* Amazingly – and disgustingly – The New York Times theorizes that the choice of the Chabad center by Islamist terrorists in Mumbai was “accidental”
* Islamists: All of India is stolen Muslim land
* Mumbai massacre was coordinated in a highly sophisticated way. The terrorists used BlackBerrys to stay in touch with each other during the siege
* Some prominent liberal media refuse to point out that this was a case of Muslims targeting non-Muslims. For example, Britain’s highly-regarded Channel 4 News said that the “militants” showed a “wanton disregard for race or creed”. (Quite the opposite is true: targets and victims were very carefully selected)
* IslamOnline, the highly influential website praised for its “spiritual inspiration” by BBC guests, blames Jews and Hindus for the massacres
(A shorter version of this dispatch will appear as a comment piece in The Wall Street Journal.)
CONTENTS
1. If this isn’t terrorism, what is?
2. “Finally I see that BBC News is anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israel”
3. There is nothing remotely Zionist about Chabad
4. New York Times suggests Chabad may have been “an accidental hostage scene”
5. The BBC almost never covers Mexico. Why now?
6. “The world’s academics will already explain that the West is to blame”
7. Dramatic pictures
8. “I just grabbed the baby and ran”
9. Israel: India’s rescue efforts “premature and badly planned”
10. British security officials also criticize Indians
11. Mumbai massacre perpetrators: Are some British?
12. Terrorists monitored British websites using BlackBerry phones
13. Rabbi and his wife among 9 hostages killed at Jewish center
14. Islamists believe that India is a Muslim land
15. “Mumbai attacks are warning to us” (By Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 29, 2008)
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
IF THIS ISN’T TERRORISM, WHAT IS?
At present, the death toll from the terrorist attacks in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, which began Wednesday night and finally came to an end yesterday morning, stands at 172 (not 195 as stated in some news reports yesterday) though it is likely to rise.
Apart from India, more Israelis were murdered in the attacks than citizens of any other country, with eight Israelis killed – not five as stated in some media reports. (Nine persons were murdered at the Jewish center. Eight were Israelis, some with dual US-Israeli citizenship. A Mexican Jewish woman was also killed there. Some of the Jewish victims may have been tortured before being killed.)
At least 15 other foreigners were killed in the attacks, including citizens of Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Thailand, Britain, and France.
What is not being made clear in certain prominent Western media is that this was a meticulously planned and well-organized operation on seven carefully-selected sites in India’s financial capital. Some of the terrorists arrived by boat on the night of the attack. Others had apparently been in the city for months gathering intelligence and there are reports that at least two of the terrorists had managed to get jobs at the hotels they then attacked, and two others were staying there as guests. This would have enabled them to plan the attack and gain an edge over security forces by familiarizing themselves with the layout of the labyrinthine Edwardian building that houses the Taj Mahal hotel.
The Times of India reports today that some of the terrorists had actually stayed on a rental basis at the Jewish center to scout it out, identifying themselves as Malaysian students.
Security forces seized a mass of grenades, bullet magazines for AK-47 machine guns and other equipment. Indian commandos said the attackers had demonstrated professional techniques, firing in short bursts, setting traps and even stocking up with almonds and dried fruit to keep their energy up during the siege. It stretches credulity to believe that these individuals were acting alone.
As I note below, the terrorists even used BlackBerry email devices to stay in touch with each other (and possibly outsiders) and exchange intelligence and information in different locations during the siege.
DO THEY WISH TO EXPRESS SOME SYMPATHY WITH THESE MURDERERS?
So, even though this was clearly an assault aimed exclusively against innocent civilian targets – two hospitals, two hotels, a tourist restaurant, a train station and a Jewish center – why did much of the media, including the British-based global networks BBC and Sky News, label the killers “militants” instead of terrorists? Why did The Guardian ape Al-Jazeera in calling them “gunmen” as though this was just some kind of random crime scene?
If The Daily Telegraph can call them “Islamic terrorists” why does The Times of London feel the need to refer to them as “militants” on its website? What is the motivation of journalists in trying to downplay these heinous atrocities? Do they wish to express some sympathy for these murderers?
There was no hostage stand-off. The terrorists didn’t want to negotiate. They wanted to murder as many Hindus, Christians, Jews and atheists as they could, and in as spectacular manner as they could.
“FINALLY I SEE THAT BBC NEWS IS ANTI-SEMITIC, NOT JUST ANTI-ISRAEL”
Some of the reporting by the BBC – the world’s largest broadcast network, which has many TV and radio stations broadcasting in different languages around the world, and is lavishly funded by the British taxpayer – was disgraceful.
Particularly during the first day or two of the terror attacks, you would have to search very hard on the BBC to find a connection with Islamicism. It is a local Indian problem, the subcontinent has a history of unrest, the BBC repeatedly tried to persuade its massive global audience.
Even the Pakistani angle was presented as some kind of local Pakistani-Indian dispute rather than as a problem with militant Islam – this despite the fact that the gunmen themselves were screaming “Allah Akbar” (Allah is the Greatest) as they murdered “the Jews and the infidels” in line with Bin Ladenist ideology.
THERE IS NOTHING REMOTELY ZIONIST ABOUT CHABAD
And in particular, the BBC went out of its way not to report that the Chabad Jewish community center was attacked. At one point when BBC correspondents did mention it, viewers were merely told that “an office building” had been targeted (referring to the Jewish community center as such).
On Friday morning, dramatic television pictures of Indian commandos storming the besieged Chabad center in Mumbai were broadcast by networks around the world. Heavily armed commandos, their faces covered by balaclavas, rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of the Chabad center while Indian sharpshooters in buildings opposite opened fire as a helicopter circled overhead. A huge crowd of onlookers could be seen looking aghast as they watched from nearby streets. Yet BBC World and Al-Jazeera alone avoided showing these pictures, almost pretending there was no siege at the Jewish center.
By then the Jewish center was one of only two sites that remained under siege in Mumbai and yet reporter after reporter on the BBC barely mentioned it.
Incidentally, there is nothing remotely Zionist about the Chabad Jewish center in India. Even fierce critics of Israel on this email list who have in the past disagreed with me when I have said there is an element of anti-Semitism in the way the BBC distorts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have told me in the last couple of days that for the first time they could clearly see that anti-Semitism, not just anti-Israelism, was at work in the way BBC news covers the world.
NEW YORK TIMES SUGGESTS CHABAD MAY HAVE BEEN “AN ACCIDENTAL HOSTAGE SCENE”
Meanwhile The New York Times wrote: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”
Is this what passes for analysis at The New York Times?
Has The New York Times learned anything since the Holocaust when, even after the war ended in the spring of 1945, the paper infamously refused to report that the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and so on killed in the camps had been Jews, and killed as Jews.
Dozens of eyewitness accounts by local Indians said the gunmen shouted “Allah Akbar” from the Jewish center. It is housed in a non-descript block and is not obviously marked from the outside as a Jewish center. It is the one Jewish building in a densely crowded city of many millions. And The New York Times wants to let readers think it might have been an accidental target?
The New York Times has admirers who treat it with positively religious reverence, as though it were beyond criticism. But others can plainly see that for the Times to proclaim itself, with inimitable pomposity, as the paper of record is downright risible.
Even The New York Times’s British equivalent, The Guardian, began its news story: “The inclusion of the headquarters of an ultra-orthodox Jewish group was obviously intended to send its own message.”
Does The New York Times think that the seeking out and murder by the terrorists of the only New York rabbi and his wife in a Mumbai was “an accidental target”?
Indeed, there was nothing accidental about any of the seven sites that the terrorists attacked. And it was no accident that Mumbai (formerly Bombay) was hit. It is the most multi-religious city in India – with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees and Jews living in relative harmony.
THE BBC ALMOST NEVER COVERS MEXICO. WHY NOW?
Of course, there is a pattern to this. When people were murdered by al-Qaeda in recent years at synagogues in Jerba (Tunisia) and Istanbul (Turkey), and at the Jewish center in Casablanca (Morocco), and at many other locations, both the BBC and The New York Times avoided or downplayed the fact that terrorists were hitting Jewish targets, even though al-Qaeda video messages and websites congratulated themselves on specifically killing “Jews and infidels”.
Hours after the Mumbai attacks began, the Associated Press released an article carrying the demands of the Mujahideen group that claimed responsibility in e-mails to several media outlets. The AP headline, quoting the claim of responsibility, was “India should return Muslim land.” But it was hard to find this on the BBC.
Meanwhile yesterday morning, within a short time of the siege ending, with piles of bodies identified, and with much of the rest of the world media still dominated by stories related to the Mumbai attacks, the BBC World Service website headline was:
“Mexico in the narcotics era. With thousands of people dead and millions thinking about leaving the country – BBC uncovers the social impact of drug trafficking in Mexico.”
“THE WORLD’S ACADEMICS WILL ALREADY EXPLAIN THAT THE WEST IS TO BLAME”
An editorial today in the Israeli paper Ma’ariv written by Ben-Dror Yemini (who is a long-time subscriber to this email list), suggests that an “intellectual terrorism” exists, and notes that, “The terrorists in India did not make any public announcements. There is no need. The world’s academics will already explain that the West is to blame, especially the Zionists”. He adds: “The free world must awake. The first stage in the fight against terrorism is a total suppression of the hate industry. No more incitement under the pretense of ‘freedom of speech’.”
Andrew Bostom, a scholar of Islamic Jihad and its responses in the West, notes: “The ‘coverage’ of the Mumbai massacres has been an appalling spectacle of ignorance, denial, and scapegoating – of the victims. If Hindus and Jews (and in the end, all potential non-Muslim victims of jihad) don’t realize their shared predicament – targeting by jihad hatred – after these events, then they never will, possibly hastening their separate destruction.”
There have now been 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism (i.e. terrorism based upon supposed Koranic doctrine) since Sept. 11, 2001, he says.
DRAMATIC PICTURES
Here is a particularly dramatic set of pictures from The Boston Globe of the three-and-half-day terror rampage in Mumbai. Some of the pictures are graphic, but you have to click to view them.
“I JUST GRABBED THE BABY AND RAN”
Twelve hours after gunmen stormed the Chabad Jewish community center in Mumbai, the community’s Indian cook, Sandra Samuel, made a dramatic escape, dashing out from the room in which she had barricaded herself. But as she did so, she put herself in additional danger by grabbing the blood-soaked 2-year-old old son of the community’s rabbi.
She and the baby, together with one other center worker (Zakir Hussein, 22, the Jewish center’s caretaker, who is incidentally a Muslim), managed to escape.
“I just grabbed the baby as I ran out,” said Samuel, 44, who has worked as a cook for the center for the last five years.
The two-year-old was unharmed and the blood that covered him belonged to the other dead and wounded hostages inside. He is now an orphan after both his parents were confirmed dead.
ISRAEL: INDIA’S RESCUE EFFORTS “PREMATURE AND BADLY PLANNED”
Israel defense officials have criticized the way Indian security forces handled the terror attacks in Bombay, after India turned down their offer of help and advice to defeat the terrorists. Israeli security chiefs were concerned given the many past cases of botched attempts by foreign security forces to rescue Jewish hostages, for example by German commandos at the Munich Olympics.
Officials from the Israel security agency the Shin Bet said the Indian troops had prematurely stormed the besieged hotels and other locations, risking hostages’ lives in the process.
“Indian counter-terrorist forces were well trained but failed to gather sufficient intelligence before engaging the terrorists,” one Shin Bet official said.
“It appears that the Indian forces showed up at the scene and immediately began exchanging fire with the terrorists instead of first taking control of the area,” he said.
Others said the Indian commandos made the basic mistake of storming the Jewish Center in daylight hours. No one was found alive in the building though it is not clear yet whether they were all killed before the Jewish center was stormed, or during the rescue mission.
Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak had offered assistance to Mayankote Kelath Narayanan, India’s National Security adviser, but it was turned down.
Indian media have reacted angrily to criticism from Israeli defense officials of the Indian commando operation.
The two countries have close defense ties. India has bought more than $5 billion worth of Israeli equipment since 2002.
BRITISH SECURITY OFFICIALS ALSO CRITICIZE INDIANS
British officials also said that Indian security forces had “bungled” their response to the attacks. One told The Daily Telegraph: “They are supposed to set up a command center in complete control as their first priority. Instead they arrived and went in with guns blazing. It was blind. They didn’t have maps of the hotels, yet the terrorists had done enough reconnaissance to use the service facilities to maneuver.”
A senior Indian special forces source said: “There were far too many command centers with each one trying to best the other which led to confusion and delayed operations. There appears to have been a lack of detailed, precise planning.”
MUMBAI MASSACRE PERPETRATORS: ARE SOME BRITISH?
News reports quoting Mumbai’s chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and others suggest that a number of British passport-holders were among those who carried out the attacks. The British government has cast doubt on these reports. But if they prove accurate, it would not be the first time that British citizens had perpetrated acts of Islamist terrorism abroad.
Among those I have written about previously are:
* Omar Sheikh, a 27-year-old former LSE (London School of Economics) student* convicted of the murder of the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.
* Asif Mohammed Hanif, a 21-year-old from West London and Omar Khan Sharif, his 27-year-old accomplice from Derby in the British Midlands, who was studying at King’s College London*, who murdered three Jews and wounded 65 in a suicide attack at “Mike’s Place” bar in Tel Aviv in April 2003.
Others include:
* Sayyad al-Falistini, 18, from London, who was killed after a failed suicide attack in Bosnia in 1995. He is believed to have been Britain’s first attempted suicide bomber.
* Khalid Shahid, from Birmingham, Britain’s first “successful” suicide bomber, in Afghanistan, 1996.
* Bilal Ahmed, 25, from Birmingham, killed eight people in a suicide bomb attack in Kashmir in December 2000.
There are many other more recent examples too, but the mainstream British press are reluctant to write about this phenomenon.
Douglas Murray, the director of the Center for Social Cohesion (and a subscriber to this email list), points out: “Since the 1990s Britain has been one of the global centers of Islamist radicalization and yet successive British governments have failed to stop those who preach hate and incite violence against anyone who falls outside of their radical interpretation of Islam.”
* Tom Gross adds: the fact that several of Britain’s suicide bombers targeting Jews abroad were students from the very same British universities where university authorities have allowed anti-Zionist hysteria to spill over into anti-Semitism, is probably not a coincidence.
At the same time, to state the obvious, although there are many Muslim extremists in Britain, the vast majority of British Muslims are entirely peaceful and law-abiding.
TERRORISTS MONITORED BRITISH WEBSITES USING BLACKBERRY PHONES
Adding to the speculation that at least some of the attackers may have British links, The Daily Telegraph reports that during the three-day siege the terrorists monitored international reaction to the attacks on British newspaper websites and on Arabic websites popular in the north of England.
A senior officer in India’s elite Black Cat commando unit said suspicions of a British link were first raised when investigators examined BlackBerry email-and-phone devices seized from some of the captured terrorists, which they had used to monitor the internet.
General Noble Thamburaj, head of India’s southern command, said: “There was a lot of content from the English media, not just in London but the Urdu and Arabic sites that are very strong in the north of England.”
Gen. Thamburaj said at least five of the terrorists had used BlackBerrys to monitor British websites – and to check on the police response.
The availability of news updates and live TV streams from Indian and foreign media is thought to have given the hostage takers an advantage during the siege.
***
Other reports say that one captured terrorist joined the Lashkar a-Tayeb (“Army of Believers”) group a year ago. In the past, the group had strong links to Osama Bin Laden, and its members trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Abu Zubaydah, considered one of the most senior Al-Qaeda officials being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, was captured in March 2002 in a joint operation by United States and Pakistani intelligence forces at a Lashkar a-Tayeb safe house.
Some reports say the sponsor for the Mumbai massacres is thought to have been an Indian businessman living in Saudi Arabia, who has been under intelligence surveillance for a year.
The sole surviving terrorist told authorities that the plan was to kill 5,000 people.
RABBI AND HIS WIFE AMONG 9 HOSTAGES KILLED AT JEWISH CENTER
Israeli officials said that nine bodies were removed from the Chabad House in Mumbai and taken for identification. The bodies of the Israelis are being brought to Israel for burial.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said some of the bodies found there had been tied up and abused, and the three women who were slain had been killed many hours before the men. They were found in a pool of blood.
“Our world is under attack, it doesn’t matter whether it happens in India or somewhere else,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said, in remarks not carried by the BBC. “There are Islamic extremists who don’t accept our existence or Western values.”
Witnesses to the scene of the carnage reported ghastly images of blood everywhere and live hand grenades still lying amid the bodies. Only after the grenades were neutralized were the bodies finally removed.
You can see pictures of some of the bloody scenes if you scroll down on this page, and click through the photos.
Very few foreign leaders have conveyed condolences over the attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions to Israel. One who did call Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last night to express condolences was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Jews in Istanbul have also been targeted by al-Qaeda.
***
TERROR IN ISRAEL TOO
On the same day (Friday) that the siege of the Jewish center was ended in Mumbai, eight Israelis were also wounded when a mortar shell fired from Gaza hit Nahal Oz in southern Israel. One 21-year-old Israeli conscript from Beersheba lost his leg in the attack. Doctors at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon are still trying to save his other leg as I write. At least one other of the wounded Israelis has severe injuries.
Hamas’s armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, claimed responsibility for the attack – even though The Guardian comment page, lying as usual, wrote recently that Hamas hasn’t been responsible for any of the attacks on southern Israel since the supposed ceasefire went into effect last June.
ISLAMISTS BELIEVE THAT INDIA IS A MUSLIM LAND
Below I attach a comment piece by Charles Moore, a distinguished former editor of The Daily Telegraph. As Moore, who is a subscriber to this email list, points out “Islamists believe that India is a Muslim land, which was stolen from them. If they had their way, the world’s largest democracy would come under the rule of Sharia.”
“... Perhaps because of our media obsession with Palestine above all other places involving Islam... we do not understand what is happening [elsewhere],” he adds.
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLE
NO, THIS WASN’T LIKE COLUMBINE
Mumbai attacks are warning to us in Britain
By Charles Moore
The Daily Telegraph
Nov. 29, 2008
In the newsrooms of our national papers, there is a phrase about a story whose interest for the readers needs to be clearer. “Put a Union Jack on it,” we say: people are more likely to read it if it has a British angle.
When the terrible attacks began in Bombay, the media did indeed seek out British victims. But at a deeper level, they have failed to put the “Union Jack” on the story. They do not consider how these horrors relate to the British past, and the British future.
Perhaps out of political correctness, most media outlets call the city in question Mumbai. It was renamed thus in the 1990s by Hindu nationalists anxious to efface British links. But a great many Indians including, I notice, the army chief interviewed on Thursday, still call it Bombay.
Similarly, the railway station in which passengers were massacred has an official name which the BBC struggled to pronounce but is known locally as “VT”, which stands for Victoria Terminus. It is a 19th-century, Gothic, British building which makes St Pancras look restrained.
So what you might call Mumbai-jumbo obscured the drama of the setting for the attacks. It seems that the terrorists landed their inflatable boats by the Gateway to India. The Gateway to India was built nearly a century ago for King George V to disembark for the visit which culminated in the Delhi Durbar, the high point of the Raj.
Having moored, the terrorists ran into the Taj Mahal Hotel, built a few years earlier than the Gateway by a member of the Tata family, allegedly in defiance of the Apollo Hotel, which had refused him entry because he had a brown face.
One must assume that attacking where they did, the terrorists knew what they were doing. They were striking at a place that symbolises former British power and new Indian pride. It most vividly represents the link, made chiefly by trade, between India and the world.
Under the British, and continuing since independence, Bombay is also the most multi-religious city in India – with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees and Jews. So it was natural for the murderous fanatics to seek out the Jews, as well as Westerners in general, and kill them.
On Friday, I spoke to a friend lying on the floor 100 yards from Nariman House, where the rabbi and his wife were being held. He said he thought it was wrong to say the attackers were targeting foreigners alone: they were targeting all connections between foreigners and Indians.
Islamists believe that India is a Muslim land, which was stolen from them. If they had their way, the world’s largest democracy would come under the rule of Sharia. The Gateway to India would clang shut.
Perhaps because of our media obsession with Palestine above all other places involving Islam, we take little advantage of our historical experience. We do not understand what is happening.
Channel 4 News said that the Bombay killers showed a “wanton disregard for race or creed”. On the contrary, they deliberately attacked people and places where such disregard for creed and race is, in a friendly sense, a way of life.
Channel 4’s Jon Snow said, on his daily email, “I suppose the nearest parallel would be the school killing at Columbine, near Colorado”.
No! The Columbine killings were isolated actions of two young minds disturbed. They were not the product of a paramilitary, worldwide, politico-religious ideology.
After Columbine, websites of international religious organisations were not buzzing with conspiracy theories to excuse the killers.
But during the Bombay attacks, IslamOnLine, the website which supports Ken Livingstone’s old friend and spiritual inspiration to the Muslim brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, gave space to messages blaming Israel, or the CIA, or Hindus, or all three.
It was reported that some of the terrorists attacking Bombay were British citizens. Even if this turns out not to be the case, what happened there will blow back here and – which we find even harder to understand – what happens here, blows back there.
After the London Tube bombings of July 7, 2005, attention turned to the madrassas, the Muslim schools churning out extremists in Pakistan.
With some justice, Pervaiz Musharraf, then president of Pakistan, turned the point round. Look at the appalling fanaticism being encouraged in some Muslim institutions in Britain, he said. There is a terrible traffic, and we are part of it.
By far the largest part of the British Muslim population, and of our Hindu and Sikh populations, descend from the Indian subcontinent. The tensions, over Kashmir, for example, are strong.
Pakistan now has the Bomb and the greatest terrorist-inspired instability in the world. The subcontinent divided because Britain departed. We took part of the problem home.
In the wake of September 11, 2001, the greatest Islamist terrorist threat seemed to be coming from Arabs in Britain; but since 2004, police have had to focus on the links with the Indian subcontinent. Mohammed Siddique Khan, the British-born leader of the “7/7” suicide bombers, is the best known example.
Because of these problems, our Government realises that it must act against extremism. It has a programme called Prevent to do so. But a theory dominates Prevent which says that “violent extremism” has no link with other extremism, and that we should engage all those extremists who are not actually killing people.
The Muslim Contact Unit of the Metropolitan Police has devoted most of its “counter-terrorism” work to favouring such “moderate” extremists – the sort of people who applaud suicide bombs in Israel, but condemn them here.
Bob Lambert MBE, the unit’s recently retired leading light, has published an article saying the Islamists and Salafis (extreme literalist puritans) are actually the good guys, whereas moderates like Ed Husain, the author of The Islamist, who exposed the hate-filled, grievance-based ideology, has succumbed to “the lure of celebrity status”.
Faced with young Muslims who sympathise with violent terrorism, the police, Mr Lambert thinks, should adopt a “non-judgmental” approach.
When you think about it, this strategy is weird. It is like going to the BNP, which is, formally, non-violent, and saying, “Look, your views are close to those of violent racists, so please let us give you public money to try to control them.”
Non-judgmental, all right – to the point of creating a moral vacuum about our own values which extremists are only too happy to fill.
Two things happen. The first is that the Government sets up a perverse incentive, by which Muslims know that they must raise grievance and warn of even worse conflagrations unless the state coughs up.
The second is the denial of the basic truth that extreme ideas tend to produce extreme actions. Recent government guidelines say that ideology can be a cause of violent extremism but is “seldom the most important”.
Doesn’t the history of the 20th century suggest that bad ideas lead to the most horrendous violence of all? Shouldn’t the events in Bombay bring that home to us once again?
* Israel’s “Lost tribe of Obama” celebrates by slaughtering goats
* Poll: Only 19% of Americans say Israeli-Palestinian peace should top Obama’s priorities
CONTENTS
1. Afghan schoolgirls blinded with acid for not wearing full burqua
2. A 13-year-old, stoned to death for being raped
3. Cairo protest over repeated Saudi whipping of doctor
4. Saudi official: Ok to kill owners of “immoral TV”
5. Fayad fails to mention Judaism among faiths devoted to Jerusalem
6. Baghdad’s Jews on edge of extinction
7. Oxford students in “dress like a greedy Jew” party row
8. Christmas is scrapped in Oxford
9. UC Berkeley: pro-Israel students called “Nazis” and “dogs,” assaulted on campus
10. London University event likens Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
11. A mentally impaired young British man groomed into becoming a suicide bomber
12. Only 19% of Americans say Israeli-Palestinian peace should top Obama’s priorities
13. Israel’s “Lost tribe of Obama” celebrates by slaughtering goats
14. Song of the day
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
AFGHAN SCHOOLGIRLS BLINDED WITH ACID FOR NOT WEARING FULL BURQUA
(First published by myself on NRO on Friday, Nov. 14)
Lately it has become popular among some elite European opinion-makers to call for the abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban. For example, yesterday Britain’s BBC and Sky News both carried stories attempting to put pressure on the British government to withdraw troops.
It is worth reminding people exactly what abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban means. Yesterday, three Afghan schoolgirls suffered serious burns when attackers sprayed acid in their faces as they walked to school in Kandahar. The attackers ripped off the girls’ headscarves before the attack, while other schoolgirls wearing the full-length burqua accompanying them were left untouched.
(For picture of one of the schoolgirls sprayed with acid being treated in Kandahar hospital, see here.)
Girls were banned from going to school under the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. Since then, Taliban attackers have killed dozens of teachers and students and torched many school buildings in an attempt to close down the schools for girls that reopened after George W. Bush liberated Afghanistan.
***
Last week the BBC broadcast an hour of propaganda, on its “World Have Your Say question-and-answer session with the Taliban.” The BBC presenter opened the program by saying (apparently in all earnestness): “Everybody is asking... what do the Taliban want?” He went on, “What can we do to make you the Taliban feel less threatened?”
A 13-YEAR-OLD, STONED TO DEATH FOR BEING RAPED
(First published by myself on NRO on Saturday Nov. 1)
She was 13. She was gang raped. And her punishment for this “adultery” was to be stoned to death last week on the orders of an Islamic court in Somalia by dozens of men in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators.
But why does MSNBC call the perpetrators “militants” rather than murderers?
And why is this story on several prominent websites today, including Fox News, but it is nowhere to be found today on The New York Times’s website? Is The New York Times really “The paper of record” that it claims to be?
The murdered girl’s name was Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. Let us try to remember it.
CAIRO PROTEST OVER REPEATED SAUDI WHIPPING OF DOCTOR
In a rare public protest, a group of demonstrators in Cairo last Tuesday called for the release of an Egyptian doctor sentenced by a court in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in jail and 1,500 lashes. The lashes, due to be carried out in stages over a considerable period of time, are almost impossible for any human being to bear, and several fellow doctors said it would be difficult for the condemned doctor, Raouf Amin, to survive.
The head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights handed a petition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asking him to intervene in Amin’s case.
A Saudi judge said Amin was responsible for a Saudi princess becoming a drug addict while under his medical supervision. Amin’s son told The Egyptian Daily News that the woman was already addicted to painkillers before he began treating her. When Amin appealed against his sentence, it was doubled to its current level. Some of his relatives in Egypt have suffered a breakdown at the thought of his having to endure such a punishment.
SAUDI OFFICIAL: OK TO KILL OWNERS OF “IMMORAL TV”
I don’t think we’ll be seeing “MTV Saudi Arabia” anytime soon.
MSNBC reports that Saudi Arabia’s top judiciary official has issued a religious decree ruling it permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast “immoral content.” The 79-year-old Sheikh Saleh al-Lihedan said that satellite channels had led to “deviance in thousands of people.”
Many of the most popular Arab satellite networks – which include channels showing music videos – are owned by Saudi princes and well-connected Saudi businessmen. Al-Lihedan did not specify any particular channels.
Al-Lihedan is chief of the kingdom’s highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council.
FAYAD FAILS TO MENTION JUDAISM AMONG FAITHS DEVOTED TO JERUSALEM
“Jerusalem is holy to two religions, Islam and Christianity,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad told the UN-organized interfaith peace conference last Wednesday night. (Fayad is regularly described as a “moderate” and “pragmatist” in western media.)
Israel has complained that Fayad failed to mention the importance of Israel’s capital to Judaism, the only religion for which Jerusalem is the most important city.
The forum had earlier been addressed by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
***
HAMAS FIRES HEAVIER ROCKETS AT ISRAEL
Meanwhile, rockets continue to rain down on southern Israel. Several Israelis were injured, including children and an 80-year-old woman. The rockets fired included several advanced Grad-type missiles. During the “ceasefire” Hamas has been able to smuggle in or manufacture greater range rockets. For the first time yesterday residents of Ashdod, which lies south of Tel Aviv, held “Code Red” drills in city schools.
On Sunday, after an intelligence operation, a member of the Tanzim unit of the “moderate” Fatah movement was arrested at a warehouse in Nablus where he was manufacturing explosive belts for use in suicide attacks.
BAGHDAD’S JEWS ON EDGE OF EXTINCTION
There are only eight Jews left in Baghdad, reports the Reuters news agency from Iraq.
It is unusual for international news agencies to write about the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries.
In its piece, Reuters notes that Iraq’s Jewish community dates from biblical times. According to Charles Tripp’s History of Iraq, the country was home to 117,000 Jews in 1947. Under Ottoman rule, and well into the first half of the 20th century, Jews made up 20 percent of the population of Baghdad.
“Speaking in fluent English, an ex-accountant who was interviewed – one of Baghdad’s last Jews – launches into a description of the Baghdad of his youth, one of the Muslim world’s most cosmopolitan cities. He recites the names of legendary social clubs where Jews, Christians and Muslims mingled in better days, with music and whisky and parties that ran through the night,” reports Reuters.
OXFORD STUDENTS IN “DRESS LIKE A GREEDY JEW” PARTY ROW
Oxford University has launched an investigation after students allegedly held a party at which they were told to arrive dressed as Orthodox Jews carrying bags of money.
The party, held last Wednesday, has been condemned by the Jewish community as “blatantly anti-Semitic,” according to The Guardian’s education supplement.
A spokesman for the Union of Jewish Students in the UK said: “The actions of a few students have caused real offence. We are appalled that in 2008 old myths and anti-Semitic stereotypes are still appearing among supposedly educated students.”
Some Jewish students at Oxford say they were feeling “isolated and vulnerable”.
“Other students wouldn’t dare stereotype Black or Muslim students in this way,” said one.
Oxford University issued a statement saying “the university unreservedly condemns racial stereotyping.”
CHRISTMAS IS SCRAPPED IN OXFORD
Council leaders in Oxford have decided to ban the word Christmas from this year’s festive celebrations to make them more “inclusive”. But its decision to rename the series of Christmas events the “Winter Light Festival” has been criticized even by non-Christian religious leaders.
Sabir Hussain Mirza, chairman of the Muslim Council of Oxford, told The Observer newspaper: “This is the one occasion which everyone looks forward to in the year. Christians, Muslims and other religions all look forward to Christmas. I’m angry and very, very disappointed. Christmas is special and we shouldn’t ignore it.”
Rabbi Eli Bracknell, of Oxford, said: “It’s important to maintain a traditional British Christmas. Anything that waters down traditional culture and Christianity in the UK is not positive for the British identity.”
One dissenting council member said: “There’s going to be a Christmas tree, and even if the lights are called something else, to me they will be Christmas lights.”
UC BERKELEY: PRO-ISRAEL STUDENTS CALLED “NAZIS” AND “DOGS,” ASSAULTED ON CAMPUS
A group of pro-Palestinian students disrupted an Israeli hip-hop concert at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on Thursday night.
Students attending the concert were assaulted. One concertgoer suffered concussion after receiving blows to the back of his head.
Police were called in and arrested the leader of the anti-Israel group, Husam Zakharia, and other members of his group, charging them with battery.
According to press reports, the anti-Israel students shouted curses throughout the incident, calling the pro-Israel students “Nazis” and “dogs,” and threatening to kill them.
Jewish organizations have requested that the University of California “take a unified stand against the continued harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.”
LONDON UNIVERSITY EVENT LIKENS GAZA TO WARSAW GHETTO
An event titled “From the Warsaw Ghetto to the Gaza Ghetto” took place last Wednesday at Goldsmith’s College at the University of London. Goldsmith’s was recently “twinned” with Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
Among the speakers at the event was Suzanne Weiss, a member of the Toronto-based group “Jews against Zionism” that encourages boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Weiss claimed that Israel “uses many of the methods of Nazism to oppress the Palestinians.” Weiss was joined by Palestinian academic Ghada Ageel, a virulently anti-Israeli politics lecturer at Exeter University, who is often a guest “expert” on the BBC.
In case anyone needs reminding (as some London university students obviously do) the ghetto in the Polish capital, established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over 400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30 percent of the population of Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by the end of May 1943.
A MENTALLY IMPAIRED YOUNG BRITISH MAN GROOMED INTO BECOMING A SUICIDE BOMBER
A mentally impaired Muslim convert, Nicky Reilly, has pleaded guilty to attempted murder and preparing to commit acts of terrorism. The young man was groomed on the internet by Muslim extremists, who encouraged him to carry out a suicide bomb attack at a busy restaurant in Exeter in southwest England.
According to his family, Nicky had been “radicalized” and “brainwashed” by two men who claimed to be linked with Al-Qaeda. Reilly’s plan failed when one of the homemade bombs exploded in his hands as he assembled them in a toilet cubicle.
ISRAEL’S “LOST TRIBE OF OBAMA” CELEBRATES BY SLAUGHTERING GOATS
(First published by myself on NRO on Nov. 13)
8,000 Bedouin Arabs in northern Israel are the latest to stake their claim to be “the lost tribe of Obama.” A sheikh in the Galilee says he has evidence that he and his family are “linked by blood” to the new President.
“We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to mention it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” said Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member in the small Bedouin village of Bir al-Maksour.
Following Obama’s election victory, Sheikh Abdullah handed out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to everyone in the area, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.
It is true that many African migrant workers were brought to the Galilee by rich Arab sheikhs in the 1930s. One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains.
“The sheikhs from all the villages are talking about it. There’s a whole delegation of Druze leaders coming from the Golan Heights to congratulate us,” he said.
POLL: ONLY 19% OF AMERICANS SAY ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE SHOULD TOP OBAMA’S PRIORITIES
Ha’aretz reports that only 6 percent of Americans think the U.S. should favor the Palestinians in Middle East peace talks, according to a new poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
66 percent of those polled on Nov. 4 said the U.S. should support Israel in the peace process. (80 percent of Republican voters and 59 percent of Democrats took this position.)
Only 19 percent thought “making peace between Israel and the Palestinians” should be among President-elect Barack Obama’s top foreign policy priorities.
Almost two-thirds of Americans said they were more concerned about the nuclear standoff with Iran; some 72 percent of those polled agreed with the statement that “even with all the problems that America faces at home now, we must still work hard to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”
SONG OF THE DAY
In an effort to counterbalance some of the often highly depressing stories posted in these dispatches, I occasionally try and attach some light items too.
Here is Louis Armstrong singing the classic “Dream a little dream of me.”
For me, Louis Armstrong was one of the greatest American artists – in any of the arts – of the twentieth century. He was also something which great artists aren’t very often, a wonderfully warm and attractive personality.
* Bomber of Paris synagogue in 1980 found teaching at Canadian university
* Australia switches position to vote twice against Israel at the UN, ending the previous (Howard) government’s alignment with the U.S. and Israel
* Swedish civil servant unlawfully demoted for defending Israel
CONTENTS
1. Academics who bomb
2. Lawyers who hate
3. Diplomats who switch
4. Civil servants who are “persecuted”
5. Hypocrites that occupy
6. “Ottawa university instructor arrested in 1980 blast at Paris synagogue” (The Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 13, 2008)
7. “UN vote: Rudd breaks with Howard on Israel” (Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 10, 2008)
8. “Egyptian lawyer: Arab men should sexually harass Israeli women and says: leave the land so we won’t rape you” (Al-Arabiya TV, Oct. 31, 2008)
9. “Swedish court: Civil servant unlawfully demoted for pro-Israel views” (Ha’aretz, Nov. 11, 2008)
10. “Britain’s occupied territories” (By Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 11, 2008)
ACADEMICS WHO BOMB
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach five articles below, involving Canada, Australia, Sweden, Britain and Egypt. There are brief summaries first for those who don’t have time to read them in full.
In the first article, The Ottawa Citizen reports that an Ottawa university professor has been arrested for the infamous terrorist bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four people and injured scores of others. Hassan Diab, 54, was arrested on Thursday in a posh suburb of the Canadian capital, Ottawa, as he was getting dressed to go to work.
Following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, and a new climate in French politics which is less supportive of terrorism against Jews, the French authorities finally issued an international arrest warrant against Diab. It is the first such international warrant for terrorism ever executed in Canada.
The Oct. 3, 1980, bombing of central Paris’ Copernic Road Synagogue was triggered by high explosives planted in a parked motorcycle outside the building. The blast killed three French Jews and a young Israeli woman. Hundreds of worshippers gathered inside the synagogue for a Sabbath service were spared the full force of the blast, though many were injured, as were many bystanders. A Palestinian group claimed responsibility.
Diab teaches sociology and anthropology at the University of Ottawa, and also teaches part-time at Carleton University.
* Updating The Ottawa Citizen article, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported that Diab appeared before the Ontario Superior Court on Friday, where Justice Michel Charbonneau ordered a publication ban on further details of the case at the request of federal lawyers. The trial is scheduled to start in February. He faces multiple murder charges.
LAWYERS WHO HATE
The second item below is a transcript of an interview which Egyptian lawyer Nagla Al-Imam gave to Al-Arabiya TV on October 31, 2008. He urges young Arab men to sexually harass Israeli girls “wherever they may be” as a new means of “resistance.”
Nagla Al-Imam said: “This is a form of resistance. In my opinion, they are fair game for all Arabs, and there is nothing wrong with it.”
“[The message of this sexual harassment is] leave the land so we won’t rape you.”
DIPLOMATS WHO SWITCH
In the third article below, The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australia has switched its position to vote against Israel on two resolutions at the United Nations, ending the previous Howard government’s alignment with the United States and raising concern from the Jewish community.
“The move also signals to the incoming Obama administration that the Rudd government plans to take a different approach to the Howard government on the international stage,” writes the paper.
The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said he was concerned over the government’s switch. “We are concerned that the vote has changed, we do not understand the basis for the change,” he said.
Australia was the only major country in the world that joined the U.S. in recent years in supporting Israel.
The Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Micronesia continue to vote alongside Israel at the UN, saying their historic commitment to the Jewish people will not change.
CIVIL SERVANTS WHO ARE “PERSECUTED”
In the fourth article, Ha’aretz reports that a Swedish court has ruled that a civil servant was unlawfully demoted for pro-Israel views.
The court ruled in favor of a government employee (Lennart Eriksson, 51) who sued his employers for demoting him because he expressed support for Israel and the U.S. on a private blog.
Eriksson said that he had been demoted in September last year from the position of manager of an asylum assessment unit – which he had held for six years – to manager of one of the board’s shelters, after he condemned Hamas terrorism against Israelis. Eriksson, who is not Jewish, told the court he had been “politically persecuted” by his government employer.
During the case, the head of the Migration Board called Hamas a “liberation movement” and its former head, Sheikh Yassin, a “freedom-fighter.”
The court ordered the government agency to pay Eriksson the equivalent of $30,000 in damages and legal expenses.
Swedish Christian Democrat MP Annelie Enochson pressed her foreign minister, Carl Bildt, about the matter, but Bildt refused to comment.
HYPOCRITES THAT OCCUPY
In the final article below, Jerusalem Post columnist Michael Freund points to British hypocrisy in its new measures to “impose an economic choke hold on the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria” (measurers which Ha’aretz’s edition this weekend also expressed concerns about).
On November 3, The Independent newspaper reported that London is pressing all 27 European Union member states to clamp down on imports produced by Jews living beyond Israel’s 1967 borders. “While Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are busy firing rockets into the Negev, the British government is more concerned about tomatoes being grown in the West Bank,” writes Freund
Freund points out that Britain has “occupied territories” throughout the world that the local populations or other countries would like back.
“From Europe to South America to the Middle East to the South Pole, there is hardly a corner of the world in which Britain isn’t involved in some territorial dispute or another as it obstinately clings to control over disparate chunks of terrain.”
Among the examples Freund gives are:
* The Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which Britain fought a brief war over in 1982 (which left 900 dead)
* The Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean (which both Mauritius and the Seychelles claim, and from which Britain forcibly expelled all the inhabitants between 1965 and 1971 to make way for a military base and until now deny the Chagossians their “right of return”)
* Parts of the polar icecaps of Antarctica that Britain has “occupied” to the fury of Chile
* The Cypriot territories of Akrotiri and Dhekelia which Britain has kept as sovereign military bases (Cyprus’ new president vowed earlier this year to remove the British “colonial bloodstain” from his country)
* Gibraltar further across the Mediterranean, which Spain wants back. And so on.
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
OTTAWA UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTOR ARRESTED IN 1980 BLAST AT PARIS SYNAGOGUE
Ottawa university instructor arrested in 1980 blast at Paris synagogue
The Ottawa Citizen
November 13, 2008
An Ottawa university instructor has been arrested for the infamous terrorist bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four people, injured scores of others and put synagogues around the world on a tough new security footing. Hassan Diab, 54, was arrested by the RCMP at Gatineau residence Thursday morning as he was getting dressed, and placed in custody at the RCMP’s A division on McArthur Road, said his lawyer, René Duval. He is to appear in an Ottawa court on Friday.
The RCMP would not confirm the identity of the person they arrested, but a justice department official confirmed it to be Mr. Diab.
Two French judges reportedly issued an international arrest warrant against Mr. Diab earlier this month, believed to be the first such international warrant for terrorism ever executed in Canada.
The Oct. 3, 1980, bombing of central Paris’ Copernic Road synagogue was triggered by high explosives planted in the saddlebags of a parked motorcycle outside the building. The blast killed three Frenchmen and a young Israeli woman. Hundreds of worshippers gathered inside the synagogue for a Sabbath service were to emerge minutes later. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations was blamed.
As one of the first contemporary terrorist strikes on a synagogue outside the Middle East, the blast trigged the fortification of Jewish community sites across Europe and North America.
France’s Le Figaro newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, reported last fall that French authorities suspect Mr. Diab was the leader of the small commando team responsible for the attack and had asked Canada for assistance with their investigation.
The French magazine L’Express reported on Thursday that a team of French police, magistrates and intelligence officers had been in Canada working on the case and would try to arrange Mr. Diab’s extradition to France. The French arrest warrant executed on Thursday accuses him of making and planting the bomb, according to the Reuters news agency.
Soon after details of the French authorities’ interest in him were reported in October of last year, Mr. Diab issued a statement to the Citizen through his lawyer, stating he had no involvement in the bombing, no criminal record and was never a member of the Palestinian group or known anyone associated with the group. Nor, he said, has he been active with any other militant organizations.
Though he visited a cousin in Paris roughly a year or two after the explosion, he only learned of the bombing when a Le Figaro reporter approached him last fall at the University of Ottawa, where he is a part-time sociology and anthropology instructor teaching one bachelor of arts-level class.
Married with two grown children from a previous marriage, his lawyer said he also teaches part-time at Carleton University, where the Citizen unsuccessfully attempted to interview him last November following one of his classes.
EGYPTIAN LAWYER SUGGESTS ARAB MEN SHOULD SEXUALLY HARASS ISRAELI WOMEN AND SAYS: LEAVE THE LAND SO WE WON’T RAPE YOU
The following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian lawyer Nagla Al-Imam, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on October 31, 2008. (Translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI))
Interviewer: Egyptian lawyer Nagla Al-Imam has proposed that young Arab men should sexually harass Israeli girls wherever they may be and using any possible method, as a new means in the resistance against Israel.
Interviewer: We have with us the lawyer Nagla Al-Imam from Cairo. Welcome. What is the purpose of this proposal of yours?
Nagla Al-Imam: This is a form of resistance. In my opinion, they are fair game for all Arabs, and there is nothing wrong with...
Interviewer: On what grounds?
Nagla Al-Imam: First of all, they violate our rights, and they “rape” the land. Few things are as grave as the rape of land. In my view, this is a new form of resistance.
Interviewer: As a lawyer, don’t you think this might expose Arab youth to punishment for violating laws against sexual harassment?
Nagla Al-Imam: Most Arab countries... With the exception of three or four Arab countries, which I don’t think allow Israeli women to enter anyway, most Arab countries do not have sexual harassment laws. Therefore, if [Arab women] are fair game for Arab men, there is nothing wrong with Israeli women being fair game as well.
Interviewer: Does this also include rape?
Nagla Al-Imam: No. Sexual harassment... In my view, the [Israeli women] do not have any right to respond. The resistance fighters would not initiate such a thing, because their moral values are much loftier than that. However if such a thing did happen to them, the [Israeli women] have no right to make any demands, because this would put us on equal terms – leave the land so we won’t rape you. These two things are equal.
I don’t want young Arab men to be interrogated. I want these Zionist girls with Israeli citizenship to be expelled from our Arab countries. This is a form of resistance, and a way of rejecting their presence.
AUSTRALIA SWITCHES POSITION TO VOTE AGAINST ISRAEL AT THE UN
UN vote: Rudd breaks with Howard on Israel
By Phillip Hudson
Sydney Morning Herald
November 10, 2008
www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/09/1226165386581.html
AUSTRALIA has switched its position to vote against Israel on two resolutions at the United Nations, ending the Howard government’s unswerving alignment with the United States and raising concern from the Jewish community.
The move also signals to the incoming Obama administration that the Rudd Government plans to take a different approach to the Howard government on the international stage.
In the weekend vote in New York, Australia supported a resolution calling on Israel to stop establishing settlements in the Palestinian territories and a resolution calling for the Geneva Conventions to apply in the Palestinian territories.
The resolutions on the Middle East peace process are held annually and the Howard government had backed both from 1996 to 2002 but in 2003 began to vote against or abstain. It was a move that aligned Australia with only the US, Israel, the US Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau and Micronesia and put the country at odds with Britain, Canada, New Zealand and France.
Australian officials told the UN the Government had changed its position because it supported a two-state resolution of the conflict to deliver a secure Israel living beside a viable Palestinian state and that Australia believed both sides should abide by their obligations under the Road Map for Peace.
Australia said it was concerned activity in the disputed settlements undermined confidence in the negotiations. It was among 161 countries that supported both resolutions, with two abstaining and six against.
The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Robert Goot, last night was concerned over the Government’s switch. “We are concerned that the vote has changed, we do not understand the basis for the change,” he said.
The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, last night said there had been no change to Australia’s policy on the Middle East. He said he had met the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, in Jerusalem two weeks ago and told them Australia was a strong supporter of Israel and the Middle East peace process.
“Australia’s friendship with Israel is longstanding and enduring and we understand completely Israel’s legitimate security concerns,” he said.
“As a staunch and longstanding friend of Israel, we want its people to be able to enjoy the fruits of a normal, peaceful existence, within a Middle East that recognizes Israel’s right to live within secure and internationally recognized boundaries. That is an approach that has strong bipartisan support in Australia and it’s an approach that will continue.”
The Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Helen Coonan, called on Mr Smith to explain why Australia changed its vote. “The change in emphasis is concerning unless it can be better explained as giving effect to a bipartisan and balanced approach,” she said.
Australia maintained its vote on seven other UN resolutions relating to Israel, in particular opposing a resolution criticizing Israel on Palestinian human rights. Australia said it believed the resolution was too one-sided against Israel and failed to take account of Israel’s legitimate security concerns or reflect the responsibility of Palestinians to end attacks against Israel. Australia was one of eight countries, including Canada, to vote against this resolution that was supported by 87 countries with 70 abstaining.
Last month Australia announced new sanctions on Israel’s rival Iran but backed down on a pledge to force the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, before an international court on charges of inciting genocide.
SWEDISH CIVIL SERVANT UNLAWFULLY DEMOTED FOR DEFENDING ISRAEL
Swedish court: Civil servant unlawfully demoted for pro-Israel views
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Ha’aretz
November 11, 2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1036367.html
A Swedish court ruled on Tuesday in favor of a government employee who sued his employers for demoting him because he expressed support for Israel and the U.S. on a private blog. During the trial, the defender caused a local upset by calling Hamas a “liberation movement.”
Lennart Eriksson, 51, told Ha’aretz by phone that his boss, Eugene Palmer, had demoted him in September 2007 from the position of manager of an asylum assessment unit – which he had held for six years – to manager of one of the board’s shelters. Eriksson, who is not Jewish, said he viewed this as political persecution.
According to the verdict delivered by the Molndal District Court, the demotion was an illegal and discriminatory attempt to unjustly dismiss Eriksson. The court ordered the Board to pay Eriksson the equivalent of roughly $30,000 in damages and legal expenses.
According to Eriksson, Palmer told him he had seen Eriksson’s Web site and that Eriksson’s views were both “unusual and controversial.” Palmer told him he was being demoted because of the Web site, and that running it was inappropriate for a senior Board official.
“I will continue to work at the Migration Board,” Eriksson told Ha’aretz following the verdict. He added that he has received congratulation calls and emails from about a dozen of his coworkers at the board.
Swedish media has so far expressed a partial interest in the case. Eriksson has been interviewed for a few local papers, but no national circulation medium has shown interest in the verdict.
At the final hearing last month, Staffan Opitz, representing the Migration Board, said Hamas should be considered a ‘liberation movement,” adding that its slain spiritual leader, Sheikh Yassin, was a “Palestinian freedom-fighter,” according to Eriksson and witnesses present at the courthouse.
Christian Democrat MP Annelie Enochson has subsequently queried her foreign minister, Carl Bildt, about the matter, noting that the “statements made by a government representative” conflict with Sweden’s official position, which views Hamas a terror organization.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry has not replied to the query so far. Its Tel Aviv embassy declined to comment on this issue when contacted by Ha’aretz.
“Unfortunately, this case is probably not indicative of any change in the prevalent attitudes in government toward Israel or the conservative school of thought,” said Ilya Mayer, vice chair of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Society, who launched a public campaign to raise awareness to Eriksson’s case. “It’s merely a case of arrogance and abysmal performance on the part of the defense.”
BRITAIN’S OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Britain’s occupied territories
By Michael Freund
The Jerusalem Post
November 11, 2008
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404702016&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Even as its armed forces are valiantly prosecuting the war on terror overseas, Britain’s diplomats at home are doing their utmost to ensure that this will not be remembered as their country’s finest hour.
In a baffling turn of events, the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown has quietly begun turning up the political heat on Israel in recent weeks, seeking to impose an economic choke hold on the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria.
On November 3, the UK Independent newspaper reported that London is pressing the European Union to clamp down on imports produced by Jews living beyond Israel’s 1967 borders. In a circular distributed to all 27 EU member states, the British Foreign Office grumbled that “there has been an acceleration in settlement construction,” and it urged Europe “to look at how UK and Community policies can avoid inadvertently supporting or encouraging settlement activity.”
Israeli officials are said to be concerned that this may be the first step in a British campaign to bring about a total boycott of Jewish goods from Judea and Samaria.
And so, while Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are busy firing rockets into the Negev, the British government is more concerned about Israeli tomatoes being grown in the West Bank.
This latest British intrusion into Israel’s internal affairs will likely get an additional boost next week, when Foreign Secretary David Miliband visits here and reportedly plans to raise the issue of settlement construction in Judea and Samaria with his hosts.
WELL, IF the Brits want to have an open and frank discussion about “occupied territories,” I say bring it on. A good place to start would be with Britain’s own “occupied territories,” which are far more extensive and widespread than anything it accuses Israel of possessing.
Indeed, from Europe to South America to the Middle East to the South Pole, there is hardly a corner of the world in which Britain isn’t involved in some territorial dispute or another as it obstinately clings to control over disparate chunks of terrain.
The most famous of these, of course, are the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which are claimed by Argentina. Although the islands are of little economic value and are home to more penguins than people, Britain fought a brief war with Argentina over them in 1982 which left 900 dead. And just last week, the British sparked a diplomatic row with Buenos Aires by issuing a new constitution for the Falklands, which it said is intended “to protect UK interests.”
This prompted Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taina to call a press conference at which he denounced the British for attempting to perpetuate “an anachronistic colonial situation.”
AND THEY call us stubborn occupiers? Half way around the world lies another fine example of British hypocrisy – the Chagos Archipelago, which London refers to as the British Indian Ocean Territory. Both Mauritius and the Seychelles have strong claims to it as their own, but that didn’t stop Britain from forcibly expelling all the inhabitants between 1965 and 1971 to make way for a military base it wanted to lease to the US.
And though the Chagossians, as they are known, have repeatedly won court cases against the British government demanding their “right of return,” the Brits will have none of it, and have largely left the islands’ former residents to fend for themselves in exile.
As prominent British columnist Matthew Parris put it in the Times of London last week: “The saga is a stinking disgrace, a slur on Britain’s good name.” Nonetheless, her majesty’s government simply refuses to let go.
Thousands of miles to the south, even the polar icecaps of Antarctica have not escaped London’s lust for land. Britain has staked a claim to a whopping 1.7 million square kilometers of the South Pole’s frozen terrain, part of which overlaps with territories claimed by Chile and Argentina.
But the fact that it is stepping on other nations’ toes, and ignoring their rightful claims, does not seem to trouble Britain’s Foreign Office one bit.
Back here in the Middle East, our neighbors in Cyprus continue to suffer from some good old-fashioned British colonial covetousness. While efforts are under way to reunite the Greek and Turkish controlled parts of the isle, Britain doggedly continues to cling to 254 sq. km. of Cypriot territory in the form of the Akrotiri and Dhekelia sovereign military bases. This has sparked the ire of Cyprus’ new president, who vowed earlier this year to remove the British “colonial bloodstain” from his country.
WHILE WE are on the subject of British colonialism, need we mention the territory of Gibraltar, which Spain wants back? And what about Northern Ireland? So before Britain decides to preach to Israel about the issue of “occupied territories,” it would do well to put its own house in order.
Put in perspective, it is clear that all of London’s harrumphing about Israel’s “occupied territories” is just a lot of duplicitous hot air.
By contrast, Judea and Samaria are the ancient heartland of the Jewish people, the cradle of our civilization, and Israel has every right – morally, historically, theologically and militarily – to be there.
The same can hardly be said for Britain’s dubious claims to various specks of land at other nations’ expense. As Winston Churchill once famously pointed out: “The English never draw a line without blurring it.” And nowhere is that line presently more blurred than when it comes to London’s barefaced hypocrisy on the subject of “occupation.”
* No doubt they will be saying Barack Obama is a Mossad agent next
* Massive Hamas rocket fire at Israel “celebrates Obama victory”
* Did Obama lie about firing anti-Israel advisor Robert Malley?
* Hamas in Al-Hayat today: We are in touch with Obama’s aides
* Ha’aretz: Netanyahu and Obama have “good personal chemistry”
* Olmert: “Bush’s name will be etched in gold letters in the annals of the State of Israel”
* Olmert: Behind the scenes, in matters I cannot make public, Bush did more than you will ever know to help Israel
(Some of this dispatch – on the mixed reactions in the Middle East to Barack Obama’s election victory – was written last week, but I was unable to post it until now for health reasons.)
EXTRA NOTE: The Associated Press today reported that next week the IAEA will confirm that they have found traces of uranium at the suspected Syrian nuclear site bombed last year by Israel.
CONTENTS
1. Rahm Emanuel’s Israeli connections
2. “It was like something out of The Godfather”
3. To the White House and back, via the West Wing
4. Mixed feelings in Israel about appointment of Rahm Emanuel
5. Yitzhak Rabin aide: “To be honest, Obama doesn’t make us sleep well at night”
6. Commentator on al-Jazeera: “Rahm Emmanuel is an officer in the Israeli Mossad”
7. Jewish far left shocked by appointment of Emanuel
8. Arab media: “The U.S. Democrat Party is like a snake that kills you slowly”
9. Ahmadinejad congratulates Obama, urges “real change”
10. That vast Jewish rightwing conspiracy
11. Peres: “Nobody should look at whose side Obama is on. He just has to be on the side of peace”
12. Tzipi Livni warns of discord with Obama over Iran
13. Ehud Barak on Iran: All options open, whatever U.S. policy
14. Obama appears to toughen his Iran stance
15. Ha’aretz: fears that Obama will force Israel to give up its own nuclear option
16. Sadness in Israel that bush is leaving office
17. Olmert heads to D.C. to ask for last favors from Bush
18. Israeli politicians and newspapers heap praise on Bush
19. Bush was also “the father of the Palestinian state”
20. Massive Hamas rocket fire at Israel “celebrates Obama victory”
21. Hamas: we are in touch with Obama’s aides
22. Did Obama lie about firing anti-Israel advisor Malley?
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
RAHM EMANUEL’S ISRAELI CONNECTIONS
The first prominent appointment announced by Barack Obama since winning the U.S. presidential election last week was that Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel will be his White House chief of staff.
The chief of staff is one of the closest advisers to the president. He usually decides who gains access to him, and helps develop administration policies. Former chief of staffs who have gone on to higher postings include Dick Cheney (chief of staff to Gerald Ford from 1975-77) and James Baker (who was Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff from 1981-85).
Emanuel, 48, is the Chicago-born son of former Israelis. He grew up speaking Hebrew with his father Benjamin, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Jewish underground in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s.
The Emanuel family were originally called the Auerbachs, but after their uncle Emanuel was killed by Arab terrorists in Jerusalem in 1933, the family adopted his first name as their surname.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Rahm Emanuel went to Israel to serve as a civilian volunteer. He has not “served in the Israeli army,” as some British and other news reports have stated.
Emanuel was a senior advisor to Bill Clinton during his term in the White House and was first elected to Congress in 2002.
A devout Jew, he reportedly obtained a special waiver from his rabbi in order to work through the holiday of Rosh Hashanah during the $800 billion Wall Street bailout last month.
“IT WAS LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF THE GODFATHER”
Many Republicans and some Democrats have questioned why Obama’s first key appointment was a Washington insider and fiercely partisan “take-no-prisoners” Democrat. “Obama’s first decision as President-elect undermines his promise to ‘heal the divides’,” said the Republican National Committee spokesman.
Emanuel has a reputation for being a master strategist but also a highly partisan fighter in the rough world of Washington politics.
Nicknamed “Rahmbo,” he is known for his fierce temper and for using language that might have made Richard Nixon blush.
At the height of the Monica Lewinsky affair, he told British Prime Minister Tony Blair before a joint public appearance with Bill Clinton: “This is important. Don’t f*** it up.”
He sent a dead fish to a pollster and attacked a dining table with a steak knife while cursing the names of Democrats he accused of being disloyal to Clinton. “When he was done the table looked like a lunar landscape,” a witness said. “It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you.”
As one blogger put it, Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff is “Change you can f****** believe in.”
(Here is Obama speaking about Rahm Emanuel in a joking way in 2005.)
TO THE WHITE HOUSE AND BACK, VIA THE WEST WING
Life seems to be imitating art. Emanuel was the model for the fictional character Josh Lyman in the award-winning series The West Wing.
This was a result of the fact that “Josh” was created by Aaron Sorkin and played by Bradley Whitford, both of whom are clients of the Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, Rahm’s brother.
Like Josh, Rahm Emanuel worked on a president’s first victorious campaign. After his win in 1992, Bill Clinton said, “I doubt we could have won without Rahm Emanuel.”
As President Clinton’s political director, Emanuel’s style upset a lot of people and he made mistakes that led to his being demoted on the orders of Hillary Clinton. But he stayed on in the Clinton White House and clawed his way back into favor.
Josh Lyman, too, lost some power and influence after making a mistake early on. He, too, recovered. In the plot line in the final series of The West Wing, Josh leaves the White House to run the presidential campaign of a long-shot ethnic-minority candidate who triumphs and makes him his chief of staff.
Rahm’s brother, Ari, whose other Hollywood clients include Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat), Mark Wahlberg and Larry David, also has a character modeled after him in a TV series: “Ari Gold” in the series Entourage.
MIXED FEELINGS IN ISRAEL ABOUT APPOINTMENT OF RAHM EMANUEL
There is some trepidation in Israel about Rahm Emanuel.
Israeli officials note that some of the toughest officials towards Israel in the Clinton White House were American Jews (or Americans of Jewish origin) who bent over backwards to prove that they did not suffer from “dual loyalty”.
While Rahm Emanuel does not appear to be anti-Israel, he was one of a group of left-leaning Israeli and American Jews who kept pushing the Oslo “peace process” forward in the 1990s, forcing the Israeli government to make more and more concessions regardless of the fact that Yasser Arafat was flouting the agreements he had already signed by stockpiling enormous quantities of weapons in Gaza and the West Bank and educating an entire generation of Palestinian schoolchildren on the virtues of suicide bombing. This helped lead to the bloody intifada that broke out in the last year of Clinton’s presidency and resulted in thousands of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.
“THE ISRAELI NEGOTIATING TEAM WAS WARY OF EMANUEL”
Israeli diplomats recount that during the negotiations over the Wye accords in 1998, the Israeli team headed by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was especially wary of one of Bill Clinton’s aides: Rahm Emanuel. “His fluent Hebrew, his instinctive grasp of the ‘Israeli’ mindset and his complete loyalty to his president made the Israelis afraid to talk when he was nearby.”
“He has a kind of directness and coarseness that is very familiar to Israelis,” a senior Israeli diplomat told Ha’aretz. “But it doesn’t necessarily bring him closer to us. One thing is certain – Israelis will not be able to pull the wool over his eyes.”
“HE WILL NOT HAVE MUCH PATIENCE WITH ISRAELI EXCUSE-MAKING”
Israelis are now concerned that Emanuel will use his legendary toughness to pressure them into making another round of concessions without first ensuring Palestinian leaders are committed to peace which could once again lead to an outbreak of severe Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Emanuel’s friend Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, said: “Rahm, precisely because he’s a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, Rahm will call out such nonsense and it will be very hard for Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew.”
YITZHAK RABIN AIDE: “TO BE HONEST, OBAMA DOESN’T MAKE US SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT”
There is also considerable anxiety in Israel about Obama across the political spectrum.
* “To be honest, Obama doesn’t make us sleep well at night,” Eitan Haber, who was a senior aide and negotiator for former center-left Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, wrote in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper last month, in an editorial titled “Obama’s victory could signal bad times for Israel.”
* In another editorial last week, Yediot Ahronot wrote “The decisive majority of Israelis held their fingers for the Republican candidate, John McCain and are now wondering, ‘Is Obama good for the Jews?’ Let us hope he will not substantially change the traditional line of friendship and a special relationship between Israel and the U.S.”
* A comment piece in Yisrael Hayom said: “Over the years, Israel has found it easier to deal with two types of presidents: The emotional; and those with a deep understanding of foreign affairs. Obama is neither. He has neither Clinton’s emotionalism nor Bush and Nixon’s understanding of foreign affairs. From Israel’s perspective, he more resembles President Carter.”
“THE DEMOCRATS ARE MUCH MORE REALISTIC TODAY ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS THAN THEY WERE IN THE PAST”
However, the paper does not think that the Obama administration will pressure Israel because “It will be preoccupied, at least initially, with domestic issues. Also, in recent years, the Democrats have realized that the Palestinian side lacks the necessary infrastructure to live up to what they promise. The Democrats are much more realistic today than they were in the past and this fact is likely to be to Israel’s benefit in the end.”
* By contrast, another Israeli commentator told Bloomberg news: “We know that there will be tremendous pressure on the Israeli government. We know that Obama is bringing back the old team from the Clinton administration that pushes Israel to make stupid mistakes and we hope they will not repeat their mistakes once again.”
* Ben Dror Yemini, lead commentator for Ma’ariv, said: “While some are acting as though the messiah has arrived, they are ignoring how problematic this choice of president is, in many respects.”
“OBAMA GOOD FOR ISRAEL IF HE CAN RESTORE AMERICA’S POWER”
* But Ron Ben-Yishai, writing on Ynet, said: “If Obama will be good for America, Israel will benefit as well. What is truly important to Israel’s security are the economic power and military-strategic determination that America conveys, as well as its position as a superpower on the global stage, as Israel benefits from an American deterrence umbrella.
“As America’s status as a global power is mostly affected by its economic and technological power, the next president’s ability to address the financial crisis in the U.S. is of critical importance for Israel too.
“The next president will be good for Israel should he be able to restore his country’s economic and diplomatic power, extract its army from the Iraqi quagmire, and leverage his election victory in order to unite the American people behind his policies.”
BIBI AND OBAMA HAVE “GOOD PERSONAL CHEMISTRY”
* Ha’aretz reports that Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed good personal chemistry with Obama during their meetings, more so than Tzipi Livni did with Obama.
COMMENTATOR ON AL-JAZEERA: “RAHM EMMANUEL IS AN OFFICER IN THE ISRAELI MOSSAD”
Many Arab and European critics automatically assume that Rahm Emanuel must be “fiercely pro-Israel.”
“With the appointment of this Zionist, Barack Obama is proving that he is more Zionist than the Zionists,” said Subhi Abu Ishira on the Palestinian NGO network.
The “Window into Palestine” blog called Rahm Emanuel “the son of a terrorist, a real living terrorist.”
Hassan Hamadah, a Lebanese journalist and commentator, told al-Jazeera TV: “A few hours ago, there was an announcement about the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as the chief of staff of the White House, which is, in fact, the prime minister of the administration, the prime minister of the U.S. president. Rahm Emmanuel is an officer in the Israeli Mossad, and he served in the Israeli army.”
Of course many conspiracy theorist anti-Semites in the Arab media (as well as some in the European media) see the hidden hand of the Jews and Israel everywhere and blame them for all the world’s ills, in much the same way as the Nazis did.
No doubt they will be saying Barack Obama is a Mossad agent next.
JEWISH FAR LEFT “SHOCKED” BY APPOINTMENT OF EMANUEL
On the other hand, the Jewish far left in America regard Rahm Emanuel’s appointment as a sign that Obama won’t be anti-Israeli enough.
For example, Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the leftist Tikkun magazine, released a widely-circulated “news advisory for journalists” titled “Rahm Emanuel is no Reason for Hope or Celebration.”
He wrote: “Election night, tens of millions of us wept for joy. We sang the songs that we had sung as young men and women when we were fighting segregation in the south and then in the north, some of us being beaten, others jailed, some even killed. For the first time in three decades we could sing ‘Imagine’ and ‘The times they are a changing’ without feeling that we were holding onto utopian fantasies that had been buried by the cynical realists who have shaped public discourse.
“... We could hardly believe our own eyes. We were living through the rebirth of a nation... so no wonder why many of us were shocked and deeply disappointed when we learned on Thursday that Congressman Rahm Emanuel was to be the Chief of Staff in the Obama White House.
“... Emanuel has a long history of militarist ideology behind him. His father was a member of the ultra-right-wing terrorist organization Etzel. Emanuel himself ... has been one of several Congressional leaders enforcing the ‘Israel Lobby’ consensus.
“... The Rahm Emanuel selection is an early warning that the peace and justice agenda dropped by Obama after he won the Democratic nomination may be permanently on hold, and the progressives themselves may have to settle for ‘access’ and flowery words at an inauguration address rather than the substance of change.”
ARAB MEDIA: “THE U.S. DEMOCRAT PARTY IS LIKE A SNAKE THAT KILLS YOU SLOWLY”
While many in the Muslim Middle East have expressed satisfaction, if not outright joy, at Obama’s election, some have not. The Egyptian media quoted the leading Sunni sheikh, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as saying that “the American Democrat Party is like a snake that kills you slowly without you noticing.”
The Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Elsami targeted Obama himself. In an article headlined “That black man will never change U.S. policy,” it wrote: “The most that that black man can do is to replace some of the staff. He will never manage to change the structure of the American regime, which was established by capitalists, Zionists and racists.”
A commentator in the Iranian publication Kayhan on Sunday said: “Some reformists talk of Obama as if he is a divine prophet. Obama too is part of the Great Satan.”
The Beirut Daily Star wrote that “while Obama may be sincere in changing U.S. policy, he will face an entire subculture that operates within the American political arena... widely known as the ‘Israel’ or ‘Jewish’ lobby that he will be unable to overcome.”
A more moderate view was expressed by Daoud Al-Shiryan, columnist for the London-based Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat and deputy director of Al-Arabiya Television. “The U.S. elections afford a kind of change that does not occur in the Arab ‘democracies’... The faces in the White House change in a way that we find impressive,” he wrote.
AHMADINEJAD CONGRATULATES OBAMA, URGES “REAL CHANGE”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Obama an unusual letter of congratulations – the first time an Iranian leader has congratulated the winner of a U.S. presidential election since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“I will be reviewing the letter from President Ahmadinejad, and we will respond appropriately,” Obama said on Friday, leaving open the question about whether he will reply. President Bush chose not to respond to a rambling 18-page letter he received from Ahmadinejad in 2006.
In his campaign for the presidency, Obama said he would be ready to talk to Iranian leaders without preconditions. The Bush administration has long insisted that Iran stop enriching uranium before any high-level negotiations can begin; Iran has resisted those demands.
Syria also congratulated Obama. Syrian information minister Mohsen Bilal said he hoped that the new U.S. president would put more pressure on Israel.
THAT VAST JEWISH RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY
... often hinted at in the European leftist media, doesn’t seem to exist.
According to exit polls, 78% of American Jews voted for Obama.
These numbers were even more striking than those in the 2004 election, when Democratic candidate John Kerry received 74 percent of the Jewish vote. Al Gore received the highest ever percentage of Jewish votes, in 2000, with 79 percent.
According to exit polls, a record 89 percent of American Muslim voters picked Barack Obama last week.
PERES: “NOBODY SHOULD LOOK AT WHOSE SIDE OBAMA IS ON. HE JUST HAS TO BE ON THE SIDE OF PEACE”
Officially, all Israel’s leading politicians congratulated Obama (as did all Palestinian ones, including the heads of Hamas).
President Shimon Peres – one of the few politicians in the world who is as eloquent as Obama – said: “It was an American election and a worldwide choice. I don’t recall any other election that practically all of humanity was following with hope and concern. I want to congratulate the newly-elected President: young, fresh, promising, representing a change and introducing change.
“... In a way, it is also an end of racism. There is no longer any way that any white man can claim superiority. We are the same people, and this election is a great statement to that effect.”
“I also have the utmost respect for the other candidate John McCain, who fought with great courage and stamina. And when it was over, they shook hands together. For us, America is a great friend and a great hope. When President Obama was here, he asked me what he can do for Israel. My answer was: be a great President of the United States of America. If you will be a great President of the United States of America, you will have great promise for Israel as well, and for all of the region and for all of our neighbors. Nobody should look at whose side the President is on – he just has to be on the side of peace. And if he will be on the side of peace.”
TZIPI LIVNI WARNS OF DISCORD WITH OBAMA OVER IRAN
There is, however, great concern in Jerusalem over Obama’s Iran policy.
Israeli Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Livni, leader of the center-left Kadima party, said on Thursday that U.S. talks with Iran on its nuclear program may be “problematic,” highlighting possible disagreements with a Barack Obama administration. “Dialogue at this point may be interpreted as a sign of weakness,” Livni told Israel radio.
“I think that premature dialogue at a time where Iran thinks that the world has given up on sanctions may be problematic,” she said of Obama.
And last night, Livni spoke by phone with U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden and pleaded with him to maintain a tough American stance on Iran and Hamas. “It is of the utmost importance that we keep up our coordination against the Iranian threat because time is not on the side of the moderates,” she was quoted as saying to Biden, according to the Israeli foreign ministry.
EHUD BARAK ON IRAN: ALL OPTIONS OPEN, WHATEVER AMERICAN POLICY
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday that Jerusalem may not be able to wait that much longer to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Speaking after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Barak said that whatever American policy may now be, “for Israel, all options are open.”
OBAMA APPEARS TO TOUGHEN HIS IRAN STANCE
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke at length by phone to Barack Obama on Thursday night.
Besides congratulating him, Olmert also raised concerns over the issue of Iran.
A few hours later, on Friday lunchtime, Obama gave his first (and so far only) press conference since winning the election. And for people like myself, who regard a nuclear Iran and the almost inevitable nuclear arms race across the Middle East and beyond that will almost certainly follow, as the world’s most pressing concern, even more so in the long run than the economic crisis, it was reassuring that Obama mentioned Iran as his first foreign policy matter.
Indeed in a carefully stage-managed press conference, where all the journalists’ questions were reportedly vetted by the Obama team in advance, Obama said that stopping Iran going nuclear was of paramount importance. Surprisingly, given the level of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama did not mention those issues in the press conference, nor other foreign policy concerns like Russia and Pakistan. The Iranian nuclear program was the only foreign policy topic he addressed, and he did so in a way that appeared to distance himself from some of the statements he made during the campaign. There was no longer any talk of meeting the leaders of the Iranian regime without preconditions.
It is possible that Obama only prioritized Iran in order to try and allay fears in Israel. Many in Israel are calling for action to be taken now, while the friendly President Bush remains in office, and not to wait for a more uncertain period under Obama.
HA’ARETZ: FEARS THAT OBAMA WILL FORCE ISRAEL TO GIVE UP ITS OWN NUCLEAR OPTION
In an editorial, Israel’s leading liberal newspaper Ha’aretz wrote: “The Iranian question is likely to cause disputes between Jerusalem and Washington.”
Ha’aretz said there is great deal of fear in Israel that Obama “will be too soft on Iran while Iran continues to arm itself with nuclear weapons under the cover of diplomatic dialogue. Further, tensions between Jerusalem and Washington will increase if the U.S. is enticed to accept a deal to close Dimona [in Israel] in return for shutting Iran’s Natanz weapons site or halting Iranian nuclear development as part of an overall regional agreement for disarmament, which will naturally focus on Israel.”
OLMERT HEADS TO D.C. TO ASK FOR LAST FAVORS FROM BUSH
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert will visit President Bush in Washington later this month in an attempt to reach last minute agreements and extract a number of promises before both leaders step down. Olmert is looking for commitments from Bush on questions relating to borders and refugees in any final agreement with the Palestinians, and in relation to various aspects of military cooperation.
Ha’aretz asked in a news analysis: “While Olmert is still looking for promises from Bush, the real questions being asked in Jerusalem relate to president-elect Barack Obama. Will the new American president cut military aid to Israel or will he keep his predecessor’s agreements with Israel? How will he handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and will he support Israel’s security requirements?
SADNESS IN ISRAEL THAT BUSH IS LEAVING OFFICE
There is much sadness in Israel that President George W. Bush, the most pro-Israel American president ever, is leaving office.
As well as more prominent public measures to support Israel, Bush did much behind the scenes to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at international forums, and to assist in strengthening military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. Bush did this out of deep-rooted ideological reasons, not because American Jews support the Republicans. Indeed prominent American Jewish commentators such as Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman can barely find a good word to say about him. In much the same way, Bush did more than any previous president to help Black Africans, and “George Bush” is now a popular name for babies in several African countries. Bush did so for humanistic reasons, not because African-Americans were likely to vote Republican.
ISRAELI POLITICIANS AND NEWSPAPERS HEAP PRAISE ON BUSH
Speaking during what was probably Condoleezza Rice’s last visit to the region as U.S. secretary of state, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni applauded “a bilateral relationship which has been truly strengthened under the leadership and vision of President Bush ... His contribution will never be forgotten.”
Prime Minister Olmert said: “I would also like to offer a word in warm appreciation for President Bush. His name will be etched in gold letters in the annals of the State of Israel. I cannot share everything that I know with the public, nor even with all members of the government but those who know, know. President Bush is a great friend of the State of Israel and of the Jewish People. I think that he deserves the praise, esteem and profound gratitude of every resident of the State of Israel.”
In its main editorial yesterday, Israel’s largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, also commended Bush’s support for Israel in its war against Palestinian suicide terrorism, the suicide terrorism which resulted in part from the misguided policies of the Clinton administration. The paper also thanked Bush for his firm commitments in trying to help give Israel defensible boundaries.
BUSH WAS ALSO “THE FATHER OF THE PALESTINIAN STATE”
It is worth noting that Bush has not only been “pro-Israel” but “pro-Palestinian.” He went beyond his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in formally calling for the creation of a Palestinian state.
He endorsed a “road map” for peace that remains the basis of current negotiations. And last year he relaunched the peace process in Annapolis, Maryland, securing the backing of Arab leaders.
The U.S. has given an unprecedented $700m this year to the Palestinian Authority. Rice noted that her presence in Jenin, where she gave a press conference last Friday, and scene of much violence during the intifada in 2002, was a measure of the progress made.
MASSIVE HAMAS ROCKET FIRE AT ISRAEL “CELEBRATES OBAMA VICTORY”
Within hours of Barack Obama being declared the winner last week, there was a massive barrage of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza on towns and farms in southern Israel.
Israelis took to the bomb shelters, many families spending the night underground. There was substantial damage to property. At least 20 rockets hit Israel within 12 hours of Obama’s victory.
Since Obama’s election, over 60 rockets have landed in southern Israel. Three rockets that hit the coastal city of Ashkelon resulted in a 13-year-old girl and two women being treated in hospital for shock.
One Kassam rocket from Gaza even landed in Sderot cemetery, hitting the graves of Israelis previously killed by rockets from Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called the Hamas attacks “flagrant violations” of the cease-fire. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said “Israel wants the truce to continue.”
HAMAS: WE ARE IN TOUCH WITH OBAMA’S AIDES
Ahmed Yousef, Hamas’ chief political adviser in Gaza, told the Arab daily Al-Hayat today that Hamas has maintained regular communication with Obama aides since before the U.S. election.
“We were in contact with a number of Obama’s aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his election campaign and be used by Republican candidate John McCain (to attack Obama),” Yousuf told Al-Hayat.
Yousuf said Hamas’s contact with Obama’s advisers was ongoing, adding that relations were maintained after Obama’s victory last week.
During Obama’s campaign, he pledged that his administration would only hold talks with Hamas if it renounced terrorism, recognized Israel’s right to exist, and abided by past agreements.
DID OBAMA LIE ABOUT FIRING ANTI-ISRAEL ADVISOR MALLEY?
According to reports in several usually reliable Middle East websites today, President-elect Obama has dispatched his “senior foreign policy adviser” Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria on the next administration’s first diplomatic mission.
Obama was widely criticized during the election campaign for employing Malley on his team after Malley admitted to being in regular contact with Hamas and other Islamic radicals.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt responded at the time that Malley had provided “informal advice to the campaign in the past,” but insisted that he had “no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”
Aides to Malley are reported as saying today that Obama told Mubarak that the U.S. would maintain military and civilian aid and sell advanced F-16 aircraft to Cairo. Egypt has not ordered F-16s in nearly a decade.
Last month, Egypt held one of its biggest military exercises ever – aimed at Israel even though officially Egypt is at peace with Israel.
* The Guardian opinion page: “The U.S. media have been captivated by Obama, at the expense of their curiosity and skepticism”
* Hanson: Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place
* On the Slate journalists’ vote that went 96 % to Obama: “That’s an extraordinary turnout. I doubt that Obama will garner 96 % even in his home precinct of Hyde Park in Chicago”
* It’s 3 a.m. in the White House and the Prime Minister of Israel is calling...
CONTENTS
1. The media voted long ago
2. The media “votes early and votes often”
3. Slate admits its writers voted Obama by 55-2
4. Nielsen: 33.6 million watched the Obama ad that McCain couldn’t afford
5. Politico: NBC, CBS, and ABC slanted coverage against Palin
6. As 3 newspapers endorse McCain, their reporters are dumped from “O-Force One”
7. “We have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Obama”
8. “The media will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage”
9. Additional note concerning the Jewish vote
10. “U.S. media [abandons their] curiosity and skepticism” (Guardian, Nov. 1 2008)
11. “The End of Journalism” (By Victor Davis Hanson, NRO, Oct. 31, 2008)
THE MEDIA VOTED LONG AGO
[Note by Tom Gross]
Because this website concentrates on media, as well as Middle East analysis, here are some final additional observations about the media coverage of the 2008 American presidential election.
If Barack Obama wins today, as seems likely, it will no doubt be an emotional moment for a person of color to assume the presidency after the often appalling treatment of black people throughout much of American (and world) history. However, I for one would be happier if Obama was winning from a level playing field in the media.
Even some in the liberal media have started to admit that they went too far in their pro-Obama stance. I attach pieces either in full or summary from liberal publications – The Guardian, Slate, (the influential Washington political insider magazine) Politico – all acknowledging to one degree or another that despite the record amount of media coverage in this election campaign, the public hasn’t been properly informed.
The left-of-center magazine Politico acknowledges that the only TV network that gave anywhere near equal time to the candidates was Fox News, which Politico says gave slightly more coverage to Obama than McCain. Every other large media publication or network slanted its coverage in Obama’s favor in what issues and information they chose to share with their audiences.
Now that the campaign is over, the centrist Politico has also acknowledged that its coverage wasn’t even-handed: 100 stories were more favorable to Obama; 69 to McCain, it says.
And a new study by The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that since the end of the party conventions, McCain has received four times as many negative stories as positive ones, whereas Obama had more than twice as many positive stories as McCain, and only a fraction of the negative ones.
THE MEDIA “VOTES EARLY AND VOTES OFTEN”
Harold Evans, a distinguished former editor of both the Sunday Times and Times (of London), writes in The Guardian:
“It’s fitting that the cynicism ‘vote early and vote often’ is commonly attributed to Chicago’s Democratic boss, mayor Richard Daley, who famously voted the graveyards in 1960 to help put John Kennedy in the White House. In this 2008 race, it’s the American media that have voted very early and often. They long ago elected the star graduate of Chicago’s Democratic machine, Barack Obama.
“I am not talking of editorials in newspapers, though Obama has the preponderance of the endorsements over John McCain. What’s troubling to anyone old-fashioned enough to care about standards in journalism is the news coverage in mainstream media...
“All the mainstream national outlets were extraordinarily slow to check Obama’s background... Let’s hope the consequences of electing ‘the one’ will be as wondrous as the press has led the voters to believe.”
***
Tom Gross adds: Congratulations to The Guardian for being open-minded enough to print this article. Would the liberal American media have printed it?
It is worth reading Evans’ piece in full (below). Among the media he criticizes for “twisting remarks” in favor of Obama is The New York Times.
Coming from Harold Evans, one of the most distinguished figures in journalism, who is by no means a conservative, perhaps New York Times editors would care for a little introspection now that the campaign is over.
Evans, who is a subscriber to this email list, also chastises parts of the media for the misogyny shown against Hillary Clinton.
(For my own article on the misogyny also shown against Sarah Palin, see here.)
NIELSEN: 33.6 MILLION WATCHED THE OBAMA AD THAT MCCAIN COULDN’T AFFORD
Hollywood Reporter writes: “If Barack Obama fails to win the election, perhaps the networks should hire him to entertain viewers on Wednesday nights. Obama’s 30-minute primetime infomercial was seen by 33.6 million viewers across seven networks – including CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision, MSNBC, BET, and TV One. That’s 70% more people than watched the conclusion of the World Series last night on Fox (19.8 million).”
Christopher Beam, writing in Slate, says: “Barack Obama’s half-hour infomercial Wednesday night didn’t teach us a lot we didn’t already know – except that an Obama administration would likely feature immaculate stagecraft.”
SLATE ADMITS ITS WRITERS VOTED OBAMA BY 55-2
Slate columnist Jack Shafer: “My personal experience confirms Michael Kinsley’s hunch that liberals flock to media jobs. In the 10 years that I hired at Washington City Paper and SF Weekly, only one reporter or editor job went to a self-identified conservative. I can’t be guilty of any pro-liberal bias partly because liberals tend to creep me out. Yet year after year, the best applicants were almost exclusively liberal.
Tom Gross adds: credit to the left-leaning Slate for admitting this, considering that in a separate survey this week among staffers and contributors at Slate, Obama got 55 of the 57 votes cast.
Shafer adds, concerning the Slate staff vote: “That’s an extraordinary turnout. I doubt that Obama will garner 96 percent even in his home precinct of Hyde Park [in Chicago]. Editor David Plotz theorizes that Obama polled so well at the magazine because 1) most of us live in extremely Democratic cities on the East and West coasts (as if geography was political destiny!); 2) the staff skews young, and all polls show younger voters favoring the Democrat; 3) several of the magazine’s contributors are Obama advisers; and 4) ‘we are all journalists,’ and liberals, as our beloved founder Michael Kinsley wrote in 2000, are naturally attracted to the profession.”
POLITICO: NBC, CBS, AND ABC SLANTED COVERAGE AGAINST PALIN
Media coverage of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been overwhelmingly negative according to a new study by the Culture and Media Institute. A survey of stories shown on NBC, CBS, and ABC between September 29 and October 12 revealed that negative stories about Palin were shown over positive stories at a rate of 18-1.
“The networks have successfully created a caricature of Sarah Palin that ignores her appeal, intelligence and accomplishments,” the Media Research Center president said.
During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday, the Alaska governor said there is an “obvious double standard” in coverage of her.
For example, the media have focused relentlessly on her wardrobe while ignoring face-lifts and cosmetic procedures allegedly undertaken by Joe Biden. They have questioned the ability of a mother with young children to run for office, while they have not done so for a father with young children, like Barack Obama.
AS 3 NEWSPAPERS ENDORSE MCCAIN, THEIR REPORTERS ARE DUMPED FROM “THE O-FORCE ONE”
Three of the newspapers that defied the rest of the media and publicly endorsed McCain have had their reporters kicked off the Obama plane – or as The Christian Science Monitor calls it, “The O-Force One.”
The “Barack Obama for president campaign” said last weekend that there will no longer be room on its campaign plane for news reporters from the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News and the Washington Times, all papers which days earlier had endorsed John McCain. (Most other papers have endorsed Obama.)
“It feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth,” quipped John Solomon, executive editor of the Washington Times, which lost its seat after three years of travel with Senator Obama and just 72 hours after endorsing McCain.
Obama was apparently furious with the Washington Times after it revealed last week that he spent $700,000 of campaign donations collected from economically-hit Americans just on staging and lights alone, for his Berlin victory rally last summer for Germans who can’t vote in America.
The LA Times also reports that the Obama campaign urged supporters to clog a radio station’s phone lines and e-mail boxes because it gave air-time to an Obama critic.
“WE HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THE CURRENT MEDIA INFATUATION WITH OBAMA”
In the second article below, Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes:
“There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnable. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time – from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions – that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
“Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people...
“Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign...
“THE MEDIA WILL NEVER AGAIN BE TRUSTED TO OFFER CANDID AND NONPARTISAN COVERAGE”
Hanson continues: “Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home...
“Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked...
“The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates...” (Full article below.)
ADDITIONAL NOTE ABOUT THE JEWISH VOTE
For those interested, I’m quoted three times in this story from today’s Jerusalem Post: Experts agree Obama will win Jewish vote.
Also, some of you might be interested in this item of mine from last Thursday for National Review Online: First exit poll of actual American votes from Israel shows big McCain win.
In contrast to Jews living in America, who it seems will overwhelmingly vote Obama, the first exit poll of Americans in Israel (based on a sample of 817), showed 76 percent voted for McCain.
46% of registered Democrats living in Israel said they had crossed party lines to vote McCain. By contrast, the Republican crossover to Obama was minimal – just 2%.
I attach two pieces below.
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
“MAD ABOUT THE ONE”
Mad about The One. The US media have been captivated by Obama, at the expense of their curiosity and scepticism
By Harold Evans
The Guardian,
November 1, 2008
It’s fitting that the cynicism “vote early and vote often” is commonly attributed to Chicago’s Democratic boss, mayor Richard Daley, who famously voted the graveyards in 1960 to help put John Kennedy in the White House. In this 2008 race, it’s the American media that have voted very early and often. They long ago elected the star graduate of Chicago’s Democratic machine, Barack Obama.
I am not talking of editorials in newspapers, though Obama has the preponderance of the endorsements over John McCain. Obama certainly deserves the credit for recruiting impressive advisers and running a more efficient campaign machine than any one in the US’s political history.
What’s troubling to anyone old-fashioned enough to care about standards in journalism is the news coverage in mainstream media. Forget the old notions of objectivity, fairness, thoroughness, and so on. The nastiest rumours on both sides haven’t been published, but the coverage has been slavishly on the side of “the one”.
It has not just been anti-Republican. It goes without saying that after eight years of George Bush’s macho blunders, the disenchantment of even the conservative outlets was bound to show. Researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism report that in the six weeks since the Republican convention, McCain, once the darling of the media, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. Meanwhile, Obama got twice as many positive stories as McCain. The website Politico has also acknowledged that it had loaded the dice against McCain: 100 stories were more favourable to Obama than McCain; 69 were the opposite.
But the press bias towards Obama doesn’t represent a simple revulsion for the Republican party. It was on display in the Democratic primaries with the persecution of Hillary Clinton. Worst of all, in the primaries, the press let the Obama campaign get away with continuous insinuations below the radar that the Clintons were race-baiters. Instead of exposing that absurd defamation for what it was - a nasty smear - the media sedulously propagated it.
Clinton made the historically correct and uncontroversial remark that civil rights legislation came about from a fusion of the dreams of Dr Martin Luther King and the legislative follow-through by President Lyndon Johnson. The New York Times misrepresented that as a disparagement of King, twisting her remarks to imply that “a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change”. This was one of a number of manipulations on race by the Obama campaign, amply documented by the leading Democratic historian, Princeton’s Sean Wilentz. Clinton came close to tears in a coffee shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which many thought helped her to win an upset victory there. MSNBC television gave a platform to the Chicago congressmen, Jesse Jackson Jr, where he questioned her tears and claimed that she’d not shed any tears for the black victims of Katrina, and that she’d pay for that in the South Carolina primary, where 45% of the electorate would be African-Americans.
In fact, MSNBC ran a non-stop campaign for Obama propelled by the misogyny of its anchors, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and David Shuster. Chelsea Clinton joining Clinton’s campaign prompted Shuster to report she was “pimping” for her mother.
Obamania has not been deflated one bit by the non-stop talkers on rightwing radio. They offer vituperation in place of enlightenment; paranoia in place of policies, and as such have little influence with the crucial independents.
On the web, the rightwing Drudge Report highlights anything that favours McCain, the Huffington Post does the same for Obama, and the more independent Slate has said only one of its staff intends to vote for McCain, the other 55 for Obama. Fox News has the vehement Sean Hannity paired with the mildly liberal Alan Colmes, not a fair match, but it has been more willing to investigate than CNN. In the Democratic primaries, there was a pattern on CNN where the short news videos of Clinton rarely let you hear what she was saying, but the short news videos of Obama let his words come through. I mentioned this to a CNN editor who said, “Oh, that’s our young video editors, they just find Obama more exciting.”
The young and affluent liberals have been captivated by Obama’s charisma, the unstated notion that electing a black man will be absolution for the years of discrimination and prejudice, and the expectation that Obama’s undoubted appeal to the outside world will repair America’s image. All understandable, but these emotions have been allowed to swamp the commonplace imperatives of journalism: curiosity and scepticism.
All the mainstream national outlets were extraordinarily slow to check Obama’s background. And until it became inescapable because of a video rant, they wouldn’t investigate the Reverend Jeremiah Wright connection for fear of being accused of racism. They wouldn’t explore Obama’s dealing with the corrupt, now convicted, Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. They haven’t investigated Obama’s pledge to get rid of the secret ballot in trade union affairs. After years of inveighing against “money in politics”, they’ve tolerated his breach of the pledge to restrict himself to public financing as McCain has done (to his cost). Now the LA Times refuses to release a possibly compromising video, which shows Obama praising Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi at a 2003 banquet, saying its promises to its source prevent it from doing so.
The British press is notorious for political distortions, which more or less balance out. But the American press likes to think of itself as more superior and detached than it actually is. In 2000, the mainstream media did a great deal to elect George Bush by portraying Al Gore as a boastful liar.
Let’s hope the consequences of electing “the one” will be as wondrous as the press has led the voters to believe.
THE END OF JOURNALISM?
The End of Journalism. Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place
By Victor Davis Hanson
The National Review
October 31, 2008
There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnable. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time – from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions – that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING
For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing – and the corrosive role of private money in poisoning the election process. The most prominent Republican who crossed party lines to ensure the passage of national public campaign financing was John McCain – a maverick stance that cost him dearly among conservatives who resented bitterly federal interference in political expression.
In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.
Obama has now raised over $600 million, by far the largest campaign chest in American political history. In many states he enjoys a four-to-one advantage in campaign funding – most telling in his scheduled eleventh-hour, 30-minute specials that will not be answered by the publicly financed and poorer McCain campaign.
The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised – some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.
For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.
Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted were critical for the survival of the republic.
Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.
THE VP CANDIDATES
We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses – indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.
Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate. In unprecedented fashion, Biden has simply avoided the press for most of the last two months, confident that the media instead would deconstruct almost every word of “good looking” Sarah Palin’s numerous interviews with mostly hostile interrogators.
By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character – plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hizbullah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad. In response, the media reported that the very public Sarah Palin was avoiding the press while the very private Joe Biden shunned interviews and was chained to the teleprompter.
For two months now, the media reaction to Biden’s inanity has been simply “that’s just ol’ Joe, now let’s turn to Palin,” who, in the space of two months, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to a backwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion white secessionist causes. The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially – almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.
So we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else – and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.
Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home.
THE PAST AS PRESENT
In 2004, few Americans knew Barack Obama. In 2008, they may elect him. Surely his past was of more interest than his present serial denials of it. Whatever the media’s feelings about the current Barack Obama, there should have been some story that the Obama of 2008 is radically different from the Obama who was largely consistent and predictable for the prior 30 years.
Each Obama metamorphosis in itself might be attributed to the normal evolution to the middle, as a candidate shifts from the primary to the general election. But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona – in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue – FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge – and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.
Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor – until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 – and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; butwhy were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?
Behind the Olympian calm of Obama, there was always a rather disturbing record of extra-electoral politics completely ignored by the media. If one were disturbed by the present shenanigans of ACORN or the bizarre national call for Americans simply to skip work on election day to help elect Obama (who would pay for that?), one would only have to remember that in 1996 Obama took the extraordinary step of suing to eliminate all his primary rivals by challenging their petition signatures of mostly African-American voters.
In 2004, there was an even more remarkable chain of events in which the sealed divorce records of both his principle primary rival Blair Hull and general election foe, Jack Ryan, were mysteriously leaked, effectively ensuring Obama a Senate seat without serious opposition. These were not artifacts of a typical political career, but extraordinary events in themselves that might well have shed light on present campaign tactics – and yet largely remain unknown to the American people.
Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
SOCIALISM?
The eleventh-hour McCain allegations of Obama’s advocacy for a share-the-wealth socialism were generally ignored by the media, or if covered, written off as neo-McCarthyism. But there were two legitimate, but again neglected, issues.
The first was the nature of the Obama tax plan. The problem was not merely upping the income tax rates on those who made $250,000 (or was it $200,000, or was it $150,000, or both, or none?), but its aggregate effect in combination with lifting the FICA ceilings on high incomes on top of existing Medicare contributions and often high state income taxes.
In other words, Americans who live in high-tax, expensive states like a New York or California could in theory face collective confiscatory tax rates of 65 percent or so on much of their income. And, depending on the nature of Obama’s proposed tax exemptions, on the other end of the spectrum we might well see almost half the nation’s wage earners pay no federal income tax at all.
Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue? And when credits are added to the plan, are we now essentially not cutting or raising taxes, but simply diverting wealth from those who pay into the system to those who do not?
A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.
Second, the real story was not John McCain’s characterization of such plans, but both inadvertent, and serial descriptions of them, past and present, by Barack Obama himself. “Spreading the wealth around” gains currency when collated to past interviews in which Obama talked at length about, and in regret at, judicial impracticalities in accomplishing his own desire to redistribute income. “Tragedy” is frequent in the Obama vocabulary, but largely confined to two contexts: the tragic history of the United States (e.g., deemed analogous to that of Nazi Germany during World War II), and the tragic unwillingness or inability to use judicial means to correct economic inequality in non-democratic fashion.
In this regard, remember Obama’s revealing comment that he was interested only in “fairness” in increasing capital-gains taxes, despite the bothersome fact that past moderate reductions in rates had, in fact, brought in greater revenue to government. Again, fossilized ideology trumps empiricism.
Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.
The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.
Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief – but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.
* New York Times: Rate of nuclear thefts “disturbingly high”
* MI5 have intercepted up to 100 suspects posing as postgraduate students who aimed to acquire chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons material and expertise during the past year
CONTENTS
1. Dangers ahead
2. “World faces growing risk of war: US intelligence chief” (AFP, Nov. 1, 2008)
3. “CIA’s loss of top spies ‘catastrophic,’ says agency veteran” (CQ, Oct. 17, 2008)
4. “Intel says Iran plans secret nuclear experiments” (AP, Oct. 30, 2008)
5. “Rate of nuclear thefts ‘disturbingly high’” (NY Times, Oct. 27, 2008)
6. “Terrorists try to infiltrate UK’s top labs” (The Observer, UK, Nov. 2 2008)
DANGERS AHEAD
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach five articles, below, about global threats. There are brief summaries by me first for those who don’t have time to read them in full. These warnings – coming from such internationally-respected figures and organizations (the IAEA, AP, The New York Times, etc) – should be of immediate concern to the incoming U.S. president. Let’s hope he’s up to the job.
If Barack Obama is elected tomorrow, one immediate thing to look out for will be his relationship with General David Petraeus, who last week formally became the head of U.S. Central Command. There are already reports in the Christian Science Monitor, the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) and elsewhere, that the two have begun to fall out over strategy.
Petraeus previously presided over the “surge” in Iraq, which is widely credited as being a huge success. If Obama and Petraeus are in dispute, a successful strategy in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere will be much harder to implement.
SUMMARIES
“LARGE CASUALTY TERRORIST ATTACKS MORE LIKELY”
In the first article below, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell warns that the world faces a growing risk of conflict over the next 20 to 30 years. The likelihood of “large casualty terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or less likely, nuclear materials” will also increase during that period, he said.
QUTTING AT THE TOP OF THEIR CAREERS
The second article below reports that scores of the CIA’s most experienced spies – including those running a CIA unit responsible for preventing terrorists from getting nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – have quit the agency recently while at the top of their careers, i.e. at a time when the agency needs their skills the most.
It is estimated that the CIA is losing “25 or 30 station chiefs” (i.e. the top CIA representative in a country or major city) “or their equivalent” at headquarters, every six months.
“The effect in any time in history would be serious,” one outgoing station chief told Congressional Quarterly. “But at this time, when you’re trying to rebuild the agency from the cutbacks of the Clinton years, massively trying to catch up, at a time when you really need your most experienced people to run operations and mentor the new blood coming in, it’s catastrophic.”
An agency veteran who recently penned an unauthorized memoir under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones” advised the CIA to “cut layers of management ruthlessly to speed operations and to put more spies on the street.”
IAEA: IRAN PLANS SECRET NUCLEAR EXPERIMENTS
In the third article below, the Associated Press reports from Vienna that intelligence provided to the 145-nation Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reveals that Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program.
The alleged tests loosely replicate Saddam Hussein’s attempts to build the bomb nearly two decades ago, notes the Associated Press, which says that the intelligence report is drawn from Iranian sources within the country.
Efforts led by the Bush administration to implement tough U.N. sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend enrichment have been consistently blocked by Russia and China.
According to some sources, Iran may now only be six months away from developing nuclear weapons capability.
MOHAMED EL BARADEI WARNS ABOUT NEW NUCLEAR THEFTS
The fourth article below relates that Mohamed El Baradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that the number of reports of nuclear or radioactive material stolen around the world last year was “disturbingly high.”
El Baradei said nearly 250 such thefts were reported in the year ending in June.
“The possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear or other radioactive material remains a grave threat,” he said. His staff cautioned that the amount of missing material was not enough to build a nuclear bomb. But small amounts could be used in a so-called “dirty bomb.”
Most of the concern about thefts centers on the countries of the former Soviet Union, but they occur elsewhere too.
100 TERRORISTS TRY TO INFILTRATE UK’S TOP LABS
In the fifth and final article below, yesterday’s Observer newspaper in London (the Sunday edition of The Guardian), reports that Britain’s intelligence service MI5 has warned that al-Qaeda is seeking to recruit scientists who develop deadly viruses. The security services have intercepted up to 100 suspects posing as postgraduate students who aimed to acquire chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons material and expertise during the past year, writes the paper.
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
“WORLD FACES GROWING RISK OF WAR”
World faces growing risk of war: US intelligence chief
Agence France Presse (AFP)
Nov. 1, 2008
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081031180559.hq1yll01&show_article=1
The world faces a growing risk of conflict over the next 20 to 30 years amid an unprecedented transfer of wealth and power from West to East, according to the US intelligence chief.
Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, predicted rising demand for scarce supplies of food and fuel, strategic competition over new technologies, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
“What I’m suggesting -- there’s an increased potential for conflict,” McConnell said in a speech Thursday to intelligence professionals in Nashville, Tennessee.
“During the period of this assessment, out to 2025, the probability for conflict between nations and within nation-state entities will be greater,” he said.
Conditions for “large casualty terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or less likely, nuclear materials” also will increase during that period, he said.
McConnell described a multi-polar world in 2025 shaped by the rise of China, India and Brazil, whose economies will by then match those of the western industrial states.
“In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power, now underway, as noted from West to East is without precedent in modern history,” McConnell said.
Territorial expansion and military rivalries are not likely but cannot be ruled out, he said.
“We judge these sweeping changes will not trigger a complete breakdown of the current international system, but the next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks and many, many challenges,” he said.
By 2025, China is likely to have the world’s second largest economy and to have emerged as a major military power, the largest importer of natural resources and the largest contributor to world pollution.
“China is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country,” he said.
India will have either the third or second largest economy and will press to become “one of the significant poles of this new world,” he said.
Russia also will be part of that group but only if it expands and diversifies its economy and integrates it with the world global economy, he said.
“Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, demographics, access to natural resources, investments and technological innovation. There will be a struggle to acquire technology advantage as the key enabler for dominance,” he said.
HUGE PROBLEMS AT THE CIA
CIA’s loss of top spies “catastrophic,” says agency veteran
By Jeff Stein, Homeland Security correspondent
Congressional Quarterly
Oct. 18, 2008
www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002976430&parm1=2&cpage=1
Only a few months ago, Sam Faddis was running a CIA unit charged with preventing terrorists from getting nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Today, only 50, the equivalent of a full colonel at the top of his game, he has quit.
Scores more like him, Faddis says, spies with years of working the back alleys of the world, have walked away from the CIA’s Operations Directorate at the top of their careers, at a time when the agency needs their skills the most.
The directorate is losing “25 or 30 chiefs of station” – the top CIA representative in a country or major city – “or their equivalent” at headquarters, every six months, Faddis estimates.
That’s out of an estimated thousand or fewer case officers – the men and women who recruit and manage spies – worldwide.
“The effect in any time in history would be serious,” Faddis says, “but at this time, when you’re trying to rebuild the agency from the cutbacks of the Clinton years, massively trying to catch up, at a time when you really need your most experienced people to run operations and mentor the new blood coming in, it’s catastrophic.”
“It’s getting to the point where we just don’t have any experience on the ground,” Faddis maintained during several hours of conversation over the past two weeks.
“It bears emphasizing that, where during the Cold War, it was a catastrophe to be [unmasked as a CIA agent] and sent home, if you screw up now, people die. The tolerance for mistakes is less than ever,” he said.
Faddis declined either to confirm or deny that any CIA personnel have died combating terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the grim, mum faces of former spies I’ve asked about agency casualties since that day speak for themselves.
A former program manager in the Operations Directorate, speaking on condition of anonymity because he still does contracting work with the agency, agreed with Faddis.
“It’s comparable to the hemorrhage of junior officers from the Army right now, in the sense that these are leaders whose experience and hands-on ability right in front of their people on the front line is so critical,” he said.
The CIA has said that money is luring away its best old hands. And it’s true that a large number come back as private contractors, doing virtually the same jobs at twice the pay.
Some say there are more contractors filling desk in the directorate now than career officers.
But many don’t return, Faddis maintains. And, theoretically, he and other operations veterans say, contractors can’t take leadership positions that have been emptied.
The CIA flatly denies there’s a hemorrhage of senior personnel.
“Last year, for example, it was in the neighborhood of 7 percent of GS-15s in the National Clandestine Service,” spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.
“And that’s somewhat below what it had been in previous years,” he continued. “It’s all quite modest. The notion of dramatic losses at that grade, or any other, is simply incorrect.”
A CULTURE OF TIMIDITY
In any event, it’s not the money sending them into retirement, the veteran spies I’ve been talking to say.
It’s the directorate’s management, which they maintain rewards sycophants at headquarters over operatives who have been “carrying out aggressive operations in dangerous places,” as Faddis put it.
“I think that one of the things that they’ve tried to portray over the last several years is that everybody’s leaving for the money,” he said. “And that’s not true.
“I mean, the money makes it easier. Nobody joined the CIA to make money. If money was your driving force, you never would have been there in the first place,” Faddis said. “People leave because they’re just fed up. They leave because of the management structure. They say, ‘I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried to change this place, and it’s just never going to turn the corner and I’m done.’ That’s the sentiment.”
Virtually none of the team chiefs and case officers who led the first CIA units into Afghanistan and Iraq remain with the agency, said Faddis, who recently authored a memoir, “Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq.”
It’s because the DO is plagued by a culture of “timidity and risk aversion,” Faddis said.
“But frankly I think there are other factors,” he added. “There’s a general perception of cronyism, favoritism, that the way to get promoted – that the guys who are not being promoted are the guys who are doing aggressive operations in dangerous parts of the world. If you’re a chief of station in a dangerous part of the world running aggressive operations, and your contemporary is a staff aide sitting on the seventh floor in meetings, there’s no question of who’s getting promoted. It’s the guy standing next to the boss telling him what he wants to hear. It’s not the guy in a dangerous place really trying to take the fight to the enemy.”
An agency operation veteran who recently penned an unauthorized memoir under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones” advised the CIA to “cut layers of management ruthlessly to speed operations and to put more spies on the street.”
“Accepting the CIA’s ploy that it just needs a few more years to hire the right people” is wrong, Jones said. “The CIA has used this ploy for decades. The CIA has all the qualified people it needs. The problem is that they are poorly led.”
BURROWING IN
Gary Berntsen, a former station chief who led one of the first CIA teams into Afghanistan after 9/11, agrees. He left in disgust over management.
In a new book, “Human Intelligence, Counterterrorism & National Leadership,” Berntsen writes that the agency’s personnel problems predated the Bush administration, but the president waited too long to double the size of the Operations Directorate.
“The act was welcome, but betrayed the fact that he had not sought an accurate understanding of the size and needs of he Clandestine Service during his first term in the White House.”
And still today, Berntsen says, “the most ambitious officers in the Clandestine Service have sought minimal time in the field and burrowed themselves in the CIA headquarters bureaucracy to attain advancement.”
So what?
According to some accounts, the CIA’s Predator drones and other new technologies are making up for the shortage of spies in the field. The veterans would take issue with that, but they also remind that the spy agency has other yawning missions: China and Russia, for starters.
The spy agency is “bleeding out” with the mass departure of veterans who learned how to spy the hard way, on the streets of hostile foreign environments, Faddis says. “There’s not enough people on the ground with any experience.”
“At minimum, what it means is that you can’t run certain kinds of operations,” he said. “You just can’t do it, you just don’t have – maybe you have the best and brightest coming in these days, and I don’t want to denigrate them – but there’s just no substitute for experience. At some point you need someone to clue you in on how to do this.”
His hair turning silver, but still youthful looking from days spent skippering his boat in the Chesapeake, Faddis says, “to me the real tragedy is there’s just a whole bunch of guys floating around here who are not in the building, but should be.”
IAEA: IRAN PLANS SECRET NUCLEAR EXPERIMENTS
Intel says Iran plans secret nuclear experiments
The Associated Press / International Herald Tribune
October 30, 2008
www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/30/europe/EU-Nuclear-Iran.php
VIENNA, Austria: Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program, according to an intelligence assessment made available to an intelligence assessment made available to The Associated Press. The intelligence, provided by a member of the 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, also says a report will soon be submitted to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.
The alleged tests loosely replicate Saddam Hussein’s attempts to build the bomb nearly two decades ago. But experts question the conclusion by those providing the intelligence that Tehran, too, is trying to reprocess the fuel to make a nuclear weapon. They note that the spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the approximately 30 kilograms (65 pounds) of weapons-grade material needed for a bomb. Still, they say that the alleged experiment appears plausible – if not as a fast track to weapons capability then as a step that could move it further along that path.
With Iran’s nuclear program already under international scrutiny, any new efforts by Tehran to increase its nuclear expertise and its store of enriched uranium would set off alarm bells – particularly if that stock was highly enriched. The higher the enrichment the easier it is to reach the 90 percent level used in the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
The 3-page intelligence report, drawn from Iranian sources within the country, says the source material would be highly enriched – some at above 90 percent, the rest at 20 percent. In contrast, Iran’s enrichment program under constant IAEA monitoring has churned out material that is less than 5 percent enriched, in line with the fuel needs of modern reactors.
“Procedures were evaluated for recycling fuel by dissolving fuel rods” for irradiated waste and then reprocessing the material into uranium metal, says the intelligence assessment. Uranium metal is used for nuclear warheads.
“Sufficient data was collected for planning production lines for recovering the fuel,” says the assessment, which gave Tehran’s Jaber ibn Hayan Laboratories, run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as the location for the experiment.
Top officials of AEOI are “in the final stages” of writing a report for the Iranian leadership for assessment on whether to go forward with reprocessing, according to the intelligence.
The laboratories and the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the site of the reactor, have figured in suspect experiments, including clandestine plutonium separation attempts uncovered by the IAEA.
If the information is accurate then Iran is “trying to get their nose in the tent” of reprocessing material potentially suitable for a warhead, said David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspect secret proliferators. “On the surface it may have nothing to do with making a bomb, but in the end that’s what it could be about.”
IAEA spokespeople were unavailable Thursday but an official of the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog said the agency would not comment. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.
Both Albright and a senior Vienna-based diplomat agreed that the alleged experiment roughly jibed with Saddam’s efforts to chemically process research reactor fuel to recover enriched uranium – in the case of Baghdad, enough and at a sufficiently high level of enrichment to make a bomb.
Close to success, the Iraqis saw their plans fail with the destruction of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center during the first Gulf War of 1990-1991.
“This is the ‘Iraqi scenario,’” said the diplomat, referring to the alleged Iranian experiment. He – like the source of the intelligence – demanded anonymity because their information was restricted. But both he and Albright noted that the purported source for the fuel – Tehran’s TNRC research reactor – was unlikely to have enough material for reprocessing into the core of a warhead.
The five-megawatt reactor initially ran on weapons-grade uranium fuel enriched to 93 percent that was provided by the U.S. in the late 1960s to the then pro-Washington regime. But measured in terms of potential proliferation, the amount was small – only 7 kilograms (15 pounds). Then, in the late 1980s, Argentina helped reconfigure the reactor core and provided about 115 kilograms (250 pounds) of uranium. In contrast to modern reactors that run on low-enriched fuel, that material was highly enriched to about 20 percent.
Albright said that even optimal reprocessing would probably yield less than about half of the 30 kilograms (65 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium needed for a bomb. That restriction makes it unlikely that Iran was looking to the TNRC reactor for that immediate purpose.
Instead, an Iranian reprocessing plans could be part of Tehran’s attempts to push the nuclear envelope.
U.S.-led efforts for tough U.N. sanctions for Iran’s refusal to suspend enrichment have been consistently blocked by Russia and China. Tehran also has support of developing countries traditionally suspicious of Washington.
Defying weak sanctions, the Islamic Republic has moved further through enrichment toward developing weapons capability – now anywhere from six months to several years away, depending on the source.
Iran may be banking on further international inaction if it announces it will reprocess, perhaps arguing that it will need it as a source for new fuel for the research reactor. If allowed to do so, it will have moved another step ahead on the path to being able to develop warhead material. “It’s the idea that Iran wants to slowly develop nuclear weapons capability under the tent and it does it slowly so that people will accept it,” said Albright. “It’s (a matter of) keeping your head down, moving slowly and deliberately and winning at each step.”
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: RATE OF NUCLEAR THEFTS “DISTURBINGLY HIGH”
Rate of nuclear thefts “disturbingly high,” monitoring chief says
By Neil Macfarquhar
The New York Times
October 27, 2008
www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/world/28nuke.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
UNITED NATIONS – Mohamed El Baradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a speech on Monday that the number of reports of nuclear or radioactive material stolen around the world last year was “disturbingly high.”
Dr. El Baradei, in his annual report to the General Assembly, said nearly 250 such thefts were reported in the year ending in June.
“The possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear or other radioactive material remains a grave threat,” he said. “Equally troubling is the fact that much of this material is not subsequently recovered.”
Members of Dr. El Baradei’s staff and outside experts cautioned that the amount of missing material remained relatively small. If all the stolen material were lumped together, it would not be enough to build even one nuclear device, they said.
It is also unclear if the rising number of reports of stolen material stems from a growing market for radioactive goods or more vigilant reporting of thefts by member states.
However, the idea that there might be a new market for such material is of concern, they said, especially if some of it were to end up in a dirty bomb.
The threat from such a bomb is less a health risk from radiation than from the panic an attack would probably cause, said Cristina Hansell, a professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in Monterey, Calif.
Most of the concern about thefts centers on the countries of the former Soviet Union, where nuclear programs were widespread, but they occur everywhere.
In a typical case, Ms. Hansell said, an oil company reported last May that a device containing radioactive material that was used in exploration in Sudan was missing.
It would take long exposure to the device to create any health risk, she said. “What will kill you from a dirty bomb is the immediate explosion, not the radioactivity,” she said, noting that the main concern was that despite the attention devoted to trying to police such material, the amount disappearing keeps rising. “There still seems to be quite a big problem.”
Aside from the issue of thefts, Dr. El Baradei said he hoped that North Korea, which left the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003, would return, and he criticized Iran for impeding the agency’s attempts to verify whether it was developing nuclear weapons.
Sin Sang-chol, a North Korean representative to the United Nations, accused the monitoring agency of spying on his country at the behest of Washington and called its position “prejudiced and unfair.”
The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, defended his country’s nuclear development program as peaceful while lashing out at Israel for its creating a weapons program outside the nonproliferation treaty framework.
It is widely assumed that Israel has nuclear weapons, but the Israeli government has never acknowledged it.
Mr. Khazaee called the policy of trying to force Iran to stop nuclear enrichment before starting negotiations on economic and other incentives “an irrational and failed policy.”
TERRORISTS TRY TO INFILTRATE UK’S TOP LABS
Terrorists try to infiltrate UK’s top labs
The Observer
November 2 2008
A British scientist wears a protective suit in a laboratory. MI5 has warned that al-Qaida is seeking to recruit scientists who develop deadly viruses. Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain’s top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year.
The security services, MI5 and MI6, have intercepted up to 100 potential terrorists posing as postgraduate students who they believe tried accessing laboratories to gain the materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the government has confirmed. It follows warnings from MI5 to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qaeda’s terror network is actively seeking to recruit scientists and university students with access to laboratories containing deadly viruses and weapons technology.
Extensive background checks from the security services, using a new vetting scheme, have led to the rejection of overseas students who were believed to be intent on developing weapons of mass destruction. A Foreign Office spokesman said the students had been denied clearance to study in the UK under powers ‘to stop the spread of knowledge and skills that could be used in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery’. He added: ‘There is empirical evidence of a problem with postgraduate students becoming weapons proliferators.’ The overseas students, a number of whom are thought to be from ‘countries of concern’ such as Iran and Pakistan, were intercepted under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, introduced by universities and the security services last November.
The findings raise questions over how many terrorist suspects may have already infiltrated the UK’s laboratory network. Rihab Taha, dubbed ‘Dr Germ’, who worked on Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program, studied for her PhD in plant toxins at East Anglia University’s School of Biological Sciences in Norwich. In addition, a number of well-educated Iraqi scientists - funded by Baghdad - infiltrated several British microbiology laboratories in the run-up to the Gulf war of 1990-91. Britain has about 800 laboratories in hospitals, universities and private firms where staff have access to lethal viruses such as Ebola, polio and avian flu or could acquire the technology and expertise to develop deadly weapons. Whitehall sources remain concerned about the number of countries intent on acquiring the materials and knowledge to develop a nuclear or biological warfare capability.
John Wood of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control said: ‘Any scientist would say it’s important that we know who is working in our laboratories, and also why they are working there.’
The trial of two NHS doctors, Mohammad Asha, 27, a Jordanian national, and Bilal Abdulla, 29, from Iraq, who allegedly plotted widespread carnage through car bomb attacks in London’s West End and Glasgow airport last year, has intensified scrutiny on the radicalization of students. Named in the plot is 27-year-old Indian PhD student, Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a Jeep laden with gas canisters into Glasgow Airport’s main terminal building but died several weeks later from severe burns. Ahmed studied for his PhD in the technology department of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.
A spokesman for Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said the security scheme had so far proved effective. He added: ‘It is important to protect the UK from people who may wish to use technology and materials here inappropriately.’
Michael Stephens, head of security at the Medical Research Council, which runs some of Britain’s most sensitive laboratories, said they took the issue of biosecurity ‘extremely seriously’.
Concern that al-Qaeda is intent on developing a more sophisticated weapons capability moved the former director-general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, to warn publicly that terror attacks in Britain could involve weapons of mass destruction. She said: ‘We know that attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technologies are there.’
Extremist groups are known to have targeted students, offering to fund courses in return for using their newly acquired expertise. It is unclear if any of those denied ‘clearance’ to study in the UK during the past year were funded by grants from host governments such as Tehran.
A Foreign Office spokesman said ‘efforts’ on scrutiny of foreign postgraduate students would continue with only a few of the 20,000 applications rejected for security reasons. In the US, draft legislation advocates banning all non-Americans from laboratories which possess potentially dangerous bacteria and viruses, a measure the UK government believes is too draconian.
Professor George Griffin, chairman of the advisory committee on dangerous pathogens, has warned of the lack of a national standard required for people to work in high-security laboratories.
The move comes as the government considers plans to build a new pathogen research facility in central London, between King’s Cross station and the British Library. Experts have warned that a terror attack would prove catastrophic to the surrounding area.