Al-Ahram Weekly : Arab diplomats relieved at Arafat's death

Relief is perhaps the best way to describe the private reaction of most Arab officials to the sudden and somewhat ambiguous death of Yasser Arafat, the icon of the Palestinian struggle for the past 40 years.

In public, before their own constituencies, these same officials laid on what they felt obliged to provide: a red carpet funeral. Most major Arab leaders and senior representatives were on hand in Cairo to pay their last, and somewhat belated respects to a man they had largely forgotten during his nearly three-year siege in Ramallah.

But beyond the honours of a brief state funeral, Arafat received very little recognition from his fellow Arab leaders. Official statements eulogising the Palestinian leader sounded more like a simple notification of another death, rather than any genuine outpouring of grief at the loss of a revolutionary hero.

At the Cairo headquarters of the Arab League, a two-hour ceremony was held to collectively eulogise Arafat, in response to a request circulated by the Palestinian permanent mission in Cairo and strongly supported by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

But once the ceremonies had ended, there was hardly any further mention of him. Instead, Arab capitals began talking about the need to 'capture the moment' and 'seize the opportunity' to get the US to start moving on the Palestinian-Israeli front. In addition, papers are already being drafted in at least a couple of Arab capitals to be presented at a Barcelona process foreign ministers' meeting in The Netherlands, the current rotating chair of the European Union, in the hope of instilling new momentum into the peace process.

In a syndicated article, 'Arafat left, leaving the Palestinians with an ever vivid dream of independence', run by the Saudi-owned, London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, King Abdullah of Jordan, who was known to have an uneasy relationship with Arafat, as did his late father King Hussein, described the death of the PLO leader as 'a new chance for peace'.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, certain Arab diplomats, in particular those from countries with direct borders with the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, were explicit in expressing their relief at the death of Arafat. For them, his passing marks the end to the presumptuous obstacles that the Palestinian leader had thrown up on the road to a settlement with Israel, largely for the sake of his own glory. Some see his death as heralding an end to the oppressive control that he had exercised over the Palestinian resistance movements, including Hamas and Jihad. Other diplomats are breathing a sigh of relief at the demise of a leader they considered too self-centred to really care about the misfortunes of his own people.

In six interviews conducted by Al-Ahram Weekly since Arafat's death, there was not a single word of sorrow expressed by any Arab diplomatic source. Indeed, for many, Arafat's death would seem to mark not an end, but a new beginning. This sentiment was also expressed by some Palestinians, who were known for their opposition to Arafat's authoritarian style of rule.

'It is understandable, in a way, that Arab leaders work in a totalitarian manner,' one Palestinian source said. 'They are leaders with states. But Arafat was not a leader with a state; he was the leader of an independence movement.' According to the source, at one point Arafat seemed even to wish to fool himself, claiming that he was a true 'Arab president' in order to be received at the White House.

Given the dominance of such perceptions in diplomatic circles, it is hardly surprising that Arafat's passing has been an occasion for a general sigh of relief. 'He thought he could keep on playing his games of saying 'yes' to one person and 'no' to another over the same offer,' one diplomatic source said. 'He thought he could be the leader of the Intifada and the leader of the peace treaties at the same time. That was impossible. That was the reason that in the end, nobody was willing to burn his fingers for him, because we all knew his real game.'

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PA police rescue 3 attempted smugglers from collapsed tunnel

Palestinian Authority policemen rescued three Palestinians from a collapsed tunnel through which they were attempting to smuggle weapons a few hundred meters from the Egypt-Israel border in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday.
The three were arrested by Palestinian security forces and transfered to Israel for medical treatment. The Israel Defense Forces made their rescue possible on condition that they be transfered to the army afterward.

The three, all from the same family, were trapped in rubble after the tunnel collapsed due to heavy rain in the area overnight. The family is from the Yabna refugee camp in Gaza.

Military sources said the tunnel collapsed while an unknown number of Palestinians were digging toward an IDF outpost near Rafah in southern Gaza.

The sources said the army had permitted two Palestinian bulldozers to enter the area to help dig out the people.

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The Enforcer (for Shin Bet)

Isralert.com source: New Scientist.com

Michael Koubi worked for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, for 21 years and was its chief interrogator from 1987 to 1993. He interrogated hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including renowned militants such as Sheikh Yassin, the former leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli attack this year. He claims that intelligence gained in interrogation has been crucial to protecting Israel from terrorism. He tells Michael Bond that, given enough time, he could make almost anyone talk


What cut you out to become an interrogator?
It was in my character. It was natural for me. Also I spoke Arabic very well.

What was it about your character?
Being an interrogator is 70 per cent character, 30 per cent learned. You have to know how to use intonation when you speak to a prisoner. You have to let him feel you are the boss, always. Not many interrogators can do that, because they don't have the self-assurance. I was born with that. You have to know instinctively the exact time when to shout, when to speak loudly, when to speak quietly, or when not to speak at all and just sit and look at him - for hours if necessary. These things are instinctive.

How good are you at Arabic and why is that important? At school I learned Arabic better than other students, even the small nuances. I spoke it with my grandmother, with my parents. I can speak Arabic better than most Arabs. I learned the Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian dialects as well as Palestinian. This is very important because many Palestinians have worked all over the Arab world and they might speak, say, Egyptian Arabic better than they speak Palestinian. So when I'm interrogating someone who lived in Egypt they'll think I was actually there. They'll think I know everything about their world. Language is the key.

How does that help you in interrogation?
It's about making them think they cannot hide anything from you. If they live in a certain neighbourhood in Cairo, I will learn everything about that neighbourhood. I will know it like the back of my hand. I will learn the details, the houses, even the trees, everything about it. I will give the prisoner the feeling that I followed him there.You have to learn everything about him and his background. You have to know about his family, his wife, his children, his friends, his neighbourhood, his city. You have to be better than him, wiser than him. If I interrogate Sheikh Yassin, I have to know about the Koran. If I interrogate a maths teacher, I have to know maths. If you feel your detainee is wiser than you and you cannot stand head to head then you must change interrogators. That has never happened with me.

How do people behave when they are interrogated for the first time?
Every detainee behaves differently. It depends whether he's from the city or the village, or a Bedouin from the desert. It depends whether he's educated or not. Prison is unimaginably different to normal life. People behave in unexpected ways. People who talk tough in public often submit in interrogation.I once interrogated a Bedouin who said nothing at all for a few days. He was a very tough man. During one session I was playing with a stick, and this idea came to me: I said to him, do you realise there's a snake hidden in the stick? And suddenly he became very afraid. He said he'd tell me anything. This man was used to dealing with snakes in the open, but in a cell it was a different matter.

What's the first thing you do when faced with a new detainee?
It depends on the person. I have a thousand different systems for a thousand detainees. I always have to start alone in the room with him. Sometimes, to make a show, I get other, cooperative detainees to shout outside the door, and when he hears them yelling he gets fearful. Many detainees are young, between 18 and 24. It's their first time in jail and being interrogated, and most of them are likely to do what I tell them. Of course they won't talk about everything at the beginning. Sometimes I'll come in and give him a slap - but only with permission from higher authority.

What do you do when faced with someone who won't talk?
That is my speciality. I know how to do that. It has happened a lot.

How do you do it?
I have many systems. But I do it without using any kind of physical pressure.

Can you tell me about these systems?
No, I cannot.

Can you give me an example of when you've used them?
Once I interrogated a Palestinian man who belonged to Hamas and who I believed knew about the murder of two Israeli soldiers. I had interrogated him once before, when he had said nothing. This time he behaved differently. I looked in his eyes, at his hands, his legs, and he was reacting differently. I assembled my other interrogators, more than 20, in the room, and told them to remain silent. I told them, I am going to show you how to interrogate someone. Of course he was scared with 20 interrogators there. Then I did a few actions, without physical pressure. I showed him how I knew that he was involved. Suddenly he asked for a cigarette. When a Hamas terrorist asks for a cigarette during interrogation, you know he is going to admit something. I gave him one immediately, before he changed his mind. He asked for another. He smoked 10. Then he said, look I'm going to tell you things you don't know. He told me about all the leaders of Hamas, and about hundreds of others who were involved in Hamas that we didn't know about. He opened the way for us to get at Sheikh Yassin and other Hamas leaders who have been killed by our forces.

How physical are you allowed to get during interrogations, with permission?
Very low levels. It could be two slaps in one interrogation, or to shake him, but not very strongly, or to put a cover on his head to scare him. We have never insulted a person's religion or humiliated them. There is no torture in the security services.

What do you make of the torture and abuse that took place in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?
I don't want to judge the Americans. In Gaza we have one security person for every 1000 people. In Iraq they have one for every 100,000. They have no information or intelligence on their detainees. Information is the beginning of interrogation, and if there is none, if there is no language between you and the detainee, sometimes you will use more power. That I presume is what happened in Abu Ghraib.

Have those techniques ever been used in Israel?
Sometimes it has happened, but very seldom, and in these cases the interrogators were thrown out of the organisation. I have no need for those methods. I use only psychology, head to head.

But there have been many accusations.
I know. But these accusations come from detainees who heard screams and shouts coming from neighbouring cells and believed it was really happening, when it was just theatre. The yelling was from other detainees who were cooperating with us.

Did you ever have a detainee you couldn't break?
It has happened, but very seldom. I could count them on one hand.

Why were they so difficult?
They were very primitive people, not literate and not well educated.

Why does that make it harder?
Because I cannot use some of my systems. For example, I cannot show him written papers because he does not know how to read or write. They behave differently. I cannot speak about it. I cannot teach you all my tricks.

Tell me about Sheikh Yassin. How did you interrogate him?
I interrogated him twice, in 1984 and 1989. At the beginning he was totally silent. He didn't answer any questions. Then I said to him, I know you are a religious man, let's speak about religious knowledge. Now, to prepare for this interrogation I had learned the Koran almost by heart. I said to him, let's have a competition. I'll ask you a question about the Koran, and if I win I can ask you another about any subject and you have to answer. He was sure he would know it better than me. But I started asking complicated questions, and he didn't know the answers. When you are in prison, you forget things. For example, I asked him to tell me the name of the only sura out of the 114 in the Koran that did not contain the letter mim. He didn't know. I asked him how many verses there were in the Baqarah sura, the longest in the Koran. He had forgotten. So I won, and I sat with him for hundreds of hours while he talked about the ideology of Hamas. He even told other detainees to cooperate with me, because he respected me. If he could he would have killed me, but he respected me.

How would you interrogate someone like Saddam Hussein?
The Americans asked me about him. I said I couldn't help them. I don't want to say I can break him, but I'm sure I can. I'm sure I can achieve better results with Saddam than the Americans have, because of my experience.

How would you do it?
He was a leader, he has a lot of experience. He was an interrogator himself, and he killed hundreds of people himself, so it would be very difficult to interrogate him. But there is a way. I have heard rumours that he hasn't said anything.

Did you ever feel sympathy for the people you interrogated because of what you put them through?
Sometimes you can be sitting before someone who is 24 years old and he looks like a nice man. Then he admits to you what he's done and you can change 180 degrees in what you feel about him. It has happened a lot. Sometimes when I'm interrogating someone I feel that I could kill him because of what he's done. But if you want to achieve a result you have to keep your cool.The point is we are acting against terrorists. If I thought someone was innocent or knew nothing I would release them immediately.

Interrogation can leave people traumatised for years. Can you always justify it?
You can be sure that we never use physical or psychological methods that damage prisoners.

Do you think you could be broken if you were interrogated?
No. I would use the same methods I use when interrogating someone, only the opposite. I would give nothing away. Nothing.

Don't you have any weaknesses?
None. None in interrogation.

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In Their Own Words: Comparing the Rhetoric of Jihadism and Nazism

by Joseph D'Hippolito
Private Papers

In the twentieth century, genocidal, imperialist totalitarians wore swastika armbands, herded members of supposedly inferior races into concentration camps and shouted, "Heil Hitler!" In the twenty-first century, they wear black coveralls and hoods, decapitate civilian contractors, shoot children in the back, plow hijacked airplanes into buildings and shout, "Allahu Akbar!"

Jihadism is this century's equivalent of Nazism in more than just barbarity. The Osama bin Ladens and Abu Musab al-Zarqawis are the violent face of a coherent, ruthless ideology that imitates the Nazi method of winning popular support. Jihadists—whether terrorists, imams or intellectuals—exploit collective frustration by converting it into a pervasive sense of victimization, then offer the solution: embrace an inherent superiority, seize entitled power and destroy all opponents.

Just as the Nazis described Germans as victimized by a decadent West—as represented by democracy, jazz, "degenerate art" and the Versailles treaty—so do jihadist intellectuals describe Muslims. Consider the words of Mohammed al-Asi, a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, an advisor to the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the imam of the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.:

Muslims are living in a kafir (unbelievers') domain; they are virtually adrift and homeless. The inherent condition of today's Muslims who have lost sight of a Prophet as commander is a religious community of people who are beholden to the forces and powers of kufr (apostasy): secular kufr and religious kufr, mental kufr and military kufr, as well as kufr by choice and kufr by force.

Or consider this editorial in Crescent International magazine published immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:

We know from past experience that people who feel themselves and their peoples to be under sustained and unrelenting attack can react in the most unbelievable ways.

The problem is that none of these [Americans] seem to realize that America has long been at war with numerous peoples all over the world. This is not the opening salvo of a new war; it is probably likely a stunningly successful attempt by one of America's many victims to hit back—very, very hard.

[The] argument is that democracy, freedom and civilization are under attack and must be forcefully defended; such words ring hollow from Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Colin Powell and Tony Blair, each of whom has been responsible for far, far more death and suffering than seen in the US yesterday.

These excerpts explain that Muslims, victimized by the West, have an inherent right to avenge themselves by obliterating non-combatants. Like with the Nazis, in their view there is no such thing as innocent bystanders.

The chilling words of Magdi Ahmad Hussein, the secretary general of the Egyptian Labor Party, broadcast by al-Jazeera television are yet more direct:

We are the weak ones. They make demands on us that don't exist in international law. There must be reciprocity. Those who bomb Fallujah cannot prevent me from bombing Los Angeles. Why Fallujah? Why do we always feel inferior to them? If we had missiles, we should have bombed Los Angeles or any other city until they stopped bombing Fallujah, Samarra and Ramadi.

Just as the Nazis regarded Jews as the fundamental nemeses of humanity, so do jihadist intellectuals. Al-Asi, who often speaks at American universities at the behest of Muslim student groups, said the following at the University of California, Irvine in 2001:

The Zionist-Israeli lobby is taking the United States to the abyss. We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take the Jew out of the ghetto but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew.

Just as the Nazis believed that oppression prevented Germans from fulfilling a destiny mandated by their unparalleled superiority, so do jihadist intellectuals who view Muslim superiority as spiritual, not racial.

"Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West," says Tariq Ramadan, a popular Muslim scholar who teaches in Switzerland and Germany, and who was appointed a post at Notre Dame's Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies before being barred from entering the United States. He is also the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who in Egypt in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the spiritual precursor to groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Al-Asi rejects Western values and asserts Muslim superiority more emphatically. "Obviously, all of this spells out an 'agenda' of Islamic political activity, not in the Western definition of politics, which is sullied and corrupt, but in the Islamic definition of politics, which is clean and healthy," he says. He criticizes his co-religionists for being seduced by "a cunning materialism that decays the Muslim will and causes the Muslims to join the 'modern and developed' world!"

Just as the Nazis regarded Blitzkrieg as critical in the fight against an oppressive West, so do sympathetic intellectuals regard jihad, as Ramadan himself implies:

Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the anti-establishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war.

Hamid Algar, professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at UC Berkeley, was more blunt when he praised Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1994:

Let us remember the comprehensive Jihad that should also embrace our communal and political lives and if necessary go to the point of taking weapons in our hands to defeat the enemies of Islam.

Let us remember the clear analysis of the West that the Imam [Khomeini] gave us—as a collection of international bandits—which has consolidated itself since Imam's death. Let us also remember his insistence that the abominable genocide state of Israel completely disappear from the face of the globe.

Just as the Nazis believed that war provided the primary means for the Volk (racial community) to acquire its rightful Lebensraum (living space), so do Islamic fanatics believe that jihad is fundamental for the ummah (Muslim community) to re-establish the worldwide caliphate, Islam's ultimate geopolitical goal.

Explains Mohammed al-Asi:

The contemporary Muslim mind has to become "preoccupied" with how the Prophet went about putting together an Islamic state. Therefore the information about this state-building has to occupy center stage in our discussions, in our lectures, in our khutbahs (public sermons), in our studies and in our research. Islamic institutions and resources have to be committed to this urgent task.

We should not be studying hair-splitting fiqhi (legalistic) issues in halaqat (study sessions and circles). We should be learning how to consolidate our social will-power and how to form active and status-quo-challenging units throughout our African and Asian lands to reclaim them for Islam.

In the constitution of Iran, Article II, it is written: "All Muslims are one nation, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is duty bound to rest its general policy on the unity of Islamic nations and undertake efforts to realize the political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world."

What about potential opponents? Consider the fate of Theo van Gogh, an independent Dutch filmmaker and the great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh who made a controversial documentary entitled Submission, which depicted violence against women in Muslim societies. Jihadists saw Theo van Gogh as a blasphemer who deserved death. A Muslim website in the Netherlands published a picture of van Gogh with a red target over his chest. The caption read, "When is it Theo's turn?"

On November 2, van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam. His assailants shot him with an automatic gun, then slit his throat and pinned to his corpse with a knife a note bearing threats to Netherlanders and quotations from the Koran. Police arrested a man of Moroccan descent whom authorities say is affiliated with terrorists.

Finally, listen to Algar's views on Palestinian suicide bombers, made in California Monthly, Berkeley's alumni magazine:

That term, an invention of the West, does not represent the perspective of those who engage in such action and is not very helpful. [It] seems to me that a greater degree of moral condemnation should be reserved for those who continue, daily, with impunity, to kill and to humiliate the Palestinian people.

In other words, there is definitely a cause-and-effect relationship here, and to criticize or condemn an effect while overlooking the cause is not very helpful.

Algar is no hypocrite in his defense of terrorism and murder. In 1998, he verbally harassed and spat on members of Berkeley's Armenian Student Association, who were commemorating the genocide of Armenians by the Turks.

"It was not a genocide, but I wish it were, you lying pigs," said Algar, quoted by Shake Hovsepian in Usanogh: Periodical of Armenian Students. "You are distorting the truth about history. You stupid Armenians; you deserve to be massacred!" The students filed a grievance and Berkeley's Associated Students demanded that the administration force Algar to issue a written public apology or censure him.

It should surprise nobody that scholars promote such opinions. During the 1920s, German professors despised the Weimar Republic and longed for the return of authoritarian government. But those professors did not expect the Nazis' brand of totalitarianism. Today's Islamic scholars in the West not only expect it. They welcome it.

Nearly six decades after defeating the Nazis, civilization confronts a distressingly similar—and equally ruthless—ideological enemy that deserves the same fate. It's all there, in their own words.

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UN blames Jews for anti-semitism

Your Tax Dollars at Work
The U.N. discovers the cause of anti-Semitism: Jews.

BY ANNE BAYEFSKY

Yesterday the House International Relations Committee revealed that money from the United Nations Oil for Food program, which was supposed to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, helped pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.N. has a problem with anti-Semitism: It doesn't know what it is.

In order to figure it out, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Unesco invited a group of experts to Barcelona last week. Their mission: to provide the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diéne, with advice on anti-Semitism as well as "Christianophobia and Islamophobia."

From whom did the U.N. get advice? There was Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland's Fribourg University, who was denied entry to the U.S. in August on the basis of a law concerning aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity" or are considered a "public safety risk or a national security threat." But apparently the U.N. thought it was worth listening to the views on racism of someone who said on Sept. 25, 2001, that "[Osama] Bin Laden is perhaps a useful straw man, like Saddam Hussein, whose diabolical representation perhaps serves other geo-strategic, economic or political designs."

Then there was anti-Semitism expert Esther Benbassa from the Sorbonne. She wrote in September 2000, "Today, especially in the United States, Jewish philanthropy is exerted in the name of the perennization of the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust]. The money flows to create pulpits on anti-Semitism and the genocide, to finance museums, and research. As if nothing else were significant or had ever existed."

In her written contribution to the meeting, she artfully refers to "merging the image of the extermination with the might of Israel against the Palestinians, the one image reducing the significance of the other, and the Jew as both victim and executioner." Maybe the U.N. tapped her for her expertise at encouraging anti-Semitism?

Also in Barcelona were two Israelis who sit on the board of the same nongovernmental organization, the Alternative Information Center, a perennial U.N. favorite though it is on the fringes of Israeli society. The Center's co-chairman Michael Warshawski wrote in a 1996 newsletter: "Ethnic cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy." Fellow board member and Tel Aviv University professor Yossi Schwartz presented a paper at the center's workshop this past May "with the support of the Basque Government" entitled "Anti-Zionism Not Anti-Semitism." Calling for the elimination of the Jewish state is not new to Mr. Schwartz, who has written--after quoting from Trotsky's "epoch": "The solution of the working class to the national question in Israel/Palestine is not one or two or three capitalist states but a socialist federation of the Middle East."

Some invited Jews canceled their participation in the Barcelona conference, though some did attend, including another Israeli. They were compelled to spend their time taking exception to contributions from experts such as "superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika is not anti-Semitism."

At the end of the meeting a draft report, prepared with the assistance of U.N. staffers, was shared with participants, who now have a few days to confirm the outcome. The report will become a U.N. document, and it will be disseminated around the world. Here are some excerpts from the U.N.'s contribution to combating anti-Semitsm:

In practice, it is often difficult for an anti-Zionist type of expression not to be seen as simultaneously anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, several participants maintain that it is necessary to conserve the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, whilst defending the right to be anti-Zionist without being branded an anti-Semite and also bearing in mind that most Jews were anti-Zionists before 1935. . . .

The genuine Zionism of many Jews helps to explain the fact that many people wrongly feel that most Jews lend their unconditional support to Israeli policies. That is why we have seen attacks on synagogues, arson attacks on schools, desecration of cemeteries, for reasons that have nothing to do either with religion, or education, or the peaceful rest of the deceased, but that have a great deal to do with a political and a territorial conflict. . . .

In the past, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon was absent from the Arab-Muslim world. Here, the Arab-Israeli conflict plays an essential role, but another important element is the perception of the State of Israel as the "Trojan horse" of the West in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism would therefore be a particular manifestation of the hatred felt for the West, partly for financial reasons. . . .

Recommentations:

. . . The leaders of Jewish communities should also act to distinguish defence of the State of Israel from the fight against anti-Semitism. . . .

Contextualising the memory of the Holocaust with that of other genocides and serious events in contemporary history in order to make sure that at the end of the day everyone can feel the Holocaust as their own tragedy, both Jews and non-Jews.

In other words, according to the U.N. experts' draft report, discrimination against individual Jews is bad, while "anti-Zionism"--the denial to the Jewish people of an equal right to self-determination--is not. Since it is the perception of unconditional Jewish support for Israel that leads people to attack a Jewish cemetery, and anti-Semitism was absent from the Muslim world prior to the Arab-Israeli conflict (the mufti of Jerusalem and his friend Hitler notwithstanding), the way to defeat anti-Semitism is for Jews to cut loose defense of the state of Israel. And by the way, anti-Semitism will diminish if only we stop emphasizing the unique horror of the Holocaust.

It may not be surprising to learn that Mr. Diéne seems to have had pretty fixed ideas about anti-Semitism before the meeting even began. In his October 2004 report to the General Assembly, he wrote: "The cycle of extreme violence triggered by the dynamics of occupation . . . has fuelled profound ethnic antagonism and hatred. . . . The Palestinian population . . . is . . . suffering discrimination. Even if Israel has the right to defend itself . . . a security wall . . . constitutes a jarring symbol of seclusion, erected by a people . . . marked by the rejection of the ghetto. One . . . effect of this conflict is its . . . contribution to the rise of . . . anti-Semitism."

Simply put, Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. Or, if it weren't for Israel's annoying insistence on defending itself, on the same terms as would be applied to any other state faced with five decades of wars and terrorism aimed at its obliteration, Jews would be better off.

It is interesting to compare the U.N. expert's incisive analysis of the underlying hatred in Sudan. After noting in the same report that two million Sudanese have died and four million have been displaced, he muses that "massacres, allegedly ethnically motivated, are continuing to claim victims in the Darfur region. . . . The Special Rapporteur therefore proposes to give greater priority to this region with a view to conducting . . . an investigation . . . of the ethnic dimension of the conflicts ravaging it."

Another day, another U.N. meeting, another UN report, and another serious step backward in combating anti-Semitism.

And don't forget, another American taxpayer dollar.

Ms. Bayefsky is an international lawyer and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

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Orthodox Jew shot in head and killed in Belgium, probably by Muslims

Moshe Yitzhak Na'eh, who was shot in the head overnight Wednesday in Antwerp in what seems to be an anti-Semitic attack, died of his wounds late Thursday afternoon, Belgium's Prosecutors office announced.

Prosecutor's spokeswoman Dominique Reniers said, "We do not exclude any motive, but so far there are no indications that the motive was racist or extremist," she said.

Reniers called the victim a "devout young man" who was shot from close range. He slumped on to the road, where he was discovered by passers-by who initially thought he was a road accident victim.

There were no witnesses to the shooting.

Na'eh, 24, an ultra-Orthodox Jew and a father of five – the oldest five years old, the youngest an 18-months-old baby - was shot at about 2:20 a.m. on Lange Kievitstraat, near a Muslim neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post from Na'eh's bedside in an Antwerp hospital before he passed away, Na'eh's sister, who asked that her name not be published, said the family was praying her brother will survive the attack. "As long as there is life there is hope," she said, adding that all the Jewish schools in Antwerp are saying Tehillim (Psalms) for her brother's recovery.

Belgian federal police are investigating the incident, which seems to be a hate crime, as Na'eh's money was not stolen and he was not involved in any criminal deeds.

Louis Davids, Editor-in-Chief of the Belgian Jewish Weekly, told The Jerusalem Post that the shooting in Antwerp made headline news on all TV and radio stations Thursday. "Belgian Jews are worried about the escalating violence in their neighborhood. The young man was an integral part of the close knit Jewish community, for that reason many are distraught and shocked," Davids said. Davids added that police have increased their patrols of the Jewish areas to reassure citizens. The local police have also assigned a large team on this case in order to uncover the facts as soon as possible.

Both Na'eh and his father serve as gabays (custodians) of the Pshevorski Rebbe in Antwerp, where Na'eh grew up. He finished work at the house of the rebbe, located in the same building of the community's synagogue, at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, according to Yehuda Ceitlin, a correspondent of the European Jewish Press.

The rebbe's house is located near a bridge separating the Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods of Antwerp. Na'eh was walking along the bridge on his way home when he was shot in the head from close range.

He was quickly rushed to hospital, where doctors struggled to keep him alive.

"If this is indeed an anti-Semitic act," Ceitlin said, "this is a big change in Belgium. There have been anti-Semitic stabbings here, punches – but never shooting."

"The Jewish community here is very worried," Ceitlin told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

He added that he was informed that at the time of the shooting Na'eh was carrying in his pockets 1,300 Euro, which the attackers did not attempt to steal.

"This is further evidence that the attack might have been an anti-Semitic incident," Ceitlin said.

Representatives of Antwerp Police and the Belgium Justice Ministry held a press conference on Thursday to officially address the incident. "They didn't give away any new information," Ceitlin said. "They did, however, call Belgium Jewish leaders prior to the meeting and asked them not to participate in it, so as not to turn the press conference into a 'Jewish happening'," he said.

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A voice of sanity among Yahoo Message Board morons

(In response to a post entitled "Israelis don't want peace.") - EoZ - by: Macaroniguy

How moronic you are. How ignorant of history you are.

Israel has ALREADY made concessions, more than any other country has ever made (willingly). And, in this conflict, Israel is the ONLY one making concessions.

Do you know that Israel, even with the 'extra' territories, still only comprises 22% of the Territory of Palestine that was given over by the British? Israel was originally bequeathed, in the Balfour Declaration, 100%. While the Israelis went through the proper channels and sought the approval of the League of Nations in order to legitimize its nation, the Arabs simply grabbed 78%, most of that going to make the country of Jordan. Israel could have easily fought, but they did not, as A CONCESSION TO PEACE.

Then, Israel was attacked in 5 separate wars of pan-Arab military aggression. In the 1967 war, in particular, Israel defended itself, fighting off the invaders, and actually gained a huge swathe of land. Did Israel keep this land? No. It gave back 90% AS A CONCESSION TO PEACE.

Only a small amount was kept, as a buffer between itself and its hostile enemies. Whom did this land belong to? Answer: the Jordanians. Did the Jordanians make a claim to recover this land? Answer: No.

Finally, as A CONCESSION TO PEACE, Israel allowed Egyptian born and raised Arafat to bring in his fellow Arabs, calling themselves 'palestinians' (though most have no roots in the region preceding the 1900s) to live in this region. They did so on the Arab promise that they would peacefully co-exist. Question: Did the 'palestinians' do as they promised, did they behave according to the condition of their occupation of Israeli land? Answer: No. They have conducted a 30 year long guerrila war against the Israelis, slaughtering innocent Israelis unmercifully.

Nevertheless, AS A CONCESSION TO PEACE, Israel offered *NINE* times peace treaties to the 'palestinians', and all nine were rejected, the 'palestinians' not willing to bend even modestly, though the Israelis were willing to give away nearly everything.

This war is costing Israel preciously. It costs Israel, most importantly, in the lives of its people, both mortally and emotionally. It costs Israel economically, draining away a huge percentage of its revenues in fighting a never-ending war. It also costs Israel economically in that the Arabs have spent trillions of oil dollars in a large PR campaign to smear Israel and villainize her for defending herself, to the point that other nations balk at trade with her.

The U.S. tax dollars sent to Israel are a pittance, in point of fact. Compared to the $2.0 billion yearly military aid to Israel, the U.S. contributes more than $130 billion(!) every year to the defense of Europe and more than $30 billion to the defense of Japan, Korea, and the Far East. Over 300,000 U.S. troops are stationed with NATO and over 30,000 U.S. troops in the Far East. In contrast, not one single U.S. soldier needs to be stationed and put at risk in Israel. U.S. military analysts estimate that the U.S. would have to spend the equivalent of $150 billion a year in the Middle East to maintain a force equivalent to Israel's. Finally, Israel provides the U.S. with invaluable intelligence and testing of its weapons.

To sum up: Israel has done everything in the name of peace, has made untold concessions for peace, has toed the line in every way possible, while the Arab/Muslim terrorists and militants have done everything possible to ethnically cleanse her, to genocidally destroy her, in the name of hatred and war.

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Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered

by Theodore Dalrymple

The slaughter of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, in broad daylight, by a young man of Moroccan origin bent on jihad, has at last dented Dutch confidence that unconditional tolerance can be on its own the unifying principle of a viable society. For tolerance to work, it must be reciprocal; tolerance appears to the intolerant jihadist mere weakness and lack of belief in anything. Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.

Like most people in Western democracies, Van Gogh, by all accounts a brash and combative man, took his freedom of expression for granted. Most of us most of the time do not reflect much on the fact that such freedom is an historical exception rather than an historical rule, a reversible achievement rather than a free gift of God. There are still many who would rather kill than brook any contradiction of their opinions or beliefs, even while they live in the most tolerant of societies.

But why kill Theo Van Gogh, of all the people who have expressed hostility to radical Islam? Perhaps it was mere chance, but more likely it resulted from his work’s exposure of a very raw nerve of Muslim identity in Western Europe: the abuse of women. This abuse is now essential for people of Muslim descent for maintaining any sense of separate cultural identity in the homogenizing solution of modern mass society.

In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.

The abuse of women has often, if not always, appealed to men, because it gives them a sense of power, however humiliated they may feel in other spheres of their life. And the oppression of women by Muslim men in Western Europe gives those men at the same time a sexual partner, a domestic servant, and a gratifying sense of power, while allowing them also to live an otherwise westernized life. For the men, it is convenient; interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, almost the only openly hostile expressions toward Islam from British-born Muslims that I hear come from young women, some of whom loathe it passionately because they blame it for their servitude.

Religious sanction for the oppression of women (whether theologically justified or not) is hence the main attraction of Islam to young men in an increasingly secular world. This explains why a divide often opens between brothers and sisters in the same European Muslim family; the sisters want liberty, but the brothers enforce the old rules. They have to, or the whole gratifying system breaks down.

This, I suspect, is the source of the rage against Theo Van Gogh.

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Arafat TV tribute angers Kuwaitis

The late Palestinian leader is despised by many Kuwaitis for supporting Iraq's invasion of their country in 1990.

The documentary, which describes Arafat as a great freedom fighter, was shown a day before his death was made official.

Information Minister Mohammad Abdulhassan has come under fire over the issue, in particular from conservative MPs.

Kuwaitis remember only too well how Arafat very publicly supported former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the invasion of their country.

Some Kuwaitis are also disappointed that their government sent a high-level delegation to Arafat's funeral in Cairo.

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The moral sickness of the world

Melanie Phillips

The degradation and corruption of British and western society, not to mention the United Nations, are now on sickening display for all with eyes to see from the disgusting response to the death of Arafat. This man, the godfather of modern terrorism, who caused the deaths of thousands of souls, who preached death and destruction towards the Jews, who terrorised and swindled the Palestinian Arabs he purported to lead and kept them trapped in penury, servitude and squalour, is being feted in death as a world statesman. The Jerusalem Post reports that the UN lowered its flag to half-mast, while UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was 'deeply moved' by the news, according to a UN statement, and he 'conveyed his condolences to Suha Arafat and the Palestinian people'.

'President Arafat will always be remembered for having led the Palestinians, back in 1988, to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state," the UN statement said. "It is tragic that he did not live to see it
fulfilled.'

'Peaceful coexistence'? From the man who spearheaded barbaric acts of mass murder against the Israelis until the end? 'Tragic' that he did not live to see a Palestinian state, when Arafat was the man who turned it down in 2000? What kind of madness is this?

French President Chirac was as usual genuflecting before terror:

'French President Jacques Chirac visited the Percy military hospital to bid a final farewell to Arafat, whose body was to be flown to Cairo later in the day."I came to bow before president Yasser Arafat and pay him a final homage," he said after the 25-minute visit, pledging France would continue to work for Middle East peace.'

While Nelson Mandela showed his true colours as an enemy of decency:

'Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation, one who gave his entire life to the cause of the Palestinian people,' said former South African president Nelson Mandela in a statement.

And then let us not forget our own pygmy Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who on the Today programme (8.10 am) yesterday shockingly and unbelievably called 'President' Arafat a 'towering figure', said it was difficult to imagine the Middle East without him and announced that he would be representing the Britsh government at his funeral. Since when did the British government feel the need to represent itself at the funeral of a mass murderer? How can Tony Blair pose as a noble defender of civilised values against terror when his government honours in this way one of the world's principal terrorists?

On National Review Online, Tom Gross expresses revulsion at the moral corruption of such responses:

'Yet until the very end, some prominent Western journalists never stopped heaping praise on him, or covering up for his countless crimes and misdeeds. It didn't matter how many Jews, Arabs, and others died on his orders, or how many times he let down his own people, or stole from them. For these journalists, as well as for many European governments, he remained a worthy Nobel peace-prize winner and the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people. To judge by some of the reporting as he lay on his deathbed in Paris — the hushed tone of the television newsreaders, the flattering touched-up portrait photos on the cover of the London Times — Arafat was a figure who deserved to be deeply revered, a kind of ailing pope. There was little mention of the fact that he played a central role in the growth of modern terrorism, and continued to instigate it until the end. That his hijacking of airplanes inspired al Qaeda, that he ruined the modern Olympics by gunning down athletes, that he had a wheelchair-bound American pensioner shot and thrown into the Mediterranean, or that the PLO's massacre of 21 young Israeli children in their school pre-dated Beslan.'

The reaction of the free world to Arafat's death, along with the opprobium heaped daily upon his victims in Israel, illustrates the decadence that now rewards evil and punishes those whom it terrorises. It is a horrifying indication of a world that has simply lost its fundamental understanding of right and wrong. All who value life, liberty and justice should take careful note and shudder at this moral -- and mortal -- sickness. This is the way a civilisation dies.

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Israel Navy acquires three new fast-class ships

The Israel Navy has commissioned three Israeli-made Super Dvora Mk-III fast patrol ships in a generational leap for its protection of the coast.

The 27-meter-long craft boast a top speed of 50 knots, making them the fastest interdiction ships in the navy's fleets. They are to replace the venerable Dabur patrol craft that have been in service for 30 years.

The Super Dvora Mk-IIIs are manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries' Ramta Division in Beersheba.

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NATO invites Israel to joint military, anti-terror exercises

BRUSSELS - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has suggested that the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time, take part in multinational military exercises and participate in anti-terror activities such as patrols in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
NATO is also considering sending forces to the Gaza Strip after Israel implements the disengagement plan, if Israel and the Palestinian Authority reach an agreement on the withdrawal and ask for NATO help.

A military summit was to be held in Brussels on Wednesday, with the participation of the chiefs of staff of 26 NATO members and countries that have ties with the organization. For the first time, Israel will send a senior IDF representative to the summit: operations directorate chief Major General Yisrael Ziv, who was sent at the last minute in place of Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon.

NATO plans to upgrade what it calls the 'Mediterranean dialogue' it is conducting with Israel and six Muslim nations: Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauretania. This means that policy discussions will be conducted by leaders of a higher rank, and that the level of joint military operations will be raised through coordinated military exercises, the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and joint planning for civilian disaster readiness.

The IDF's first-ever role in NATO military exercises is part of the organization's decision to invite the armies of the 'Mediterranean dialogue' countries to take part in the exercises.

Seven exercises were proposed to the IDF, including training that will take place in Ukraine in June. NATO sources said experience has taught that it is worthwhile to start with sending officers from countries new to alliance activities to view multinational operations as a way of learning the methods.

Diplomatic, not just military, dialogue is also on the agenda. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was invited to participate with his colleagues from the other 'dialogue' nations, in a meeting with the NATO foreign ministers council which will meet in Brussels next month.

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"Syria responsible for deaths of Americans in Iraq"

For more than a year, Washington has been pressing Syria to seal its border with Iraq. Two months ago, senior American officials delivered that message to President Bashar Assad in Damascus and expressed concern over Syria's longtime support of anti-Israeli terrorist groups. William Burns, a State Department official who was accompanied by Peter Rodman of the Defense Department later said that Assad was told that 'Syria should not be used as a platform to undermine Iraqi stability.' In an interview, a senior Defense Department official complained that 'elements in the Syrian' government 'are actively colluding with our enemies.' He says that 'extremists in Iraq are using Syria as a place to organize and to get support and to flow back and forth across the border, and we believe this is tolerated by the Syrian government. . . . This means they share responsibility for the killing of Americans, and this has to stop.'

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Creating a state the moral way

....We must no longer put up with the notion - prevalent not only in the Third World but also, unfortunately, in European countries - that the weak and occupied are not subject to any moral restrictions. The Jewish people and the State of Israel possess the utmost moral justification for such a demand: It is doubtful whether in the course of human history there has been another people like the Jewish people in the 20th century for whom achieving sovereignty was not just a matter of national honor and identity, but an existential question.

From a moral standpoint, the Jewish people's struggle for independence could have justified more far-reaching means than those employed by any other people. Despite that, most Jews chose to focus their efforts on constructive building of a nation and its defense, and the pre-state organizations that subscribed to 'armed struggle' (Etzel and Lehi) limited their terror to attacking British soldiers and institutions.

The only period in which the Etzel deviated from that rule was in the waning days of the 1930s 'Arab revolt,' when revenge attacks were launched against Arab civilians following attacks on Jews. Not only was that a strictly reactive policy, but those attacks were condemned by the vast majority of the Jewish public, and the Etzel itself ultimately desisted its attacks after a brief period.

Israel is fully within its moral rights to demand that the Palestinians restrict the methods of their struggle and to insist that the nations of the world address that demand with the Palestinians. Certainly, Israel should require the international community to accept its right to fight terrorism forcefully in line with the world's legitimate demand that Israel stop ruling over millions of Palestinians.

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Egyptian columnists did not mourn Arafat (MEMRI)

'I Do Not Care at All Whether He Remains Unconscious'

Anwar Wagdi, a columnist for the Egyptian government weekly Akhbar Al-Youm, wrote on November 6, 2004:

"I do not know what will become of the Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, and I do not care at all whether he remains unconscious in the recovery room of a hospital in Paris or whether he suddenly awakens, dons his military uniform, and boards the plane to return to Ramallah, with a broad grin on his face and his two famous fingers reaching the skies in [his] traditional sign of victory, a victory that never was throughout the long decades that have gone by…

"My lack of interest in Arafat's fate does not stem from a lack of humanity toward a poor, sick person, who is suffering the agony of dying, but [stems from the fact] that I have not forgotten, and will not forget, as long as I live, how Arafat jumped for joy, dancing, singing, and praising [the killers] as soon as he learned of the death of the late Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat on October 6, 1981.

"The picture of Yasser Arafat exchanging congratulations with those surrounding him on the occasion of the death of the 'traitor' and the 'agent' – as they had the audacity to describe the Egyptian president … prevents me from expressing solidarity with Abu Ammar [i.e. Yasser Arafat], whatever his fate may be." [1]

'We in Egypt will Never Forget how Yasser Arafat Broadcast the Song 'Rejoice My Heart' in the [West] Bank and the [Gaza] Strip when President Al-Sadat was Assassinated'

In a similar vein, columnist and former editor Anis Mansour wrote on November 10, 2004 in the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram:

"Life is in the hands of Allah, O Abu Ammar. and one must not gloat over a death. [However,] we in Egypt will never forget how Yasser Arafat broadcast the song 'Rejoice My Heart' in the [West] Bank and the [Gaza] Strip when President Al-Sadat was assassinated, [nor will we forget] the exclamations of joy regarding 'the fall of the Zionist traitor, agent, criminal, and exterminator Anwar Al-Sadat!'

"What has passed is dead. And the dead has already paid his debt and must not be beaten. Yasser Arafat has left the Palestinian people facing a difficult choice and a test. This opportunity must not be missed. The Palestinian people must prove to the world that it can have one stand and one leadership in order to renew the struggle in a different form…

"In the event that the Palestinians are divided in their opinions regarding who should be their leader and in the event that they direct their guns toward themselves and there is a civil war – they will give Israel, the U.S., and the entire world a strong justification to cease all negotiations, because there is no one [Palestinian leader] with whom an understanding can be reached, but [instead there are] many.

"If the absence of such a person continues for a long time, Israel will shelve the road map plan and there will be no map and no road, but anarchy

in Palestine, and that will constitute a danger to Israel's security. [In such an event,] there will be no escape, and the U.N., the U.S., the European Community, and the Arab League will publish a resolution concerning Palestine, and in the future there will be those who [talk] about the need to occupy Palestine or make it a protectorate.

"In order to avoid such a thing, the Palestinian people must quickly choose a wise leadership – otherwise, there will be thousands of bad scenarios that will take us back for another century." [2]

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