Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 24, 2004

Powell: World Getting Tired of Waiting for Arafat to Cede Power

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the international community is growing weary of waiting for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to hand over control of security forces to an empowered prime minister. He suggested this could mean reduced outside aid for the Palestinians.

Mr. Powell made no specific threats for cutting aid and set no deadlines. But at a news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the Secretary suggested that international aid to the Palestinians could be jeopardized if Mr. Arafat continues to resist calls for reform, especially demands that he yield control of security agencies to Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

'There is a weariness in the international community to continue providing the kind of assistance the Palestinian people so desperately need unless we see some sort of political reform and determination on the part of the Palestinian Authority to improve itself,' he said. 'And improve itself in the form of having an empowered prime minister who has control over the security forces, can rationalize the security forces, and can put in place a government that is ready to take political responsibility for Gaza, security responsibility for Gaza, and is ready to engage the Israelis.'

The United States has been the largest single aid provider to the Palestinians through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, despite its differences with Mr. Arafat, with whom it ceased political contact in 2002 because of his failure to curb terrorism.

Disgusting Reuters article gloriying suicide bomber

Lots of gnashing of teeth about the family of the monster, not a word about the families of the people blown up. Way to go, Al-Reuters. - EoZ

'I don't know what's happening,' said Abu Salem's 12-year-old brother Tarek, in disbelief that his sister had died. 'I don't know where she is. She isn't at home.'

Abu Salem, whose photographs show her as a brown-eyed girl in a white headscarf with a slight smile, blew herself up near a hitch-hiking post in Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing two Israeli border police and wounding 17 other people in the first suicide attack in the city in seven months.

The blast tore through the mainly Jewish district of French Hill in Arab East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. (which of course justifies blowing up Jews, according to al-Reuters. - EoZ)

In the aftermath of the attack, hundreds of residents of the Askar camp rushed to help the bomber's family remove furniture, clothes and appliances from a two-storey house built by the United Nations agency that serves Palestinian refugees.

Family members said they had known nothing of Abu Salem's plans for the attack.

Her father Ali, recovering from surgery to open clogged arteries, collapsed and was taken to hospital after learning of his daughter's death.

Relatives said Abu Salem had just passed high school graduation exams and had spoken of entering university.

Minutes later, Abu Salem's mother also passed out and was rushed to a local hospital.

'She had a second shock. It was not enough that she lost her daughter. Now she fears she will lose her husband,' a neighbour said. 'Look at the house, which is empty of her daughter, her husband and all its contents.'

Israel typically demolishes the homes of militants suspected of involvement in suicide bombings, a practice Palestinians condemn as collective punishment but which Israeli officials say deters future attacks. (Once again, demolishing homes is condemned but blowing up people is normal. My disgust at Reuters knows no bounds. - EoZ)

Suicide Bomber Was Children's TV Show Hostess

The young 18-year-old female suicide terrorist, Zeinab Ali Isa Abu-Salem, who murdered two Israelis yesterday and wounded some 30 others, was none other than a children's TV show hostess on a local station in Shechem. Ofra resident Debbie Segal, who noticed the terrorist approaching the bus stop moments before she blew herself up, described her as 'extraordinarily beautiful.' She comes from a very wealthy Arab family in Shechem, which owns the TV station where she worked.

Palestinian Media Watch has thoroughly documented numerous children's TV programs that indoctrinate Arab children to seek 'heroic death for Allah.' On January 15, 2002, Arafat himself, during a PA televised message to children, told them, 'Is it not the greatest message to the world, when a child dies for Allah?'"

"Humiliating" her saved maybe twenty lives: Questions for President Bush

President George W. Bush:

When an Israeli border policemen, Mamoya Tahio and Menashe Komemi approached Zainab Ali Issa, 18, asking for identification and then demanding that she be searched, is this what you were referring to yesterday at the United Nations as the "daily humiliation" of the Palestinian people?

So what was the poor girl to do? She had come all the way from Jenin with her explosives. She was no doubt carrying her bag as a fashion accessory. How dare those nasty Israeli bullies stop her and ask her what was in the bag?

How dare they stop her from approaching that hitchhiking stop packed with Israeli soldiers! Maybe she wanted a ride?

So she did what any nice Palestinian girl would do under the circumstances. She pressed her detonator, blew herself to hell, and murdered her inquisitors.

The reality is that young women who choose to become suicide bombers is a growing trend among the Palestinians. Zainab Ali Issa was the eighth successful female suicide bomber, all of them sent by Arafat's Fatah. In the last few weeks five would-be female bombers either have been caught or turned themselves in enroute to attacks.

There is a reason for this trend. Their handlers, invariably men, know that women look more innocent, are less likely to be stopped. They take advantage of the hesitance of Israeli soldiers to stop and search them.

When a woman walks by fully covered in the garb of traditional religion, there is a natural tendency to respect their modesty and privacy.

The "disrespect" of two heroic border policeman, their "humiliation" of this ticking bomb, saved the lives of at least a dozen people.

One has to wonder, listening to you scold Israel from the podium of the United Nations: have you no shame? Are you not afraid that the listening delegates will laugh at the sheer hypocrisy of you, the Commander in Chief of armed forces which daily, in the streets of Iraq, and in the homes of Iraqi families, submit the locals to searches and worse, not hesitating to shoot first and ask questions later when a suspicious character approaches a checkpoint or looks askance at a patrol?

Of course you are not afraid, because you know that the listening delegates are part of the same hypocritical double standard. Those who come to blow up Israelis are freedom fighters, not terrorists like the ones who try to blow them up. Israelis who try to reduce contact with suicide bombers who wish to infiltrate into their country are accused of creating an "Apartheid Wall."

Don't misunderstand me, Mr. President: I think the American armed forces are for the most part exemplary, as soldiers and as human beings. They are doing their best in a difficult mission. And if there are others, whether in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, show some disrespect for human rights and a taste for intentional humiliation and sexual abuse, they are the exceptions, the rotten apples who don't reflect or spoil the glorious bunch of men and women fighting the good fight, yes, to keep the world free and to fight the evil terrorists.

Why can't you see that it is exactly the same with us?

The heroes are the young border policeman who pay with their lives to save the lives of others. Who guard the checkpoints under terrible conditions. And yes, who live and build in the heartland of the Bible that belongs, and has always belonged to the Jewish people!

How dare you tell us to freeze our growth? How dare you insult us by accusing us of "humiliating" a people when all we are doing, and have always done, is to defend ourselves against murderers.

You seem to fancy that the Palestinians really want peace rather than to end Israel and kill Israelis, even if their leaders and people say so and do so?

Why can't you see, and say, that the villains are a people which glorifies ritual murder, which celebrates on TV and schools suicide bombing as the fashion of choice for young people? When the Palestinians started sending ticking bombs to murder our people, they forced us to impose stringent checks and, ultimately to build a barrier that is as ugly as it is necessary--at least for the moment. You build tall ugly barriers against Mexican seeking employment? Is our desire to keep suicide bombers out so terribly hard to understand?

So, President Bush, this is what we say: if protecting ourselves means "humiliating" others by stopping potential bombers and searching them, then let us humiliate them daily, 24/7.

President Bush: if you really fancy yourself the leader of the global war on terrorism, then please: stop resorting to this embarrassing double standard where you are unwilling to call the master terrorists by name, where you don't demand that the Palestinian fight terrorists in their midst, where you single out for criticism Israel -- the world leader in the fight against terror, historically in terms of counter-terror techniques, and the nation on the front lines and the most risk from terror.

When you say these shameful and foolish things in front of a shameless world, Mr. President, with all due respect, you do not earn the respect of your people, or ours.

I believe you remain basically on our side, and I have no doubt the "other guy" would probably say about the same, or worse. But when all is said and none, that really is no excuse. When you obscure the difference between good and evil, you undermine the moral basis of your just cause.

When you accuse us of "daily humiliations" as we give our lives to save lives, Mr. President, you only humiliate yourself.

Reuven Koret
Publisher, Israel Insider

Heroes who blocked bomber to be buried today

Two Border Policemen killed Wednesday while barring the path of a female suicide bomber, an action which police officials said may have saved dozens of lives, are to be laid to rest on Thursday. The funeral for Border Policemen Yonatan (Mamoya) Tahio, 20, of Rehovot will be held at the military cemetery in Rehovot on Thursday at one P.M. The funeral for Menashe (Meni) Komemi, 19, of Moshav Aminadav, will take place Thursday afternoon at four PM at the police cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

French lawmakers amused by Sharon's disengagement expectations

At least someone is laughing.

Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin recently told the national-religious Hatzofeh newspaper the following anecdote about his last visit to Paris, where he had been invited to meet the heads of the French Parliament.

'I came, and after a few words of courtesy, they asked me, 'Tell me, Mr. Israeli Parliament Chairman, you are known as one of Prime Minister Sharon's close friends, so why is it that you do not support his disengagement initiative?'

I said, 'Well, the truth is that I should ask you. He has been trying to convince me that the moment we disengage, Europe will give us at least 15 years of quiet and won't put pressure on us [to make further concessions], and during this time we will be able to stabilize our control over areas on which we cannot compromise, such as the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. So tell me: Will you in fact give us 15 years of quiet?''

'They started to laugh and said that they now understand why I don't support the Prime Minister. Later on, I asked them if they would give us 15 months of quiet. They laughed.'

'I asked, 'How about 15 weeks?' and they continued to laugh.

''15 hours?' I ventured, and they still laughed.

Regarding 15 minutes, they didn't laugh, but neither did they nod....' "

MADRE - Ford Funded NGO Leads Demonization of Israel

Founded in 1983, and based in the United States with 23,000 members, MADRE describes itself as an "international women's human rights organization that works in partnership with women's community based groups…to develop long term solutions to the crisis they face."

In practice, however, MADRE's activities reflect an extremist political and ideological agenda that also justifies terror. Nevertheless, and despite its high-profile role in the 2001 Conference on Racism at Durban, MADRE received $350,000 of funding from the Ford Foundation in 2003 (There is no list of sponsors on the MADRE website.) A former MADRE official, Sarah Leah Whitson is currently the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, providing another example (along with Joe Stork and Gary Sick) of the primacy of anti-Israel bias in HRW's Middle East activities.)

The 2001 Durban Conference and beyond

Madre was a major participant in the NGO forum of the Durban Conference on Racism in 2001, including a highly biased presentation on the history of Palestinian refugees. MADRE's political agenda is also reflected in the partnership formed with the Palestinian NGO Ibdaa, a "refugee community center" engaged in virulently anti-Israel activities. Ibdaa also had a prominent role at the Durban conference, and supplies much of MADRE's anti-Israel materials.

Historical Distortion

In examining MADRE's publications on the conflict, extreme distortions in the service of a political agenda are commonplace. Reports accuse Israel of using F-16s to destroy "houses, mosques, kindergartens, clinics" and make the false claim that "half of all the land [in West Bank] will be swallowed by Israel." Its background resource to the conflict is a farce. There is no reference to Arab terror attacks, no historical background, and Israel is consistently portrayed as responsible for the 1948 and 1967 Wars. MADRE repeats the canard blaming Zionism for anti-Semitism, and portrays the Oslo process as an anti-Palestinian accord designed to consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza, a claim repeated in a MADRE report "Hunger in Palestine".

MADRE's dominant political agenda is also seen in the differences in the distribution of its reports. Between December 1999 and April 2003, this organization issued 17 reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as compared to 13 on all of Latin America, eleven on Iraq, five on women's health and three on Africa during this period. The content of these reports reflect the continued ideology of delegitimization of Israel.

Excusing terror in order to demonize Israel

In its "Palestine Country Overview", the post-Oslo violence beginning in September 2000 is termed a "Palestinian struggle" versus an Israeli "military offensive characterized by grave and massive violations of Palestinian human rights." Rejecting Israel's security concerns, MADRE places Palestinian terror in the context of the "right to resist military occupation". Marking International Women's Day on March 8, 2002, a MADRE statement ignores Palestinian terror and the murder of hundreds of Israelis, while charging Israel with assassinating "activists" or "leaders" and building an "Apartheid Wall", which is falsely labeled "electrified". This is a blatant propaganda text, including sentences such as "Israeli forces have responded to Palestinian demands for independence by attacking with US made Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets..." A MADRE press statement of April 2, 2002 during the height of the Palestinian terror campaign continues this theme: "Israel is killing unarmed women, children and old men…" and adding the grossly unethical statement that "Israelis killed by Palestinian suicide bombers are victims of Sharon's policy." MADRE's amoral equivalence between Israeli victims and Palestinian perpetrators is demonstrated in its view that "[state] terrorism is the essence of Sharon's policy."

Despite MADRE's claim to be a human rights organization, there is no mention of Palestinian violation of Israeli rights through terror or encouragement of childhood martyrdom and official incitement. Violence and terror are excused as part of Palestinian culture and nationalist struggle. MADRE's only mention of human rights violations within the Palestinian Authority is in a short letter of December 10, 1999 asking "honored President Arafat" to reassess his incarceration of twenty political opponents.

In summary, MADRE's radical political agenda and demonization of Israel are in direct contrast to its claimed objective "to develop a long term solution to the crisis". Women's rights issues are discarded in favor of carrying out a blatant anti-Israel politicized agenda. If it continues to fund this organization, the Ford Foundation is ignoring its own guidelines.

Hizballah broadcasts propaganda to North America via Al Manar

Hizballah broadcasts a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week stream of Iran-inspired propaganda to North America via the Al Manar TV channel, using the American company Intelsat's Telestar 5 satellite. Broadcasts to Europe and North Africa are made via Eutelsat of the European Space Agency, now operated by a private French company. Additional Al Manar broadcasts are carried to North Africa and Europe by the American firm New Skies Satellites. Al Manar broadcasts to the Middle East on Arabsat, owned largely by Saudi Arabia. (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies-Hebrew)

Israel demands change to IAEA resolution, threatens boycott

Israel has threatened to boycott an international conference on a nuclear free Middle East sponsored by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) if a resolution calling Israel a nuclear threat is not removed from the agenda.
The conference, scheduled for January 2005, will be attended by representatives from several Middle Eastern countries including Iran, as well as non-government organizations and a number of independent experts.

The conference, which has no binding powers and is characterized as an 'academic seminar' last met in 1997 and in 1993. IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei discussed Israel's possible participation in the forthcoming conference. He was in Israel a few months ago and met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the director of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, Gideon Frank.

In a speech to the IAEA's general conference, meeting this week in Vienna, Frank yesterday said Israel would take part in the January conference only if an Arab resolution submitted to the general conference was removed - it refers to Israel's nuclear 'capabilities and threats.' This draft is submitted yearly by the Arab bloc but has always been removed after pressure from Israel, the U.S. and other countries.

If the resolution is removed, Israel says it will vote for another more general resolution, passed in previous years, which speaks of the IAEA's efforts to extend nuclear monitoring to the Middle East."

Zarqawi's Mentor Killed

The spiritual mentor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in a US air strike, associates and relatives said yesterday.

Omar Youssef Jumah, known as Abu Annas al-Shami, a Muslim cleric who justified Zarqawi's alleged beheading of hostages in Iraq, died last Friday while heading to the west of Baghdad, they said. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Shami called himself the grand mufti, or spiritual guide, of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad group.

In edicts published on Islamist web sites, Shami said Islam permitted the beheading of hostages who co-operated with the US military.

'Whenever a major kidnapping would take place they would take from him a ruling on how to handle the hostage according to religious sharia teachings,' one Islamist activist said.
Shami's militancy was shaped by four years as a religious seminary student in Saudi Arabia, where he fell under the influence of the strict Wahhabi brand of Islam before returning to Jordan in 1991."

Pals to US: "We Know who Killed Americans and We Won't Arrest Them"

Gen. Musa Arafat, the overall commander of the Palestinian Authority's National Security Forces in the Gaza Strip, said Wednesday that the PA security forces know the identities of the perpetrators of last October's attack on a US diplomatic convoy in which three Americans were killed.

However, Arafat told Reuters that the PA security forces cannot act against the suspects while fighting with Israel continues.

The US called the comments 'outrageous' and urged the PA to immediately arrest the killers if it indeed knows their identities.

'We find Musa Arafat's statement, if he is correctly quoted by Reuters, to be totally unacceptable and outrageous,' a State Department spokesman said Wednesday.

'The US has consistently demanded that the PA take action to locate, apprehend, and bring to justice the killers of our three colleagues, since the deadly October 15, 2003, attack on embassy personnel in Gaza.

'The PA performance on this issue has been unacceptable to us. We have not seen the PA demonstrate the will, much less the capacity, to investigate this case seriously. If it is true that the PA knows the identities of the murderers, we expect immediate action to be taken to arrest, prosecute and convict them.'

It was the first time a senior PA official admitted to knowing who was behind the attack.
Arafat described the perpetrators as 'some Palestinian factions' and said that the US also knew who was behind the attack.

Sharon's deepening crisis of legitimacy

This month, as the right massed in tens of thousands to assail Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the conduct of his disengagement campaign, denouncing his drive to evacuate settlements as lacking all legitimacy, one of the most respected advocates of the withdrawal initiative lent her voice in unlikely backing for the prime minister's critics.

'The central question is that of legitimacy,' said Ruth Gavison, one of Israel's foremost professors of law and a founder and former president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

'The Sharon government today has no clear legitimacy for the move that it is making,' she said of the disengagement campaign, noting that the plan has yet to be approved either by the cabinet or the Knesset.

'It is not at all certain that we should cooperate with this move, which threatens to take people out of their homes under the authority of such a shaky [legal] basis, without even so much as a cabinet decision.'

In fact, a number of attempts by Sharon to win formal backing for the plan have either been blunted or brusquely rebuffed.

In May, the prime minister's bid to garner momentum for disengagement through a referendum of members of his Likud party ended in a humiliating defeat.

A month later, Sharon's cabinet balked at ratifying the initiative. So divided was the cabinet that the prime minister ultimately sacked two far-right National Union ministers to ensure a majority.

But even then, three of his five senior Likud ministers withheld their votes until the prime minister agreed to limit the decision to an anemic resolution on preparations for a possible future disengagement, which would then be subject to a potentially crippling series of phases and cabinet reconsiderations."