Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Hamas Leaders Apparently Quit Damascus, Says Israel

Hamas leaders have apparently quit Damascus following Israeli threats to target them for assassination in retaliation for a Palestinian double suicide bombing last week, Israel's defense minister said on Monday.

But Shaul Mofaz, who joined the cabinet after serving as army chief, said: 'They will not be free. We will chase them down everywhere.'

A Hamas spokesman in Gaza dismissed Mofaz's remarks as 'Israeli propaganda' but declined to comment on the whereabouts of the Damascus-based leaders except to say they visited other Arab countries from time to time."

Naomi Ragen: Who is the Enemy?

I have not been able to recover from the terrorist attack in Beslan. Terrorism is not the enemy. Terrorism is a tactic of the enemy. Who, then, is the enemy that fights all those who identify with the civilized world -- the world in which children and their mothers are cherished and protected, even in war? The world in which school buildings, and ambulances, and hospitals, and holy places are respected and left out of armed conflicts as neutral zones? The world in which children are taught to love thy neighbor, even if he is different and follows another religion? A world in which there can be no excuse for wiring a school building with explosives, starving children and shooting them and their mothers in the back when they cry, and finally blowing up the roof over their heads, burying hundreds in rubble?

The enemy is the man who shot Tali Hatuel when she was nine months pregnant and then shot her four little girls in the head at point blank range. The enemy is the man who blew up elderly Holocaust survivors at their Passover Seder in Netanya. The enemy is the man who blew up the nightclub in Bali, who laid the bombs on the train tracks in Madrid. The enemy is the political framework that train this man and rewarded him. The enemy is the country or countries that financed the political framework. The enemy is the leader of these countries.

The enemy is the religious leaders of these countries, who did not teach their people right from wrong. The enemy is the congregations who sat through the hate-mongering sermons. The enemy is the head of the family who went home and beat his wife, and strapped suicide belts on his sons, and slit the throats of his daughter and sister for supposed violations of the family honor. The enemy is the child who grows up in such a culture and becomes one of its perpetrators.

The enemy is the Western nations who turn a blind eye, looking to excuse this behavior so it will not have to do anything about it. The Sunday Telegraph, Le Monde, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Bild, all claiming the problem is that the Russian government has brought this on itself by angering the Chechans. It is the victim who is to blame. Just as Israelis deserve what they get. Tali Hatuel deserved what she got. Her little girls. The little children of Beslan. The only way to stop the murderers of children from murdering is to give into their demands, these newspapers claim [http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/06/202.html]

I disagree. The only way to stop murderers from murdering is to destroy them.

And if you say this is impossible, I say: think back sixty years. The Thousand Year Reich is the dust of history. We destroyed their leaders, their governments, their buildings, their youth movements, their philosophy. We destroyed it all. We didn't negotiate. We didn't appease. We didn't try to show them our softer side. We uprooted the evil from mankind, because no negotiations, no fence, no signed agreement,no borders, no words were effective against them.

Long before September 11, I wrote to this list: If an Israeli grandmother and her grandchild are not safe in a playground, than no grandmother and no grandchild anywhere in the world are safe in a playground.

If the children of Beslan were not safe in their school, then no child and no school is safe anywhere in the world. Until this enemy is destroyed root and branch, without mercy or equivocation.

The breakdown in morality which we witness everyday is finally engulfing us. Those in the Western news media who call armed terrorists, men who wire schools with explosives and murder women and children, 'hostage-takers' and 'militants' are setting themselves up to mourn their own children.

A generation ago, fifty million people died because the reaction of their governments and their religious leaders and their press came too late. The Neville Chamberlains saw to that. Too late. And for us, who have our Shimon Peres', and our Yossi Beilins, and our Chiracs, and our Kofi Anans, and Michael Moores and John Kerrys will it also be too late?

For the children of Beslan, the answer is yes. And for your children?

Copyright Naomi Ragen, 2004."

Vandals paint swastikas on tombs in eastern France

Vandals spray-painted red swastikas and the initials 'SS' on four family tombs with Jewish-sounding names in a cemetery in eastern France, police said Monday.

ISRAEL EYES LEBANON AS POSSIBLE PEACE PARTNER

Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom suggested that Israel may establish diplomatic channels with Lebanon if the Lebanese government imposes law and order in the war-torn south and disarms the Shi’ite terror group Hizbullah. In the long run, Shalom said Lebanon and Israel may enter peace talks, which is Israel’s goal, according to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayyat.

Shalom’s remarks were made after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last week condemning Syria's continued interference in neighboring Lebanon, though it did not mention Syria by name. Syria has some 15,000 troops stationed in Lebanon.

The resolution was submitted a day before Lebanon made a Syrian-backed amendment to its constitution that allows the incumbent president Emile Lahoud, who has Damascus’s support, to remain in office for an additional three years.

Shalom said there is no disagreement between Israel and Lebanon and that if Lebanon was a free state with international backing and negotiated with Israel, he does not think anything should stop the two countries from reaching an agreement.

DEBKAfile - World Muslim Brotherhood Calls to Arms to Thwart Gaza Evacuation

At 78, the fiery Egyptian preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a household name in the Muslim Arab world, commanding great respect as a leading theologian and star status for his religious phone-in program over Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic television station. Jailed repeatedly in his home country for inciting religious violence, he operates out of Qatar as a member of the supreme Shura council of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in most Middle East countries, and heads a European Islamic canonical law council. In his broadcasts, the radical preacher publicly champions suicide terrorism against Israeli civilians. All the same, British law enforcement authorities saw no need to hamper Qaradawi’s activities when he landed in Britain this week.

The business that brought him to London is revealed here exclusively by DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources. The preacher placed before a World Muslim Brotherhood conference a working document drawn up at “a secret meeting of the movement” somewhere in the Middle East, calling on all brethren in the Muslim world to rise up and foil Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and, most of all, to combat any potential Egyptian or Jordanian role in its implementation. The Brotherhood was exhorted to resort “to all means available.”

The London conference endorsed the resolution and stressed its importance by adding: “No power can prevent the Brotherhood from thwarting this scheme, even if it entails direct and open confrontation with the governments of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The struggle will be uncompromising.”

This is the first time in many years that the Muslim Brotherhood, ideological soul-mates of al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the Middle East and Europe, has crossed the line between radical doctrinal rhetoric and operational violence, threatening Israel, the Palestinian areas - and Arab governments too - with a campaign of terror.

This sensitive information was relayed to two White House officials, Stephen Hadley and Elliot Abrams, when they met Sharon and other Israeli officials in Tel Aviv Tuesday, July 13, according to DEBKAfile’s political sources. It explains the sudden absence of Egyptian emissaries from contacts with Sharon on the future of his disengagement initiative. Cairo, ever prone to Islamic fundamentalist outbreaks, is loath to take the lid off a fresh wave, especially during the potentially volatile period of regime transition from the ailing president Hosni Mubarak to his son Gemal. Jordan is likewise playing down its support for Sharon’s plan. King Abdullah has enough worries from the danger of Iraqi guerrilla war spillover and clandestine al Qaeda activity without giving the Muslim Brotherhood’s broad and influential Jordanian membership a pretext for opening yet another front against the throne in Amman.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Hamas, Jihad Islami and factions of the popular resistance committees, are bound by the Brotherhood’s decision to fight tooth and nail against Egyptian or Jordanian attempts to establish a security presence in Palestinian areas. This circumstance leaves former Gaza strongman Muhammed Dahlan with little option but to shelve his dreams of ruling the territory and return to his studies in London.

According to our Middle East sources the Muslim Brotherhood found ten reasons for their change of course:

1. Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will relieve the Israeli government of a heavy burden.

2. It will thrust the Palestinian leadership to the sidelines of government in the two territories. Already Arafat is forced to pretend to kowtow to Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman.

3. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak offered Sharon guarantees to preserve calm in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s withdrawal.

4. Instead of opening the way to further major Israeli withdrawals on the West Bank, Sharon’s disengagement will slow the process down.

5. The West Bank’s future will be up for grabs and Israel will have a free hand to exercise its will in the territory including finishing the construction of its defense barrier.

6. Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip would turn the clock back to the discredited solution-in-stages resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

7. The disengagement plan would reduce any Palestinian state that does emerge to the status of Arab protectorate rather than independent state.

8. Political or government changes in Israel could cause the plan to be ditched at any moment before or during execution.

9. Egypt was refused guarantees specifying Israeli political and military conduct in return for Cairo’s assistance in implementing disengagement.

10. All these considerations lay bare the perils inherent in Sharon’s plan and underline the urgency of thwarting it any price.

The prime minister’s office in Jerusalem is fully aware of the new terrorist peril posed by the many-branched Moslem Brotherhood and the almost certain loss of Egyptian and Jordanian security forces as vital props for keeping Palestinian terror in check. Yet Sharon shows no sign of being put off his determination to push ahead, and opposition leader Shimon Peres, co-architect of the failed 1993 Oslo Accords, continues to intone that withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is essential to Israel’s security. Neither have made any reference to the fact that the terrorist threat emanating from land evacuated by Israeli forces will have intensified manifold with the new Muslim Brotherhood threat. Al-Qaradawi will no doubt take full advantage of the broad Arab audience his popular program enjoys to propagate his message of violence far and wide.

Iran's promise: '80 seconds of hell'

On Saturday, June 26, only a few weeks ago, two security guards at the Iranian U.N. Mission were expelled from the United States, and allowed to sneak back to Tehran. The State Department says that they were "engaged in activities inconsistent with their duties." Sure. They were spies.

The pair had been observed by the FBI for months moving around Manhattan videotaping landmark buildings and other infrastructure. It took an alert transit police officer to arrest them when he saw them taking video images on the subway tracks. They claimed diplomatic immunity and were not charged with any crime.

In Tehran, as August began, the Islamic Republic's supreme guide Ali Khamenei, was answering questions from a hundred or so Islamic guidance officials, home from foreign postings for retraining. Most of his answers were trite slogans, but when he was asked, "Is our Islamic Republic at war against the United States," he paused before replying. "It is the United States that is at war against our Islamic Revolution."

However, Khamenei's own newspaper was even more direct. Writing this July, it said, "the White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of hell that will burn to ashes. Those who resist Iran will be struck from directions they never expected."

To these facts add that an Arab newspaper published in London and Beirut reported that an Iranian intelligence unit has established a center called "The Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening," controlled by a Revolutionary Guards intelligence officer, Hassan Abbasi. The newspaper has a tape recording of Abbasi when he spoke of Iran's secret plans, which include "a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."

Missile strikes

To bring this about, Abbasi said, "There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them." This Revolutionary Guard officer continued by saying, "Iran's missiles are now ready to strike at Western targets, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Ali Khamenei, we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations."

These are facts. Now let's consider the information coming in from Iraq where, day after day, our troops are being killed.

Most of the killing is now being done by Muslim militia -- Shi'ite Muslims -- in the cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Najaf. This militia appears to have some loyalty -- but not much -- to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, but he is equally obviously not their paymaster.

The militias need weapons, ammunition, gas for their vehicles, food, water and everything else to fight the Iraqi police and our military. Just remember that these are Shi'ites. The Iranians, just over the border are also Shi'ites. So we needn't be surprised to learn that the word on the streets of Baghdad and Tehran is that they are providing millions of dollars every month for the "hot" war against the Americans.

The Iranian Shi'ites have during the past few weeks established relations with the Kurds in the north of Iraq and with the main Arab Sunni rebel group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And, every alliance is cemented with dollars.

25-year war

Iran has been at war with the United States since the mullahs ousted the shah's forces in 1979.

Iran's war against the United States has gone on for 25 years. It is past time that the ayatollahs, mullahs and imams begin to understand that there are limits to our tolerance and that our military might is by no means exhausted?

That February in 1979, the Revolutionary Guards invaded 27 U.S. listening posts in Iran that had been set up to monitor Soviet rocket tests. The posts were closed and our guys expelled.

That was enough for Democrat Jimmy Carter. He sent a wonderful letter to the Ayatollah Khomeini, praising him as "a man of God." And, in a show of goodwill, Carter lifted the ban he had imposed on arms exports to Iran.

A few days later, the Revolutionary Guards raided our embassy in Tehran and seized our diplomats as hostages for a year and a half. In April 1980, Carter tried a military rescue attempt, which ended in disaster with more Americans being killed.

Since then Iran has created one disaster after another. The Marine barracks in Beirut with 241 U.S. Marines killed, some 30 U.S. hostages taken in Lebanon, the torture-killing of the CIA's Middle Eastern chief and the generalized support of all America's enemies.

On July 27, Iranian Member of Parliament Hamid-Reza Katoziyan told a television audience "Muslims living in the U.S. are currently, in my opinion, in a special situation. Perhaps they do not walk the streets with weapons or attach bombs to themselves to carry out a suicide operation, but the thought is there."

And, one last fact: The 9/11 commission in its report poses a question, "September 11 was a day of unprecedented shock. The nation was unprepared. How can we avoid such a tragedy again?"

The answer has to be obvious. Ensure that Iran does not have the opportunity to make a first-strike against the U.S. and that Iran stops attempting to make Iraq a colony.

Sharon proposes Israel, Russia fight terror together

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed Israel and Russia work together to fight terror, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

Sharon is expected to discuss the issue Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will be visiting Israel, the radio said.

In a message of condolence to Russia, Sharon said Israel stands by Russia's side in this difficult period.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also expressed his condolences, saying the attack on innocent civilians proves that terror has no borders.

British Islamic cleric:OK to target children

An extremist Islamic cleric based in Britain said yesterday that he would support hostage-taking at British schools if carried out by terrorists with a just cause.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, said that holding women and children hostage would be a reasonable course of action for a Muslim who has suffered under British rule.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mohammed said: 'If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.

'As long as the Iraqi did not deliberately kill women and children, and they were killed in the crossfire, that would be okay.'"

Self-Reflection by some Muslims; but others always blame Israel

A prominent Arab journalist wrote that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism.

'Our terrorist sons are an end product of our corrupted culture,' Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, 'The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!'

Al Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups -- in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi born leader of the al-Qaida terror network.

'Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims,' he wrote. Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless 'we admit the scandalous facts,' rather than offer condemnations or justifications.

'The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us.'

Arab TV stations repeatedly aired footage of terrified young survivors being carried from the school siege scene, while pictures of dead and wounded children ran on front pages of Saturday's Arab newspapers.

Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist and columnist for Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram, wrote that the images 'showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children and the pain of their families.'

'If all the enemies of Islam united together and decided to harm it ... they wouldn't have ruined and harmed its image as much as the sons of Islam have done by their stupidity, miscalculations, and misunderstanding of the nature of this age,' Bahgat wrote.

Other Islamists were more cautious in their criticism.

Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt's largest Islamic group, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said the siege did not fit the Islamic concept of 'jihad,' or holy war, but took care not to characterize it as terrorism.

'What happened ... is not jihad because our Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings,' Akef said. 'Real jihad should target occupiers of our lands only like the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance.'

Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic,' but insisted Muslims weren't behind it.

'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation."

Saddam almost had nukes in 1991

British intelligence knew about a nuclear smuggling network long before it became public knowledge at the start of this year, but did little to intervene, the BBC has been told.

Following his defeat in the Gulf War, the United Nations authorised inspections of Iraq's military facilities because of concerns Saddam Hussein was trying to build the bomb.

It was a slow process, but according to one former weapons inspector, eventually documents were recovered from Iraqi intelligence outlining an extraordinary offer to sell nuclear equipment and expertise to Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the Gulf War - an offer which could have made all the difference.

David Albright, a physicist, says an approach was made from the network run by the Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.

'They had trouble building nuclear weapons and this design, that we now know Khan could have offered Iraq, would have been ideal,' Mr Albright said.

In the event, the Iraqis hesitated, fearing dirty tricks by the CIA. Mr Albright says British and American intelligence knew all about the documents and should have done more about Mr Khan.

'When I saw the document I was really stunned by it. This was like a smoking gun document of some really horrific thing taking place and I was surprised by the lack of follow-up. It didn't seem to be taken that seriously'.

Creating a successful nuclear weapons programme is highly complex and technically demanding. Until now it has been thought to be beyond the reach of nations trying to do so secretly.

But the Khan network changed all that. It offered off-the-shelf solutions for regimes which until recently were thought incapable of mounting a credible nuclear threat."

9/11 Celebration Convention in London (MEMRI)

The London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that the extremist Islamic movement Al-Muhajiroun had announced a convention in London, titled "The Choice is in Your Hands: Either You're with the Muslims or with the Infidels," to mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The organization had planned a similar anniversary event a year ago, called "The Magnificent 19 [Suicide Attackers]," but had cancelled it at the last minute. The following is a summary of the report: [1]

Al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri, a Syrian residing in London, told the paper by phone that the convention would feature Al-Qa'ida "surprises," with the screening of a never-before-shown video. He said that the convention will focus on "the anniversary of the division of the world into two great camps – the camp of faith and the camp of unbelief," and would take place September 11, 2004 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Bakri added: "On this day, we will talk about the ramifications of these [9/11] operations for Afghanistan and Iraq… We want the world to remember this operation … that lifted the head of the [Muslim] nation." Bakri called 9/11 "a cry of Jihad against unbelief and oppression," and said that the aim of remembering it is to "revive the commandment of Jihad among the youth of the [Muslim] nation."

Bakri said that the convention will also feature a lecture about the Islamic religious roots of "slaughtering the infidels," that is, beheading foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and that there will be films by Al-Qa'ida, the Tawhid and Jihad organization, and the Brigades of the Two Holy Places in the Arabian Peninsula, and that there will also be a film on the most recent operations in Chechnya. He added that one of the speeches, by Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, known to be Al-Qa'ida's military commander in Iraq, will be translated.

US Soldier convicted of trying to give help to al-Qaida

A National Guardsman accused of trying to give al-Qaida information about U.S. troops, including methods for killing soldiers, was found guilty Thursday on all five counts of trying to help the terrorist network.

The verdict in Spc. Ryan G. Anderson's court-martial, which began Monday, was announced late Thursday afternoon.

Anderson, a tank crewman whose 81st Armor Brigade unit is now in Iraq, was accused of trying to give terrorists information about U.S. troops' strength and tactics. The terrorists he thought he was meeting with were actually undercover federal agents, prosecutors said.

A military spokesman has said the charges amount to attempted treason.