Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Oops. Never mind.

A society that celebrates by firing guns in the air does not have the right to tell others about the value of life. -EoZ.

The Palestinians arrested a suspect in Monday's murder of Nuran Dib, on Tuesday evening.

The man reportedly fired shots into the air; one of those shots hit the girl.

The suspect is being questioned regarding the shooting.

The IDF said on Monday night that following an initial investigation, it did not seem that the 10-year-old from Rafah was hit by IDF tank fire.

Palestinians had originally claimed that the girl was killed by shrapnel fired from an IDF tank shell at an UNWRA schoolyard in Rafah, where Dib was playing.

The Palestinians used the supposed killing as a pretext to resume firing mortars at Gaza Strip settlements.

During the day Monday, soldiers positioned in posts located along the Philadelphi Route fired twice from light weapons into areas far from where the girl was hit, security officials said.

The officials said that at the time the girl was killed, officials at the District Coordinating Office received reports that in the same area Muslim worshippers returning from the Hajj in Mecca fired warning shots in the air to celebrate their return.

Like a perpetual memory machine, the tomb of Yasser Arafat grows more elaborate with each passing day.

Just 11 weeks ago, as Arafat lay dying in a hospital bed outside Paris, this bare-dirt corner of the iconic Palestinian leader's debris-strewn Mukata headquarters was one of the most blighted sights in the entire West Bank.

Today, a national shrine is rising from the rubble, replete with landscaped gardens, newly transplanted mature olive trees and Palestinian flags framing a steel-and-glass burial chamber whose doors open toward the holy city of Mecca.

With all eyes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focused on the prospects of a long-overdue ceasefire, the high-speed deification of Arafat's wreath-strewn gravesite has passed almost unnoticed. But it is nonetheless fascinating to watch the almost daily adornments accrue.

However much Palestinians promise that, in the fullness of time, Arafat will make one last journey to be reburied in his beloved Jerusalem, the embellishments underway at this supposedly temporary gravesite come with a sense of permanence.

... Habash is now executive director of the National Committee for Immortalizing the Symbol of the Immortal Leader Yasser Arafat.

The astonishingly fanciful title means he oversees a 50-person committee charged with reinventing the Mukata compound as a kind of Arafat theme park.

What exists today, he says, is just the beginning. Plans are being hatched for a mosque, a library and a national archive on the grounds of this former British police headquarters.

The partially destroyed apartment complex nearby, where Arafat spent his final three years, has been under 24-hour guard since the former leader's death.

Habash's committee is viewing it as a future museum.

Habash, who has been at Arafat's side since their days of exile in Beirut in the 1980s, admits to being something of a packrat.

From reel-to-reel tapes of early Palestinian Liberation Organization meetings to the tiniest scraps of paper initialled by Arafat, he calculates some 5 million pieces of Araphernalia have been preserved for future historians.

"Even those (Palestinians) who didn't like Arafat feel that they have lost something very important," says Habash.

"What we want to do is turn the Mukata into the permanent symbol of the Palestinian people — a symbol that will be as great as the symbol of George Washington."

National symbols are no less important to neighbouring Israel.

Yet none of the tombs of that nation's founding fathers — from Theodore Hertz to David Ben Gurion to Yitzhak Rabin — can be described as anything but modest, compared with the shrine evolving around Arafat.

"That is one big different between our cultures," notes professor Yehuda Gradus, director of the Ben Gurion Institute and overseer of the former prime minister's gravesite in Israel's southern Negev desert.

"Arafat to them was almost like a ghost. He was built into this enormous figure, which is a very common phenomenon throughout the Third World.

"It doesn't surprise me at all that there will be such a spectacular site."

Gradus says the Israeli inclination is to construct national memories focusing less on its leaders and more on the ideas they represented.

Consequently, while Ben Gurion lies in a rather ordinary grave, Israel has invested heavily in the nearby Ben Gurion Institute for Desert Research, where some 85 scientists live and work to this day, advancing the former leader's trailblazing ideas about reclaiming the desert as a habitat for humanity.

"Ben Gurion was a very modest man," says Gradus. "And so he has a modest grave.

"But he also was a visionary. He believed that by leading the world in this field, Israel would be a light unto other nations, achieving scientific advancements and exporting this knowledge of desert development for the benefit of all."

Such separation of man and motive appears unlikely to ever apply to Arafat.

Jihad Watch: Muslims at hate website spread personal info, photos of Christians who debate Muslims

More data that may be relevant to the New Jersey Coptic Christian family that was murdered. There is a Muslim hate website that posts the names of Christians who post on the PalTalk message boards.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross says in his article 'Christians on PalTalk Chat Service Tracked by Radical Islamic Web Site':

A radical Islamic Web site systematically tracks Christians on PalTalk.com, an Internet chat service on which a New Jersey man received a death threat two months before he and his family were murdered. The password protected Arabic Web site, at the address www.barsomyat.com, features pictures and information about Christians who have been particularly active in debating Muslims on PalTalk.

Here are some translations of these conversations. It is clear that the personal information is being exchanged in order to facilitate the murders of the people discussed ("After he is finished, the isolation of the Christian lady will be completed.") I have removed their names for obvious reasons.

Bibo 117: Allah bless you brothers!

Here is the surprise you’ve all been waiting for and we haven’t published yet due to a certain reason. The damned Muhammad-cursing dog "[NAME REMOVED]" is the big brother of "[NAME REMOVED]" and their little brother is the one called "[NAME REMOVED]."

"[NAME REMOVED]" the dog is married to the daughter of one of the Muhammad-cursing Christians from paltalk. We have postponed publishing this information because there is a lot more to be revealed when the time is right. These are the pictures of the "devil triangle."

[Photos of the people mentioned were then posted.]

Bibo 117: For you my brothers I now present the second photo collection of the Muhammad-cursing paltalk pigs. Wait a little for the rest of the pictures. The first photo is that of the foul smelling ugly pig "[NAME REMOVED]."

Anti Christians: [Posts Photos:] "The deceitful [NAME REMOVED]" and "The liar [NAME REMOVED]." [In green in the middle:] "Beware!"

Bibo 117: Fellow brothers this is the picture of one of the most Muhammad-cursing Christians. It was taken as he was opening a camera with one of the young Christian ladies from Paltalk.

*After he is finished, the isolation of the Christian lady will be completed.

This idiot’s name on paltalk: [NAME REMOVED]
His real name is: [NAME REMOVED]
He lives in [NAME REMOVED].

Titles of Threads at barsomyat.com:
A Pig Christian Soldier
Pigs of America
Blood Victims of Jesus
Destruction Perpetrated by the Love of Jesus
All this for innocent civilians?
You are digging your graves in your own hands
Because of America, Cancer Spreads in Egypt

Jews can make Arabs riot with only a few words

What power Jews have over Arabs - just a couple of words and they start rioting. It's almost like they have no free will and are completely controlled by us!

Karachi: Peres interview broadcast sparks violence
By JPOST.COM STAFF

In the Pakistani town of Karachi, dozens if Muslim extremists attacked the offices of the country's largest media corporation after it broadcast an interview with Vice Premier Shimon Peres.

After barging into the building housing the corporation's television and newspaper offices, the attackers assaulted employees, destroyed equipment and vehicles, and set fires in the studios, Army Radio reported.

In the interview which the extremists were protesting, Peres had requested the Islamic country's leaders to improve relations with Israel and to participate in diplomatic procedures.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said that the country would consider formal recognition of Israel with the renewal of the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Why the change in the UN?

The blogosphere is commenting on the apparent change going on in the UN. I gave one cynical reason for it, and Israpundit gave another and I quoted Anne Bayefsky on her take.

Soccerdad adds some more interesting wrinkles and quotes, including this fascinating quote from Kofi Annan found by Meryl Yourish:

New York, 14 January 2005 - Statement Attributable to the Spokesman for the Secretary-General on the Middle East

The Secretary-General condemns the Palestinian terror attack that caused the death of six Israeli civilians and injury to four others at the Karni crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip yesterday evening. He wishes to express his deepest condolences to the families of those killed and injured.

The Secretary-General hopes that this terrible incident will not be allowed to undermine the recent positive steps made by both parties. He also calls on the new Palestinian leadership to make all possible attempts to bring to justice the organizers and perpetrators of this attack.

The Secretary-General emphasizes again that violence cannot provide a solution to the conflict, and that only through negotiation can peace be achieved.

Notice that he called violence against Israel "terrorism"; he didn't condemn Israel for anything nor call for "restraint."

Yourish also points out that the EU has also given an uncharacteristic comment blaming terrorists for terror.

Evelyn Gordon in the Jerusalem Post gives the credit to a consistent Bush policy at the UN:

For years the US has vetoed resolutions it deemed too biased against Israel. But during the late 1980s and 1990s Washington was unable to sway any other council member to its side: With monotonous regularity such resolutions failed by a vote of 14-1.

Over the last four years, however, there has been a shift. While no country has yet joined the US in voting "no," there have consistently been two to four abstentions - usually from Europe, occasionally from Africa as well.

Since Security Council resolutions need nine votes to pass, this means that the council has been inching toward a situation in which anti-Israel resolutions could be defeated even without an American veto.

Bush achieved this shift by setting a clear, consistent standard for what constitutes bias: Condemnations of Israel are biased unless the resolution also condemns anti-Israel terror.

And, more importantly, vague condemnations of "all violence against civilians" do not qualify. The resolution must explicitly condemn Palestinian perpetrators such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

That is such a simple and reasonable demand that some countries have found it impossible to ignore. Yet the Palestinians, and hence the Arab countries that sponsor Security Council resolutions on their behalf, have never once been willing to agree.

The result is that a handful of nations that once voted consistently against Israel - England, Germany, Norway, Romania, Bulgaria and Cameroon - turned into frequent abstainers.

This is definitely worth watching. I'm distrustful of Annan but the theory that the current US administration policies are influencing the EU is worth thinking about. I still tend to think that the EU and UN sponsorship of the roadmap has a lot to do with it, because they have to appear to be honest brokers in order to participate in the process that they so desperately want to be involved in, at the risk of sinking into irrelevance.

U.N. Transfers Thousands to Hamas Affiliates

The UN may have done more to help international terrorism than any single country.

UNITED NATIONS - A United Nations agency transferred thousands of dollars to a Palestinian Arab charity affiliated with terrorism long after Israel warned of the terror connection, though the U.N. publicly claimed payments to the organization had stopped.

The blunder points to trouble inside the U.N. Development Program, a huge operation headed by Mark Maloch Brown, who has recently been appointed Secretary-General Annan's chief of staff, largely for his organizational skills and his ability to handle the press. The U.N. plans to launch an internal probe as a result of the revelations uncovered by The New York Sun.

According to a UNDP letter that was seen by the Sun, the agency transferred the sum of $6,000 to an account in the Jenin branch of Cairo Amman Bank in September 11, 2003. The account belongs to the Jenin Zaka, or charity committee.

A subsequent letter from UNDP, dated October 3, 2003, written in Arabic and addressed to the head of the Jenin organization, actually states that the transfer was a mistake and demands a return of the funds. 'It was transferred to your account by mistake,' the letter states, adding that the money 'was intended for the Tul Karem Charity Committee.'

Both committees were identified by the Israeli Defense Force as part of a charity network affiliated with Hamas, the terror organization that has boycotted the recent election in the Palestinian Arab areas. The head of the Jenin committee, Ahmed Salaatnah, spent time in Israeli jails between 1993 and 1995 for terrorist activities in the Izz a Din al Kassem, the operational military branch of Hamas responsible for a chain of suicide bombings.

The money transfers in the fall of 2003 are interesting because it was made clear to the head of the UNDP office in Jerusalem, Timothy Rothermel, by the IDF four months earlier that the charity organizations were fronts for Hamas.

Tale of two refugee groups

About 600,000 Pal refugees from Israel in 1948.

About 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries 1948-1952. The Arabs confiscate all their property, valued in the millions of dollars.

Pals go into refugee camps after their Arab brethren refuse to take them in.

Jews go to Israel where they are welcomed with open arms.

The Arab world is virtually without Jews.

Israel gives citizenship to a million Palestinians.

Pals grow up in sewage under UN auspices.

Jews, although discriminated against at first, become productive members of society.

Pals blame Israel for their problems.

Jews become cab drivers, store owners, farmers and politicians.

Pals remain in camps for over fifty years, in Lebanon, Syria and in the West Bank and Gaza, where they learn terror and hate. Their Arab brethren work hard to keep them in subhuman conditions. Any attempts to move them out of camps and into normal houses and apartments are vehemently opposed by other Arabs. Saudi oil billions go towards Palestinian terror rather than making Palestinian lives easier.

The Jews live in a democracy. Although they started out penniless, they now contribute mightily to Israel's economy.

Who is responsible for the welfare of the Jewish refugees?

Who is responsible for the welfare of the of the Arab refugees?

Rabbis and imams unite against religious extremism

I had read about this when it happened in early January, but it received virtually no press coverage in the US. So I decided to post it here.

By the way, these are not left-wing nor reform rabbis for the most part, but rabbis who are quite Orthodox. -EoZ

Rabbis and imams unite against religious extremism
By Daniel Ben-Simon

BRUSSELS - A few minutes before Europe observed three minutes of silence last Wednesday in memory of the tsunami victims, Jewish and Muslim clergy who had convened at Egmont Palace decided to join them. Two days earlier, the clergy had come together to seek means of greater involvement for religion in quietening the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At exactly noon, all the participants got to their feet around the tables in the magnificent conference hall. Rabbis and imams, along with several Christian clerics, stood side by side and bowed their heads in utter silence.

Suddenly, Rabbi Shlomo Chelouche, the chief rabbi of Haifa, recited a short prayer for the victims. When he finished, all those present said "amen."

Then Zimer Omar Farouk Turan, the former mufti of Istanbul, recited verses from the Koran. No sooner did he finish than Rabbi Yosef Azran, chief rabbi of Rishon Letzion, chanted a psalm, his voice choked with tears. When the moments of silence were over, the hundreds of clergy in the room remained standing. Some wiped away a tear.

"This proves that rabbis and imams can work together for a common goal," said Rabbi Rene Sirat, the former chief rabbi of France. "In all my years as a rabbi, I never experienced a moment like this," Sirat added, invoking the traditional Jewish blessing for reaching a special milestone.

Hojat al-Islam Muhammad Mehatali, a senior Iranian cleric, looked at his colleagues in amazement. "These moments were the cream of the whole conference," he said. "Where have you ever seen Muslims and Jews praying as if they were one family?"

There was no shortage of moving moments during the unprecedented "Rabbis and Imams for Peace" conference, which was sponsored by the organization Hommes de Parole. The confrence hosted more than 200 rabbis and imams as well as Christian clergy from all over the world to convey the message that religion does not send people out to kill and that anyone who takes a life in the name of religion transgresses a commandment of God.

The conference concluded on Friday with a pledge that the Jewish and Muslim clerics would work to put an end to bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians and would struggle with all their might against hatred, ignorance and extremism on both sides. When the declaration was read, the participants got to their feet and applauded.

The delegates grew close during the conference. Rabbis who had never met an imam spoke freely with them during the meetings. At first, they ate at separate tables - Jews here, Muslims there, eyeing each other suspiciously. A day later they had moved closer; a day after that, they were sitting together and even taking pictures arm in arm.

By Wednesday, they were praising each other's faith. "We are all the children of one father - Abraham the Patriarch," said Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron.

Sheikh Talal Sidr of Hebron moved the audience when he called on them to visit every mosque and synagogue to preach peace and dignity. "This is the divine commandment; we must educate a generation to peace and love," he said.

"How is it that every Jewish prayer ends with the word peace and every Muslim prayer ends with the word peace and we are killing each other?" asked Sheikh Abdul Jalil Sajid, the imam of Brighton, England.

Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, chief rabbi of Ramat Gan and a leading opponent of disengagement, surprised the audience with his conciliatory tone. "Judaism and Islam have a common task," he said, "to bring a message to the whole world. Don't we all have one father? So why should we hurt each other?"

The imams represented most of the countries of Africa and Asia, dressed in traditional robes and head coverings in a rainbow of colors. The former president of Indonesia, Abdul Rahman Wahid, canceled his participation because of the tsunami damage to his country.

"The extremists have taken God hostage," said Andre Azoulay, adviser to the king of Morocco. "Unfortunately they are stronger than the Jewish and Muslim people of peace." Participants made great efforts to distance themselves from the horrors perpetrated by fanatics in the name of God.

Paramount during the conference was the clergy's desire to participate in the political process. Several noted that without religious legitimization, no political agreement will last and realizing that if they do not rein in the extremists, the latter might touch off a powder keg of religious hatred that will ignite the whole region.

At the end of the conference, participants held hands and sang Haveinu Shalom Aleichem, a Hebrew song of peace. "We made history," said Alain Michel, a French Christian and president of Hommes de Parole.

Settlers hope for 100,000 at rally

Film clips set to dramatic music of scuffles between police and settlers during past evacuations of outposts in the territories will highlight Sunday night's planned anti-disengagement rally outside the Knesset, which is expected to draw more than 100,000 people.

"We will say, you can stop this, if you let the nation decide," said Emily Amrusy, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, of the planned event, to be held at 7 p.m. under the twin slogans "Let the nation decide" and "Call for new elections."

"It's a cry for the democratic process," said Amrusy.

Protesters are asking Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "legitimize disengagement" by either holding a national referendum or by calling for new elections. Should there be a national referendum, the council would respect the results, said Amrusy.

Among the speakers at the rally will be Yonatan Abukasis, the father of Ayala, 17, killed this month by a Kassam rocket that fell in Sderot. MKs, including those from the Likud who oppose disengagement, will speak, said Amrusy, but the exact list has not been finalized.

The council had also turned to personalities on the Left in hopes that they would join them in the call for a democratic process, but got no response, she said.

Film clips to be shown at the rally will include statements by Sharon, showing how he has "flip-flopped" on the issue.

The event is set to last for 18 hours, but it's expected that only a small group will stay overnight and into the next day, when the gathering is to end at 3 p.m.

Binyamin Regional Council head Pinhas Wallerstein said he hoped it would be the largest such protest ever staged outside the parliament building.

The Council of Jewish Communities has rented 1,200 buses to bring anti-disengagement protesters to Jerusalem from all over the country, he said.

"The true test of the rally's success is not in the speakers but in the number of people that attend," Wallerstein said.

He has not been deterred, he added, by the growing spirit of optimism that has brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together, nor by the continual progress of the plan to evacuate all the Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four more in northern Samaria.

"We will not stop protesting," he said, explaining that settlers were planning many more events, including a conference of Orthodox leaders from around the world in a few weeks.

At the start of January, settlers set up a protest camp outside the Knesset. They plan to stay there until the government reverses the disengagement decision.

Ami Applebaum, a computer scientist from Bnei Brak who plans to attend the rally, said he was not the typical protester in that he supports the principle of giving up land for peace. But, he said, disengagement should only happen within the context of a negotiated plan.

He said he believed that Sharon aborted the democratic process by campaigning on one platform and acting on another once in office. Nor does he believe that the Knesset vote supporting disengagement is indicative of the nation's or even the politicians' true feelings.
"If a secret vote were held in the Knesset, it's not clear that the majority would support it," he said.

Great article on Pups for Peace

"These Israeli 'agents' have a nose for explosives
By Amelia Thomas | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

TEL AVIV - At 8:30 on a crisp January morning, Erez Finkelstein pulls up at Tel Aviv's central bus station. He takes two containers from his pocket. 'This one's TNT, dynamite,' he says as he shakes the small can, 'and the other's C4, plastic explosive.' He approaches a bus in a long line of parked vehicles, and tucks the TNT beneath the wheel arch. He then walks to a nearby motor scooter and conceals the C4 inside the engine casing.

Despite appearances, Mr. Finkelstein is performing a job crucial to Israel's domestic security. He is part of a team - half of whom are two-legged, the other half four - that works tirelessly to prevent the bomb attacks that regularly rock the country. As an instructor for the US-Israeli charity Pups for Peace, his job is to ensure that their highly trained squad of bomb-detecting dogs stays in top form.

'First, Cliff,' says Finkelstein as a brindle Dutch shepherd appears, straining at his leash. Cliff's handler, Elad Bachal, releases the excited young dog.

After just two minutes of sniffing, Cliff discovers the first of the hidden explosives. Mr. Bachal rewards him with his toy - a simple fabric cylinder known as a 'puppy roll' - and Cliff cavorts with glee.

Finkelstein extracts the dynamite. 'If the dogs didn't find what they're looking for at least once a day,' he explains, 'they might lose interest in their work.'

Since the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000, there have been 124 separate bomb attacks on Israeli civilians. But it wasn't until

the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya in March 2002 - which killed 30 and injured 140 - that a US economics professor, Glenn Yago, telephoned his long-time Israeli friend, Ronnie Lotan, and Pups for Peace was born.

'He called me from Scottsdale, Ariz., just minutes after the attack,' recalls Mr. Lotan, now director general of the charity. ' 'We've finally got to do something about this,' he told me. 'Let's get dogs.' '

Although neither man had any experience in the field, they became convinced after initial research that a squad of bomb-detecting dogs would boost public security.

Read the rest.

The UN's Cynical Use of "Never Again"

by Anne Bayefsky

On Monday, the United Nations marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp with a day-long special session of the U.N. General Assembly, followed by the opening of an exhibition. Throughout the event, the words "never again" were repeated many times. But what exactly did they mean to U.N. members and officials?

Here is the cynical response: They meant that the secretary-general has been seriously weakened by the Oil-for-Food scandal and ongoing congressional and criminal investigations, as well as the sexual abuse of refugees in the Congo by U.N. peacekeepers and the mishandling of sexual-harassment charges in-house. A secretary-general seeking to serve out his remaining two years in office finds throwing something toward the Jews, in the form of commemorating a 60-year-old catastrophe, a relatively inexpensive means of redemption.

The scope of the exercise was strictly controlled. The Europeans agreed to promote the special session on the condition that there were no resolutions and no final declaration — in other words no lasting statement of purpose or resolve. They were not prepared to do battle with Arab and Muslim states over texts or outcomes. Not a single substantive U.N. document was distributed. The ground rules for the special sessions of the General Assembly for the previous decade were completely different — this one would be "commemorative" only.

One hundred thirty-eight U.N. members agreed with the proposition to hold the special session, and one more decided to speak at the actual event. Of the remaining 50 U.N. members, half were from the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

U.N. member states delivered 41 speeches over the course of the day. Only five of those speeches mentioned Israel. Even the speeches of the United States, the European Union, Canada, and Australia failed to refer to Israel. Nobel-laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, who spoke at the outset, mentioned Israel once; citing a number of examples of steps that the allies might have taken, he added "if Britain had allowed more Jews to return to Palestine, now Israel, their ancestral land...it would have prevented or reduced the scope of the tragedy." Weisel also called for condemnation and prosecution of suicide-terrorism as a crime against humanity (without mentioning the context).

An evening reception brought hundreds of Jews to the public entrance of the U.N. where an exhibit containing photographs and artwork from Yad Vashem was unveiled. Walking through it, one comes across the word "Israel" on one occasion, in the last sentence, which reads: "Most of the Holocaust survivors immigrated to the state of Israel after its establishment in 1945 following a resolution of the United Nations." When the exhibit was opened, the assembled crowd sang Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem — although this breach of U.N. protocol is said to have been approved on the grounds that the song was for all victims of the Holocaust.

The rules of the game were articulated by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz while speaking on behalf of the United States: "We have agreed today to set aside contemporary political issues, in order to reflect on those events of 60 years ago in a spirit of unanimity." And except for an indirect comment by Jordan and a direct reference to Palestinians by Venezuela during the day's speeches, the game plan was followed.

The upshot? The United Nations looks better in the eyes of many. The secretary-general improved his image. Israel, the perpetual U.N.-loser, was queen-for-a-day.

But the nagging question is, where does this leave "never again"?

Widening the lens, we notice that last month the U.N. adopted 22 resolutions condemning the state of Israel, and four country-specific resolutions criticizing the human-rights records of the other 190 U.N. member states. Also in December the public entrance of the U.N. sported the annual solidarity with the Palestinian people exhibit, featuring a display about Palestinian humiliation at having to bare midriffs at Israeli checkpoints. (No mention was made of the purpose of the checkpoints or the Israelis who have died from suicide belts on Palestinians who circumvent them.) On exactly the same day that the secretary-general announced the holding of the commemorative session, January 11, 2005, he also pushed forward the U.N. plan to create a register of the Palestinian victims of Israel's non-violent security fence. (There are no plans to create a register of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism.) In March the U.N. will begin its annual session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, at which Israel will be the only U.N. member state not allowed to participate in full because U.N. states continue to prevent it from gaining equal membership in a regional group. The U.N. remains without a definition of terrorism, never having transformed the names of Palestinian terrorists from abstract entities into the targets of specific U.N. condemnation or consequences of any kind. And any day now we can expect the secretary-general to continue his pattern of denouncing Israel's lawful exercise of self-defense as "extrajudicial killing" or as a morally reprehensible contribution to "a cycle of violence." In other words, U.N. demonization of Israel and the green light to the killers of Israelis that such demonization portends will not skip a beat. This is the face of modern anti-Semitism.

Jews everywhere are indebted to the willingness and ability of Israelis to live and breathe self-determination. When contemporary political issues are set aside, and an affirmation of the centrality of the Jewish state's well-being to the Jewish people's well-being is not key to a commemoration of the Holocaust, "never again" is an empty phrase. Worse, situated in a place where a U.N. General Assembly resolution said Zionism was racism until 1991 and the 2001 U.N. Durban Declaration delivers the same message, it plays into the hands of those who would separate Jews from Israel for no other reason than to divide and conquer.

The speaker of the Italian senate, Marcello Pera, was the only non-Israeli participant who was prepared to stand against the wheeling and dealing in the backrooms, telling the General Assembly that the anti-Semitism of "today...feeds on...insidious distinctions...made between Israel and the Jewish state, Israel and its governments, Zionism and Semitism. Or...when the struggle for life led by...Israelis is labelled 'state terrorism.'"

The less-cynical response to our original question — about the meaning of "never again"? Some Holocaust survivors such as Nesse Godin and Congressman Tom Lantos were able to speak directly — during the unofficial lunchtime break organized by Bnai Brith, in a room far from the General Assembly. Some people listened. Some people heard. The pictures of Auschwitz are still in the front hall of the U.N. for a little while longer. A blow was struck against Holocaust deniers. And for one day, the democratic state of Israel was not the most reviled member of the U.N. (less than half of whose members can be called "free" according to Freedom House).

When all was said and done, however, the U.N. got a lot more than it gave. Improving the image of the U.N. and its secretary-general could prove more costly than Israelis have bargained.

Canada sued over Israel passport policy

Why exactly is West Jerusalem considered not Israel but the rest of the areas between the 1947 partition line and the Green Line is?

The Canadian government is being sued for listing Jerusalem as the birthplace of a Toronto teenager instead of Israel, the Toronto Star said Thursday.

Eliyahu Yehoshua Veffer, 17, was born in West Jerusalem, and is angry with the Canadian government's stance on the embattled region.

There are 28 Jerusalems in the world, Veffer said. I'm from the one in Israel. I want the government to recognize that.

Under current passport regulations, Canadians born in Jerusalem cannot list Israel as their place of birth because of its ongoing classification as a disputed territory. That policy has been in effect since Israel was formed in 1948.

Veffer's lawyer, David Matas, also the legal counsel for B'nai Brith Canada, filed the initial application Wednesday for the review in a Winnipeg federal court, where Matas lives.

My client wants his country of birth on his passport, Matas said. Everybody else in the world can have it, but the government is denying him the right to do it. It's discriminatory.

Now no one will mourn her

Notice how this story completely went under the radar:

IDF: Palestinian Child Was Killed by a Kassam Fragment

(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials report that the preliminary investigation into the death of a five-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza points to a Kassam rocket.

Military officials report the girl was killed when the rocket landed several hundred meters from her in the Dir el-Balah area of Gaza sending shrapnel flying in all directions. Officials explain the preliminary report indicates she was not killed by IDF gunfire at is being reported by PA sources.

George McGovern on Bombing Auschwitz

by Stephen J. Solarz and Rafael Medoff

(Rep. Solarz served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1993. Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America’s response to the Holocaust - www.WymanInstitute.org)

World leaders will gather at Auschwitz, site of the former Nazi death camp, on January 26 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Allies’ liberation of the camp. The event will help focus needed attention on the horrors of genocide, then and now. But it will be haunted by the knowledge in 1944, that Allied bomber pilots had Auschwitz within their gun sights, yet were never given the order to attack.

George McGovern was one of those pilots.

McGovern, the former U.S. Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, recently spoke on camera for the first time about his experiences as one of the American pilots who flew over Auschwitz. In a meeting with interviewers from Israel Television and the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, McGovern recalled his days as the pilot of a B-24 “Liberator” in the 455th Bomb Group, targeting German synthetic oil plants in occupied Poland--many of them within a few miles of the Auschwitz gas chambers.

After the Allies gained control of the Foggia air base in Italy in December 1943, Auschwitz was for the first time within striking distance of Allied planes. In June 1944, U.S. diplomats and Jewish leaders in Switzerland received a detailed report about Auschwitz, prepared by two escapees. They described the mass-murder facilities, and drew diagrams showing where the gas chambers and crematoria were located.

As a result, Jewish organizations repeatedly asked the Roosevelt administration to order the bombing of Auschwitz and the railroad lines leading to the camp. The War Department rejected the proposals as “impracticable,” claiming such raids would require “considerable diversion” of planes needed for the war effort. U.S. officials claimed to have conducted a “study” which found that bombing Auschwitz was not militarily feasible. But no evidence of the alleged study has ever been found.

Ironically, military resources were diverted for various other non-military reasons. Secretary of War Henry Stimson blocked the Air Force’s plan to bomb the Japanese city of Kyoto, because of its artistic treasures, and his deputy John McCloy --who rebuffed many of the requests to bomb Auschwitz-- diverted U.S. bombers from striking the German city of Rothenburg, because of its famous medieval architecture. General George Patton even diverted U.S. troops in order to rescue 150 Lipizzaner horses in Austria.

The administration’s “diversion” argument was just “a rationalization,” Senator McGovern said in the interview. How much of a “diversion” would it have been, when he and other U.S pilots were already flying over the area?

In the summer and fall of 1944, the Allies repeatedly bombed the oil factories near Auschwitz--at a time when hundreds of Jews were being gassed daily in the camp. On December 26, McGovern’s squadron dropped fifty tons of bombs on oil plants in Monowitz, an industrial section of Auschwitz, located less than five miles from the site where an estimated 1.6-million people were murdered during 1942-1944.

“There is no question we should have attempted ... to go after Auschwitz,” McGovern said in the interview. “There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.”

Even if there was a danger of accidentally harming some of the prisoners, “it was certainly worth the effort, despite all the risks,” McGovern said, because the prisoners were already “doomed to death” and an Allied bombing attack might have slowed down the mass murder process, thus saving many more lives.

Some years ago, in a supermarket in my old Congressional district in Brooklyn, I (Stephen Solarz) chanced to meet a woman who had a tattooed number on her arm. When she told me she had been in Auschwitz, I asked her what she thought of the argument that bombing the camp would have been wrong because prisoners would have been killed. She replied: “It would have been our finest hour, because we assumed we would all be killed anyway and this would at least have shown us that the world had not forgotten us and some of the Nazis would certainly have been killed as well.”

“Franklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero,” McGovern said. “But I think he made two great mistakes in World War Two.” One was the internment of Japanese-Americans; the other was the decision “not to go after Auschwitz ... God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation.”

One hopes the world leaders meeting at the Auschwitz site on January 26 will reflect not only upon the savagery of the Nazis, but also on the role of bystanders, then and now. As Senator McGovern emphasized, the Auschwitz experience should produce “a determination that never again will we fail to exercise the full capacity of our strength in that direction ... we should have gone all out [against Auschwitz], and we must never again permit genocide.”

Sharon is happy with Abbas, FM says cease-fire is a "ticking bomb"

I wouldn't mind this doubletalk and mixed signals if Israel had ever demonstrated the ability to play the game well. As it stands, the country just looks incompetent in both its desire for defense and its desire for peace. -EoZ

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Thursday that the cease-fire forged by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbbas was a 'ticking bomb which will blow up in our faces.' Shalom made the comments hours after an interview with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was published in which Sharon said he is 'very satisfied' with the steps being taken by Abbas to end the violence.

On Wednesday, the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened to end the new, tenuous cease-fire, after undercover Border Police troops shot dead a Hamas activist and wounded two members of the Brigades in the West Bank city of Qalqilyah.

The killing came hours after Israeli officials hinted at a change in assassination policy, stating that if quiet obtained on the Palestinian side, Israel would respond with quiet as well.

But Shalom, speaking to Army Radio after talks with newly-confirmed U.S. Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, said 'A cease-fire as such is not a goal.'

'Whoever thinks a halt is the right thing, is mistaken. A cease-fire is a ticking bomb which will blow up in our faces,' Shalom said.

'Therefore, you cannot take a cease-fire as a long-range goal, while they are are still preserving their infrastructure, the extremist organizations can rebuild them and bring about a situation in which at a time they choose they can carry out one terrorist attack or a series of terror attacks, which will bring down this whole process and send it to hell.'