy chicken wings, has announced it is to open its first branch in Tel Aviv this summer.
Ofer Ahiraz, the man responsible for bringing the franchise to Israel told Reuters, “I strongly believe that the Hooters concept is something that Israelis are looking for… Hooters can suit the Israeli entertainment culture.”
Ahiraz said a specific location in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most cosmopolitan city, had yet to be chosen, but he said it would not open restaurants near large religious populations, and they would not be kosher. In the next few years there could be as many as five Hooters restaurants in Israel, including one in Eilat.
International food chains such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Hard Rock Cafe have already failed in Israel where local restaurants and cafes are often particularly good.
ISRAEL TO START AMATEUR FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION
Following hot on the heels of the launch of a professional baseball league this summer, Israel will start an amateur tackle football association in the fall.
Steve Leibowitz, president of Israel’s flag football association, announced the formation of the new four-team league in a ceremony last week at the Kraft Family Stadium.
In attendance was Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots of the National Football League. Kraft donated the money for the stadium, the only one in Israel designed for American football. The IFL plans to kick off with teams in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Kfar Saba.
For more on the Israeli baseball league, see Israel to have its own baseball league (& Iran bars women from soccer matches) (May 19, 2006).
“THE STRUGGLE OF FREE PEOPLES IN OUR AGE”
I attach three articles below.
The first is an editorial from the Jerusalem Post. It says that “Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: “While Israelis subscribe to the maxim ‘never again,’ the German dictum is ‘never again war.’” Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the U.S. and Israel.”
The second article is from Brussels Journal, a popular European blog “set up by European journalists and writers to restore three values that are so lacking in the so-called ‘consensus-culture’ of contemporary Europe: Freedom, the quest for Knowledge, and the Truth.”
The blog post, written by “Fjordman”, a Norwegian contributor, is in agreement with the Jerusalem Post editorial: “The Holocaust was an unspeakable crime. It also did massive damage to Europe’s own identity and cultural confidence, and is one of the major causes of Europe’s seeming inability to withstand the ongoing Islamic Jihad.”
The final article below, is a rare positive piece on Israel from the New York Times. It is a report on the black Sudanese refugees now being given protection in Israel having fled from their Arab attackers in Sudan.
It reports that “roughly 200 of the Sudanese in Israel are Muslim, including about 100 who fled the bloodshed in Darfur.” According to the article, the refugees come from Egypt: “After they began hearing that they would be jailed in Israel, they still came, so desperate were they to leave Egypt.”
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
EUROPE’S ISRAEL PROBLEM
Europe’s Israel problem
Editorial
The Jerusalem Post
March 7, 2007
Two recent polls tell us what we already knew: Israel is relatively popular among Americans and the subject of considerable antipathy among European democracies. The data suggest that Americans see themselves with Israelis in the same boat, while Europeans have an almost opposite point of view. Why is this so and what, if anything, can be done about it?
The US poll, conducted by Gallup, found that Americans are more pro-Israel than they were 10 and 20 years ago and now sympathize with Israel three times more than with the Palestinians: 58 percent to 20%. Since 2000, Gallup polls have shown that fewer Americans express no preference on the conflict, with most of the shift from the undecided column moving in Israel’s favor.
In the second poll, the BBC asked people in 27 nations to rate a group of countries and found that Iran and Israel were almost tied for the spot of the country most people saw as a “mainly negative influence.” Only in the US and Nigeria did a plurality see Israel as a “mainly positive” influence. By contrast, in Germany, France and Great Britain, 77%, 66% and 65%, respectively, viewed Israel as having a “mainly negative” influence.
These same European countries viewed Iran even more dimly – 78%, 86% and 76% negative, respectively, and the US in an only slightly less negative light – 74%, 69% and 57% negative, respectively.
Some may interpret these data as evidence of European anti-Semitism. It is, indeed, difficult to entirely avoid such conclusions when the Jewish state is so blithely painted with the same brush as Iran, a dictatorship that opposes every value Europeans claim to believe in, openly foments terrorism and is racing to obtain nuclear weapons.
Yet, according to the BBC poll, Germans and French see the US and Israel in almost identically negative terms, with the British showing slightly less anti-American sentiment.
Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: “While Israelis subscribe to the maxim ‘never again,’ the German dictum is ‘never again war.’” Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the US and Israel.
Europeans realize that Iran is a threat, but they are almost as, if not more, opposed to confronting that threat than they are fearful of the threat itself.
The US and Israel, as the nations that are perceived both as Iran’s main targets and as those most actively fighting back, are threats to the European strategy of lying low and hoping that their adversary will go away.
Further, America and Israel are both seen as provoking Iran and therefore making things worse.
Is there anything Israel – or the US, for that matter – can do to change this European environment? Though it might not be decisive, the most powerful thing the US can do to shift European opinion is to speak with one voice, at least in areas of bipartisan agreement. While Democrats and Republicans disagree on Iraq, they agree that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable and that sanctions must be tightened dramatically to force the Iranian regime to back down.
If a bipartisan message to this effect were to emerge from Washington, it could help signal Europeans that it is not just the “cowboy” Bush administration that is pushing for draconian sanctions, but liberal Democrats who believe that confronting Teheran now with nonmilitary means is the best way to avoid both war and the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Israel, for its part, needs to stress that it faces a struggle for existence against the same jihadi axis that threatens Europe, as symbolized by the hugs this week between Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran.
Ultimately, it will be difficult to convince Europeans that they need to help defend Israel, at least morally, when they do not accept the need to defend themselves. Such, however, is the struggle of free peoples in our age, a struggle that must be won.
“EUROPEANS NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW CLOSELY INTERTWINED ARE THE FATES OF ISRAEL AND OF EUROPE ITSELF”
Why Europeans should support Israel
By Fjordman
Brussels Journal
March 12, 2007
www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1965
One of the most frustrating things to watch is the powerful anti-Israeli and sometimes outright anti-Semitic current that is prevalent in too much of Europe’s media. Bat Ye’or’s predictions about Arab anti-Semitism spreading in Europe as the continent’s Islamization and descent into Eurabia continues have so far proved depressingly accurate. This trend needs to be fought, vigorously, by all serious European anti-Jihadists. Not only because it is immoral and unfair to Israelis, which it is, but also because those who assist it are depriving Europeans of the opportunity to fully grasp the threat and understand the nature of the Jihad that is now targeting much of Europe as well.
In 2005 the Norwegian police issued a mobile security alarm to Carl I. Hagen, leader of the right-wing Progress Party. Mr. Hagen had criticized Islam and could see no similarity with the concept of morality and justice found in Christianity. During the 1990s, Mr. Hagen was one of the few politicians who protested against giving money to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a part of the Norwegian-brokered Oslo Peace Process.
Hagen said that if Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next. He felt that Christians should support Israel and oppose Islamic inroads into Europe. In an unprecedented step, a group of Muslim ambassadors to Norway blasted Carl I. Hagen in a letter to the newspaper Aftenposten, claiming that he had offended 1.3 billion Muslims around the world. Other Norwegian politicians quickly caved in and condemned Hagen. Maybe Norway, “the country of peace” and home to the Nobel Peace Prize, will get along just fine with Islam, “the religion of peace.”
Although some political leaders such as Mr. Carl I. Hagen have a clear understanding of what’s going on, they are unfortunately few and far between. Most European media commentators are hostile to the Jewish state of Israel