Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Israeli Arabs volunteer for the Civil Guard

On the same day that three Israelis were killed and more than 30 were wounded by a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv's Carmel Market, a report was released by the police about Israeli Arabs' volunteering for the Civil Guard.
In the northern police district, where 11 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by police in October 2000, the increase in volunteers, from 700 to 4,400, was most impressive. The volunteers, some in police uniforms and others in their civilian clothes, patrol Jewish and Arab communities and help the police in community affairs where the difficulties are the greatest.

This is an amazing achievement, first and foremost for the police. It is true that police attitudes toward Arab citizens still suffer from many flaws and failures, including outright harassment, according to the Mossawa Center for Arab Rights in Israel.

However, based on much evidence from the local authorities and Arab citizenry, the volunteers' work succeeds in easing negotiations between the citizenry and police. Therefore, at least some of the wall of alienation and hostility that rose dramatically after the October 2000 events has been cracked, and a new foundation has been formed for welcome cooperation between Jews and Arabs.

Thousands of Israelis voting for US President

It's not too late for some Americans living in Israel to send in their absentee ballots, Haaretz has learned. For residents of certain states, including key battleground states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, today is the deadline for overseas residents to send in their vote, provided the ballots are postmarked on November 2.
'People at the county board of elections are bending over backward to accommodate overseas voters,' said Mark Zober, chair of Democrats Abroad in Israel. 'They want to do everything in their power to avoid the appearance of trying to prevent people from getting out to vote. The election in 2000 was a mess, and what's going on now is defiantly a reaction to that.'

Although many states' deadlines were 'rock rigid' only one month ago, election boards in places like New York will now accept ballots up to 13 days after election day.

'Most registered voters living [in Israel] have already sent their ballots,' Zober added, 'but the extension is good news for some people who still haven't.'

Estimates of votes originating from Israel range, but even the lower estimate, some 30,000, is nearly double the turnout in the 2000 election. Some party activists put the number of voters as high as 60,000; Democrats and Republicans agree that the turnout is unprecedented.

'I've never seen anything like this,' said Marc Zell, one of the founders of Republicans Abroad in Israel, as he distributed ballots at a registration event in Efrat last week. 'The number of Americans [in Israel] coming out to vote in the 2004 election is unquestionably unprecedented. I worked hard to get the vote [out] in 2000, but the numbers weren't even close to what we have here. People were still under the impression that their votes didn't matter.'

Though the vast majority of Americans in Israel are registered Democrats, many have discarded party loyalties in hopes of reelecting President Bush. Registration events aimed at Americans in the ultra-Orthodox communities who identify with Bush's conservative stance on issues like abortion and gay marriage have also given the Republican ticket a boost here.

Tribute to a Terrorist on Campus

From lgf:

LGF reader moshe28 forwarded a scanned image of a poster from the Muslim Students Association at Northeastern Illinois University, advertising an event at the college this week paying tribute to the so-called “spiritual leader” of the genocidal Hamas terror gang, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin—a man personally responsible for the murders of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children, who met his end earlier this year thanks to an IAF missile.

Hamas is on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, and no person more symbolized their evil agenda than Yassin. It’s outrageous that the MSA would openly pay tribute to this monster, and that university facilities will be provided to them for such an abhorrent purpose. For more information, see this post from moshe28.

Israel to scale down anti-terror offensive

Israel will scale down the offensive against Palestinian terror groups in order not to interfere with the inner Palestinian processes currently taking place in the PA in light of Yasser Arafat’s illness, a senior Israeli official said last night.

The IDF operations in the territories, especially the IAF’s targeted assassinations, could inflame tensions on the Palestinian street. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have instructed the IDF and ISA to maintain restraint, knowing that unrest in the territories would make it difficult on the successor to introduce a new policy towards Israel.

Several defense officials believe that if a former Palestinian leader, like Abu Mazen, or any other figure would be interested in ending the violent struggle, far-reaching concessions could be made by Israel.

In inner discussions at the Defense Ministry, it has been estimated that Abu Mazen would likely succeed Arafat together with a collective leadership comprised of current Palestinian PM Abu Ala, Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub.

The Israeli defense establishment believes that Arafat was the one who prevented the termination of the violent struggle against Israel, contrary to Abu Mazen’s opinion when he served as prime minister and contrary to the opinions of other senior Palestinian officials, who would not dare to express their views publicly.

That is the reason why the changing of the guard among the Palestinian leadership is viewed as an opportunity that could result in implementing the disengagement plan based on a deal and not unilaterally.

Analysis: Hamas sees itself as a substitute for the PA

By Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz Correspondent

The Hamas political - not military - silence is no more than nervous waiting for medical news from Paris. Hamas representatives publicly wish the Chairman good health and a speedy recovery, but nobody denies Hamas had long awaited just this situation.
Even before Yasser Arafat's illness became known, Hamas leaders declared on several occasions that they see their organization as a worthy substitute for the Palestinian Authority.

Now, if Arafat, whether alive or dead, is gone from the leadership, Hamas will share the status of anyone with pretensions to rule, whether he be named Abu Mazen, Fatah, or the PLO itself.

In view of this, calls from Hamas leaders for a united Palestinian leadership 'to face new challenges' are getting increasingly loud. When Hamas talks about a unified leadership, it means its own representation will not shrink and may even exceed that of Fatah and its branches.

This call by Hamas fits nicely with Egypt's initiative to establish a unified leadership that would make it easier for Egypt to impose its patronage on the disengagement plan while cooperating with the Palestinians, thereby preventing conflict with any of the parties.

The closeness that developed over the past year between Hamas and Egypt - the 'partner status' the organization received during talks with Egypt - greatly upset the PA and annoyed Yasser Arafat. He was caught in a vise between Egypt, which sought to bring about a cease-fire, and pressure exerted by the PLO, which demanded that Hamas be neutralized.

In that web of pressures, Hamas presented itself to Egypt as an organization prepared at any time to hear and reach national reconciliation, and that the rejectionist party was Arafat and his organization.

According to Hamas sources, each time Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman arrived on the scene, Hamas gave him conciliatory messages. This was out of an assumption, later proved correct, that Arafat wouldn't want to grant Hamas the sought-for status as a partner equal to Fatah.

Now, if Arafat is gone and Abu Mazen heads the PLO, Hamas will be in a more comfortable situation. Abu Mazen forged close ties with Hamas leaders back in the days of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin, who viewed him as 'a decent and honest man.'

The important challenge facing Arafat's replacement or replacements - how to get Hamas to assist with the disengagement plan without giving it veto power over political maneuvers.

Iran MPs, crying 'Death to America,' pass nuclear bill

To cries of 'Death to America' and 'God is Greatest' Iran's hardline-dominated parliament passed a bill on Sunday obliging the government to continue efforts to develop a civilian nuclear energy program.

The proposal, backed by 247 of parliament's 290 lawmakers, did not specifically force the government to resume uranium enrichment or end snap U.N. inspections of atomic facilities as
some lawmakers had called for.

But the outline bill approved on Sunday could incorporate such suggestions during subsequent discussions, lawmakers said in a session broadcast live on state radio.

'This is the voice of parliament, the voice of the Iranian nation,' Parliament Speaker Gholamali Haddadadel said after the
bill was approved.

'The message of this bill is that we will not give in to pressure ... The Iranian nation is determined to use peaceful nuclear technology,' he said.

Palestinian mortar hits synagogue, injures worshipper

Earlier Sunday, an Israeli man was seriously injured early Sunday, when Palestinian militants fired a barrage of mortar shells at Gaza Strip settlements early on Sunday, striking a synagogue in Kfar Darom.

The victim, suffering from massive bleeding, was evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva, and was underwent surgery.

His condition was upgraded to moderate by Sunday evening.

The terrorists protected by Arafat in Ramallah disappear

RAMALLAH -- As if in a scene from some postapocalyptic TV production, the men sat for long hours in rooms with one wall missing, in a three-storey building next to the West Bank office of Yasser Arafat.

The building housed one of the Palestinian leader's intelligence services until its outer wall was ripped away during Israel's invasion of Mr. Arafat's Mukata compound in April, 2002.

They were the wanted men of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, sought by Israel on suspicion of being involved in countless attacks on Israelis and the lynching of suspected Palestinian collaborators.

Officially, they did not exist. Reporters could see them, and they would sometimes wave back. But gun-toting guards forbade photographing or talking to them.

The men numbered about 20. They sipped tea, cleaned their Kalashnikov assault rifles or snoozed quietly in the sunlight that drenched the rooms through the missing exterior wall.

Their ghostly presence in the battered compound was repeatedly denied by the Palestinian leader's spokesmen, although they could be seen easily from its western gate.

Some of them were officially employed by one of Mr. Arafat's myriad of security forces. In their spare time, which has of late been plentiful, they doubled as 'activists' for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the terrorist wing of Mr. Arafat's Fatah group.

In other words, they went out and tried to kill people, usually Israelis. Sometimes they killed other Palestinians. Sometimes they simply provided muscle for security or political figures, then returned to their three-walled rooms.

On Thursday, close to midnight, the ghosts finally vanished, exorcised by the imminent departure of Mr. Arafat, their patron and protector, for medical treatment in Paris. They walked out through the front gate carrying their weapons, and vanished into the night.

Arab News: Fight Over Arafat's Billions

At the same time sources close to the Palestinian leadership said a bitter fight had broken over who should control the ailing leader’s fortune estimated to be between $4.2 billion and $6.5 billion.

Sources said Arafat has written a will transferring control of his assets to members of his wife’s family. Some of his aides, including former Premier Mahmoud Abbas who has stepped in as interim leader, however, believe the fortune belongs to the “beit al-mal” (public treasury), and should be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. The controversy started last week when Suha, Arafat’s wife, asked Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s confidant and adviser, to prepare a list of the ailing leader’s fortune. According to Palestinian sources Rashid has said he would furnish the list only to the Palestinian Authority.

Identifying Arafat’s personal fortune and separating it from numerous secret bank accounts that he maintains in the name of the Palestine Liberation Orgaization and Al-Fatah is no easy task.

According to Jean-Claude Robard, a Swiss investment adviser, Arafat opened his first secret bank account in 1965 with a $50,000 check from the emir of Kuwait. Since then he has set up other accounts in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.

Arafat also owns a number of hotels and holiday resorts in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Austria. He is the main shareholder in two cellular telephone companies operating in Tunisia and Algeria.

Some of Arafat’s businesses are in partnership with Arab politicians, former officials and entrepreneurs, including Rifaat Assad, a brother of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, and Barzan Al-Takriti, a half-brother of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Al-Takriti is now under arrest in Baghdad.

The Two Most Terrible Countries in the World?

By Edward Bernard Glick October 31, 2004

Edward Bernard Glick is a professor emeritus of political science at Temple University in Philadelphia. His email is ebglick@comcast.net

Most Europeans, their pontificators and their polls tell us, think that America and Israel are the two most terrible polities on this planet. Not nuclear North Korea. Not near-nuclear Iran. Not the Sudan, which is practicing genocide. Not even Saudi Arabia, which besides exporting oil and terrorists peddles and bankrolls extreme Wahabism around the world.

What in Heaven's name is happening across the Atlantic pond, especially among the Angry Left, whom Lenin used to call the Useful Idiots? Are they thinking rationally? Or are they just emoting against the current President of the United States and the current Prime Minister of Israel?

Did the Europeans like Americans and Israelis more when former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, at the behest of former President Bill Clinton, offered Palestine Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat some 95 percent of the Israeli-occupied territories, a portion of East Jerusalem for his capital, and the dismantling of most of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? And were the Europeans at all upset when Arafat rejected Barak's offer and began the present intifada?

The truth is that, except for a very few astute observers like Alexis de Tocqueville, Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Margaret Thatcher, and Alistair Cooke, in his marvelous "Letters from America" series on BBC, European intellectuals have never understood the United States. Nor have they wanted to. They've always had contempt for us. They have always mocked America's dynamism, openness, diversity, informality, social mobility, and appeal to the huddled masses of the world.

Never mind that the United States saved Europe in two World Wars and that thousands of American soldiers lie buried in its graveyards. But saving Europe when it screws up is what the United States is supposed to do. And damning Americans for saving them is what Europeans are supposed to do, under the French principle that no good deed should go unpunished.

Also, with the exception of Great Britain, Europe cannot forgive history for its having ceded to the New World the Old World's erstwhile cultural, diplomatic, economic, and military dominance. France, in particular, cannot abide the fact that it's no longer a great power. It therefore compensates by tweaking America whenever it can. France exaggerates the importance of its veto on the United Nations Security Council and fantasizes about earlier centuries of real and imagined Gallic glory.

When Europe's elites and their American hangers-on proclaim that the world despises Americans, they are being delusional. Americans are not flocking to foreign consulates, begging for visas, or sneaking across borders and oceans, so that they can live happily in, say, North Korea, China, Pakistan, or the Congo. Rather, it is the other way around. When was the last time Europeans or anyone else saw Floridians rafting to Cuba to live under Fidel Castro, or Californians crossing deserts to work illegally in Mexico?

As for the Islamist terrorists, they have generally ignored Europe, though not completely, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Spain, France, Turkey, and Russia. Until now, their main focus has been on the Great Satan, which, among its many sins, is its refusal to
?« abandon Israel, the Little Satan.
?«
One wonders why the Europeans, who claim to understand everything, cannot comprehend that for Americans September 11 was the Pearl Harbor of World War Three. Are they so mired in their anti-Americanism that they will worry about the Jihadist threat to Western civilization only after a biological, chemical, or nuclear version of September 11 -- not in New York or Washington, but in London, Paris, Stockholm, or Brussels?

As for the Europeans' negative attitude toward Israel, here, too, they are being delusional, if not outright anti-Semitic. Of course, anti-Israelism is not a synonym for anti-Semitism. And one can favor the evacuation of every Jewish settlement from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank without being either anti-Israel or anti-Jewish. But what is one to make of Europe's unceasing criticism of Israel's response to terror and to the bloodiest intifada in Israeli history?

Since it is a democracy, Israel cannot resort to the military methods that Arabs have used with much success. For example, in order to save his kingdom, the late King Hussein killed several thousand Palestinians and ousted Yasser Arafat from Jordan in "Black September" 1970. Hafez al-Assad killed 20,000 Syrians in Hama in 1982. And Saddam Hussein tested poison gasses in 1988 on Iraqi Kurds in Halabjah, killing 5,000, and then employed the gasses against Iran in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s. Nevertheless, famous for their double standards, the Europeans saw nothing, heard nothing, and said nothing.

The Europeans are also unwilling and unable to grasp the impact of the Holocaust -- which took place on their turf, after all -- upon the Israeli psyche and the Jewish soul. They don't understand that after Auschwitz even Israelis with no familial ties to Europe are determined to ensure that the spectacle of Jews being killed and maimed with immunity and impunity will never happen again, especially in the Middle East.

In the days before we in the West could imagine Palestinian children being used as suicide bombers, and their parents praising them for it, the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, herself a mother, used to say that "we shall have peace with our neighbors only when they begin to love their children more than they hate ours."

If Europe really wants to help -- and I am not sure that it does -- let it spend its time and money persuading the Arabs and their coreligionists that a sovereign Palestine living in peace with its infidel neighbor is a far nobler Islamic goal than a vanquished Jewish state would ever be.
If Europe really wants to help, let it acknowledge that even without a Jewish Israel there would still be hostility, dictatorship, cronyism, corruption, and overpopulation in the Middle East; there would still be Arab states without oil resenting Arab states who have oil; there would still be hundreds of thousands of unemployed and underemployed Palestinians; there would still al Qaeda terrorists; and there would still be 1.3 billion Muslims in the world.

If only one percent of Muslims are radical Jihadists, there would be 13 million people, a number equal to the total number of Jews in the world, who are hell bent on terrorizing Unbelievers back to earlier centuries of real and imagined Islamic glory.

And, instead of demonizing America and delegitimizing Israel, if Europe really wants to help, let it join America and Israel in their effort to defeat the Jihadists and bring them and the rest of Islam peacefully and productively into the Twenty-first Century.

Terror has touched one in five Israeli Jews

JERUSALEM - A huge percentage of Israel’s citizens unparalleled in any other nation on earth are forced to live with the pain and grief produced by unrelenting Islamic terrorism, a study conducted at Haifa University has revealed.

One out of every five Israeli Jews has lost a loved one to the current “Palestinian” terrorist campaign, according to the survey.

That is the equivalent of approximately 60 million American victims of terror.

In addition, over 14 percent of the Israeli Jewish population has either witnessed a terrorist attack or stumbled upon a scene where murdered Jewish bodies were present.

Most of those polled in the study said they had adjusted their lives as a result of Palestinian Arab terrorism, and were pessimistic about the government’s ability to protect them.

Disturbing results

Professor Gavriel Ben Dor and Dr. Daphna Kanti-Nissim of Haifa University carried out the survey last month by conducting telephone interviews with a random sampling of 1,613 Israelis.

Nearly 29 percent of Jewish respondents said they had lost a close friend or relative to Palestinian Arab violence since September 2000.

There are roughly five million Israeli Jews, meaning more than one million had registered the loss of a loved one to terror in the past four years.

Fifteen percent of the Jews polled said someone among their family or friends had suffered injuries as a result of Arab terror during that period.

The results also showed that 14.5 percent of Israeli Jews had either directly witnessed a terrorist attack or had subsequently arrived at a site where the bodies of murdered men, women and children were present.

Psychological effect

The atmosphere of terrorism, suffering and grief has produced a serious psychological effect on Israel’s Jews, the study explains.

“If Israel has won the Intifada, as some pundits have claimed, it is having a much more difficult time in the psychological battle against terror,” read a press release issued by Ben Dor and Kanti-Nissim last week.

“Nearly one third of the Israeli public (28.1%) will have nothing to do with any event, person, or situation that reminds them of a terrorist incident,” their statement noted.

A full two-thirds of Israelis said they have less faith in the government’s ability to protect them than they had four years ago.

More than half of the public feels less in control of events affecting their lives, and 56.3 percent are pessimistic about their future welfare.

The numbers were even higher among Israeli Arab respondents, though they are rarely if ever the direct targets of “Palestinian” terrorists.

In search of a solution

Israel has for years searched in vain for diplomatic and limited military solutions to the terrorism plaguing its citizens.

Jerusalem has, under constant and heavy international pressure, refrained from fully unleashing its vaunted IDF against the forces of “Palestinian” terror.

An operation to forcibly disarm and dismantle the terror groups – in light of the Palestinian Authority’s decade-long refusal to do so – is a non-starter amid fears of the worldwide outcry it would produce.

Arafat said to have lost mental capacity

His aides knew he was losing it when he started shouting out that he supported Bush for President.- EoZ

Senior Palestinian Authority sources say Chairman Yasser Arafat has lost some of his mental capacities and cannot function. Some doubt that he will be capable of resuming his position as PA leader, even if his health recovers to some extent.
In Paris, where Arafat is hospitalized, Palestinian sources said initial tests on the 75 year old leader ruled out leukemia, but his condition remains serious. The Palestinian envoy to Paris, Leila Shahid, said specialists were still looking for the cause of the dramatic collapse of the Palestinian leader's health.

The reports that Arafat's mental state may have deteriorated are worrying Palestinian leaders at home far more than his physical health. Reports say that after his collapse last Wednesday, Arafat lost his mental functioning. In some cases he did not recognize people who came to visit him.

Diplomatic sources said last week he even had trouble recognizing Abu Mazen and Abu Ala who and in some cases his speech was incoherent and confused, but there is no clear opinion on whether such lapses might be permanent or temporary. However, there are grave doubts as to whether, even after a relative recovery, he will be able to make decisions or give orders or even to understand what is happening around him, sources said.
"

BBC Reporter Cries for Yassir Arafat, Her Hero

An absolutely unbelievable display or journalistic bias. -EoZ

By Barbara Plett
BBC correspondent, West Bank

The world watches the unfolding drama as the man who has become the symbol for Palestinian nationalism seems to hover between life and death. Though full of uncertainties, Mr Arafat's life has been one of sheer dedication and resilience.

To be honest, the coverage of Yasser Arafat's illness and departure from Palestine was a real grind. I churned out one report after the other, without any sense of drama.

Foreign journalists seemed much more excited about Mr Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah.

We hovered around the gate to his compound, swarming around the Palestinian officials who drove by, poking our microphones through their dark, half-open windows.

But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?

Was this another story we Western journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is an historic event, while the locals get on with their lives?

Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning.

In quieter moments since I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion?

I suppose there was a pathos about the strong contrast between this and other journeys Yasser Arafat has made.

There was his defiant departure from Lebanon in 1982 after the Israeli army had routed his Palestine Liberation Organisation. He promised then he was on his way to Palestine, and, in a roundabout way, he was.

There was his triumphant return to the Gaza Strip in 1994, when the Oslo Peace Accords appeared to open the window to a Palestinian state. Tens of thousands of people cheered his arrival; they were even hanging from the trees!

Compare that to the few hundred loyalists who came out to watch him leave the West Bank on Friday, waving and calling out one of his favourite sayings: the mountain cannot be shaken by the wind.

But I think this history explains Palestinian emotions better than mine.

For me, it was probably the siege.

I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah.

I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: "Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege."

And so was I.

Mohamed A Dura Affair Proven a Hoax

by Stéphane Juffa.
Original article in French

Background
September 30, 2000: a France 2 news report filed by Talal Abu Rahma with a voice-over commentary by Charles Enderlin purports to show the fatal shooting of a Palestinian child, Mohamed A Dura, and the wounding of his father Jamal by Israeli gunfire. France 2 distributed the report free of charge to world media.

The accusation against the IDF was based solely on the testimony of France 2 reporter Abu Rahma, backed up by his hierarchy at France Télévision.

The 3-year Metula News Agency investigation, in conformity with the findings of the IDF commission led by physician Nahum Shahaf, has consistently maintained that Abu Rahma’s declaration was false, and that the 27 minutes of footage allegedly showing the Israelis shooting at the A Duras does not exist.

Repeated requests by our agency to view the 27 minutes of footage were denied

Further, MNA concluded that France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin was deliberately lying, to make the incident seem authentic, when he claimed that he cut out the sequence of the child’s death throes because they were too horrible to show.

Enderlin also declared that there was no footage showing the fatal bullet hit the child. The images on the news report do not corroborate the accusation that child was killed by Israeli soldiers; the commentary suggests what the images do not show.

France 2 claimed to be holding the clinching evidence—the film of the child’s death throes--but would never present it.

Under circumstances connected to the Metula investigation and film demonstration, France Télévision’s CEO, Marc Tessier, asked the station’s news director Arlette Chabot to show the 27 minutes of raw footage to Luc Rosenzweig, former Le Monde journalist (now free lance contributor to Metula News Agency, Radio Communauté Juive, etc.)

Rosenzweig, accompanied by two eminent media directors, was received in the France 2 offices by A. Chabot, Didier Epelbaum (advisor to the president of France 2) and an “image analyst” from the station’s legal department.

The France 2 officials tried to sidestep projection of the 27 minutes of raw footage, dismissing them as insignificant and irrelevant, since Abu Rahma had retracted his testimony, explaining that the cameraman had been “caught off guard” when he testified.

“Caught off guard? Three days after the incident, comfortably seated in a lawyer’s office?

So they are admitting that Abu Rahma gave false testimony…and subsequently retracted. Now that the sole witness to the assassination of Mohammed A Dura has retracted, there is nothing left of the affair “but a shred of bad fiction not worth a kopek.”

Rosenzweig and his colleagues were not aware of Abu Rahma’s retraction for the simple reason that France 2 never made it public.

For four years French public TV officials had been hiding the fact that they do not have 27 minutes of film to prove the blood libel against Israel.

They had allowed the hoax to become a symbol of the Palestinian revolt against the barbarous Jews.

The A Dura image has generated years of dreadful violence, murderous mobs, the Ramallah lynching, etc. It has fanned hatred between Palestinians and Israelis, between Jews and Arabs.

The atmosphere in the France 2 office became tense.

Didier Epelbaum was violating numerous provisions of the ethical charter he himself had drafted, namely the obligation to correct news reports when new, contradictory information arises.

Informed that Abu Rahma is in Paris undergoing medical treatment, Rosenzweig said he would like to speak with him. Epelbaum replied that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble because the Palestinian cameraman doesn’t speak French and his English is very poor.

Stéphane Juffa remembers hearing Abu Rahma speak on CNN; his English was fine.

Finally Rosenzweig and his colleagues are shown the 27 minutes of raw footage.
No new images of the A Duras. No shots of Israeli soldiers. Scenes of demonstrators attacking the Israeli position, scenes of kids pretending to be wounded by the Israelis.

Epelbaum comments, “Those kids are always doing that!”

Enderlin claimed he’d handed over the raw footage intact to Israeli authorities.

Rosenzweig saw that this wasn’t true.

The few seconds where you can see the child moving voluntarily after he was (allegedly) killed instantly by the fatal shot, had been retouched with stills.

Rosenzweig asks about the “unbearable” death throes. Embarrassed reaction from the France 2 officials. There are no such images. Epelbaum asks the visiting journalists if they have proof that the news report is a fake.

He doesn’t seem to realize that the September 30, 2000 incident at Netzarim Junction is totally baseless now that it has become obvious that the sole witness (Abu Rahma) gave false testimony and the correspondent (Enderlin) was caught lying.

But Rosenzweig has further proof. He plugs his USB stick into a computer and brings up the picture of a dead child taken in Gaza’s Shifa Hospital on the day of the A Dura incident, and presented as Mohamed A Dura.

“There’s a slight problem here,” he says. “The face on this corpse is not exactly the same as the face [of Mohamed] in your news report.”Chabot wonders out loud if they had been “fooled,” and suggests having police experts compare the two. Metula has already made the test: the two boys are not the same age, the wounds on the corpse have nothing in common with the alleged wounds of M. A Dura.

Conclusion

Enderlin can stick to his usual defense--explaining that Israeli army officers fell into his trap, which is true, and that the State of Israel would have sued him if the report were a hoax—but it won’t work anymore.

In fact, Daniel Seaman, head of the government press office (GPO) and the Prime Minister’s spokesman, Ra’anan Gissin, have already publicly announced that the A Dura news report is a fake.

Seaman informed us that the government had decided it was not appropriate to drag accredited foreign correspondents into court. But that might change after the revelations in this article.

There is nothing left of the claim that Mohamed A Dura was assassinated by Israeli soldiers.

But the larger question, of the dangers when foreign media interfere in a conflict, remains to be addressed. France 2 has been fooling people for four years, pretending they were holding raw footage that showed Jewish soldiers assassinating an Arab boy.

The French public TV channel contributed to the revival of medieval rumors that demonize Jews: the Israeli soldiers would have to be utterly heartless to pick out a child in the crowd and fire at him for 45 minutes until they killed him.

The media hoax fabricated by Abu Rahma and Enderlin exceeded their expectations. The image of the ferocious Israelis still holds, and it has convinced the vast majority of French-speaking people.

Now France Télévision has a tremendous task. They have to explain what happened and acknowledge what they did. And they must reconsider the journalists and methods that produced the A Dura affair, the biggest hoax in media history.

The people who did it should no longer be allowed to inform the French public about the Arab-Israeli conflict. And they shouldn’t be allowed to keep the prizes awarded for the scoop.

The Metula News Agency will be watching!

Utah County sheriffs get security tips in Israel

One day, more advanced equipment will be available to first responders throughout the nation with help from input by sheriffs and their personnel who recently returned from a trip to Israel, Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy says.

Tracy and sheriff's Sgt. Skip Curtis spent one week in September, with more than three dozen other sheriffs and their personnel, traveling throughout a nation that regularly sees the tragedies of terrorism.

The trip, sponsored by the National Sheriffs' Association, was a fact-finding mission as well as a chance to look at systems in place in Israel that may be adaptable to homeland security issues this nation may see in the future, Tracy said.

In many ways, the trip was reassuring because agencies in Utah County are working on some things already in place in Israel, he said.

But, the sheriffs and their personnel also saw more advanced weapons and systems than those available in the United States, Tracy said, adding America is behind when it comes to such equipment for the nation's first responders.

Tracy said he would like to see the equipment developed nationally and made available to local
agencies through homeland security grants.

'We will take this back to the Department of Justice,' said Tracy, who is a member of the National Sheriffs' Association committee on weapons of mass destruction and homeland security, to see what may be the best way to develop the weapons and systems for agencies in the United States.

The sheriffs and their people received several classified briefings during their trip. They looked at port security as well as internal surveillance systems -- the camera infrastructure with ready response capability.

Israel's advanced equipment includes high-tech modifications to camera systems and a gun that can shoot around corners.

The equipment could be used to prevent or deal with a terrorist attack in America -- the threat of which is still real -- or other events.