Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 14, 2005

The Lebanon Stakes (OpinionJournal)

Hezbollah has a history of killing Americans.

We are now approaching the 20th anniversaries of the murders of Robert Dean Stethem and William Buckley. The CIA station chief in Beirut, Buckley was beheaded by the Hezbollah on June 3, 1985. Stethem, a Navy diver, was murdered by Hezbollah the same month aboard hijacked TWA Flight 847. An eyewitness described Stethem's killing:

"They singled him out because he was American and a soldier. . . . They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up. . . . They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs. Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol--they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out. . . . Later they dragged him away and I believe shot him."

So this is hezb Allah, the Party of God, the spear of Iranian influence in the Levant and chief local enforcer of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Last week, it organized a counter-demonstration in Beirut on Syria's behalf, following weeks of anti-Syrian protests that had led to the resignation of puppet Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami. Now Mr. Karami has been renamed to his post by puppet Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a move the Lebanese opposition wasted no time in denouncing. The dividing line in Lebanon, separating a pro-independence coalition of Druze, Christians and Sunnis from the pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah, has now become clear.

As have the stakes. The size of Tuesday's rally has been exaggerated: Our Lebanese sources tell us there were around 350,000 protestors, not 500,000 as commonly cited, and that many of them were bused in direct from Damascus. Also notable was that while the demonstrators waved Lebanese flags, they mounted Syrian President Bashar Assad's portrait. But all this only underscores how much rides on the question of Lebanon's independence--and how far Syria, Hezbollah and Iran may go to preserve the status quo.

For Syria the stakes are economic and political. An estimated one million Syrian guest workers reside in Lebanon and remit their wages to relatives back home, and Syrian officials have plundered much of the international aid Lebanon received over the past decade. The Bekaa Valley also serves as a lucrative transit point for narcotics and other contraband. Without Lebanon, Syria's economy might collapse.

So, too, might the Assad dynasty: Bashar's grip on power is far less sure than his father's, and the loss of prestige that a withdrawal from Lebanon would entail might well be politically fatal to him and the minority Allawite clique through which he rules.

For Iran the stakes are strategic. Its elite Revolutionary Guards operate terrorist training camps in the Bekaa. Iran has also placed upward of 10,000 missiles in Lebanon, including the medium-range Fajr-5 rocket, bringing half of Israel within their reach. It thus maintains the option of igniting a new Mideast war at any moment, as well as a hedge against the possibility of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on its nuclear installations. Yet if Syria withdraws, no pro-independence Lebanese government will indulge Iran's military presence. The Lebanese have had enough of allowing their territory to serve, Belgium-like, as the battleground of choice for foreign powers.

For Hezbollah, the stakes are greater still. During the years when Israel maintained a security zone in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah could present himself as a patriot fighting occupation. But Israel removed its forces from Lebanon in 2000, and now Nasrallah's support for Syrian occupation exposes a different set of motives: not patriotic, but Jihadist. And the last thing the Jihadists want is for Lebanon to again become a flourishing, pluralist, cosmopolitan Arab state.

Syria's withdrawal would likely precipitate a Lebanese decision to enforce U.N. Resolution 520, which requires the Lebanese Army to patrol its border with Israel, a function now performed by Hezbollah. At length, it could lead to the disbanding of Hezbollah as an independent militia, though its terrorist wings would likely continue to operate.

How does the Bush Administration manage the crisis? There are reports that it is considering a softer line toward Hezbollah in the hopes of encouraging its acquiescence to a Syrian withdrawal. But we are confident President Bush would not lightly betray the memory of Stethem, Buckley or the hundreds of other Americans killed by Hezbollah over the years.

The latest news is that the young Assad promised U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen on Saturday that Syria will withdraw completely. This is promising. But given the stakes all around, skepticism is in order and world pressure will have to continue. The help of the French here has been welcome, due in part to Jacques Chirac's personal ties to the murdered Lebanese patriot Rafik Hariri. However, France still declines to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

The Cedar Revolution began as an outburst of rage against Hariri's killers. It has been sustained by what former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross calls "the absence of fear"--the belief that the Syrian government will not do in Beirut's Martyrs' Square what the Chinese did in Beijing's Tiananmen. A joint Franco-American declaration that a crackdown in Lebanon would have serious consequences for Damascus would help give all Lebanese patriots the courage to move forward.

Rainbow over Har Homa

Rainbow over Har Homa
Hat tip to Callie

The forgotten Middle East refugees

I'm mildly surprised that this was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

by Semha Alwaya

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?

When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.

The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."

In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."

Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.

In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.

All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.

Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.

Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.

Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.

Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (www.jimena-justice.org).

Saudi spokeperson condemns terror - except against Israel

No surprise here, but the idea of the Saudi official running away from a press conference rather than show himself to be a hypocrite and liar is priceless.

Adel al-Jubeir is the national spokesperson of Saudi Arabia, the face that the kingdom likes to show in the West. In contrast with most Saudi Arabians, he is clean-shaven, and his English is polished and almost unaccented. If he has any traditional Arab clothes, he hides them in the closet in his house in Saudi Arabia. In Western countries, he is careful to appear only in expensive, quietly fashionable, and conservative suits, which, together with his receding hairline, lend him the appearance of a senior accountant.

He speaks softly, but in tones of authority, backed by his senior status in Saudi Arabia foreign affairs adviser to Prince Abdullah, the acting ruler of the kingdom. His voice is the voice of his masters, dubbed for Western ears, and that is the source of his power. He is said to be the best Arab spokesperson today.

On Tuesday, at a press conference at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, al-Jubeir launched a campaign to improve Saudi Arabia’s image in the US, under the slogan, “We’re fighting terrorism.” The fact that someone of his stature has been assigned to orchestrate the campaign shows how Saudi Arabia’s image has deteriorated in US public opinion.

Now, however, al-Jubeir wants Americans to believe that Saudia Arabia is remaking itself that what it has been is not what it will be. As he puts it, "The bottom line is that no Saudi citizen will be able to escape the clear message that intolerance, violence and extremism are not part of our Islamic faith, or of Saudi culture or traditions.”

Asked how Saudi Arabia defines terrorism, al-Jubeir said that the kingdom had adopted the UN’s formula, which defines terrorism as an act that causes victims among civilians, “anywhere.”

"Globes’" reporter, who identified himself as an Israeli journalist, wanted to hear how Saudi Arabia defines Palestinian organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other like them. Are these terrorist organizations? Does Saudi Arabia support them, and will it continue to do so? The reporter also asked whether the Saudi Arabian royal family would agree to diplomatic relations with Israel after implementation of the disengagement plan.

Without blinking, al-Jubeir answered, “Let’s wait a minute with that. Let’s finish with the subject of terrorism.” He turned to two other reporters, unexpectedly stopped the press conference, and quickly left the room. Several people, apparently employees of the Saudi Arabian embassy, physically blocked access to the retreating spokesperson. A group of Arab journalists began to shout, “What about the briefing in Arabic that you promised us?”, but al-Jubeir was already out of hearing.

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.