Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 11, 2005

FrontPage magazine - Sharansky's Straight Talk

I've said it before - Democracy and freedom are two different things, and freedom is a prerequisite for true democracy. Rewarding those who pretend to have a democracy when in fact they have no real freedoms is counterproductive.

JERUSALEM -- Last week Israel's minister for Diaspora affairs, Natan Sharansky, sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon requesting that he demand that the Palestinian Authority stop executions of suspected "collaborators" with Israel. Such "collaborators" are generally Palestinians who were "convicted" by the PA's controversial "state security" courts of tipping off Israel about impending terror attacks, or about the whereabouts of terrorists who were planning them. In other words, their "crime" is to assist Israel in preventing the mass murder of civilians.

Sharansky's letter to Sharon pointed to a contradiction in Palestinian behavior: "It is unacceptable that the PA demands the release of terrorists from our jails, and we respond affirmatively because of the hope for an opening to peace, while at the very same time the PA is about to commit state executions of people accused of helping Israel thwart terror.... It is impossible to build a peace process based on blood."

Last February 16, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas already ratified death sentences against three "collaborators." And last week, the PA's chief mufti Sheikh Akrima Sabri announced that he was reviewing fifteen more death sentences at Abbas's request -- about half of the cases involving alleged "collaborators." Reports say the mufti has already recommended that five of the prisoners be executed, though whether they were "collaborators" is not yet clear.

These days Sharansky's name is associated with an exuberant optimism about the Middle East, and about all peoples' ability to create well-functioning democracies if given a chance. President Bush has sung the praises of his book The Case for Democracy and declared it to be part of his "presidential DNA." Events like the Iraqi people's insistence on voting despite a threat of terror, and the Lebanese people's agitation against the Syrian occupation of their country, are dramatic and hope-inspiring and seem to bear out Sharansky's -- and Bush's -- message.

What can get lost in the excitement, though, is that Sharansky is not an uncritical optimist -- far from it. If his overall message has not had much resonance in Israel itself, it's because Israelis have lived in the Middle East a long time and are harder to persuade that it's changing for the better. And Sharansky himself, despite his own optimism on the philosophical level, is actually -- a side of him much less known in America and the West -- among the more cautious and realistic Israelis when it comes to the facts on the ground.

INDEED, WHILE ABBAS'S election as PA chairman last January is commonly mentioned in the same breath with the Iraqi elections and, now, the Lebanese struggle (as well as President Mubarak's -- as yet untested -- promise of genuine multicandidate elections next September), the party over Abbas's "election" was one Sharansky did not join. Telling the Jerusalem Post last January 10 that this election was not "truly free," he explained: "Free elections can only take place in societies in which people are free to express their opinions without fear. This is not the case in the Palestinian Authority....there was no other candidate [than Abbas]..."

He went on to say it was a "shame" that, as Post reporter Herb Keinon paraphrased him, "the world uses the same words for completely different types of processes in different governmental systems, thereby making moral equivalencies that don't exist." Sharansky added in his own words: "This election can be the beginning of the democratic process only if we don't have illusions that democracy is already there, and that all we have to do now is give them independence. If that is what we do, then we will find that we have given independence not to a democratic state, but to a terrorist state."

Sharansky's unflinching scrutiny of the Palestinian Authority continued on January 25 when he drew attention to a detailed report on its promotion of anti-Semitism and genocide in its official media. Compiled by Palestinian Media Watch and called "Kill a Jew -- Go to Heaven," Sharansky summarized the study to reporters: "As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire 'culture of hatred' in Palestinian society today, from textbooks to crossword puzzles, from day camps to music videos. Calling for the murder of Jews, as Jews, is the end result."

(As shown by the Palestinian media's lionization of the recent suicide bomber at a Tel Aviv club, any improvement since then is still very partial. See also a report by Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.)

ANOTHER ISSUE WHERE Sharansky dissents from the prevalent -- including the Bush administration's -- perception is Israel's disengagement plan. Last February 20 when the Israeli cabinet (over one-third of which is now members of the dovish Labor Party) voted 17-5 in favor of the plan, Sharansky was one of those five nays. Indeed, if President Bush wanted to learn Sharansky's view on this subject, he didn't need to look far; on page 262 of The Case for Democracy, Sharansky writes:

"I...opposed...Sharon's disengagement plan because I did not accept the premise that there was no potential Palestinian partner and no hope for peace.... In my view, one-sided Israeli concessions would only strengthen the forces of terror and fear within Palestinian society, making it even more difficult to promote positive change and decreasing the chances of a viable partner for peace emerging in the future."

And just a few pages earlier, Bush presumably read criticisms by Sharansky that would have hit still closer to home, since they concerned Bush's own Road Map:

"The Road Map was the voice of Bush but the hands of Oslo.... The Road Map was effectively calling for a quick game of musical chairs among the Palestinian leadership, turning reform efforts into a farce.... In hindsight, the Bush administration's support for the Road Map seems even more shocking.... when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rhetoric and the policy of his administration diverged.... the Road Map will not bring to fruition the ideas the present articulated on June 24 [2002]. It will not bring genuine freedom to the Palestinians, and therefore will not bring genuine peace."

There is a disconnect, it seems, between the Sharansky whom President Bush and many of his fervent supporters have adopted as a sort of standard-bearer, and the Sharansky who is much more reserved and cautious when it comes to the details of reaching democracy and peace, but who seems to be a victim of neglect. Some would say Sharansky himself is partially to blame for this in promoting an overly sanguine message in places far from the harsh sands of the Middle East. If genuine elections in Iraq and genuine popular agitation in Lebanon justify a measured optimism, phony elections in the PA followed by continued incitement and terrorism do not, and are reason to rethink political plans rather than accelerate them.

Perhaps the "other Sharansky" needs to make himself better seen and heard, even if it means detracting from the more cheerful image.

Credit where credit is due: Kofi Annan speaks against real terrorism

His definition of terror is accurate, the reaction from the Arab League was muted.

And the chances that the UN would actually do anything to truly fight terror is next to nothing. But nevertheless, this is a welcome speech from an otherwise corrupt and counterproductive shill for an irrelevant institution.

In a bid to reinvigorate the U.N.'s role in international security, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday proposed a global treaty against terrorism at a summit in Madrid.

In a keynote speech, Annan called terrorism an attack on the U.N.'s "core values" and said the world body must be at the forefront of the battle against it.

At the top of the U.N.'s agenda is an international treaty outlawing terrorism, Annan said, and the world must stop wrangling over the definition of the term and start fighting the threat. A comprehensive convention against terrorism has been stalled by governments' disagreement on who should be considered a terrorist. Some states want to exempt so-called freedom fighters and people resisting occupation, for example.

Annan attempted to cut through the debate by endorsing the view that terrorism is any action intended to cause death or serious harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidation.

"I believe this proposal has clear moral force, and I strongly urge world leaders to unite behind it," he said.

During a discussion, Amr Moussa, leader of the Arab League and a member of the U.N. panel commissioned by Annan, did not reject the definition but argued for a greater focus on the root causes of extremist violence, such as poverty, injustice and occupation.

Annan offered "five Ds" in the campaign against terrorism: Dissuade disaffected groups from using terrorism to achieve their goals, deny terrorists the means to carry out their attacks, deter states from supporting terrorists, develop prevention strategies and defend human rights in the struggle against terrorism.

He warned that the U.N. would be tough on terrorists and those who harbored them.

"All states must know that if they give any kind of support to terrorists, the [Security] Council will not hesitate to use coercive measures against them," Annan said.

Excuse me while I laugh at that last line.

More new, cool Israeli weapons

Besides the tank protection system mentioned, Israel also recently announced:

Israel successfully test-fired its Long Range Artillery (LORA) missile March 3, scoring a dead-on hit of a sea-based target some 200 km from the launch site on Israel's coast.

Revealed for the first time in public are digitalized mobile headquarters and a robot, unmanned security vehicle (USV) to be deployed along the security fence.

Israel Aircraft Industries presented a smart mortar bomb, called "FireBall," with pinpoint accuracy guided by GPS.
The "Eye Ball R1" is a high-tech camera packaged into a hand-held impervious ball, which can be thrown into any building, tunnel, or cave to enable remote observation from relative safety.
The Mosquito UAV measures 12 x 14 inches [30 x 34 cm], has a silent motor, and offers real-time high-quality video for up to 60 minutes, flying at 300 feet.

Also,

The Israeli kibbutz company Palsen Sasa has won a contract to provide armor for U.S. military vehicles in Iraq.
The company will provide armor for 2,000 trucks and other vehicles in kits that can be assembled on site by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Israel creates revolutionary tank shield system

Those crazy Jews are at it again :)

The IDF has revealed a revolutionary new protective shield system for its armored vehicles that intercepts and destroys missiles and rockets with a shotgun-like blast just before they hit.

The system is called Trophy and was shown in public for the first time during this week's arms fair at the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds during a conference on Low Intensity Conflict sponsored by the IDF's Ground Forces Services.

The Trophy was developed by RAFAEL together and Israel Aircraft Industries' Elta Group and General Dynamics. Known as an 'active protective system' (APS), it is seen as a major milestone in weapons design since it in theory reduces the need for heavy armor for vehicles.

According to RAFAEL, the system works against all types of guided anti-tank missiles and rockets, including the ubiquitous rocket propelled grenades. The company said the system includes four flat-panel antennas and a search radar that are mounted on the armored vehicle.

They can detect incoming projectiles from 360 degrees and calculate their approach. Its computer then determines the exact moment and angle to fire its neutralizers (small metal pellets like a shotgun blast).

In an effort to cushion the effects of their daily stress, hundreds of Israelis held a mass pillow fight in Tel Aviv's central Rabin Square on Tuesday night, Israel Army Radio reported.

"The Pillow Fight Club" organised the fight to "improve the morale" of their tense countrymen.

A pamphlet issued by the club laid down clear rules, including using only soft pillows and forbidding pummelling anyone who was not armed with a a pillow "unless they request to be hit".

Participants appeared to take the event seriously, with one saying she tested her pillows on her little sister before deciding which one to take to the fight.

"Particularly in these days with so much violence and many people feeling the need to vent their aggressions, it's a great thing," another told the radio.

Less pleased seemed to be the municipality cleaners, who had to sweep up the thousands of feathers which covered the square after the fight.

Another account of the event:

Hundreds of people gathered in the city center of Tel Aviv, Israel for a pillow fight. The participants battled one another fiercely causing down and cotton to fill the air of the city center.

In Tel Aviv, hundreds of young people gathered for a pillow fight. Each and every one of them had been mobilized through text messaging and Internet communications. Despite being strangers to one another, participants had no problem picking out a common enemy. One man came prepared with a gigantic hammer made of pillows, but ended up becoming everyone’s common enemy. The down and cotton from destroyed pillows filled the air.

“I'm having the best time. I came from Haifa and this is what happened to my pillow. It just blew up. It's amazing. I want to go back to the pillow fight,” said this pillow fight participant.

An Internet community called “Mobile Clubbing” mobilized this pillow battle. The group often uses text messages and emails to invite young people to different public events.

The United Nations must recognize Hezbollah as a force to be reckoned with in implementing the U.N. resolution calling for the withdrawal of all Syrian forces from Lebanon and the disarmament of the country's militias, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.

He was responding to a question about the disarmament of Hezbollah, which showed its strength Tuesday at a huge pro-Syrian rally in Beirut attended by hundreds of thousands of people who chanted anti-U.S. slogans. Two huge banners read in English: "Thank you Syria" and "No to foreign interference."

Annan said the world needs to accept that in every society different groups may hold different views.

"Of course, we need to be careful of the forces at work in Lebanese society as we move forward," he said.

"But even the Hezbollah — if I read the message on the placards they are using — they are talking about non-interference by outsiders ... which is not entirely at odds with the Security Council resolution, that there should be withdrawal of Syrian troops," Annan told reporters.

What part of "Thank you Syria" does Kofi fail to understand?

Now, to what really happened:

JERUSALEM – The giant Hezbollah rally that drew nearly half a million purported supporters of Syria's occupation of Lebanon actually was a staged hoax with non-Lebanese citizens, Syrian workers, students and municipal employees coerced into joining the protest, former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview this morning.

"Yesterday's huge protest calling for Syria to stay made it look to the world like a large segment of the Lebanese population actually wants to live under Syrian occupation," said Aoun, speaking to WND from Paris. "But the protest wasn't what it appeared to be. It was an elaborately staged affair."
...
"This was not a Lebanese showing, and many of those who actually were Lebanese were not there because they support Syria. We know that at least three Palestinian camps were present. And there are 700,000 Syrian workers inside Lebanon, many of whom are not even supposed to be there. They were urged by Syria to attend so it looks like many Lebanese are protesting. Plus Syria bused in their own citizens from Syria through the border into Lebanon to join the rally."

The former prime minister also accused Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Lebanese intelligence forces of coercing students and municipal workers to attend.

"They shut down the schools and all the government and public buildings and pressured students and workers to get to the rally," he said.

Sharon: Jews will remain in Hevron - what does that mean?

Sharon said yesterday:

The attack this morning at the Cave of the Patriarchs is an attempt to harm Jewish freedom of worship in one of its most sacred places. All around the world, we fight for the right of Jews to pray without harm, and protect the freedom of worship for all people – Jew, Muslim or Christian – to pray in their sacred places in Israel.

We will continue to defend the right of any person to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs, and will not tolerate the attempts of the terror organizations to prevent Jews from doing so.

Jews will continue to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and to live there.

It would be nice to know exactly what this means. Is he saying that Hevron is a "red-line" and he will never accept Israel without Hevron? Or that he would insist that Jews be allowed to live there under Palestinian rule? Is he meaning something like "G-d willing, Jews will remain there" without any plan? Is he referring to Jews living in Hevron proper, or Kiryat Arba - without the protection of the fence?

Or is it, simply, a lie to quiet the angry Israeli right?

Islamic Jihad head who ordered Tel Aviv bombing used to be a professor in Florida

Once again, reason to be proud of American academia. USF had the honor of employing at least 2 major terrorist figures, Shallah and Al-Arian.

A PALESTINIAN terrorist leader who spent five years at Durham University has been targeted for assassination by Israel after he was blamed for last weekend’s bomb in Tel Aviv, which killed five people.

Ramadan Shallah, 47, the head of Islamic Jihad, is accused by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, of ordering the attack by telephone from Damascus. A transcript of the call is believed to have been given to Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state.

Abdullah Badran, 21, the bomber, made clear in a videotape he left behind that he was acting on behalf of Islamic Jihad.

Shallah’s role underlines the extent of his transformation from an unassuming PhD student who spent 1985-90 at Durham, writing a thesis on Islamic banking in Jordan.

[...]

Shallah moved from Durham to the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he taught Middle Eastern studies and headed the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a think tank affiliated to the university.

His academic life came to an abrupt end in 1995 with the assassination of his friend, Fathi Shiqaqi, the head of Islamic Jihad. Leaving behind his comfortable life in Florida, Shallah took his place.

Israeli flower cells shaped like Star of David

This is too cool!

Israeli 'survivor' flower boasts cells in shape of Star of David

"We have never before seen a structure like this in the cell walls of plants," says Dr. Rina Kamenetsky. "This is a very rare structure - maybe even unique."

It's known as the ultimate survivor. It grows wild in Israel, thriving in the harsh dry conditions that would kill many other plants.

And what do the cells of this hardy survivor - a native Israeli Persian buttercup - look like under a microscope?

A Star of David.

"It really is symbolic," says Dr. Rina Kamenetsky, a researcher at Israel's Volcani Institute, who made the surprising discovery while trying to understand the survival mechanisms of this resilient bulb, known in Hebrew as nurit, and in Latin as Ranunculus asiaticus.

The flower from the Holy Land is also known in botanical circles as a type of 'resurrection plant' which, explains Kamenetsky, means that it can live without water, and is 'resurrected' when water becomes available.

Kamenetsky brought samples of the native Israeli type of this Mediterranean species to study during a sabbatical leave at the University of Guelph in Canada last year. She and her Canadian colleagues discovered that the storage roots of this particular Persian buttercup have a special mechanism for resisting drought and heat that is found in no other plant to date - a finding they published recently in the journal New Phytologist.

But Kamenetsky also found an additional surprise: under a microscope the cells of the root assume the form of interlocking Stars of David.

"When my Canadian colleague Professor Larry Peterson saw it, he called me over right away and said: 'Look, Rina: here's something especially for you.' I was truly amazed," she told ISRAEL21c.

It was the first time that Kamenetsky, a leading floriculturist, had seen a Star of David pattern on the cells of any plant.

It turns out that the cell walls of the storage roots of this particular plant serve as a shield. In winter, when the first rain comes, the cell walls block the sudden influx of water which could cause the cells to burst. At the same time, they protect the cells from dehydration by absorbing water.

The cell walls that serve as a year-round shield also happen to look like a shield - the shield of David.

"We have never before seen a structure like this in the cell walls of plants," she says. "This is a very rare structure - maybe even unique."

US says: 'Half measures insufficient!' Ooops...they meant Syria, not Abbas.

Tough talk against a murderous terror regime, that, um, Europe doesn't seem to like either.

The United States considered "half measures" unsatisfactory, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in response to the redeployment of Syrian forces in Lebanon.

"This does not add up to Syria leaving Lebanon. Nobody has said all troops are leaving Lebanon," a State Department official said.

"We will continue to hold their feet to the fire, not accept half-measures and call a spade a spade - that is, when they make these announcements about a withdrawal that is neither complete or immediate, we will call it for what it is,” the official said.

With all that bravado, I wonder when the White House will call Abbas a Holocaust-denier?

Terror attack at Judaism's 2nd holiest site

Another day, another terror attack that is considered "acceptable" and not worth risking the fictional peace process over. We're back to 1994, with the exception of an American president who is committed to giving the terrorists their own country. And, really, who cares about Hevron/Hebron? Only "settlers" and other Jews, not the enlightened secular Zionists who are now demonizing them worse than the terrorists.

An Arab terrorist injured four people this morning, one seriously, in a shooting attack at Hevron's Tomb of the Biblical Patriarchs.

Shortly before 9:00am, an Arab terrorist sprayed gunfire at Israelis standing at the entrance to the Machpela Cave, the tomb of the Biblical Patriarchs in Hevron. Four people were injured including a Border Guard soldier who sustained serious wounds.

The soldier and a lightly injured comrade were transported to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem's Ein Karem neighborhood. Two other lightly wounded security personnel were treated at the scene.

IDF responds to Hevron Arab attack. Photo: Hevron

The terrorist emerged from the crowded Hevron kasba market to perpetrate the attempted murder. Arab residents of Hevron have been put under strict curfew as security forces sweep the area for the attacker and possible accomplices. Military forces are still operating in the city at this time.

A policeman and former border guard patrolling the site responded by shooting at the attacker, forcing the possibly wounded terrorist to flee the scene. Hearing cries of "wounded," army medic and local resident, Yisrael Bromsohn, immediately ran to the site of the attack. Bromsohn administered emergency first aid to the critically wounded victim until additional medical personnel arrived.

Ariel Levy, who was at the tomb entrance during the attack, said, "I was with another person and we were just going into [the building] when we heard the automatic gunfire a few yards away. We quickly hit the ground." Levy said that all of the injured were border guards on duty at the site.

Medics treat today's victims in Hevron. Photo: Hevron

According to Jewish tradition, the Machpela Cave is the burial site of four biblical couples: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, and Adam and Eve.

In addition to the morning attack at the Machpela Cave, security forces in Hevron arrested an Arab possessing a letter that declared his intention to carry out a suicide bombing. The would-be terrorist was captured after security forces received intelligence warnings of a suicide bomber in the Kiryat Arba area.

Hypocrisy of releasing prisoners while PA executes "collaborators"

I was wondering why nobody seems to care about "collaborators" who are planned to be executed by the peace-loving PA this month.

In an urgent plea to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Minister-without Portfolio Natan Sharansky said the government must demand that the Palestinian Authority immediately stop the execution of those alleged to have collaborated with Israel.

'Israel must immediately demand of the PA that it stop the planned execution of suspected collaborators,' he wrote. 'It is unacceptable that the PA demands the release of terrorists from our jails, and we respond affirmatively because of the hope for an opening to peace, while at the very same time the PA is about to commit state executions of people accused of helping Israel thwart terror.'

He appealed to Sharon following a report that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is expected to approve the execution of collaborators. According to this report, the director of the PA Military Court advised that between five and 15 Palestinians are expected to be executed. The mufti of Jerusalem has confirmed this report.

'It is impossible to build a peace process based on blood. Such a process can only be based on the goodwill of both sides.

The cold-blooded execution of those individuals accused of cooperating to deflect terror directly contradicts the gestures demanded of Israel, tramples human rights, and with it any spark of hope for a better future in the Middle East,' Sharansky wrote.

AP compares Israeli and Palestinian child deaths; Sbarro's victim's father responds

AP seeks moral equivalence, as usual. Here is a response by Arnold Roth...read the whole thing.

It upsets me very much to see the agonizing story of child murders largely reduced to an AP statistical analysis. Counting bodies - whether it's factually correct or incorrect - ignores the central reality of terrorism. The terrorists want as many bodies as possible, and they don't make any effort to hide it. Counter-terrorism warfare causes innocents to lose their lives. This is awful - but it's not the same as the cold-blooded, deliberate viciousness that motivates people like the murderers of my daughter.

From personal experience, I have a better-than-average sense for how complex the journalism profession is. Still, you'll understand why I am so infuriated when an article which purports to compare the deaths of Israeli children with the deaths of Palestinian Arab children ignores the fundamental issue at the heart of the carnage: the Palestinians have a huge number of people interested in seeing more and more dead Israeli children.

If Israel failed to take the pro-active and energetic steps it does, many, many more Israeli children's lives would end in murder. The statistics in your article would then look very different. Israeli lives are saved every single day because of the work of the Israeli security forces. This is a reality of the asynchronous war of the past four years and for anyone aware of the facts, irrespective of political viewpoints, there's no room for doubt on the issue. The post-Arafat Palestinian political leadership acknowledges it. But instead of doing what moral and responsible people would - that is, forcefully preventing terror -they claim they prefer to 'discuss' and 'persuade' and not take the risk of arousing internal conflict within their own ranks. This is why it now falls to the Israeli security forces to police the Palestinians, with all that that entails.

There should have been some place found for this fundamental difference of standpoint in the article. Since it wasn't, the message is misleading and in my opinion false: poor Israeli families weaping over their misery; poor Palestinian families weaping over their misery; how tragic - but what can civilized people (meaning we readers of American newspapers that buy their stories from AP's wire service) possibly do? The cycle of violence continues.

But there is no cycle of violence in reality - not here. You know yourself, from living in the thick of things in Jerusalem, that if civilized people don't do everything in our power to stop the terrorists, they will spread their terror wider and wider. Understanding the flow of events is not about statistics - it's about terror. Almost every important thing in the way civilized society tries to regulate and manage itself today is about terror. Yet the word 'terror' did not appear even once in the article.

Time interviews Arafat the Second

What a surprise. The "peaceful" Abbas saying that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also peaceful, that Israel is responsible for all Israelis killed in terror attacks.

This sickening, disgusting, lying piece of crap is the person that the US and Israel is relying on for "peace."

TIME: Now that you've been elected, your progress depends on your cease-fire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Islamist groups opposing peace. How secure is it ?

ABBAS: I concluded a truce with Hamas when I was Prime Minister. After I became head of the Palestinian Authority, I conducted talks with them, and they accepted without any pressure on them. It is a democracy. We have to deal with them accordingly.

TIME: But when they launch suicide-bomb attacks like the latest one in Tel Aviv?

ABBAS: They said they are not responsible and they'll stick to the cease-fire. All of [the Islamist factions]. Even those that are in Damascus.

TIME: Who was responsible, then, for the Tel Aviv attack?

ABBAS: It was individuals. We arrested five. If you ask me who is responsible, the Israelis are responsible. The bombers came from the suburb of Tulkarem to Tel Aviv, crossing the wall. So who is responsible? The wall and the Israelis.

TIME: Hamas won seats in municipal elections in January. Now the P.L.O. has an opposition?

ABBAS: This is proof that they are going to be a political party, which is good.

TIME: Israelis and Americans are shocked to think Hamas could be in your parliament.

ABBAS: Why not? They should be in the parliament. They will share responsibility. Israel has more than 33 political parties from right to left and in between.

After all, Halas and Islamic Jihad share the same goals as the PA, Fatah, and Hezbollah - why shouldn't they be in the parliament?

The anti-Jewish lie that refuses to die: The history of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

by Steve Boggan

WHEN HADASSA BEN-ITTO told her colleagues she was giving up her career as one of Israel’s most senior judges to expose the deadliest forgery of the 20th century, they thought she was crazy. The forgery — perhaps more accurately a plagiarism — was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and it had been used to justify the murders of millions of Jews in Russia and Nazi Germany. But, they said, it was nonsense. It was a fairy story. Surely, no one believed this rubbish any more . . . did they?

That was in 1991. Ben-Itto subsequently embarked, at the age of 64, on an odyssey that took her thousands of miles from home and more than 100 years back in time to pre-revolutionary Russia and a Europe in anti-Semitic ferment. And, by the time she had completed her epic journey, no one thought she was crazy any more.

Next week Ben-Itto publishes the findings of her work in the UK as The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is a forensic deconstruction of a vicious piece of propaganda that paved the way for the Holocaust and which continues to poison minds against worldwide Jewry to this day. The book combines meticulous research with a previously forgotten — but immensely important — courtroom drama to trace the history of the lie to the hand that penned it.

But first, what are The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? They first appeared in 1905 as an appendix to The Great and the Small by the Russian writer Sergei Nilus. Purporting to be the minutes of a great meeting of Jewish leaders, they chronicle the devious methods by which Jews will cause global economic and political collapse to facilitate their complete domination of the world.

The reasoning behind the Protocols was first used as a means of justifying the massacres — or pogroms — that left thousands of Jews dead in Russia, the message being: “If we don’t kill them, they will kill us.” It was a similar message to that used by Hitler 30 years later.

Divided into 24 tracts on such subjects as Ruthless Suppression, Despotism and Modern Progress and Assault on Religion, its use of language is chillingly matter-of-fact. For example, in Instilling Obedience, Protocol XXIII reads: “Subjects . . . give blind obedience only to the strong hand which is absolutely independent of them, for in it they feel the sword of defence and support against social scourges . . .

“What do they want with an angelic spirit in a king? What they have to see in him is the personification of force and power.”

And so on.

Like many Jews, Ben-Itto had heard of the Protocols but had neither read them nor taken them seriously. Her parents, David, a labourer, and Deborah, fled to Palestine before the war and despaired as news came of the Holocaust in their homeland. When it was over, she had lost two grandparents, six aunts, an uncle and several cousins to the Nazis.

After graduating in law, she was admitted to the Israeli Bar in 1955 and practised for five years before being appointed a judge. In the intervening years she enjoyed a remarkable career, serving twice as a member of Israel’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and holding the temporary rank of ambassador. By the time she took early retirement to investigate the Protocols, she was an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court.

She had had five encounters with the Protocols — once when she was warned about them by a delegate at the UN in 1965; twice when she attended trials tackling racism in Paris in 1972 and Stockholm in 1989; in 1985 when a Filipino judge spoke of them as if they were a given truth; and in a 1988 newspaper article — before she actually sat down to read them.

“As I read on,” she writes, “phrases and paragraphs leapt to the eye, totally devoid of reason, absolutely opposed to any Jewish tradition and teaching.” It was time, she decided, to do something about it.

We meet at the Hilton London Metropole. Ben-Itto, wearing a smart green jacket, is now 78 but she is a bundle of energy who looks ten years younger. She has flown in from Tel Aviv as she wants The Times to carry the first news of her book in the UK (it has already been published in Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Bulgaria) because this newspaper had a special role in first exposing the Protocols as a fake in 1921.

“I was horrified when I read them — particularly when I found out they were still being published around the world as if they were true,” she says.

“Everyone had heard of them, but no one was taking them seriously. I decided to have a series of ten dinner parties for ten or so people, senior lawyers, academics, politicians and journalists, at which I would ask the guests about the Protocols. Everyone had heard of them but not one had read them.

“When I told my guests what they said and what I had found out about their history, they were appalled. I then thought that if so many influential Jews were living in ignorance, it was time for me to unmask the Protocols for what they were. The Jewish people have a history of not standing up when they are being attacked — and we have seen the results of that. I believe in standing up at the first sign of danger.” Armed only with a laptop and helped by a Russian researcher, Ben-Itto set off on her voyage of discovery like a modern-day Miss Marple.

Along the way, she learnt that the Protocols had long ago been exposed as a myth in The Times and in several books. But these books had generally been written by academics for academics and had not enjoyed a wide circulation. She also learnt of a landmark court case in Berne, Switzerland, in 1934 when the Jewish community hired a young and inexperienced lawyer to fight an action against a group of fascists which was distributing the Protocols.

That lawyer, Georges Brunschvig, was long since dead, but Ben-Itto discovered that his wife, Odette, was still alive. She began searching for her without success, until one day, while delivering a lecture to a women’s conference in Switzerland, she asked a delegate if she had heard of Odette Brunschvig. “Yes,” said the delegate. “She’s over there.”

“When I approached Odette and told her what I was doing, she burst into tears,” Ben-Itto recalls. “It was as if Georges’s memory and the work he did had passed into history but was being re-ignited. She invited me home and we became great friends.”

The meeting resulted in the judge being given access to the Berne case records, bundled up and gathering dust for 70 years. She also managed to interview Brunschvig’s law partner twice before he died. Those discoveries, coupled with what had already been written about the Protocols enabled her to piece together their remarkable and sinister history.

What she has established is this: the Protocols were written on the instructions of Piotr Ivanovich Rachkovskii, a Russian secret service agent, in Paris around 1895 as a means of reinforcing the anti-Jewish policies of the Romanov dynasty. They gained wide circulation after the publication of Nilus’s book in 1905 and were accepted as the truth by much of the European intelligentsia. Then, in 1921, the distinguished Times correspondent Philip Graves was tipped off by a Russian exile in Istanbul, known as Mr X, that the Protocols were based on a banned — and later burnt — book by the French satirist Maurice Joly (a gentile) entitled Dialogues in Hell.

Joly had meant well. Dialogues in Hell comprised an imaginary conversation between Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian exponent of ruthless political cunning, and Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, the French advocate of enlightened government. It was intended as a criticism of the harsh rule of Napoleon III and it earned Joly a jail sentence.

Graves was given a rare copy of the book and found that large passages of the Protocols had been lifted wholesale from Joly’s Dialogues — the Protocols, therefore, could not possibly have come from a meeting of Jewish elders. Furthermore, the proponents of the Protocols argue that that meeting was the First Conference on Zionism, held in Basel in 1897. But Joly wrote the Dialogues in 1864. “The Berne lawyers won their case but the Protocols were still widely used by Hitler to advocate the extermination of the Jews,” Ben-Itto says.

“I would argue that the Berne case was one of the most important of the 20th century, but it was forgotten in the events that followed.

“The real tragedy is that despite Georges Brunschvig’s great victory, the Protocols are still being published in new editions all round the world.

“You can even buy them on Amazon. They represent the most dangerous libel on an entire race and give support to the belief in what is more widely known as the Jewish Conspiracy — that the Jews are responsible for everything.

“For 9/11, for Iraq, for the spread of Aids, for all political unrest. They are so clever, you see, because any kind of social, economic or political problem fits in with the grand plan for creating the kind of disorder necessary for world domination.

“The Protocols have now left me with a moral dilemma. I am against banning and burning books — that is the kind of behaviour we associate with the Nazis. But when something has been proven to be a fake and when it is specifically designed to incite racial hatred, then I think there is a case for banning it. That is now impossible with the rise of the internet, so the best I can do is expose it as widely as possible for what it is.”

In Eastern European countries, where her book has been published, it has been welcomed and has stimulated sensible debate where before there was only rumour and ignorance. Yet the Protocols are still being used in other countries, primarily Arab states, to foment anti-Semitism.

For example, as recently as February 20, Ikrima Sabri, Mufti of Jerusalem, appeared on Al-Majd satellite TV to comment on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, and said: “Anyone who studies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and specifically the Talmud will discover that one of the goals of these Protocols is to cause confusion in the world and to undermine security throughout the world.”

Ben-Itto is now free to enjoy her retirement, yet the Protocols still dog her every footstep. She wants to promote her book as widely as possible (and, in most countries where it has been published she donates the royalties to causes that fight anti-Semitism). It will be published in Spain next and then Latin America, to be followed by a 100-minute documentary, which should be aired in the UK before the end of the year.

“There is no room for complacency,” she argues. “When I took this on, I had no idea what a huge undertaking it would be. I have been fortunate to have enjoyed a long and successful career but to see my book out there exposing this lie is very satisfying. I like to think of it as my legacy to the Jewish people and to the all victims who died because of the hatred incited by the Protocols.”