[All notes below by Tom Gross]

OBAMA IN ISRAEL AND THE WEST BANK

American presidential candidate Barack Obama arrives in Israel this evening (local time), as part of his whirlwind tour of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe.

He will stay until Thursday morning. He is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Likud opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. He will also be escorted by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on trips to Sderot and the Western Wall, and make a visit to Yad Vashem. Tomorrow he will also travel to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

I am told that his only planned press conference in Israel will take place in Sderot. (For security reasons, I am not making public the time or location.)

 

TRYING TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE RADICALS

Since I last sent a dispatch on Obama, he has somewhat moderated his positions on Israel and Iran and sacked two of his most anti-Israel advisors (Samantha Power and Robert Malley) both of whom I strongly criticized in previous dispatches.

Nevertheless Obama retains many advisors, who in my opinion, hold beliefs that run strongly counter to American, western, Israeli, and democratic interests in the Middle East.

To try and reassure critics about his Middle East advisors, Obama has also invited Dennis Ross, a centrist career diplomat, who was lead negotiator on Israeli-Palestinian issues for Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, to accompany him. (Mr. Ross is also a subscriber to this email list.)

 

OBAMA’S NEW “ADVISOR” PROBLEM: CHUCK HAGEL

However, of particular concern to supporters of Israel is that Obama, the Democratic Party candidate, is being accompanied by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on his trip to Israel, one of only two senators Obama is traveling with (the other being Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island).

One pro-Israel observer said: “If Obama is getting advice from Hagel about Israel, then the American Jewish community has a lot to worry about. Of all the senators with whom Obama could have traveled with, Hagel’s record on Israel is one of the worst.

“The message is heard loud and clear. While Obama has chosen to visit Israel with one of the most anti-Israel senators, by contrast, on John McCain’s most recent trip to Israel, he chose to visit with Joseph Lieberman.”

The Democratic Party has itself previously (in March 2007) released to the press examples of Sen. Hagel’s abysmal record on Israel:

* In August 2006, Hagel was one of only 12 senators who refused to call Hizbullah a terrorist organization.
* In December 2005, Hagel was one of only 27 who refused to sign a letter asking the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups.
* In June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran’s nuclear program at the G-8 summit.
* In November 2001, Hagel was one of only 11 senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yasser Arafat until he ended violence against Israel.
* In October 2000, Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.

* And here’s what the anti-Israel group, CAIR, wrote in praise of Hagel: “Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel” (Council on American-Islamic Relations, 8/28/06).

I mentioned in a previous dispatch:

When asked by Newsweek “Would you have Republicans in your cabinet?” Obama replied, “No decisions, but Dick Lugar embodies the best tradition in foreign policy. Chuck Hagel is a smart guy who has shows some courage, even though we disagree on domestic policy.”

(See: “Not since John Kerry has America had such an outstanding candidate for the Presidency” Feb. 5, 2008)

 

OBAMA LOVE FEST MOVE OVERSEAS

Even many liberal academics are acknowledging that we are witnessing one of the most biased media reporting of an American presidential election in living memory. Many prominent journalists have fallen over themselves to give gushing coverage to Obama while failing to report properly on his many fibs, flip-flops, and policy holes.

Obama’s present foreign tour is no exception. The three leading anchors of U.S. network television – ABC’s Charles Gibson, NBC’s Brian Williams and CBS’s Katie Couric – have all eagerly traveled abroad with Obama, and they are being joined by star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines.

By contrast no anchors accompanied Republican candidate John McCain on his recent tour of Europe and the Middle East, and CBS didn’t even send a reporter, providing McCain with less than 30 seconds of coverage for his entire foreign tour.

Some Democratic strategists have now begun to fear that the over-the-top bias media elitists are showing towards Obama is actually proving counterproductive and is causing resentment among “ordinary” Americans.

The Hillary Clinton campaign also repeatedly complained of media bias towards Obama during the primary campaign.

 

PUBLIC BELIEF GROWING THAT REPORTERS ARE TRYING TO HELP OBAMA WIN

The latest Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely American voters, conducted on July 19, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters are trying to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Just 14% believe reporters are trying to help McCain win. And only one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters offer unbiased coverage.

According to the poll, even a high number of likely Democrat voters believe most reporters are trying to help Obama win.

45% of likely voters say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win.

A separate survey released yesterday also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A majority also believe that the media has tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse than it really is.

These results are consistent with earlier surveys finding that large segments of the American population believe that most large media is biased to the left.

 

NYT REJECTS McCAIN’S EDITORIAL, WHILE RUNNING OBAMA’S

The latest media bias was revealed yesterday by the Drudge Report website.

It revealed that The New York Times, the most important newspaper in America, and also one of the more biased despite pretending to be “the paper of record,” turned down McCain’s editorial on Iraq – less than a week after it published a piece by Obama on the same subject.

“I’m not going to be able to accept this piece,” The New York Times Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email to McCain’s staff.

In McCain’s submission to the Times, he writes of Obama: “I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war – only of ending it... if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.”

Following the furor on the blogosphere yesterday about the Times’s refusal to print McCain’s op-ed, Shipley said the Times may reconsider.

The “paper of record” might also want to let its readers know that Shipley served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.

Obama’s piece can be read on The New York Times website. I attach McCain’s rejected piece below in the full articles section in case readers want to read what the Times won’t let them.

 

POLL OF U.S. JEWS: OBAMA BEHIND HIS DEMOCRATIC PREDECESSORS

American Jews are less supportive of Barack Obama than they were of previous Democratic nominees, a new poll has found. The lack of support comes despite the same poll finding that an overwhelming number of American Jews dislike the Bush administration.

The poll, commissioned by the new Washington-based leftist advocacy group, J Street, found that 58 percent of American Jews said they would definitely vote for Obama. In contrast, Al Gore and Bill Clinton both received approximately 80 percent of the Jewish vote in their respective runs for the presidency, while John Kerry received 76 percent in 2004. Jews are traditionally among the most left-wing groups in American society.

Polls indicate that were Hillary Clinton to have been the Democratic nominee, more Jews would likely vote Democrat this year.

The worst showing by a Democrat in recent decades was in 1980, when then-president Jimmy Carter received 45 percent of the Jewish vote compared to 39 percent for Ronald Reagan, who won the election.

 

IN CONTRAST TO U.S. JEWS, ISRAELIS OVERWHELMINGLY BACK McCAIN

Polls indicate that, in contrast to west European countries like France and Germany, where Obama is adored, Israelis strongly back McCain.

In France and Germany, where Obama will be heading later in the week, 65% and 67% of the population respectively say they would vote for him if they could. By contrast, in Israel, only 27% of respondents say they would like Obama to become president, compared to 36% for McCain.

In another poll, conducted by the Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University, if Israeli Arabs are omitted, among Israeli Jews, McCain (46%) has an even bigger advantage over Obama (20%).

The low support for Obama in Israel has, in my opinion, less to do with any belief that Obama is hostile to Israel and more to do with his demonstration thus far in the campaign of his naivety towards issues in the Middle East, particularly in regard to Iran’s nuclear program, which most Israelis consider to be an existential threat.

Many Israelis are also concerned that a hasty withdrawal by the U.S. from Iraq, as advocated by Obama, will strengthen Iran and al-Qaeda and further destabilize the Middle East.

“There is a certain amount of anxiety here about his positions and exactly how he would behave as president,” Hillel Schenker, vice chair of Democrats Abroad-Israel, admitted to the American-Jewish paper The Forward last week.

Even a majority of Israelis on the center-left said they favored McCain, which is unusual considering he is a Republican. McCain has long been a strong supporter of Israel in the Senate, and it appears unlikely he will radically change Bush’s generally pro-Israel policies. Obama’s positions are far less clear.

 

“POOR PHRASING”?

Last month, Obama declared before 7,000 pro-Israel Americans at the annual AIPAC conference: “Let me be clear... Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided.” They then gave him a rousing ovation.

Now, as with many other of his policies during the campaign, Obama has backtracked. “Poor phrasing” had, he said, resulted in his remarks on Israel being misunderstood.

“You know, the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech,” he said in an interview aired on Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria.”

Whether a gaffe resulting from his inexperience and badly-thought out Middle East policies, or a deliberate lie to impress pro-Israel voters, many see this as yet another example that he may be lacking the international credentials required of a president.

Obama is also reported to have embarrassed international figures, such as German Chancellor Merkel by demanding to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, a privilege normally reserved for elected presidents only.

 

“I’M SURPRISED AT HOW FINELY CALIBRATED EVERY SINGLE WORD WAS MEASURED”

When asked on his press plane on July 5 about the various “flip flopping” and contradictory statements, including those over Israel, Obama said, “I’m surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured.”

A reporter noted that that is precisely what happens with the president: he can change world affairs with one badly expressed word.

(Source: ABC blogs.)

***

“BY THE TIME HE’S FINISHED, OBAMA WILL HAVE MADE THE CLINTONS LOOK SCRUPULOUS”

Since securing the nomination less than eight weeks ago, Obama has been doing so much flip-flopping on a range of domestic and foreign policy issues – including public campaign financing, NAFTA, warrantless wiretaps, unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad, flag pins, gun control, and so on – that Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post, one of the few mainstream media commentators to be tough on Obama, wrote this month that “by the time he’s finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.”

 

QUESTIONABLE FRIENDS

Jews may also be concerned that many of the most significant persons in Obama’s adult life have been those who distain and vilify Israel – from Rashid Khalidi to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama failed to stand up to his friend Khalidi, the Palestinian activist-professor and former PLO spokesman whom Obama honored at a farewell dinner. Obama failed to criticize his slander that Israel was an apartheid state.

And until Wright insulted him at the National Press Club, Obama stood by his friend and mentor Wright, even after Wright said he considered Israel a “dirty word” and made the absurd anti-Semitic claim that Israel had invented an “ethnic bomb” that kills only Arabs and black people.

 

OBAMA HOLDS FUNDRAISING LEAD

Among the general public, the latest range of polls shows Obama with a 5 to 7 point lead over McCain.

However, Obama still trails on foreign policy issues. A survey conducted last week jointly by ABC and The Washington Post, showed that 72% of Americans think that McCain will be “a good Commander-in-Chief,” while only 48% think that Obama will be.

It is not only in media coverage where Obama enjoys a considerable advantage but in advertising and campaign resources too. In June, Obama had another near record month for campaign fundraising. The fact that Obama’s poll lead is not greater therefore comes as a surprise to some.

 

MCCAIN: SANCTIONS MIGHT STOP IRAN, BUT U.S. WON’T ALLOW SECOND HOLOCAUST

John McCain said in an interview yesterday evening on Israel’s popular Channel 2 news that while stiffer sanctions might stop Iran’s threats against Israel, the U.S. in any event would not allow the Islamic Republic to try to destroy Israel.

Asked about Israel feeling the need to attack Iran, McCain replied, “I would hope that would never happen, I would hope that Israel would not feel that threatened, saying the U.S. and Europe could impose significant, very painful sanctions on Iran which I think could modify their behavior.

“But I have to look you in the eye and tell you that the United States of America can never allow a second Holocaust.”

Concerning possible military action against Iran, McCain said, “I think we have a lot of options to explore before we seriously explore the military option, and I don’t think we have exercised those enough.”

McCain said he favors low-level contacts with Iranian officials, but not a meeting of presidents without preconditions. He said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would take advantage of such a meeting and its media coverage to call for the destruction of Israel.

-- Tom Gross

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

KUNTAR VOWS TO RETURN TO HIS MURDEROUS WAYS

Some commentators on CNN’s international network have (amazingly) tried to suggest that released Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar didn’t mean to kill anybody. This is despite the fact that Kuntar keeps on proudly boasting of his killings. In the latest example, Kuntar told Agence France-Presse after his release:

“I haven’t for even one day regretted what I did. On the contrary I remain committed to my political convictions. I feel enormous joy because I have returned to the ranks of the resistance and to my family.” (AFP, July 17, 2007 “Lebanon’s Kantar says no regrets over killings in Israel”)

***

PRAISING IMAD MUGHNIYEH

Indeed, within hours of his release, Kuntar visited the grave of Hizbullah’s former “operations chief,” Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus last February, and heaped praise on him, pledging to continue in Mughniyeh’s footsteps. Kuntar stated:

“We swear by Allah to continue on your same path and not to retreat until we achieve the same stature [of “martyrdom”] that Allah bestowed on you. This is our great wish. We envy you and we will achieve it, Allah willing.” (Associated Press, July 17, 2007 “Kuntar: I’ll continue Mughniyeh’s legacy”)

(For background on Mughniyeh, who was responsible for the deaths of more Westerners (Americans, French, Argentinians, Israelis and others) than any modern terrorist leader apart from Osama Bin Laden, see “He’s not quite Osama Bin Laden... But he almost is” (Feb. 14, 2008).)

***

“THE CONFLICT WON’T END”

The next day Kuntar said: “This time yesterday I was in the hands of the enemy (Israelis). But at this moment, I am yearning more than before to confront them and I ask Allah to make this happen soon... Believe me – anyone who thinks freeing the Shebaa farms will end this conflict is delusional.”

(The Shebaa farms are a tiny slither of disputed territory which Syria, Lebanon and Israel all claim.)

***

Yesterday Kuntar gave an interview to the Nazareth-based Israeli-Arab Radio A-Shams, again vowing that he will join Hizbullah in carrying out future attacks on Israel.

 

CHILD MURDERER PRAISED BY “MODERATE” ABBAS

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may be slightly more moderate than the leaders Hamas, or al-Qaeda, but as I have pointed out many times in previous dispatches on this list, he has hardly proved himself a moderate by any normal meaning of the word, and organizations like the BBC should stop describing him as one.

After his release, Abbas sent a message congratulating Kuntar, who is a Lebanese Druze, not a Palestinian moderate. Kuntar murdered a four-year-old child by bashing her head in. He also killed other innocents.

Unreported by the BBC and other western media, Abbas has made several pronouncements praising Kuntar in interviews on Palestinian TV and radio and to the WAFA (PLO) news agency.

Ziad abu al-Enain, director-general of the Ministry for Prisoner Affairs of Abbas’s “moderate” government and one of Fatah’s senior members, echoed Abbas. He said: “The Palestinians congratulate Hizbullah and its leader and send their best wishes to all the Lebanese people and to all the Palestinians upon the completion of the deal and the release of heroes, headed by the prisoners’ leader, Samir Kuntar.”

Processions were held in the West Bank to mark Kuntar’s release and “heroic acts,” paid for by diverted international donor money.

 

ABBAS MEETS ISLAMIC JIHAD HEAD IN SYRIA

Last Monday Abbas met the head of the ruthless Islamic Jihad terror organization, Ramadan Abdallah Shalah, in Damascus and discussed plans to coordinate efforts to act against Israel. Reports from Damascus say that Abbas agreed to release Islamic Jihad prisoners held in PA jails in the West Bank, in complete breach of the “road map” and all other promises and commitments that the “moderate” PA has signed.

 

ET TU HARIRI?

Michel Suleiman, the Lebanese president, accompanied by his entire cabinet, traveled to Beirut airport where a red carpet reception was laid on for Kuntar and the other released terrorists.

Suleiman said at the airport: “Your return is a new victory and the future with you will only be a shinning one.”

Even “pro-American” Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni Muslim, came to pay his respects to Kuntar, as did the Sunni majority leader of parliament, Saad Hariri (whose father Rafik was assassinated by Syria) and Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun. Each gave Kuntar and the other terrorists a hug and a kiss.

The Lebanese government declared a national day of celebration, closing all government offices and banks. Many private businesses closed as well.

 

DISAPPOINTING COVERAGE FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AND INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

There was disappointing coverage in the international press. Even The Wall Street Journal called Kuntar a “militant.”

The New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune went as far as to label him a “commando.” “Commando” is a term usually applied to those who rescue hostages, not those who deliberately kill them. The story also suggests that Kuntar’s parents’ divorce provides some kind of excuse or explanation for his brutal murders.

A few western media did run editorials critical of the Lebanese government. For example, in an editorial titled “A Strange Kind of Hero,” The Boston Globe wrote: “There is something morally repulsive in the hero’s welcome given the most famous – or notorious – of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel... All wars are inhumane. But not all warriors lose their humanity.”

 

SOME ARAB MEDIA CRITICIZE HIZBULLAH

The London-based Asharq al-Awsat Arab newspaper on Thursday ridiculed the perceived “victory” of Hizbullah, saying it had cost the Lebanese economy $7 billion.

In Lebanon, al-Anwar struck a discordant note, carrying an editorial piece which said it was “shameful to see members of the government in Beirut join the celebrations of Hizbullah.”

The Saudi paper al-Watan pointed out that Hizbullah has yet to disarm and that UN Resolution 1701, which ended the war, has not been implemented.

Several Lebanese blogs criticized the government fawning over Kuntar and pointed out that far more Lebanese prisoners remain languishing in Syrian jails for the “crime” of calling for democracy and the government was doing nothing on their behalf.

 

GERMAN PRESS: “A DISASTROUS DEAL FOR ISRAEL”

As I pointed out in the previous dispatch, the prisoner swap deal was brokered by Germany, but German media commentators criticized Israel for allowing itself to be blackmailed.

The center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote:

“The macabre Israeli-Lebanese deal, which saw living Lebanese prisoners being swapped for the bodies of Israeli soldiers, is a major success for the Shia militia. The prisoner exchange shows who really has the power in Lebanon and who can force archenemy Israel to make concessions: It is Hizbullah, it is Nasrallah. That elevates the radicals’ image in Lebanon, in the Arab world and in the Muslim world.”

“A MACABRE DEAL THAT WEAKENS ISRAEL”

The center-right daily Die Welt wrote:

“That Hizbullah is celebrating the macabre deal as a triumph is understandable – but it is also psychopathic. It shows that human suffering doesn’t count in the fight against Israel and that murder pays. In such an atmosphere, how can one hope for peace – and for the trust necessary for an agreement? Hizbullah uses the fight against Israel to gain power in Lebanon, with the approval of both Syria and Iran.

“The problem is not just that the unequal prisoner swap allows Hizbullah to fudge its designation as a terror group by becoming a recognized party to a war. Rather, it means that terror, kidnapping and murder can be profitable. This situation weakens the Israeli deterrent, rewards abductions and provides imprisoned terrorists with the hope that they might soon be freed.”

“OLMERT HAS ABANDONED A VITAL PRINCIPLE”

The business daily Financial Times Deutschland said:

“When it comes to prisoner exchanges, there was one aspect that was always seen as non-negotiable by the Israeli government: Israel never frees a terrorist who has blood on his hands, no matter what is being offered in return. A country under threat like Israel cannot get around upholding this convention.

“Nevertheless, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has now abandoned this principle by freeing a prominent terrorist in order to secure the remains of the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah. What the prime minister wants to present as a triumph of negotiation, is in truth a sign of weakness: Israel can be blackmailed, kidnappings are worthwhile.”

“ISRAEL TURNED OVER A BRUTAL MURDERER AND ITS DIGNITY”

Germany’s leading news weekly Der Spiegel, said:

“Some had hoped that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev still lived. But on Wednesday, a deal negotiated by German intelligence led to Hizbullah handing over two coffins with their remains. In exchange, Israel turned over a brutal murderer – and a bit of its dignity.”

“THE DEAL WAS VITAL FOR THE MORALE OF ISRAEL’S ARMY”

The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung opined:

“The image of a country that will do anything to bring its soldiers home, dead or alive, has been restored. That is vital for the morale of Israel’s army, because who would like to be sent to fight in a foreign country if there was a risk that he or she would be forgotten there? Nevertheless, the unequal trade has made Israel more vulnerable. The government in Jerusalem has shown that it can be coerced.”

***

GERMAN JEWS AGAINST HIZBULLAH CONTACTS AFTER BEIRUT CELEBRATIONS

Dieter Graumann, vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that German politicians and analysts should recognize Hizbullah as a terrorist organization and eschew contacts with its leaders. Graumann added Hizbullah’s “cynical celebrations” over the reciprocal release of Samir Kuntar and four other terrorists showed the Lebanese group “is a ruthless terror organization whose activists and supporters are no freedom fighters but rather cold-blooded murderers.”

 

ISRAELI PRESS CRITICIZE DEAL

In its editorial today, Israel’s best-selling newspaper Yediot Ahronot, writes:

“When we say that Gilad Shalit must be released at ‘any price,’ we mean the entire price that we will pay. We will set murderers free. We will cause many of them to go back to killing us. We will give impetus to encouraging terrorism and we will go back to dying on buses, in malls and elsewhere. This is as insane as it is immoral.”

The paper continues: “If we do not change the rules of their brutal game, we will continue to be kidnapped and blackmailed. We must try and release Gilad Shalit at any price but the price must be theirs.”

***

“HIZBULLAH BETTER AT PR THAN ISRAEL”

Ma’ariv suggests that “Hizbullah is much better than the IDF and the other official Israeli bodies in information battles.”

***

“LEBANON AND HIZBULLAH ARE ONE, AND ISRAEL MUST FIGHT AS SUCH”

The Jerusalem Post writes: “A vital lesson Israeli strategists must draw from this nauseating display of perverted unity: Lebanon and Hizbullah are one. If, heaven forbid, there is another war, the IDF must wage it with ferocity – not on Hizbullah’s terms, but across the Lebanese battlefield.

“Ever since the June 1982 Lebanon War, the Israeli military has allowed itself to be hamstrung in targeting Lebanon. International media coverage of that war, often manipulative and tendentious, along with Western – particularly U.S. – opposition to striking at the country’s infrastructure, made vanquishing our enemies impossible.

“Even among Israelis there was the lingering sense that Lebanon was essentially a peace-loving society taken hostage by violent, unrepresentative factions.

“Ultimately, that assessment reigned supreme, inhibiting the IDF from finishing Yasser Arafat off. Instead the PLO was merely ousted from its Beirut and southern Lebanon strongholds and exiled to Tunisia.

“... Artificial distinctions between ‘Lebanese’ and ‘Hizbullah’ targets were swept away by Wednesday’s display of barbaric unity. Lebanon was revealed in its hostile unanimity. If new conflict comes, Israel must internalize that unanimity of hate-filled purpose, and defeat it decisively.”

 

“IT HAS BEEN 30 YEARS YET YOU STILL CANNOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN A NATIONAL HERO AND A CHILD-KILLER”

LETTER TO THE LEBANESE PEOPLE

(Published in the Israeli press in Hebrew.)

Israeli Uri Orbach writes an open letter to the people of Lebanon, whose national hero is a child-killer:

Israel has no disagreement over borders with you, the Lebanese people, yet we certainly have a big dispute when it comes to your moral boundaries. We identified the bodies of our Udi and Eldad within a few hours. And how about you? For 30 years now you have failed to identify who your Samir Kuntar is.

It has been 30 years yet you still cannot distinguish between a national hero and a child-killer. For you, it’s enough that someone killed a Jew, even if it happens to be a young girl from Nahariya, in order for you to welcome him with great honor.

You are celebrating your “victory” and show contempt to our pain. One more triumph like this and you shall be lost. While going from one victory to the next, you are stuck with your misery and fanaticism.

With every proud display and rally for your heroes, you are being taken over the by Hizbullah gang. The fire coming out of this bramble has been eating up Lebanon’s cedars for years now...

 

HIZBULLAH MOVES INTO “EVERY TOWN” IN SOUTH LEBANON

Hizbullah is bolstering its presence in south Lebanese villages with non-Shia majorities by buying land and using it to build military positions and store missiles and launchers, The Jerusalem Post reports, citing intelligence sources. The decision to build infrastructure in non-Shia villages – where Hizbullah has less support – is part of the group’s post-war strategy under which it has mostly abandoned the “nature reserves,” forested areas in southern Lebanon where it kept most of its Katyusha rocket launchers before the 2006 war with Israel.

Behind the change is the mandate given to UNIFIL by the United Nations after the war. According to the mandate, the peacekeeping force can patrol freely throughout southern Lebanon but cannot enter villages or cities without being accompanied by soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces, which regularly tips off Hizbullah ahead of raids.

Hizbullah has trebled its pre-war missile arsenal, Israeli sources said. It now has some 40,000 short and medium-range missiles inside Lebanon, and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 – the resolution that put an end to the 2006 and provided an expanded mandate for UNIFIL – has been completely ineffective in stopping arms from pouring in to Hizbullah from Syria.

Israel has criticized the Italian and French governments, whose soldiers are meant to stop the smuggling, for not doing so. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni raised the matter last week with visiting Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country currently commands the UNIFIL forces; and Defense Minister Ehud Barak phoned French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to discuss the issue.

Israel is dismayed that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is presently “hugging Assad, not scolding him” about helping Hizbullah with its arms build-up.

 

HAMAS SAYS IT HAS LEARNED FROM HIZBULLAH DEAL

Hamas has said it will harden its stance in negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, its young Israeli hostage. Hamas leaders in Gaza told journalists that they would now “insist absolutely” on the release of prisoners who had killed Israeli civilians, and are serving life sentences.

“The deal with Hizbullah proves that patience and fortitude will lead to us seeing celebrations here (in Gaza) similar to those in Lebanon,” said one.

(In other words, by its questionable deal in which Israel received only two corpses from Hizbullah, it will be now be much harder for Israel to secure the release of a live prisoner, Gilad Shalit.)

***

A Hamas cell that was plotting suicide attacks inside Israel with chemical explosives was arrested in May, Israeli security officials revealed last week.

The cell, the officials said, was involved in manufacturing a bomb belt that was discovered in a Tel Aviv apartment on Yom Kippur, last September, and was designated for use in a suicide attack in the city.

During the investigation, the four cell members (who all come from Nablus) confessed to having built a laboratory in a Nablus apartment building where they experimented bomb building with different chemical materials, such as sulfur and nitric acid.

The four said they used an instruction video that was prepared by a senior Hamas bomb maker who was killed in 2002 during clashes with IDF troops.

 

BRITAIN BANS HIZBULLAH; GORDON BROWN TO ADDRESS KNESSET

The British parliament last Tuesday ratified a government decision earlier this month to outlaw Hizbullah’s military wing and accused the Iranian-backed Lebanese group of supporting terrorism in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

“It will now be a criminal offence for British citizens to belong to, fundraise and encourage support for the military wing of the organization,” the British Home Office (interior ministry) said in a statement.

The Iranians have been accused by the British and others of using Hizbullah as “sub-contractors” to carry out terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Gordon Brown tomorrow becomes the first British Prime Minister to address the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Brown has been a lifelong sympathizer with the Jewish state, unlike various other senior British politicians.

 

ISRAEL MAKES ARRESTS IN AL-QAEDA PLOT AGAINST BUSH

On Friday Israel released the names of six Arabs – two of them Israeli citizens and the other four Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem – who had tried to set up an al-Qaeda cell in Israel, and planned to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit to Israel in May.

Israel’s Shin Bet counter-intelligence agency said one of the suspects – a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – had used his cell phone to film helicopters at a sports stadium in Jerusalem that was used as a landing site for Bush. The suspect then posted queries on websites frequented by al-Qaeda operatives, asking for guidance on how to shoot down helicopters.

The Shin Bet said personal computers seized from several of the suspects contained bomb-making instructions and emails to al-Qaeda operatives abroad.

***

ISRAEL ARABS “SPIED FOR AL-QAEDA”

In a separate development, earlier this month Israel indicted two of its Bedouin Arab citizens for links to al-Qaeda and for planning attacks inside the Jewish state. The two, from the Negev town of Rahat, were charged on July 9 in the Beersheba District Court in southern Israel.

The indictment filed against them accuses them of gathering information and sending al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia and Iraq details of targets in Israel for possible large-scale attack. These included Ben-Gurion Airport, the Ashkelon power plant, the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, the Beersheba central bus station and targets in Eilat.

Both suspects have confessed to the charges, according to news reports.

Last December, two Israeli Arabs from Jaljulya in the “Galilee Triangle” in the north of the country were arrested for aiding al-Qaeda with information on Israeli targets.

 

A DIFFERENT TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

Samir Kuntar’s and the other terrorists healthy appearance upon release demonstrates how Arab prisoners are treated well in Israel, in complete contrast to the treatment of Israeli prisoners by Hizbullah and Hamas. In prison, Kuntar received frequent Red Cross and NGO visits, completed a social science degree courtesy of Israel’s tax-payer funded Open University, he got married and he received conjugal visits.

Hizbullah and Hamas, on the other hand, have psychologically tortured the families of their hostages, releasing only occasional pieces of misleading information, and have not even been willing to provide “proof of life” let alone allow Red Cross and NGO visits.

Indeed even Lebanese government ministers have lied. For example, in 2006 then Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, were “in good condition” when at least one was already dead and the other very seriously injured.

 

P.A. BLOOD LIBEL: PRISONERS ARE USED FOR NAZI-LIKE MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

The Palestinian Authority is intensifying its longstanding blood libel campaign against Israel, falsely accusing Israel of conducting horrific Nazi-like medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners. These fabrications have been featured repeatedly in the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which is under the direct authority of “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas.

Among the examples from this month alone:

“[Israel] is instigating slow death... doctors in Israeli prison clinics use the prisoners as guinea pigs for clinical drug testing under the pretense of ‘treatment.’” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 6, 2008)

“Many of the male and female inmates received injections from needles they had not seen before, and which caused their hair to fall out permanently... others lost their sanity, or their mental condition is constantly deteriorating... and some are suffering from infertility.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 4, 2008)

“The doctors in these prison clinics are using the prisoners as guinea pigs for clinical testing of drugs and treatment-methods.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 3, 2008)

Abd Al-Nasser Piroanah, the head of the Statistical Department in the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner and Released Prisoner Affairs, said that “the first to use prisoners for medical experiments were the Nazis, who did it in the detention centers of the German army during WWII.”

For further coverage of this, see this PMW bulletin.

 

HEBREW UNIVERSITY TO READMIT CONVICTED TERRORIST TO THE SCENE OF HIS CRIME

A radical leftist professor at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem says he will sponsor a convicted Arab terrorist who stole bomb-making materials from his lab to be allowed back to work in the very same lab.

In 2002, at the height of the wave of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks against Israeli civilians, Hebrew University doctoral student Adel Hadmi stole 160 liters of acetone – a chemical which is used for making the explosive acetone peroxide – from the Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry at the Hebrew University where he worked.

Hadmi was convicted of being a member of a terror cell that planned terror attacks against Israelis, and of recruiting other Arabs to the cell. He has now been released from prison, and Prof. Amiram Goldblum has offered him the chance to once again undertake doctoral studies at the very same laboratory the acetone was stolen from.

Goldblum is one of the most radical founders of the “Peace Now” group. Others in “Peace Now” broke with Goldblum after he defended Saddam Hussein’s Scud attacks on Israel. In 1990, after an Arab stabbed and killed three Israelis in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem where Goldblum lives, Goldblum’s neighbors threw stones through his window after he expressed statements apparently “understanding” the murderer.

The laboratory’s previous director, Prof. Avi Domb, has started a campaign to stop Goldblum readmitting Hadmi.

 

A MODERATE! AT LAST!

“I admire Bin Laden, but would not have sanctioned the 9/11 attacks – except for those on the Pentagon, CIA HQ, and the White House.”

-- Lebanese Sunni cleric Sheikh Maher Hamoud, the imam of Al-Quds mosque in Sidon (Lebanon), speaking to NBN TV on July 7, 2008.

[The above item was first published by myself on the National Review Online on Tuesday, July 15, 2008]

 

PALESTINIAN COURT SENTENCES “COLLABORATORS” TO EXECUTION BY FIRING SQUAD

On Tuesday, a Palestinian military court (headed by the “moderate” government of President Abbas) sentenced two Palestinians to death by firing squad for supposedly “collaborating” with Israel.

Human rights groups have sharply criticized Palestinian military courts, saying trials are unfair because there is no right of appeal, and arguing they should not try civilians.

At least 65 Palestinians have been sentenced to death by PA courts since 1995. 13 have been executed by hanging or firing squad. Many others were killed while they were in detention, in hospital, on their way to court, or even while they were inside courtrooms.

(... as not covered properly in most western newspapers.)

 

IRAN UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE AGAINST TEACHER TRADE UNIONIST

For details of the death sentence, click here.

I also attach below an article by leading Iranian journalist and Middle East expert Amir Taheri about how Iran’s outlawed trade union movement is growing in importance despite the regime’s brutal attempts to crack down on it.

It comes as little surprise, but is nevertheless disappointing, that it has been left to the populist New York Post to run this editorial, while the supposedly liberal New York Times is more interested in criticizing America and her democratic allies. (Amir Taheri is a long-time subscriber to this email list, as are some of the German newspaper editorialists I quoted earlier in the dispatch.)

-- Tom Gross

THE TERRORISTS WIN

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

This morning Israel has begun the process of a “prisoner swap” with the Lebanese political and terror organization Hizbullah.

However, Israel is receiving only dead soldiers, kidnapped and murdered by Hizbullah in an unprovoked cross border raid into Israel in 2006. By contrast, Hizbullah is getting five live prisoners including the notorious child killer Samir Kuntar.

While people in Israel are relieved that the families of the young kidnapped conscripts Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser can finally bury their loved ones, there is despondency and even outrage by many about the terms of the deal the Israeli government has agreed to.

Israel is demonstrating to terror groups that hostage-taking works -- and it works even when terrorists kill their hostages before handing them back.

Times have changed from the days when Israeli special forces crossed half a continent to mount a daring raid to rescue hostages at Entebbe.

Now many countries are negotiating with terrorists. For example, in Iraq in 2005, Germany paid $5 million for the freedom of a kidnapped aid worker. Italy and France have also paid ransoms in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it is widely rumored that the British government, on behalf the state-owned broadcaster the BBC, paid a considerable sum of money to Hamas to secure the release of kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnson last year, as did Fox News to secure the release of two of its employees kidnapped in Gaza a year earlier.

Such capitulation to terrorists will only serve to encourage terrorist groups to kidnap more innocent people.

Hizbullah and other extremists are today the heroes of many in the Arab world.

 

CHILD KILLER

Kuntar, now 45, took an Israeli family hostage in the northern Israeli coastal town of Nahariya, shot and killed Danny Haran in front of his 4-year-old daughter Einat. He then crushed her head with his rifle butt until she was dead. Danny’s wife managed to hide from Kuntar in the attic with her two-year-old daughter Yael, whom she accidentally suffocated while trying to keep the toddler quiet. Kuntar also shot dead a policeman who tried to rescue the little girl.

Kuntar has admitted this was a carefully planned operation. He told the court during his trial that he and his accomplices traveled by a rubber dinghy from Lebanon with “instructions to avoid opening fire, to take hostages and bring them to Lebanon.” “I was commander of the cell,” he said.

In 1985, the PLO seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship to demand Kuntar’s release. An elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and tossed overboard, left to die in the Mediterranean with his wheelchair.

During his time in prison Kuntar married Kifah Kayyal, an Israeli Arab woman from Acre residing in Ramallah, who was serving a life sentence for her terrorist activities as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP).

While in prison, Kuntar was reportedly a gang leader among inmates, and other prisoners feared him.

Kuntar has never expressed remorse for the killings and recently vowed to continue fighting Israel once released.

This morning, the BBC, CNN International, and France 24 networks have all described Kuntar as “a fighter” and have not properly explained his crimes in many of their reports.

 

KUNTAR’S FREEDOM PARTY

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah welcomed his returning comrades by saying he was “more determined than ever” to wage war on Israel.

“My oath and pledge,” he wrote in a letter printed in a Palestinian newspaper, “is that my place will be at the battlefront, which is soaked in the sweat of your giving, and the blood of the most beloved among men, and that I shall continue down the path, until complete victory.”

Kuntar is scheduled to be flown to Beirut in a Lebanese Army helicopter later today, where he will be warmly received by the heads of the Lebanese government, and festively welcomed in an enormous street party Hizbullah has arranged for him. Lebanon has officially declared a national holiday.

In Israel, by contrast, the mood is one of mourning. Nothing better illustrates the gulf between democratic Israel and some of its neighbors in their attitude towards murderers and the sanctity of human life

 

IS THIS THE KIND OF MAN THEY WANT AS THEIR IDOL?

In an editorial, the Israeli tabloid Yediot Ahronot says, “In releasing Kuntar we are paying a heavy price in that the Israeli book of laws does not include the death sentence.”

The Jerusalem Post notes: “The Lebanese people and government – and those others in the Arab world, including many Palestinians, say they are delighted by Kuntar’s release. They might want to ask themselves whether this monster is worthy of such glorification. Is he the kind of man they want as their idol? And if so, what does that say about them? Kuntar has never expressed remorse, and, according to the Palestinian Authority newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida, wrote a letter recently to Nasrallah promising not to abandon the jihad against Israel.”

Yesterday’s Yediot Ahronot also showed the picture that many Israelis feared: the abandoned Atzmona synagogue in Gaza now being used as a terrorist training base.

 

SENIOR PA OFFICIAL: NASRALLAH FORCED YOU TO YOUR KNEES

The signing of a deal with Hizbullah and resumption of negotiations with Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit has infuriated moderates among the Palestinian leadership. “You proved that Israel only understands force,” said one of the more moderate members of the PA. “We, who denounce the use of terror, need to beg for the release of prisoners?”

 

OTHER CHILD KILLERS TO BE GIVEN HEROES’ BURIALS IN LEBANON

Israel is also expected today to release the remains of several Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists. These include (1) the remains of terrorists who carried out the Ma’alot massacre of 1974, in which members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine murdered 22 Israeli high-school pupils in the town of Ma’alot in northern Israel.

(2) The bodies of the terrorists who carried out the Coastal Road Massacre in 1978, including the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the leader of the attack. In that assault, members of Fatah hijacked a bus on Israel’s coastal road and killed 37 civilians, including 13 children.

(3) The bodies of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists responsible for the attack on Kibbutz Matzuba in 2002, in which six Israeli civilians were murdered. The terrorists had been working in conjunction with Hizbullah.

***

AMONG THE WORST TERRORIST ATTACKS IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY

The PA said in its request that it wanted to “honor” Mughrabi (see paragraph 2 above) by holding a large funeral for her in Ramallah on the West Bank. Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi as “the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel.”

“We want to turn Dalal’s funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration,” the Fatah official said. “The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women’s struggle.”

It was among the worst terrorist attacks in Israel’s history.

The Sabbath massacre came on the eve of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin’s scheduled departure for Washington in 1978, where he was to confer with President Carter on the Egyptian-Israeli peace talks.

Here is how it was reported in 1978 in Time magazine.

 

GERMAN BROKERS

Today’s prisoner exchange deal was brokered by UN-appointed mediator Gerhard Konrad. Konrad holds a senior post in Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, BND. Konrad learned Arabic in Damascus as part of his intelligence training, according to Israeli sources.

These sources tell me that Germany maintains the best foreign intelligence network in the Middle East, which was built up during the days of the Stasi, the former ruthless East German spy agency.

 

NOAM SHALIT: DON’T FREE PALESTINIANS WHILE MY SON IS STILL HELD IN GAZA

Today’s lopsided exchange with Hizbullah also complicates the negotiations for the release of another kidnapped Israeli, Gilad Shalit, seized by Hamas in Israel when he was 19 years old in June 2006 and held in Gaza since. Hamas is now demanding the release of some of its most bloody terrorists for Shalit’s life.

On Monday Shalit’s father Noam lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over a plan to release dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Olmert reportedly agreed to free the prisoners following a request by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for “a goodwill gesture” when they met on Sunday at Nicolas Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Forum in Paris.

Shalit also said that that Abbas, who is wrongly described by western media as a moderate, did nothing to secure his son’s release during the first year after his kidnap, before Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip.

THE INTERNET MURDERER

Among the prisoners Abbas says Israel should release are female prisoners, including Amana Muna, who while pretending to be a teenage Israeli girl, lured Israeli teenager Ofir Nahum over the Internet to a meeting point near Jerusalem where he was brutally murdered seven years ago.

Muna, who is serving a life term, has recently been transferred to another prison after she severely beat up other female prisoners.

Senior former members of Israel’s Shabak security service have strongly criticized Olmert for today’s deal with Hizbullah and for his announcements that he will release Palestinian prisoners.

One said that the many previous releases of Palestinian prisoners failed to significantly improve the standing of Palestinian leaders but instead served to bolster the manpower of forces that act against Israel. He also related the frustration that Israeli security forces feel when they see that after expending tremendous efforts around the clock to capture terrorists they are then released in gesture politics.

 

FINAL PLEA TO PM BY FAMILIES OF 12 MISSING IRANIAN JEWS GOES UNANSWERED

The request by the families of 12 missing Iranian Jews asking Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to ask Hizbullah to supply information about their whereabouts, has gone unanswered.

The 12 Jews were arrested in the 1990s as they sought to escape from Iran across the border with Pakistan and they are believed to be held in Iranian prisons.

Among the missing Jews is Babak Teherani, the son of Los Angeles parents, Ilana Cohen-Teherani and Yousef Shaouliian Teherani. A Muslim neighbor from Tehran, who later joined the Teherani family in Los Angeles, has testified that he saw the boy, and the other 11 missing Jews, alive and well in a dark and damp Tehran prison in 1996.

The center-left Olmert cabinet has been criticized in Israel for not even considering the fates of the wives of the Iranian Jews, while paying much attention to the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. They point out that the release of live hostages should take precedence over dead ones.

 

85 VICTIMS OF HIZBULLAH ATTACKS FILE UNPRECEDENTED CIVIL SUIT AGAINST AMERICAN EXPRESS BANK IN NEW YORK

Eighty-five American, Israeli and Canadian victims of Hizbullah terror attacks on Monday filed an historic civil action in the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan against American Express Bank Ltd. (“AMEX Bank”) and the Lebanese-Canadian Bank SAL (“LCB”). The suit, Licci v. American Express Bank, requests $650 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified sum of punitive damages.

Amex Bank, headquartered in New York, serves as one of LCB’s correspondent banks in the United States, and in that capacity processes LCB’s dollar transactions. LCB’s main office is in Beirut, and it has branches throughout Lebanon and a branch in Canada.

The plaintiffs, whose family members were killed or who were themselves injured by rocket attacks fired at northern Israel by Hizbullah in the summer of 2006, allege that AMEX Bank and LCB unlawfully executed millions of dollars in wire transfers for Hizbullah between 2004 and 2006. The plaintiffs assert that Hizbullah used the funds transferred by Amex Bank and LCB to prepare and carry out rocket attacks on Israeli cities and kibbutzim between July 12 and August 14, 2006.

 

BARAK: UN RESOLUTION ON THE LEBANON WAR IS A FAILURE

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak yesterday branded the United Nations resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War as a failure, saying that it had not achieved the aim of disarming Hizbullah. Barak told his Labor Party that the resolution “had not worked, does not work now and will probably never work.”

Israel has complained that despite the resolution’s call for a strict ban on arms shipments to Hizbullah, the group has rearmed and now has a significantly larger rocket arsenal than it did during the war. The European-led “peacekeepers” in southern Lebanon have done virtually nothing to prevent Hizbullah from rearming, as they were supposed to do in accordance with the UN resolution.

***

BREAKING THE CEASEFIRE

Meanwhile, almost completely unreported in the international media, missiles are continuing to be fired from the Gaza strip into Israel, despite the supposed ceasefire.

Among the attacks, on Sunday, several mortar shells fired from Gaza landed near Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel. On Saturday, a Qassam rocket landed near the community of Shaar Hanegev.

Hamas yesterday announced it had arrested two Fatah members who had launched the rockets towards Israel.

***

PALESTINIAN SHOOTS TWO ISRAELI COPS IN OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM

A police manhunt is continuing after a Palestinian gunman hiding in a Muslim cemetery shot two Israeli policemen on patrol in the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday night. One of the shot Israelis remains in critical condition and doctors say his chances of survival are slim.

 

“HIZBULLAH TRYING TO TRACK IAF PLANES”

The Iranian and Syrian militaries have assisted Hizbullah in setting up advanced radar installations on Mt. Sannine in Lebanon’s Beka Valley which can be used to track Israeli planes from the Mediterranean Sea in the West to Damascus in the East, the Azerbaijan-based Trend News Agency reported earlier this week.

Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are suspected of having direct involvement in helping Hizbullah train to use these systems.

 

HIZBULLAH’S TRIUMPH

I attach below an analysis of the long-term implications of prisoner exchanges, by lawyers Justus Reid Weiner and Diane Morrison.

Among their points:

* Prisoner exchange is governed by international humanitarian law as detailed in the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions (1949). At the end of a conflict the states implement an exchange of captured soldiers. In the interim, the captured soldiers are entitled to the status of Prisoners of War, who must be provided with adequate facilities and care as well as communication with the outside world.

* Israel’s enemies, using proxy guerilla organizations such as the Iranian-proxy group Hizbullah, operate outside the legal framework of the laws of war – routinely committing war crimes such as indiscriminate attacks (the deliberate targeting of civilians as such) and perfidy (disguising combatants as protected individuals such as civilians). The organizations’ fighters are unlawful combatants who are not entitled to the protected status of POWs, and are subject to prosecution as war criminals.

* By exchanging prisoners with the proxy organizations as if they were law-abiding states, Israel can be seen as upgrading the status of the organizations’ unlawful combatants. Such exchanges afford them the same rights as lawful soldiers, without demanding from their leaders the reciprocal obligations. At the same time, Israel downgrades the rights of its own captured soldiers by overlooking the organizations’ systematic depravation of POW rights for Israeli soldiers under the Geneva Conventions.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

This dispatch contains a variety of items from recent days, most of which concern the abuses of Muslim women and girls in Europe and Asia. These items have generally been underreported in the mainstream media.

 

17 GIRLS REMOVED FROM BRUSSELS HOTEL AFTER BEING “ENSLAVED” BY UAE ROYALS

Seventeen young women and girls were removed by police from the luxury Conrad Hotel in Brussels last Tuesday evening following allegations that they had been enslaved by Arab royals.

Belgian police raided the Conrad, the city’s most prestigious hotel and the preferred place of residence for many presidents and prime ministers during European Union summits.

Police took away 17 young girls from the Philippines, Morocco, India, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, amid allegations they had been held captive in the hotel for eight months.

Belgian newspapers have described the case as “slavery right in the heart of Brussels.”

The chic and pricey Conrad Hotel, “where you can discover the luxury of being yourself” (according to the hotel’s website), is situated on the Avenue Louise and surrounded by the most expensive shops in Brussels.

Police have questioned members of the UAE’s royal family who kept near-permanent suites at the hotel. No charges have been brought but the investigation continues.

“We are convinced that these 17 girls are victims of people trafficking,” a Belgian official said. The operation was triggered by the escape of a Filipina girl who was imprisoned in the hotel by the widow of a senior royal figure from the UAE and her four daughters, who have rented the entire fourth floor of the hotel for the last year.

The government of the UAE has refused to comment.

 

IN ITALY, A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL “LEAPS FROM BALCONY AFTER REFUSING ARRANGED MARRIAGE”

A 15-year-old Pakistani girl has been hospitalized after jumping from a balcony in the northern Italian town of Alessandria. She had refused an arranged marriage with a 16-year-old Pakistani.

The Italian daily La Stampa reported that doctors have operated on fractures to her legs sustained during the fall.

The girl, who has grown up in Italy, is said to be well integrated. Neighbors were quoted by Italian newspapers as saying she wears “western-style clothes” and has Italian school friends.

The previous center-left Italian government issued a “charter of values” for immigrants following the death of a young Pakistani girl, Hina Saleem, who had her throat slit by male relatives in August 2006 after she went to work in a pizzeria.

 

31-YEAR-OLD DANISH WOMAN SHOT DEAD IN PAKISTAN “HONOR KILLING”

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that a man in a small Pakistani town killed his Danish sister-in-law on July 1, because he suspected her of having a “bad character” after she gave birth to a baby girl rather than a baby boy.

Faisal Bashir shot dead 31-year-old Tahira Bibi, who was of Pakistani origin, local police official Mohammad Shahbaz Cheema told AFP. “It’s a clear case of honor killing,” he said.

More than 4,000 people, mostly women, have been killed in conservative rural areas of Pakistan in recent years in the name of “protecting family honor.”

 

GEORGIA MAN “KILLED HIS CHICAGO DAUGHTER TO PROTECT FAMILY HONOR”

A man in the American state of Georgia appeared in court last Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. The 54-year-old is of Pakistani descent.

The 25-year-old victim, Sandeela Kanwal, was wed in Pakistan in an arranged marriage. Police said Kanwal hadn’t seen her husband, who lives in Chicago, for months.

 

TURKEY: OVER 1,000 HONOR KILLINGS IN FIVE YEARS

In Istanbul, at least one person is killed every week in an “honor killing” according to a new report by a Turkish human rights group. The report is said to be the most comprehensive ever on the subject. The number of murders committed for honor in the last five years exceeds 1,000. “The murderers are treated as heroes in prisons and they do not regret their crimes,” says the report.

 

SWEDISH FITNESS CLUB SUED FOR REJECTING WOMAN WITH HEADSCARF

A sports club in Malmo is being sued for 50,000 Swedish krona in damages by the “Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination” for refusing access to a woman with a headscarf.

The woman was prevented from attending aerobics and spinning classes because according to the gym’s rules at the time, headgear was banned “for safety reasons.” The case will be decided by the Malmo court, reports the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan.

Please note that other countries, such as supposedly intolerant Israel, are much more protective of the rights of religious Muslims than supposedly tolerant Sweden, and the banning of headscarves for women, whether worn in the gym or otherwise, is strictly against Israeli law.

 

MUSLIM WOMAN DEEMED TOO SUBMISSIVE TO BE FRENCH

The French newspaper Le Monde reported on Friday (July 11) that France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with “basic French values such as equality of the sexes.”

Le Monde said it was the first time a Muslim applicant has been rejected on grounds of religious practice.

The woman, who is aged 32, arrived in France in 2000. She is married to a French national, speaks good French and has three children born in France.

She wears a black burqa that covers all her body except her eyes, which are visible through a narrow slit, and lives in “total submission” to her husband and male relatives, according to reports by social services. “She lives almost as a recluse, isolated from French society,” added Le Monde.

 

RIGHTS GROUP CONDEMNS “HORRIFIC” SAUDI “SLAVE” TREATMENT OF FOREIGN WOMEN

For years, various people (including myself and the excellent group NGO Monitor) have called on major western human rights groups to highlight the plight of others in the Middle East besides the Palestinians.

The U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has finally issued a major new report, which was released last Tuesday in Indonesia, outlining horrific cases of domestic slavery in Saudi Arabia.

The 133-page report, titled “‘As If I Am Not Human’: Abuses Against Asian Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia,” was compiled after two years of research. It outlines many cases of Saudi families severely abusing female migrant workers and urged the government in Riyadh to take action.

“THEY WOULD BEAT ME, CUT ME, OR BURN ME”

“Saudis treat them like chattel, slaves, like cattle. A domestic worker is like a slave and slaves have no rights,” the report quoted a “senior consular official” at a foreign embassy in the kingdom as saying.

“For one year and five months... no salary at all. I asked for money and they would beat me, or cut me with a knife, or burn me,” Sri Lankan domestic worker Ponnamma S. was quoted as telling HRW.

Haima G., a Filipina domestic worker, said her employer called her into his bedroom one day soon after she had arrived and told her she had been “bought” for 10,000 riyals (2,670 dollars).

“The employer raped me many times. I told everything to madam. The whole family, madam, the employer, they didn’t want me to go. They locked the doors and gates,” she said.

HER FINGERS & TOES WERE AMPUTATED AFTER BEATINGS & STARVATION

Nour Miyati, an Indonesian domestic worker, had her fingers and toes amputated due to daily beatings and starvation. Charges against her employers were dropped after a three-year legal process, despite a confession.

“Employers often take away passports and lock workers in the home, increasing their isolation and risk of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse,” HRW said.

It said many “servants” were forced to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week – often without pay – for years. Sleeping quarters included closets and bathrooms.

There are more than eight million migrants work in Saudi Arabia, including 1.5 million domestic workers, mainly from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Nepal.

 

“AT LEAST 25 KILLED” IN SYRIAN JAIL RIOT

At least 25 inmates have been killed during a deadly days-long standoff between inmates and security forces at a Syrian prison where many Islamist and political dissidents are held, reports The Los Angeles Times.

Human rights groups say Syrian security forces have also wounded as many as 100 other inmates at the notorious Saydnaya prison near Damascus.

One inmate told the BBC he believed the death toll was higher. The prisoners managed to contact Syrian human rights groups and western media by telephone. The Syrian authorities have not commented on the situation.

 

DEATH PENALTY CALL FOR AFGHAN MAN WHO TRANSLATED THE KORAN

An Afghan journalist accused of distributing an “unacceptable” translation of the Koran should be put to death, says former Afghan Prime Minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai.

The journalist, Ghows Zalmay, 50, who previously served as the spokesman for Afghanistan’s attorney-general, was arrested last November for distributing a translation of the Koran into Dari, one of Afghanistan’s two official languages.

Ahmadzai, who ran in the 2004 presidential election against current President Hamid Karzai, told media that Zalmay should be put to death. “Afghanistan is today in the grip of such vices,” he said.

The new translation reportedly said that other translations of the Koran had misinterpreted verses about alcohol, begging, homosexuality and adultery.

Zalmay awaits trial in jail and is expected to face charges in an Afghan court shortly.

 

BRITISH WOMAN FACES UP TO SIX YEARS IN JAIL FOR SEX ON DUBAI BEACH

The Times of London reports (on July 9) that a British businesswoman is facing six years in a Dubai jail after she was caught allegedly having sex on a beach. Michelle Palmer, 30, a publishing firm manager, says that she was arrested by a police officer who saw her with a man on Jumeirah Beach.

She has been charged with having sex outside marriage. The man, who has also been arrested in connection with the incident, was a British tourist.

Dubai is one of seven principalities that make up the United Arab Emirates. In the past, there have been several arrests of foreign nationals in Dubai for kissing in public.

 

RELATIVES OF 7/7 LONDON BOMBER HOLD PARTY AT HIS GRAVE TO “CELEBRATE HIS LIFE”

A party was reportedly held on July 7 in Pakistan at the grave of one of London transport’s “7/7 bombers.” 52 commuters were murdered that day three years ago by four al-Qaeda inspired terrorists.

The family of Shehzad Tanweer, who was 22 at the time of his crime, and up to 400 guests “celebrated his life” and “remembered him as a martyr” at a village in Pakistan.

According to reports in the British and Pakistani press, Tanweer’s uncle, 42-year-old property developer Tahir Pervez, organized the celebration during which verses from the Koran were read and curry and rice was served to guests at his home in Samundari.

The gathering has apparently been held in secret during the last two years, but this year villagers commemorated Tanweer more openly. Tanweer detonated a rucksack bomb in a crowded Tube train near Aldgate station close to London’s financial district.

The epitaph on Tanweer’s grave in the village bears the phrase “La ilaha il Mohammed dur rasool Allah” which means “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.”

 

IRANIAN DRAFT LAW WOULD APPLY DEATH PENALTY TO BLOGGERS

The Paris-based media organization Reporters Sans Frontieres warned in a press release last week that a draft law in Iran would extend the death penalty to crimes committed online, including for bloggers and website editors who “promote corruption, prostitution or apostasy.”

Reporters Sans Frontieres added: “Death sentences were already passed last year on two journalists – Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed “Hiva” Botimar – after judicial proceedings marked by many irregularities. They have been held for more than a year without any certainty as to what will happen to them, and we urge the authorities to free them at once.”

Iran executes far more people each year than any other country, apart from China.

 

IRANIAN WOMEN’S ACTIVIST JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS

An Iranian women’s rights activist has been sentenced to five years in prison. Hana Abdi, a 22-year-old woman from Iran’s Kurdistan province, was accused of “illegal gathering with the intention of committing a crime against the nation’s security,” Reuters reported.

Abdi is a leader in a campaign to try to gather one million signatures in support of greater women’s rights in the Islamic Republic, a fellow activist said.

 

EGYPT’S LARGE CHRISTIAN MINORITY UNDER PRESSURE

Under pressure from Islamic fundamentalists, the most populous Christian community in the Middle East is seeking safety by turning inward, and cutting day-to-day social ties that have bound Muslim to Christian in Egypt for centuries.

Deadly attacks this summer on Coptic monks and shopkeepers, and scattered clashes between Muslims and Christians, have compelled many of Egypt’s estimated 6 to 8 million Copts to isolate themselves in a nation with more than 70 million Muslims, reported The Washington Post on July 7.

This is a rare example of a mainstream media publication reporting on the plight of minority groups in the Middle East other than the Palestinians.

While this will be welcome news to some, The Washington Post nevertheless equivocates about who is doing what to whom, and it appears that there is more than a little victim-blaming being done by The Post. It’s difficult to believe, as the Post’s article says, that Muslims are attacking monks and shopkeepers because Christians have chosen to send their children to Coptic schools; the reverse seems more likely.

About one Egyptian in seven in the 1950s was Coptic, but that has shrunk to about one in 10 today.

 

IRAQI POLICE FOIL ATTEMPT TO SMUGGLE SADDAM SON’S CARS

The Dubai-based, pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya TV, reported (in Arabic, on July 8) that Iraqi police have foiled a plot to smuggle out of Iraq luxury cars that belonged to Uday Hussein. Uday was the murderous, sadistic son of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The cars, including vintage British Rolls-Royces and U.S.-made Humvees, were plundered by Iraqis on the first day the U.S. troops entered Baghdad in 2003, and buried underground in an orchard in the area of Al-Durah.

-- Tom Gross

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

KING OF JORDAN RIDICULES BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL

King Abdullah of Jordan, interviewed in The Jordan Times on July 2, 2008:

“... In fact, I cannot think of a major company that does not do business with Israel. If all these companies are off limits then we are in deep trouble.

“For example, Intel whose chips power 80 percent of computers around the world has billions of dollars of investments in Israel; its closest competitor AMD also has large investments in Israel.

“Does that mean we should throw our computers away? This is nonsense. If we follow this line of thought, then we will be doing the best service to Israel. All it has to do is use the best technology and best talent in the world and automatically it would be off limits to us.”

***

The item above is a follow-up to several previous dispatches on this website concerning attempts by academics in the U.K., Presbyterian church members in the U.S., and others elsewhere, to enforce a boycott of Israel.

For King Abdullah’s full interview, see here.

 

DRAMATIC COLOMBIA HOSTAGE RESCUE: THE ISRAELI ASSISTANCE

The Israeli assistance in last Wednesday’s dramatic rescue of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, including three Americans, has now been made public.

While the daring and elaborately-planned mission was Colombian-lead, Israelis made substantial contributions behind the scenes.

Eighteen months ago the Colombian government asked Israel for help in its struggle against the FARC Marxist rebels, who had become specialists in kidnapping both civilians and military figures.

At the suggestion of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Global CST, a private firm run by the former operations chief of the Israeli army general staff, Brigadier General Israel Ziv, and Brigadier Yossi Kuperwasser, was awarded a $10 million contract to work with the Colombian government.

Ziv and Kuperwasser, together with over a dozen Israeli security experts, all former employees of the Mossad, the Shin Bet or the IDF, provided important logistical help. In addition, Israel has in recent years sold Colombia planes, drones, weapons and intelligence systems.

On their return to Israel from Colombia after Betancourt’s release last week, Ziv and Kuperwasser made clear that Israelis, complying with a request from the Israeli Defense Ministry, did not take part in the actual rescue. But it is believed that they trained the Colombian special forces involved.

SARKOZY CITES SHALIT

Betancourt had been held captive in the jungle for six years. She is now in France. Speaking at the Elysée Palace in Paris together with members of Betancourt’s family, French president Nicolas Sarkozy praised the Colombian rescue operation and also vowed that Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and held hostage in Gaza, would not be forgotten.

“In closing, I would like to address these words to Gilad Shalit and his parents: We have not forgotten. France will always come forward to help whenever a person is unjustly detained,” Sarkozy said. Both Betancourt and Shalit hold French citizenship.

 

MOTHER OF KUNTAR VICTIM PLEADS WITH PERES NOT TO LET HIM FREE

[* This is a follow-up to item 9, titled “Fury as Olmert set to release child killer to Hizbullah” in last week’s dispatch, which can be read here.]

The mother of a man killed 29 years ago by Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar has written to Israeli President Shimon Peres regarding the imminent prisoner swap with Hizbullah.

82-year-old Nina Keren’s son Danny Haran and 4-year-old granddaughter Einat were two of Kuntar’s four victims. He broke into their home in Nahariya in northern Israel and shot Danny. He smashed Einat’s skull with a rock and a rifle butt after making her watch the execution of her father. He also killed two other Israelis.

Keren’s other granddaughter, Yael, 2, also died during the attack. Only Smadar Haran, Keren’s daughter-in-law, survived.

In her letter to Peres, Keren appealed to Peres to block plans for Kuntar’s release.

“When I close my eyes at night, I see Einati’s black eyes, wide open in fear as she was about to die... For more than 29 years, I have sentenced myself to silence. But today, just before you cut the sentence of this despicable murderer, I can no longer smother my screams.

“Five life sentences were given to this beastly person. In a few days, he will be freed, before even one life sentence has run out. How will I bear the moment when he crosses the borders and turns from a despicable monster to the new hero of Lebanon,” she wrote.

 

SDEROT’S FIRST PLAYGROUND WITH BOMB SHELTERS TO OPEN SOON

Even though there is supposed to be a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, missiles continue to be fired at southern Israel. No town has suffered more from rocket attacks than little Sderot, which has been rocketed twice as many times as London was in the blitz.

Now finally, the town’s children are to have somewhere which is relatively safe to play. Sderot will open its first bomb shelter-equipped playground next month.

“The playground will have special alarms notifying children who can run quickly to safety in the tunnels and shelters,” said construction manager Boaz Etzion.

 

MORE PROOF OF SDEROT’S EXODUS: FEWER BIRTHS AND FEWER KIDS IN SCHOOL

Statistics from the Israeli health and interior ministries reveal a 15-percent decline in Sderot’s birth rate in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. The decline was not felt dramatically after the Qassams started falling in 2001, but only when the firing escalated in May 2007.

Education ministry statistics show a 9-percent decline from last year in registration for schools. Kindergarten attendees are down 25 percent from last year.

Doctors also report several women in Sderot having miscarriages in the immediate aftermath of Qassam rocket attacks.

One resident told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz: “Why should I have another baby, so he’ll sing about air raids in kindergarten?”

***

Among previous dispatches on Sderot, please see: Code Red in Sderot: Living in the most heavily bombed place in the world (March 2, 2008).

 

GERMAN PROF.: ISRAELI ATHLETES WILLFULLY SACRIFICED THEMSELVES IN MUNICH MASSACRE

Israel has demanded that action be taken against a German academic who claims that the 11 Israeli athletes massacred by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics knew of the attack in advance and willingly sacrificed themselves.

The hateful comments made by Prof. Arnd Kruger of the Institute for Sport Studies at the University of Gottingen, were picked up by the German newsweekly Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel quoted Kruger as saying that “the athletes sacrificed themselves in Israel’s service.”

When asked to expand on his remarks by the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Kruger said that he was a journalist in Munich in 1972 and that he remembered Israelis telling him they think security at the Olympic Village was not tight enough. The possibility that the Israeli team chose not to leave despite being well aware of the risk proved his point, he said.

Unbelievably, Kruger then sought to bolster his claims by saying Israelis have a “different perception of the body” and “the abortion rate in Israel is relatively high.”

Ilan Mor of the Israeli embassy in Berlin told Der Spiegel that these remarks were part of an ongoing attempt to de-humanize Israel in Germany, and called on the university administration to take disciplinary action against Kruger, who is a former dean of the social science department.

Mor said Kruger’s remarks are a symptom of the “rampant anti-Semitism in Germany, often veiled under criticism of Israel.”

The German Sports Sciences Association dubbed Kruger’s remarks “unfortunate,” and said the disciplinary board will convene later this week to discuss the case.

Elke Wittich, a sports journalist for the online magazine “SportsWire.de” told The Jerusalem Post that this was not the first time Krüger disseminated his theory about the 1972 Munich massacre. She said that the academic had previously published an article in the Gottingen university magazine blaming the Israeli athletes for their own murders. The free college publication has a circulation of 12,500.

In case readers need reminding, the Israeli athletes were massacred not only because of the PLO’s orders, but because of German police incompetence; and also, German professors played an important part in the electoral base and propaganda machine for Adolf Hitler.

For example, as late as the 1970s, the former Nazi military psychologist Prof. Peter R. Hofstaetter was still arguing that the Jews had declared war on Germany and not the other way round.

***

Among previous dispatches on the Munich massacre, please see:
* Abu Mazen (now PA President Mahmoud Abbas) and the Munich Olympics massacre.
* BBC set to name woman agent who killed Olympics massacre mastermind.

 

BERLIN FORUM CALLS FOR ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION

Also regarding Germany, Jewish groups have called on Germany’s foreign and economic ministries to never again sponsor a conference, as they did last week in Berlin, that served as a mouthpiece for anti-Semitic Iranian propaganda and included calls for the destruction of Israel.

Iran’s former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Muhammad Javad Ardashir Larijani, told the Third Transatlantic Conference – whose stated purpose was to address “common solutions” in the Middle East – that Israel should be destroyed. (Dr. Larijani’s brother Ali was Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator and is currently the speaker of the Iranian parliament.)

Representatives from Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia also attended the conference and delivered anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic statements.

As The Wall Street Journal Europe writes in an editorial today, “Iranian calls for the destruction of Israel are almost routine these days. But for a former official of the Islamic Republic to call for the destruction of the Jewish state in the city where the Holocaust was planned adds a repugnant twist – especially as the German government sponsored the event that gave the man from Tehran a Western stage.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose ministry served as one of the conference’s sponsors, is said to have been embarrassed by the various anti-Semitic statements made at the conference.

The conference was also co-sponsored by the “Peace Research Institute” in Frankfurt, by the German Protestant Church (EKD), and by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) – a think tank with close ties to the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Stephan Kramer, the general secretary of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said that “anti-Israel statements and the renewed denial of the Holocaust at a conference supported by German tax money, by the FES, the Foreign Ministry, the SPD and EKD, and held in Berlin on the 70th anniversary of the Reich Pogrom Night, call into question the official government expression of solidarity with Israel.” (Kramer is a long-time subscriber to this email list.)

 

IN SPITE OF GERMAN TALK, TRADE WITH IRAN IS GROWING

Trade between Germany and Iran is expanding despite Berlin’s declarations that it is curtailing its economic activity with the Islamic regime. In the first four months of this year, German exports to Iran increased by 18 percent from the same period last year.

Over 1,700 German companies operate in Iran, including giants such as Siemens and chemical group BASF.

Germany, Iran’s biggest trade partner in the European Union, is under American and Israeli pressure to reduce its economic ties with Iran, after Tehran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and its threats to wipe Israel off the map.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the German people in a German television interview: “You have a deep moral obligation to yourselves and your history.”

***

The (London) Daily Telegraph today cites new western intelligence reports that reveal that Iran is proceeding with establishing equipment which is used to produce nuclear weapons.

 

INTEL INAUGURATES MASSIVE NEW ISRAELI CHIP-MAKING PLANT

Intel Corp. has inaugurated a new chip manufacturing plant in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat. The $3.5 billion plant, which will be fully operational in September, is one of the biggest Intel plants in the world.

According to Reuters, it is expected to boost Israel’s gross domestic product by 2 percent.

Intel has been operating in Israel for more than 30 years and is the largest foreign company in the Jewish state, with a number of plants and research and development centers.

The new technology to be made in Israel will allow for the production of computer chips for use worldwide that are far more energy efficient. These ultra-low-powered processors will be used for mobile Internet, consumer electronic devices and low-cost personal computers.

***

For more on the increasing foreign investment in Israel, please see my article “These business visionaries know when to back a winner,” which is item 12 here.

 

DUBAI WILL BUILD “SPINNING SKYSCRAPER”

Dubai has begun construction of an 80-story building that moves. Called “The Dynamic Tower,” the building will have 80 apartments, each of which spins independently of the one above or below it. The building is being designed by Italian architect David Fisher.

In a press conference last week, Fisher claimed that the building would never look the same twice: “Not once in a lifetime.” Each apartment will be able to spin a full 360 degrees upon voice command, he said. The moving floors will be powered by 79 giant wind turbines located between each story.

-- Tom Gross

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

MAKING IT SOUND LIKE AN ACCIDENT, AND DELIBERATELY SO

The online report yesterday in The New York Times concerning the terror attack in Jerusalem benignly began as follows:

The New York Times
July 2, 2008
Construction Vehicle Kills 3 in Israel Attack

***

Research shows that most people only read headlines, not the article, and The New York Times knows this. The headline has since been changed but was up on site for many hours.

The headline writers at the Times cannot have been in any doubt about what actually happened because Times correspondent Isabel Kershner made clear in the article that the Palestinian driver went “on a rampage in central Jerusalem Wednesday, ramming several cars and two buses before a police officer clambered onto the careening vehicle and shot him dead.” She continues “the Palestinian... may have planned to crash the construction vehicle into a crowded market nearby.”

I have known Isabel Kershner for over 20 years and she is one of the fairest New York Times foreign correspondents. The headline disguising the nature of yesterday’s terror attack was almost certainly written by staff in The Times’s office in New York, which has a long track record of playing down the nature of terrorism when directed against Israelis, and before that, of covering up the Holocaust.

* For more on The New York Times reporting on Israel, see here.
* For more on The New York Times lack of reporting on the Holocaust, see here.

 

BBC RADIO SPREADS ITS LIES AROUND THE WORLD

A friend writes from New York:

I was listening to the BBC World Service this morning (broadcast on NPR), which broadcast the following headline: “Palestinian killed by Israeli in Jerusalem today ... after leaving trail of death and destruction.” Even NPR’s own headline (broadcast later after they has stopped the BBC’s broadcasts) was: “Palestinian causes death and destruction in Jerusalem today, before being shot by an Israeli off-duty officer.” i.e. The two organizations had the same information: one set forth in order of time and consequence (guy does bad things, then gets killed) and the other in order of bias and propaganda (Israelis kill guy, he did bad things).

 

BBC ONLINE HEADLINE: “ISRAEL BULLDOZER DRIVER SHOT DEAD”

And on the BBC website yesterday, the headline read “Israel bulldozer driver shot dead.” This is yet another, all too predictable attempt by the BBC to obscure the truth of the story, and to portray a Palestinian as victim even when he is in the midst of an attack.

The BBC headline was later changed to “Bulldozer rampage hits Jerusalem,” although this still makes it sound passive without naming the perpetrator or victims. The BBC has a long history of never mentioning whom the perpetrators or victims are in headlines relating to Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians, but almost always does so in reports on other conflicts.

Yesterday’s terror attack took place opposite the local headquarters of many international media outlets, including BBC, CNN and Sky News. They could literally see it unfold from their windows, as BBC correspondent Tim Franks admitted, so the BBC has no excuses for distorting the facts of the story yesterday. The BBC is a publicly funded institution with a legal obligation in Britain to be balanced and objective.

Both the BBC and The New York Times have recently invested huge amounts of money and resources into expanding and developing their news websites, and it is of some concern that these thoroughly biased news sources are so trusted by many people throughout the world, including those working in various policy-making branches of governments.

 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

Terrorists purposely targets civilians, and this terrorist was no different. He chose his victims carefully, starting his attack by motioning with his hand for a woman motorist to drive before him. Then he rammed her car with the bulldozer’s shovel.

He then used the bulldozer to plow into two public buses carrying passengers, including many women and children which he could clearly see through the buses’ large glass windows. One of the buses was completely overturned, the other crashed. He then crushed a number of cars with their drivers still in them, and targeted several pedestrians chasing them down and running them over. A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by his Caterpillar vehicle as panic spread throughout the center of Israel’s capital. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets as medics treated the wounded.

One car was dragged several meters by the bulldozer. A baby was pulled out by a passerby before the vehicle was crushed, with the child’s mother still inside. She died.

By the time his rampage was over, three Israeli civilians were dead and over 66 were wounded. Broken glass and blood were left down a stretch of one of Israel’s busiest streets.

All the time the terrorist screamed “Allah Akhbar” (God is great in Arabic) as he did so.

The terrorist was shot dead by a security guard working for a nearby bank as he approached Jerusalem’s main working class food market, Mahane Yehuda.

 

THE VICTIMS WERE WOMEN, AND TEACHERS

By contrast with other media, The Times of London’s online headline yesterday was:

‘Bulldozer terrorist’ kills three in Jerusalem

The (London) Times notes: “All three people killed were women. Their bodies were covered in plastic sheets as they lay trapped in the debris of their vehicles. One of the women was reported to have saved her baby girl’s life by throwing her out of the window seconds before the bulldozer hit... [The attacker] yelled ‘Allah akhbar!’ and hit the gas.”

[UPDATE: Disappointingly, the (London) Times has now changed its headline online to remove the word “terrorist.” The new headline is: “Bulldozer driver Hossam Dwayyat shot at wheel after deadly rampage through Jerusalem.”]

***

The (London) Daily Telegraph, whose coverage of Israel has become much more negative since Conrad Black lost control of the paper, headlined its report “Jerusalem bulldozer terrorist’s ‘heart broken by Jewish girl’.” The Daily Telegraph went on to give a sympathetic account of the terrorist rather than of the victims, using the term “a radical Jewish group” but not using radical or any negative terms to describe the Palestinian terrorist, let alone mention that he cried “Allah akhbar” throughout the attack.

The Daily Telegraph’s human interest approach to the terrorist, suggesting he acted because a Jewish girl dumped him, neglected to mention that he actually had a conviction for rape of that Jewish girl, as widely reported in the Israeli press.

Today’s Washington Post also says of the terrorist: “And for a time, he dated one [a Jew], friends and relatives said.” The Post doesn’t mentioning his conviction for rape of this Jewish “girlfriend.”

***

Amazingly, The Guardian today uses the word “terror” in its headline on an inside page:

Israel terror: Three killed, 44 hurt as Palestinian runs amok with bulldozer in street

However, on its home page, The Guardian online has the misleading headline “Three killed in Israel bulldozer attack,” and in its article inside, The Guardian said only one of the victims was a woman, whereas in fact two were. Two were also teachers, which wasn’t noted by any of the papers.

The victims were Batsheva Unterman, 33, Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, and Jean Raloy, 68. At least one of the babies injured in the attack remains in a critical condition.

 

THE ATTACK DID NOT OCCUR IN A VACUUM

Yesterday’s attack did not occur in a vacuum. Day in, day out, state-controlled media and radical imams indoctrinate the terrorists of the region to blindly hate non-Moslems in general and Jews in particular. They are told it is a holy act to kill them, guaranteeing a Moslem a place in heaven.

No American and European media I have read and watched today and yesterday, noted this. Nor did they mention that there is a long history of Palestinian terrorism increasing each time there is a “ceasefire” or Israel announces concessions (which others might describe as appeasement). Attacks on Israeli civilians following ceasefires date as far back as 1948, when Israeli civilians were massacred following the ceasefire agreements in the wake of the 1948 war.

Three terrorist groups claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which is financed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement. The other two were the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is affiliated with Hizbullah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a fringe left-wing terror group.

Hamas released a statement welcoming the attack.

The attack was the worst in Jerusalem since a Palestinian gunman walked into a Jewish school and shot eight students dead in March. By coincidence the off-duty soldier who helped the security guard mount the bulldozer yesterday to disarm the terrorist, is the brother-in-law of the army officer who took out the terrorist in March’s attack.

(For more on that attack, please see: Fatah’s young guard: “Blessed martyrdom operation in occupied [West] Jerusalem”.)

 

JANE’S: SATELLITE IMAGERY CONFIRMS SYRIAN TROOPS IN LEBANON

The well-connected defense and intelligence journal, Jane’s, reports this week that satellite imagery from as recently as March 2008 reveals that Syrian troops are present on Lebanese soil in the remote and rugged hills north of the town of Rashaya al-Wadi, despite Damascus having supposedly ended its military occupation of Lebanon in April 2005.

Jane’s Country Risk writes that the “little-known presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon demonstrates that, despite the peace talks between the two sides confirmed in simultaneous announcements in Syria and Israel on 21 May 2008, mutual mistrust continues to characterize regional relationships. As a result, despite the recognition of peace talks, negotiations are likely to be fraught while military preparedness will remain high.”

Jane’s reports that the new Syrian military equipment on Lebanese soil “includes what appears to be towed and self-propelled artillery and a T-54/55 tank.”

 

PALESTINIANS AND EGYPTIANS CLASH AT RAFAH BORDER

Dozens of Palestinians battled Egyptian border police yesterday at Egypt’s border with the Hamas-held Gaza Strip, in an attempt to force their way into the Sinai Peninsula, witnesses said. Live television footage showed Egyptian forces responding with water cannon and sealing the gates to the crossing point. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians stormed the border crossing in January.

Israel has reopened crossings into Gaza to allow for a resumption of the full transfer of goods into the territory despite the sporadic rocket attacks on Israeli towns over the past few days. Hamas and Israel agreed to a truce three weeks ago, but rockets continue to be fired from Gaza at Israeli towns and kibbutzim.

In the latest attack, two Israeli civilians suffered shrapnel wounds and a number of others were treated for emotional shock, included several children.

Among other terror acts since the “ceasefire” went into place, three Israeli civilians were shot and wounded while hiking in the Judean hills.

 

FURY AS OLMERT SET TO RELEASE CHILD KILLER TO HIZBULLAH

There is great anger among many in Israel at the lack of any meaningful reaction by the Israeli government to the recent breaches of the ceasefire by Palestinian groups as well as the fact that the Israeli government has apparently agreed to swap live terrorists for the bodies of two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, murdered by Hizbullah.

For example, in its editorial yesterday, Ma’ariv criticizes the government, “for thinking that it is permissible to exchange bodies for living murderers and to release a murderer in exchange for his victims... In the next kidnapping, when we again do not know if the abductee is alive or dead, the government will understand how foolish the current deal with Hizbullah is and how much it endangers all of us.”

***

There is particular fury that among the released terrorists will be Samir Kuntar, who murdered four Israeli citizens, and in a particularly cold-blooded act smashed the skull of a 4 year-old girl after murdering her father in front of her eyes. Her two-year-old sister also died, inadvertently suffocated by her mother who was hiding from Kuntar in a cupboard as she attempted to prevent her baby from crying. Kuntar’s anticipated release has already been widely welcomed in Gaza and Lebanon, and his brutality lauded on Palestinian Authority television, which is indirectly funded by the European Union.

In a World Service Radio report yesterday about the imminent swap, the BBC named all five Hizbullah terrorists (without using the word terrorist, of course) but did not mention even one word about their victims or their crimes.

Senior staff at both the Mossad and Shin Bet oppose the deal but have been overruled by the Israeli cabinet.

Hizbullah head Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a Beirut news conference yesterday that the prisoner swap with Israel would take place on or about July 15.

Kuntar has pledged that if released, he will join Hizbullah and continue his quest to bring about “the destruction of Israel.” He also added that he has no regrets about the murders of “Jews” and would like to kill more.

 

HAMAS HINTS IT WILL NOW RAISE STAKES FOR KIDNAPPED ISRAELI SOLDIER

Citing the high price that Israel is paying in its planned prisoner swap with Hizbullah, Hamas says it will now harden its demands in negotiations over the release of Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old Israeli whom it kidnapped inside Israel two years ago.

Following the announcement earlier this week that Israel would free Kuntar, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told Palestinian radio that Hamas would work “to release people Israel accused of having blood on their hands like Samir Kuntar. We have to take advantage of this to release our prisoners.”

-- Tom Gross