Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 04, 2004

Just in case someone thinks that Hansen is not a complete lying Jew-hater....

From the Jerusalem Post, April 1, 2003:

Terrorist organizations in Palestinian-controlled areas, as well as in Syria and Lebanon, take advantage of UNRWA workers and their vehicles to transport arms and terrorists, according to a document drawn up by defense establishment officials.

The document notes that Palestinian terrorists in Israeli custody admitted using UNRWA facilities, equipment, and vehicles to assist in carrying out terror attacks, knowing that UNRWA personnel are able to travel in Israel and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, without being subjected to security checks.

The report focuses on UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah, 38, a resident of Jabaliyah in the Gaza Strip, who was arrested last August by security forces as he returned from Egypt.

Attalah first began working for UNRWA in 1987 as a director of food supplies for Gaza Strip refugees. He was provided with a UN vehicle and issued a UN laissez-passer that entitled him to unrestricted travel in the region. According to the report Attalah admitted to investigators that he used his car to transport terrorists and arms.

Attalah told investigators that he was repeatedly asked by officials of Fatah's Popular Resistance Committee to drive them in his UN car as it was never subjected to IDF inspections. He also made use of his laissez-passer to travel to Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria where he contacted officials of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, received funds, and transferred arms.

IDF prevents terrorist attack, kills 4 armed Palestinians

Israel Defense Forces troops prevented a terrorist attack in the Negev on Saturday morning when they killed four Palestinians carrying Kalashnikov rifles who had crossed the Israeli border with Gaza near the Nahal Oz area, in the western Negev.
The military factions of Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group affiliated with Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah, later claimed responsibility for the planned suicide attack.

The militants had crossed a security fence under a thick fog. Their infiltration triggered the fence's alarm system, and security forces were rushed to the area.

The group was located some 400 meters inside Israel's territory. The terrorists exchanged fire with soldiers and border policemen in the area and were shot and killed by the troops.

The same battalion which prevented the Negev attack has killed three other militants in the area in the past ten days.

UNRWA chief Peter Hansen 'sure' Hamas members on payroll (Haaretz)

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Peter Hansen on Monday told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that he was sure members of the militant Hamas organization were on the payroll in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but that he did not "see that as a crime."
UNRWA distributes aid to the Palestinians in the territories and has frequently been accused by Israel of turning a blind eye to terrorist activity.

"Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime," the CBC web site quoted Hansen as saying.

"Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."

Hansen told the CBC, however, that the UN expects all employees to act with neutrality.

"We demand of our staff, whatever their political persuasion is, that they behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality," he said.

According to the CBC web site, the Canadian government, which donates some $10 million to UNRWA annually, said it would be "deeply concerned" should Hansen's remarks have been taken in context, and said it "will immediately seek clarification from Mr. Hansen directly and from UN authorities."

UNRWA on Sunday demanded an apology from Israel over accusations that Gaza militants used a UN vehicle to transport a homemade rocket.

The world body sought to refute the charges at a news conference in Gaza on Sunday. It showed what it said was the ambulance seen in footage released by the Israel Defense Forces and presented its driver and rescue workers to reporters.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gilerman has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding the dismissal of Peter Hansen from his post.

The letter communicates Israel's claim that Hamas is using UN ambulances as a means of smuggling arms and terrorists through the Gaza Strip.

Last Wednesday the Israel Defense Forces relased footage showing what it said were two men loading a Qassam rocket onto a van bearing a large UN logo.

The photographed images, taken from an unmanned plane in the Jabalya refugee camp, were broadcast Friday night on network television. After the object was loaded, the vehicle left the spot. Army sources say that the IDF avoided firing at the vehicle, as it had done in other instances, fearing that it might be a UN ambulance.

But rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in Jabalya on Friday after he heard that someone there may have been wounded. The wounded boy had already been moved by the time he arrived, he said.

"I came back to the car with the stretcher, and I folded it and threw it inside the car," he said. "If it was a missile, I would not throw it into the car but would put it in carefully."

The director of operations for UNRWA, Lionel Brisson, said UN workers do not carry weapons or armed militants in UN vehicles. "We want an apology from the Israelis, because we didn't commit any wrongdoing," he said.

The blurred black-and-white Israeli video showed three men walking toward the UN vehicle, including one who carried an elongated object. The army said the object was a rocket of the type used by militants to target southern Israel.

UN officials said the object was a stretcher, noting that the man in the footage was carrying it with one hand, a difficult task with a Qassam, which weighs anywhere from 5.5 to 35 kilograms.

UNRWA maintains a fleet of ambulances in the Gaza Strip, which are used for evacuating wounded. UN ambulances have been used before to transport armed Palestinians and weapons. Last May similar scenes were documented by the IDF in Rafah and in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza.

Israel to soothe battle trauma with marijuana

JERUSALEM, Oct 3 (Reuters) Israeli soldiers traumatised by battle with the Palestinians have a new, unconventional weapon to exorcise their nightmares -- marijuana.
Under an experimental programme, Delta-9 tetrohydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient found in the cannabis plant, will be administered to 15 soldiers over the next several months in an effort to fight post-traumatic stress disorder.

Raphael Mechoulam of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the chief researcher behind a project he described as a world-first, said the chemical could trick the brain into suppressing unwanted memories.

For soldiers haunted by flashbacks of traumatic battle experiences, he said, the drug, administered in liquid form, could be the answer to hundreds of sleepless nights.

''It helps them sleep better, for one thing. These people often wake up from nightmares, and experience sweating or hallucinations,'' Mechoulam told Reuters.

The army said civilian and military committees had approved the experiment.

Millions of people, mainly war veterans, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychiatric condition that can develop after experiencing life-threatening events.

Doctors already use so-called medical marijuana to treat nausea among cancer patients, appetite loss among AIDS sufferers and neurological disorders such as Tourette's Syndrome, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

However, Mechoulam said this is the first time THC would be used to treat post-traumatic stress."

Saudi Money behind Madrid bombing (Guardian-UK)

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Saudi cleric funneled money to an Egyptian described as one of the masterminds of the Madrid train bombings in March, Spanish and Italian newspapers reported Thursday.

The Egyptian suspect Rabei Osman Ahmed, arrested in Milan, Italy, in June on a request from Spanish authorities, identified Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a former university professor in Saudi Arabia, as his financier while he was living in Spain between 2001 and 2003, Spain's El Mundo and Italy's Corriere della Sera said in a joint report.

The March 11 train bombings killed 191 people and have been blamed on Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida.

In a wiretapped conversation before his arrest, Osman Ahmed reportedly said: ``The Madrid attack is my project.''

Palestinians shun intifada rallies (JPost)

A rally organized in Ramallah on Wednesday to mark the fourth anniversary of the intifada was attended by fewer than 150 Palestinians. Similar rallies in other West Bank cities also drew small crowds, prompting journalists and Palestinian political activists to wonder what went wrong.

Organizers said they expected thousands of people of people to participate in the Ramallah rally, which was organized by The National and Islamic Forces, an alliance of Palestinian groups including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

Husam Izz Addin, a reporter with the PA's daily Al Ayyam, pointed out that the low turnout raised many eyebrows in Ramallah. "Many people, including leaders of the Palestinian factions, expressed astonishment at the small number of participants in what was supposed to be a major rally in the center of Ramallah," he said.

He noted that Hamas and Fatah supporters were conspicuously absent from the rally – to the dismay of the organizers.

U.S. Threatens Green Light to Expel Arafat

(News First Class-Hebrew)
Arafat's personal advisor, Nabil Abu Rodeina, received a "cold shower" during his last visit to Washington.
The Arabic newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yom reported this weekend that senior administration officials who met with Abu Rodeina gave him an unmistakable message:
If Arafat fails to implement the commitments he made to the U.S. by the November elections, the administration will remove its objection to his being expelled by Israel.

IAF cameras catch a UN vehicles transporting a rocket for terrorists (JPost)

Israel plans to call for the resignation of Peter Hansen, the commissioner-general of UNRWA in Gaza, after IDF cameras caught Palestinians terrorists apparently using an UNRWA vehicle to transport a Kassam rocket in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF released footage taken by unmanned aerial vehicles showing masked men loading what appeared to be a Kassam rocket into an ambulance marked 'UN' on its roof. The black-and-white footage showed the men driving off in the vehicle inside the Jabalya refugee camp.

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said he plans to file a complaint with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the matter.
He told Army Radio that the UN was turning into a tool of terrorists instead of fostering peace.
'It is inconceivable that the UN, which is supposed to be spreading peace is being used as a cover for terror,' Gillerman said.

Gillerman specifically cast blame on Peter Hansen, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip. 'He is a hater of Israel. He is the source of the problem. The UN needs to ask if this man should hold such a central position.'
'We view this incident very seriously, and I intend on Monday to turn to the UN secretary-general with a very strong complaint. I will ask that they come to the necessary conclusions regarding UNRWA, to check the incident, and establish a serious committee of inquiry that will get to the bottom of this thing. It is unacceptable that the UN, which is supposed to further the goals of peace, will turn into a shelter for murderers,' Gillerman said.

Chag Sameach!

The blog will not be updated during the next few days as I celebrate Sukkot. Have a great holiday!

Why are Palestinian refugees different?-(MMN)

The Palestinian refugees who abandoned their homes in 1948 were casualties of a war started by the Arab world with the objective of preventing the creation of a Jewish state. Some of the refugees fled at their own initiative; others were, in modern parlance, ethnically cleansed. The nascent State of Israel was fighting a war of existential survival. It owes no apologies for its behavior in 1948.

UNGAR 194 was adopted in 1949 with the aim of ending the new refugee problem quickly by means of return and compensation. When you go back and read it, it invokes a degree of moderation: if refugees agree to 'live at peace with their [Israeli] neighbors', then they 'should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date'. There is plenty of qualifying language here that has enabled Israel, over the years, to insist that UNGAR 194 is not feasible because we are still effectively at war.

The Palestinian national movement, for its part, has turned 194 into a blatant demand that Israel accept the refugees' 'right of return'--a phrase neither mentioned nor implied in that resolution--as a condition for peace. Hardline Palestinians argue that Israel must allow millions of refugees to inundate the country, thereby in effect compromising its status as a Jewish state and negating UNGAR 181, which explicitly created 'Jewish and Arab states' in Mandatory Palestine. Moderate Palestinians insist that ways can be found to reassure Israel that only a small portion of the refugees would actually return. But they too are very insistent that Israel at least recognize the 'right' of all refugees to return.

In other words, for moderate Palestinians an acceptable final status peace agreement would involve a relatively symbolic return of, say, tens of thousands of refugees, coupled with agreed language regarding UNGAR 194 that could be understood by the Palestinian national movement as Israeli acknowledgement of guilt, or blame, or shame, for having created the refugee problem in the first place. Many Israelis understand this as a demand that Palestinians be awarded psychological compensation in the form of an Israeli admission that Israel was 'born in sin'--that Palestinians were 'right' and Israel 'wrong' in 1948. That is not what UNGAR 194 is all about. That is not what Israel is all about. This cannot and must not be the basis for peace.

This set of Palestinian demands relies on a remarkable Arab achievement regarding the Palestinian refugees over the past 50 years. Not only has UNGAR 194 been distorted beyond recognition in the Arab narrative, but Palestinian refugees have been awarded their own unique UN agency, UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency), while all the rest of the world's refugees make do with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Further, statutes have been promulgated by UNRWA to ensure that refugee status is passed on from generation to generation, to eternity. Thus the Palestinian refugee problem grows exponentially with every passing year. With a fifth generation of Palestinian refugees upon us, and factoring in intermarriage between refugee and non-refugee Palestinians, we are seemingly guaranteed that this problem will never be resolved because virtually all Palestinians will soon be able to claim refugee and 'return' status. Nowhere else in the world has a refugee problem been treated, or mistreated, this way.

There are a few Palestinians who recognize the absurdity of the Palestinian right of return demands. But in the Palestinian mainstream, generations of Palestinians have been educated on the concept that Israel will indeed eventually recognize the right of return and repatriate those refugees who so desire. Thus the refugee issue has become perhaps the single most difficult obstacle to peace.

I can conceive of one possible compromise position that might somehow, at some point, be useful in reaching agreement on the refugee issue. Israel would reiterate categorically that it rejects the right of return. But in the spirit of UNGAR 194, it would offer to repatriate those original refugees, i.e., Palestinians who themselves left the country in 1948, who wish to spend their last years in Israel and are prepared to do so in a spirit of peace. No extended families-only the original refugees themselves, all at least 56 years old, who would number between a few thousand and a few tens of thousands.

Palestinians could, and hopefully would, interpret this as a humanitarian gesture that goes to the core of their grievance. Israelis could claim to be faithful to the original intent of UNGAR 194, without in any way validating the Palestinian narrative regarding 1948 or the Palestinian interpretation of UNGAR 194, both of which are antithetical to the spirit of a genuine two state solution and to reconciliation between the two peoples.

If we cannot invoke a compromise of this nature regarding UNGAR 194 and the right of return, I fear we will remain far from an agreed end to this conflict.

"

Israel Divestiture Spurs Clash (Wash Post)

Jewish Leaders Condemn Move by Presbyterian Church

Jewish and Protestant leaders clashed over Israel yesterday as the heads of several major U.S. Jewish organizations condemned the Presbyterian Church's decision to begin selective divestiture in companies operating in Israel.

After a polite but tense meeting in New York, Presbyterian officials and leaders of the Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism promised to continue their dialogue. But neither side gave any ground.
___Conflict in the Mideast ___
SPECIAL REPORT
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Latest News From the Mideast:

• Israel Divestiture Spurs Clash (Post, Sept. 29, 2004 )
• 7 Palestinians Killed in Spate Of Violence (Post, Sept. 28, 2004 )
• Israel Accuses Syria of 'Directing Terrorism' (Reuters, Sept. 27, 2004; 11:27 AM )
• Full Mideast Coverage
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Graphic:
• One Land, Two Peoples A look at the history of the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

_____Religion News_____
• Displays of Perseverance (The Washington Post, Sep 25, 2004)
• A Mission To Salvage Holy Message (The Washington Post, Sep 24, 2004)
• An Array of Takes on Thomas (The Washington Post, Sep 18, 2004)
• U.S. Says Saudis Repress Religion (The Washington Post, Sep 16, 2004)
• Va. Episcopalians Enlist Ex-Archbishop's Services (The Washington Post, Sep 16, 2004)
• More Religion Stories
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"Holding something over the head of Israel to change its conduct, while holding nothing over the heads of the Palestinians to change their conduct . . . has caused utter dismay in the Jewish community," Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told reporters. "It is unbalanced, it is unwieldy, it will not work."

Jewish-Presbyterian relations have been in turmoil since the 2.4 million-member Presbyterian Church's General Assembly voted 431 to 62 in July to "initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel" and also decided to continue funding messianic congregations that target Jews for proselytizing.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk, or highest elected official, of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said the church does not plan a "blanket divestment" of its $7 billion in investment funds from companies operating in Israel. Rather, he said, it will target businesses that it believes bear particular responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians and will give them a chance to change their behavior before selling their shares.

Presbyterian officials cited one possible example: Caterpillar Inc., which manufactures bulldozers used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes that are built without permits or belong to families of suicide bombers.

Kirkpatrick said the church would also pull its money out of any companies that are complicit in supporting terrorism.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, said the Presbyterian resolution was a "lopsided" action that blamed one side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"There is plenty of guilt and plenty of blame to go around," he said. "But . . . the expectation is that there will be a certain fairness in the critique."

Jewish leaders also expressed concern that other Protestant groups, such as the worldwide Anglican Communion, appear to be considering punitive measures toward Israel. Last week an Anglican delegation toured Palestinian areas and reportedly called for divestiture to end the "draconian conditions" of Israel's "continuing occupation."

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, issued a report this week saying that mainline Protestant denominations devoted 37 percent of their human rights declarations over the past four years to criticism of Israel, far more than any other foreign country.

Saudi Man on the Street Interview - Would You be Willing to Shake Hands with a Jew?

Interviewer: 'Would You, as a Human Being, be Willing to Shake Hands with a Jew?'
I like the phrase "as a human being," meaning that of course Jews aren't human. Nice touch, Akhmed! - EoZ

Respondent 1:

"Of course I wouldn't be willing to shake hands with a Jew, for religious reasons and because of what is happening now in Palestine, and for many reasons that don't allow me to shake a Jew's hand."

Respondent 2:

"No. Because the Jews are eternal enemies. The murderous Jews violate all agreements. I can't shake hands with someone who I know is full of hatred towards me."

Respondent 3:

"No, the Jew is an enemy. How can I shake my enemy's hand?"

Interviewer: "Would you refuse to shake hands with a Jew?"

Respondent 4:

"Of course, so I wouldn't have to consider amputating my hand afterwards."

Interviewer: 'If a Child Asks You Who 'Who are the Jews,' What Would You Answer?'

Respondent 5:

"The enemies of Allah and His Prophet."

Respondent 6:

"The Jew is the occupier of our lands."

Respondent 7:

"The murderers of prophets. Our eternal enemies, of course."

Respondent 2:

"The murderers of prophets, that's it."

Respondent 8:

"Allah's wrath is upon them, as the Koran says. Allah's wrath is upon them and they all stray from the path of righteousness. They are the filthiest people on the face of this earth because they care only about themselves - not the Christians, not the Muslims, nor any other religion.

"The solution is clear, not only to me but to everyone. If only [the Muslims] declared Jihad, we would see who stays home. We have a few countries… There is one country with a population of over 60-70 million people. If we let them only march, with no weapons even, they would completely trample the Jews, they would turn them into rotten carcasses under their feet. There is another country that donated money, saying, 'I am behind you, I'll support you with weapons, just wage [ Jihad ].'

"But the cowardice inside us, deep within our hearts, was instilled by the Arab leaders, may Allah forgive them. They breast-fed us with it from the day we were born to this very day it has grown with us."

The Heart of Darkness (NRO)

...A meeting of the International Moral Court was held in the French capital September 23-25 to expose the crimes of the theocracy in Tehran. Having lived under religious fascism, I prepared myself psychologically for three days of horrific stories and images.

... Following the administrative procedures a film was shown; smuggled out of Iran, it pictured scenes of despicable horror. We all watched the unwatchable: a man lay on a stretcher while another, bearded and looking like an official, read what seemed to be a court sentence. Then a man dressed in white comes in — presumably a physician — bends over the lying man and applies the sentence.

There is only one word to describe the horror of what I saw: horror. There is other word for the act of tearing out a living man's eyes; there is no adjective to describe it. The whole assembly was plunged into a macabre silence. In the next scene, another man, lying alive and awake on a stretcher, watched his physician-torturer cut his fingers with a hand-mower. Next, a third man, or woman — there is no way of distinguishing the gender of someone wrapped up like a mummy — is buried, alive and awake, up to his chest, before being stoned to death. It barely takes a minute or two before the chest and head of the living mummy start circling around in a dance of death. What magnifies to near-infinite the evil of these scenes of barbarity is the unbearable accompanying cry, "Allah Akbar!" — "God is Great!"

"The situation becomes so explosive, every now and then, that they bring in their Lebanese commandos," Ali told me, turning his head away from that sickening screen. "Lebanese?" I asked. "Yah, Lebanese. They run out of local hands to repress, so they rely on their network. These guys are physically huge and mentally sick. Speaking not a word of Persian, they just beat. A friend of mine got caught the other day by one of these patrols. The guy was so colossal that he sucked my friend in through the car's window with just one hand. They laid him on the car's floor and started beating him. I never saw him again. Seventeen of us disappeared like this in our hood alone. Eleven never came back. Those who did return, including one of my own childhood friends, were so profoundly disrupted psychologically that no one would ever talk of his ordeal."

The projection is followed by testimonies of those who survived the heart of darkness. Coming back from death, a woman goes to the microphone, and, as she speaks, the room sinks into silence once again. A Kurdish sympathizer of an armed opposition group, she was arrested in her native Kurdistan in 1982. Hanged naked upside down — to "tear apart the self that is in every one of us," she says — she was then raped, over and over again. Gang rape, rape with a bottle...

"We will never forgive our parents for having done this to us with their revolution," says Ali, staring at nowhere. "My father said once that they did it because they thought they would get free oil at their door step. Can you believe that? Now, people won't take to the streets anymore. I mean, what for? Every one saw what they did to Zahra Kazemi [a Canadian journalist killed while in the custody of the government in Tehran]. Did the Canadians do anything in outrage? Did the Canadian government take any significant retaliatory step? Every one knows that the mullahs have huge personal savings and investments in Canada. So why should we sacrifice ourselves by defying Lebanese mercenaries in our own neighborhoods? Is the world going to recognize that we exist? Has anyone among the Iranian expatriates supported us? Has any Iranian even come to the refugee camps to see in what miserable conditions we live? We hate the mullahs so much that we could hang every single one of them on every single tree in Tehran, but, so long as we, the Iranians, are only "I" and never "Us" — so long as the West is behind the mullahs — no one will take the matters to the streets any more."

I leave the courtroom, sick of myself, sick of bearing my being. I retire to an adjacent room to write and forget. "Did Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times ever talk to Ali when he toured Iran a few months ago? He has never lived under fascism, has he? Mr. Kristoff doesn't have to face the Lebanese Hezbollah in the streets of New York, does he? So why does he advocate reforming the theocracy and flooding it with American dollars? The "reform" movement is dead, Mr. Kristoff. The aspiration for liberty and a life without fear, for a life with dignity, is not."

"We are 70 percent of the people," said Ali before I left him. They are the most redoubtable weapon of mass destruction against the mullahs, I keep telling myself. They are the end of the tunnel, if only we could recognize that there is tunnel out there and not a dead-end — if only we decided to lend them our voice.

If only...

— Ramin Parham, editor of Iran Institute for Democracy, is an independent commentator based in Paris.

Suicide bombers supported by Norwegian Muslim leader

A highly respected Muslim leader in Norway supports suicide bombers if the aim is to kill enemies.

Basim Ghozlan, the manager at Det Islamske Forbundet, one of the largest Muslim organizations in Norway, stated that suicide bombers are accepted if they kill enemies.

«If the goal in itself is accepted, than this should also be accepted,» Ghozlan said to the Norwegian radio channel Kanal 24.

In a Q&A section at the Muslim website islam.no, Ghozlan respond to a young boy who asked about suicide bombers. The Muslim leader answered the boy’s question by defending the use of suicide bombers.

«If you attack a cruel enemy, then it’s not a coward way, rather the opposite. The people who do this are actually very brave,» Ghozlan answered.

He stressed that for example Israel claims that all settlers are legitimate goals for suicide bombers.

Must not strike the innocent
«Suicide in order to hit the enemy: if the war is legal, seen from Islamic point of view, and if you do not have any other way of striking the enemy than by giving your own life, this is allowed.

The demand not to hit the innocent must not be forgotten. Unfortunately, we see in many cases that suicide bombers hit many more innocent than they wish to. In Iraq innocent people are killed almost daily because of such blind bombs. This is no jihad. The Prophet never urged anyone to do anything like that.

If it happens in occupied areas where the suicide bombers attack settlers and soldiers, it is another issue. The situations have to be discussed separately,» Ghozlan wrote in his answer to the boy.

Frightening
«I almost become a little scared when I hear this,» said Petter Eide at Amnesty International Norge.

He stated that Ghozlan’s statements are completely unacceptable.

«What he says is that he is actually legitimates murder,» Eide said to Kanal 24.

He urges Muslims in Norway to reject Ghozlan’s statements.

«I really hope the Muslim environment in Oslo address these statements because they are completely unacceptable,» Eide said.

Frida Nome, an expert in Middle Eastern issues, said that she did not think these statements were shared by most Muslims.

«I don’t think Muslims in general support this,» Nome said. «I think it’s odd that he dare say this in Norway.»

Note the willful blindness exhibited in the two latter quotes. - EoZ

1,017 Israelis killed, 5,600 injured during four years of intifada

Since the intifada erupted four years ago, 1,017 Israelis were killed, of them 70% were civilians and 30% members of Israeli security forces, data published by the ISA this (Monday) afternoon after four years of confrontation reveal.

According to the data, Palestinian militants perpetrated 13,730 shooting attacks and 138 suicide bombings. Nearly 5,600 Israelis were injured during the time period, of them 82% civilians and 18% security forces personnel.

The bloodiest year was 2002 during which 452 Israelis were killed and 2,309 sustained injuries. A significant drop has occurred since then, culminating in 2004 during which 97 Israelis were killed, another 441 injured.

However, the firings of Kassam rockets have risen steadily in the past year. In 2002, only 25 rockets landed within the Green Line, 15 in Gaza and two on the West Bank. In 2004, 118 landed in Israel and 41 in the Gaza Strip.

The ISA also outlined the growing involvement of Hezbollah in Palestinian terrorist activities. The Lebanese terror group mode of operation concentrates on assisting terrorists or foreign accomplices penetrate Israel, smuggling arms, financial backing and setting up a terrorist infrastructure in Palestinian territories or among Israeli-Arabs.