Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Why is Israel a world pariah?

An excellent article in response to a rabidly anti-semitic crackpot article published in the same newspaper last month. The newspaper, the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, is unabashedly left-wing and critical of Israel, and it is to their credit that they even agreed to publish this response.

by Michael Suedfeld

This is a critical time in Middle East history. Both the Palestinians and Israelis are eyeing painful concessions to achieve lasting peace and no one in the world is more acutely aware of this than Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The way forward is not through old rhetoric and the dredging of past events but through conciliation and dealing with the hard realities of 2005. Unfortunately, one of those realities is that some people, when presented with the possibility of turning to peace and progress, will be unable to leave their tired views behind.
How else to explain those such as William Hughes who, in this publication last month, went on a vitriolic tirade against Sharon and the nation he heads? Hughes repeated the many mantras of Israel-bashers, relying on falsehoods and half-truths to reach his goal.

It is fruitless to comment directly on such attacks. Those who forward them are on a mission. They want a very public humiliation, if not the outright dissolution, of the Middle East’s sole traditional democracy; the country that ranks highest among Middle East nations when rated for human development[1]; a country that is a world leader in technological, medical and other scientific advances[2]; a country with less than three per cent of the Middle East’s population[3]; a country that is such a minute portion of the Middle East geographically, it can be measured in tenths of a per cent; a country with few natural resources and none of that most precious Middle East commodity--oil.

Rather, I challenge readers to ask themselves: why is Israel a world pariah?

Is it because of its actions? There are numerous areas around the world where the death tolls are hundreds of times higher and where oppression--particularly of women and minorities--is a routine part of daily life, including most, if not all, other Middle East countries.

Is it because of Sharon? Since Yasser Arafat’s death, Sharon has released hundreds of prisoners[4], allowed convicted and exiled Palestinian terrorists to return to their homes[5], strengthened his commitment to removing Gaza settlements, relaxed travel restrictions[6], removed checkpoints and turned over security to Palestinian forces[7]. As for war crimes, if Sharon’s guilty so, too, are numerous world leaders with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan leading the list. Sharon may have stood by as between 500-1,000 innocents in Sabra and Shatila were murdered by Christian Phalangists (Arabs, not Jews or Israelis), Annan did exactly the same thing in Rwanda (500,000-plus dead[8]), in the former Yugoslavia (more than 100,000 dead[9]), and, today in Sudan (an estimated 300,000 dead[10]).

Is it the media? As the second Intifidah began, there were 350 press organizations with permanent representatives in Israel and another 1,300 arrived shortly after[11]. Those people were there to write “hard” news even if they had to create it. The Jenin refugee camp reporting was one of the great shams of modern journalism, yet people, including Hughes, still cite it as if there were actually a massacre there.[12]

Do we hold Israel to a higher standard than its neighbors? That’s unfair to Israel but more so to Arabs. Lebanese historian Kemal Salibi described it this way: “The liberal tradition in the West tries to impute to the behavior of the native or the underdog an idealist position which is not really there...When it comes to the thinking about Middle East politics, the American liberal mind is often chasing rainbows. They are living in a world of delusion.”[13] Arabs are not children and would be best served if we in the West demanded better from their leaders.

Is Israel perfect? No modern nation is. Israel is, however, home to a kaleidoscope of people from some 100 national backgrounds of diverse races and cultures.[14] The Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze minorities comprise approximately 20 per cent of the population.[15] Druze serve with distinction in the Israeli Defence Forces. There are Arab members of the Knesset[16], Arab members of the courts, including Supreme Court[17] and, in the last two World Cup of Football (soccer) qualifying games, Arab-Israelis scored the tying goals becoming, at least briefly, national heroes.[18] In contrast, Jews can’t even visit countries such as Saudi Arabia.[19]

In short, there is no reason to hate or demean Israel in proportions so out of whack with its actions and significance. At least not for anyone really interested in peace, justice and the other ideals this publication’s operators profess to espouse.

REFERENCES:
[1] Human Development Index
[2] Facts about the 100th smallest country
[3] Depending on which countries are included as “Middle East”, there are between 260 million and 300 million Middle East residents; approximately 6 million in Israel.
[4] Israel releases Palestinian prisoners
[5] Deported Palestinians Allowed to Return
[6] Israel to Lift Restrictions in West Bank
[7] Israel returns Tulkarem to Palestinian control
[8] U.N. Panel: Rwanda Death Toll Down
[9] Revised death toll for Bosnian war
[10] Sudan toll underestimated, report says
[11] Ha'aretz: Foreign press ired by government media center cuts
[12] Palestinians confirm no Jenin 'massacre'
[13] "The Middle East"
[14] Brainboost - How many people live in Israel?
[15] World Factbook
[16] Current Knesset Members
[17] First Arab Named To Israeli Supreme Court
[18] Arab soccer players rescue Israeli team, spark hopes for Jewish-Arab reconciliation
[19] Saudi tourism: No Jews please

Bomb boy may have wanted to go to Israeli prison to pass high school!

You can't make this stuff up.

Hassan may have wanted to be detained by the army in order to do his high-school matriculation exams in an Israeli prison, says his brother Amar.

“There’s a rumor among youngsters that it’s easier to succeed in Israeli jails,” he told Ynet. “Many boys were detained at roadblocks with weapons, in order to do the tests in jail.

Family friends said Hassan’s father was very strict with his son, who was not succeeding in school. Therefore, they estimate, the boy attempted to incriminate himself at the roadblock.

“Hassan thought that now he would be with his friends, who were detained in recent weeks, and that way they could study and succeed together,” one acquaintance said.

Another innocent Palestinian teenager attacked by IDF. (Well, he was carrying 5 bombs.)

Good to see that Israel can trust Abbas to stop terror!

TEL AVIV - A 15-year-old Palestinian boy carrying five pipe bombs was detained by IDF forces at the Hawara roadblock south of the West Bank town of Nablus.

The boy aroused the troops’ suspicions after approaching the Hawara roadblock wearing a jacket, despite the hot weather.

The soldiers instructed the boy to remove his jacket, at which point he lit a match in an attempt to detonate the explosives, the army said.

However, the soldiers were able to overcome the youngster, who was subsequently taken in for interrogation by security authorities.

Meanwhile, sappers have been dispatched to the scene and are working to neutralize the explosive devices.

A 15-year-old boy was detained at the same checkpoint only three months ago. In that case, the youngster was carrying a bag containing an explosive belt, an improvised weapon, and 20 bullets.

Palestinian Authority Still Pushing Anti-Semitism in Textbooks, Israeli Minister Says -- 04/11/2005

Who here is surprised to see that Palestinians teach their children Jew-hating lies in their schools?

Anyone?

There has been a decrease in incitement in the Palestinian media, experts say, but according to the Center for the Monitoring of the Impact of Peace (CMIP), there is still no recognition of Israel in the 160 Palestinian textbooks it has reviewed.

In the latest revelation, the CMIP said that a newly published textbook for 10th graders promotes fiction as fact.

The 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated booklet from the early twentieth century, describes an alleged plot by Jewish leaders to take over the world. Historians have debunked it as a political forgery written by Russian Czar Nicholas II's secret police in an attempt to make the Jewish people a scapegoat for the country's problems.

According to the Palestinian textbook, however, the Protocols were among the resolutions adopted by the first Zionist Congress, which convened in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, with the aim of promoting the establishment of a Jewish homeland.

'There is a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the Congress and known by the name 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' the goal of which was world domination. They were brought to light by Sergey Nilos and translated into Arabic by Muhammad Khalifah Al-Tunisi,' CMIP quoted the textbook as saying.

Hamas "Morality Police" murder young woman in Gaza

There seem to be way too many Arabs who feel that murdering Jews is moral but a woman walking with her fiance in public is immoral.

A little topsy-turvy, but one gets used to that in the Middle East.

Hamas has begun operating a "vice and virtue commando" in the Gaza Strip to safeguard Islamic values, Palestinian security officials and residents told The Jerusalem Post.

The new force, called the Anti-Corruption Unit, is believed to be behind the gruesome murder over the weekend of Yusra al-Azzami, a 22-year-old university student from the northern Gaza Strip.

Her "crime" was that she was seen in public with her fiance .

Although "honor killings" are not a new phenomenon in Palestinian society, the perpetrators were almost always relatives of the victims. But this is the first time that one of the Palestinian groups has openly acted against a woman suspected of "immoral behavior."

Hamas's "morality" patrolmen first spotted the young couple strolling along the beach in Gaza City, together with Azzami's younger sister. After enjoying the spectacular sunset over the sea, they got into the future husband's car and started driving towards Azzami's home.

According to eyewitness accounts, five masked gunmen who were in another car gave chase, opening fire at Azzami, who was sitting in the front seat next to her fianc . She died instantly.

The fiance and sister were later brutally beaten and moderately injured by the attackers.

The incident took place at a busy intersection in Gaza City.

What happened immediately afterwards left many passersby traumatized.

The assailants dragged the young woman's body out of the car, pouncing upon it mercilessly with clubs and iron bars.

"It was the most horrific crime I've seen in my life," said a university student who witnessed the attack. "What they did to the body while it was lying on the ground was barbaric. This does not represent Islam." The student, who asked not to be named, said he and several other people at the scene were too afraid to interfere. "We waited until the gunmen left the area before we called the police and an ambulance," he added.

The Palestinian Authority police, who have since arrested two suspects, confirmed that the attack was carried out by Hamas vigilantes who have been waging a campaign of intimidation against people exhibiting un-Islamic behavior.

Update: Hamas apologizes for the murder.

"Soccer-playing Palestinian teenagers" were weapons smugglers

Even al-Ha'aretz admits this now, although their initial article about this ignored the IDF statement that they were smuggling and entirely believed the Palestinian "eyewitnesses" that the teenagers were just innocently playing soccer. But note even here the "newspaper" tries very hard to hedge its bets.

The Gaza command was meanwhile continuing its investigation of the circumstances that led to the shooting of three 14-year-olds from Rafah, on the Philadelphi route. The Israel Defense Forces is almost certain that the youths were somehow involved in smuggling weapons from Egypt. A videotape from the observation post documents them approaching the Egyptian border, far beyond the reach of a kicked football that Palestinian witnesses said they had gone to retrieve.

A squad commander and a sharpshooter from Golani shot them. The members of this division are backing up the soldiers: The rules of engagement in Philadelphi are different because of the weapons-smuggling. In about 40 incidents over the last two months along the Green Line, troops have not fired as Palestinians crossed over. The people who have attempted these crossings, nearly all of them looking for a way to make some money, were arrested on the Israeli side.

The commander of the Palestinian forces inside Gaza, Mussa Arafat, reported - both to Israel and the PA leadership - that the youths were smugglers. But the PA announcements on the subject focused on condemning Israel for shooting youths.

As did al-Ha'aretz and hundreds of newspapers.

EU actually demands something from PA

The 80 rockets and mortars fired into Jewish communities are of course fine, but the death penalty for Palestinians? That is too much for the EU elite.

Notice also the usual Reuters lies sprinkled around the article.

The dozens of Palestinians sitting on death row can breathe easier since the European Union, the biggest aid donor to the Palestinian territories, raised an uproar over a move by President Mahmoud Abbas to carry out 15 executions.

'We put them on hold after a number of visiting European prime ministers and foreign ministers told Abbas he would risk a freeze in EU reconstruction aid if the executions were carried out,' a senior Palestinian official told Reuters.

Emma Udwin, spokeswoman for EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, denied any threat to withdraw or suspend aid. 'But we have underlined to them how strongly we are opposed to the death penalty,' she said.

Aides said Abbas was keen not to endanger EU diplomatic and financial support key to Palestinians' hope for reconstruction and eventual statehood on Israeli-occupied land, where they have halted a ruinous uprising and begun an open-ended cease-fire.

But Abbas, a moderate who succeeded the late Yasser Arafat on a platform of peace talks, is also sensitive to a domestic clamor for executions to better rein in murderous armed gangs and deter Palestinians from spying for Israel.

"Jewish extremists"

A search on news.google.com for the words "Jewish extremists" finds 1750 entries as of Sunday night.

And what extreme thing are these Jews doing? Are they assassinating anybody? Are they exploding bombs? Perhaps they are throwing stones at innocent civilians? Are they preaching for the genocide of entire population groups? Maybe stabbing bystanders? Shooting at soldiers?

Well, from reading the articles it appears that they are trying to peacefully rally in the area of the holiest Jewish site in the world. I have not seen any threats to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque, I have not seen any threats on anyone or anything besides possibly the democratic change of Israel's government. How extreme!

If any Arabs would be acting in exactly the same way, they would be hailed as moderates. Actually, Arabs who deny the Holocaust and support the deaths of Jews are also called moderates.

And the people who name these people "extremists" are not only the usual Israel bashers, but the Israeli government itself.

More Innocent Palestinian Children

Two young Palestinians practice with unloaded weapons during a rally of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades militant group, in Gaza City Friday April 8, 2005 . Palestinian militants are threatening to call off their month-old cease-fire with Israel and resume attacks if a rally planned for Sunday by Jewish extremists at the Dome of the Rock the most hotly disputed holy site in Jerusalem takes place. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

A picture taken at a rally of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades (part of Fatah, which the PA leadership belongs to as well.)

Israel lets down Jews over Temple Mount

Arabs have used this "reasoning" to get their way many, many times.

"Don't depose Saddam - it will cause the Arab street to get upset!"

No one is saying that the right-wing Israelis who want to protest at their holiest site are going to hurt anyone - they are saying that they'll "provoke" Muslims into bloodshed. Once again, the world regards Muslims and Arabs as people who are somehow not responsible for their actions, who cannot be blamed for their crimes. It is an amazing racism that the liberal world has towards Arabs - they are expected to be treated as if they are wild bears, or people with low IQs - "Don't get too near the cage or you'll upset him!"

This soft bigotry plays well into Arab hands - they can always use their threat of not being able to control their people to get what they want. (Even though they control their people quite well when they want to.)

And you will never see anyone say "Don't pressure Israel - it will make them upset." No, Israelis are expected to be rational human beings who can understand the complexities of the situation, who can separate emotion from logic, who can be spoken to as equals. As opposed to Arabs, who have to be "managed" so they won't do anything rash. So Jewish sensibilities towards the Temple Mount or Hebron or Rachel's Tomb or Joseph's Tomb are downplayed because the Jewish love of these areas is irrational - it is only religious.

What is a shame is that there is an implicit agreement from the current Israeli government that Jews do not have full rights over some parts of Israel, and by extension this makes it appear that Israel's rights over any territory is suspect. As long as the rights of Jews to go wherever they want is not insisted upon, then "competing" rights of Arabs making areas Judenrein will win.

And that means that bigotry and anti-semitism is being approved by the Israeli government and everyone else who thinks that Jews cannot peacefully visit or pray at their simgle holiest site. If Israel doesn't stand up for the rights of Jews, no one else will.

Win a trip to Israel

Honest Reporting is having an Internet sweepstakes. Grand prize is a trip to Israel; other prizes are an iPod and a necklace.

by Stephen Pollard
A TERM has returned to the lexicon of political debate in recent months; a term for which, in a decent world, we should have no need. That term is “anti-Semitism”.

In January, Labour produced two posters. One depicted Michael Howard as a Shylock or Fagin caricature. The other pasted the faces of Mr Howard and Oliver Letwin on to pigs’ bodies. In February, figures showed that anti-Semitic attacks rose to record levels in 2004 — 42 per cent higher than in 2003. Add to this Ken Livingstone’s comparison of a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, and the odour of anti-Semitism is clearly with us once more.

But there is a more astonishing incident which has yet to receive any coverage.

Lord Ahmed, who has been a Labour life peer since 1998, is the first Muslim to have been so honoured. His presence in the House of Lords is symbolically important. His behaviour matters, both in the message it sends to his fellow Muslims and in what it represents to the rest of us.

In May, Lord Ahmed called — at considerable personal risk — for Islamic militants such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri to be deported. The risk was real: a fatwa was immediately issued against him.

But his behaviour has not always been so admirable.

On February 23, Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for a man going by the name of Israel Shamir. “Israel Shamir” is, in fact, a Swedish-domiciled anti-Semite also known as Jöran Jermas.

The gist of Shamir/Jermas’s speech at the meeting can be gleaned from its title, “Jews and the Empire”. It included observations such as: “All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” “Your newspapers belong to Zionists . . . Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.” “In the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble — and that is Jewish supremacy drive . . . in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East.” “The Jews like an Empire . . . This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance . . . Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se.” “Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England . . . they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

Why would Lord Ahmed have hosted such a man in the Lords? It is, of course, possible that Lord Ahmed had no idea that Shamir/Jermas was a rabid anti-Semite. Yet it takes only a quick Google to discover his views and background. He has worked for Zavtra, Russia’s most anti-Semitic publication, and is allied with the Vanguard News Network, set up by an American, Alex Linder — a man so extreme that he was even ostracised by the US neo-Nazi National Alliance.

Indeed, Shamir/Jermas’s own website proudly reprints his views: “Jews asked God to kill, destroy, humiliate, exterminate, defame, starve, impale Christians, to usher in Divine Vengeance and to cover God’s mantle with blood of goyim . . . ” “The Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles . . . The picture of Jews slaughtering children for cultic reasons exerted huge impact on the Christian peoples of Europe.” On and on it goes.

Other figures at the forefront of campaigns against Israel are wise to Shamir/Jermas’s toxic anti-Semitism; Ali Abunimah, for example, who writes for the Electronic Intifada website and Hussein Ibish, press spokesman of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, gave warning in 2001 that Shamir/Jermas was not anti-Israeli but anti-Semitic. It is surely not unreasonable to expect Lord Ahmed to have exercised a cursory check on his guest.

If, however, Lord Ahmed does feel that he made a mistake in inviting him, he has yet to demonstrate it. Shamir/Jermas’s speech was made nearly two months ago. On learning of its contents, I wrote to Lord Ahmed, asking him two questions. Did he consider the invitation to have been a mistake? Did he condemn the remarks? He did not reply.

Yesterday, I phoned him. When I told him that I planned to write a piece drawing attention to his actions in hosting Shamir/Jermas and that I wanted to give him every opportunity to respond, he replied: “I am not even going to speak with you.” He then put the phone down.

Lord Ahmed’s refusal to condemn the remarks seems to indicate that he sees nothing wrong with inviting such a man to speak, or with the words Shamir/Jermas used.

There is an instructive parallel. Howard Flight was stripped of the Conservative whip for expressing a mild opinion about spending cuts. Lord Ahmed invited a known anti-Semite to speak in the House of Lords, has not uttered a word of criticism since and remains a Labour peer. Before hearing from Lord Ahmed, I also wrote to Lord Grocott, the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords. I asked him if, given Lord Ahmed’s apparent lack of contrition, Lord Grocott considered it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? No reply.

All Lord Ahmed need do to destroy the notion that he supports Shamir/Jermas’s views is to admit that he made a mistake in inviting him, and to condemn his words.

If anyone had ever told British academics that there would come a time when they would punish colleagues because of the views they held, and would treat them as pariahs and try to destroy their livelihoods in order to intimidate others into toeing the sole approved political line, they would have been incredulous. In the western tradition the universities are, after all, the custodians of free intellectual inquiry and open debate. Censorship, suppression of ideas and intellectual intimidation are associated with totalitarian regimes which attempt to coerce people into the approved way of thinking.

Yet that is what is now happening in British universities -- and the pariah is, of course, Israel. As the Guardian reported yesterday, the Association of University Teachers is about to debate a proposed boycott of Israeli academics who refuse to denounce their government's policies in the occupied territories. But the motion will 'exclude "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies".' So in true totalitarian tradition, those who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. Gee, thanks! To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people. This is a natural development from the implicit -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- assumption that has been coursing through British intellectual circles in the current hate-fest against Israel, that only those British Jews who denounce Israel's policies can be considered to be British; anyone who supports Israel is guilty of 'dual loyalty'.

This requirement to denounce Israel as the price of continued social acceptance is doubly disgusting. First, it is a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavour, which is freedom of speech and debate. And second, it is a monstrous inversion of right and wrong, victim and victimiser which turns Israel, the victim of unbroken annihilatory Arab terror for the past half century, into the regional bully while sanitising Palestinian aggression. Yes, the Palestinians have suffered hardship and restrictions in the last few years; but that is because they have been engaged in a murderous war against Israel which has deliberately targeted innocent civilians and against which Israel, like any other country, has had to defend itself. Before this current intifada started, the Palestinians were living under Palestinian governance. If they genuinely foreswore their war of extermination against Israel, there would be no barrier to their quest for self-government and prosperity. To pretend that their difficulties are caused by the victims of their own aggression is simply Orwellian double-speak.

An unnamed academic defends the boycott in the Guardian story 'as a means of registering my protest against Israelis' lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land.' This parrot mindlessly repeats the mantra of the left about the 'illegal occupation' in apparent ignorance of the fact that a) the occupation is perfectly legal under international law as the defensive measure against attack that it was; b) that it is not 'Palestinian land' at all but territory that belonged to the British colonial power until it was illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt and is now -- since they have washed their hands of it -- most fairly to be described as no-man's land; and c) that parts of these territories, such as Hebron, are the sites of Jewish settlement of great antiquity, predating the Arab colonisation by several centuries but where Jews were massacred and driven out by Arab occupiers. If we're talking colonisation here, the Jews of Palestine were the historic victims.

What is notable about the AUT motion is that it reflects the truly shocking ignorance of the region's history and current political reality, the resulting deep gullibility to propaganda based on lies, and the consequent vicious double standards and prejudice that now characterise British received opinion on the subject of Israel. Yet these are our university teachers, the very people responsible for shaping the assumptions of a society, whose own profound ignorance, prejudice and twisted morality are now on such conspicuous display.

Another Oslo deja-vu moment: Palestinians ask Israel for free weapons

Amazing how history repeats itself!

Senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have presented a plan to American and Israeli officials for coordinating the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

A source involved in the contacts told Haaretz on Wednesday that the plan includes coordinating the handover of overall security responsibility in the areas the Israel Defense Forces leaves to the PA's National Security force; a complete cease-fire during the evacuation process; and a Palestinian commitment to take all necessary steps to prevent shooting at Israeli targets outside the Strip.

However, the Palestinians condition the plan on Israel agreement to it and on Israeli help in equipping the Gazan security forces with weapons and other equipment necessary for upholding law and order in Gaza. They say that during the conflict with the Israelis over the last four years, the PA security services lost their combat capabilities and that the armed organizations have far more weapons than the forces under the authority of the PA.

Noble Iraqi terrorists are thugs who kill for $50

The true mind of a terrorist revealed.

Yet most of the world still regards Palestinian thugs as somehow more noble than their like-minded Iraqi counterparts.

Iraq's hottest new television program is a reality show. But the players are not there by choice. And they don't win big bucks, a new spouse or a dream job.

Instead, all the characters on "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" are captured suspected insurgents. And for more than a month, they have been riveting viewers with tales of how they killed, kidnapped, raped or beheaded other Iraqis, usually for a few hundred dollars per victim.

Seated before an Iraqi flag, the dejected and cowed prisoners answer questions from an off-camera inquisitor who mocks their behavior. Some sport bruised faces and black eyes. Far from appearing to be confident heroes battling U.S. occupation, they come across as gangsters.

"I watch the show every night, and I wait for it patiently, because it is very revealing," said Abdul Kareem Abdulla, 42, a Baghdad shop owner. "For the first time, we saw those who claim to be jihadists as simple $50 murderers who would do everything in the name of Islam. Our religion is too lofty, noble and humane to have such thugs and killers. I wish they would hang them now, and in the same place where they did their crimes. They should never be given any mercy."

Broadcast on al-Iraqiya, the state-run network set up by the U.S. occupation authority in 2003, "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" has become one of most effective arrows in the government's counterinsurgency propaganda quiver.

"It has shown the Iraqi people the reality of those insurgents, [that] they are criminals, killers, murderers, thieves," Interior Minister Falah Naqib said last week.