EDITORIALS
A SHORT NOTE FROM THE FREEMAN CENTER.....Bernard J. Shapiro
WE ARE BEING SOLD OUT!...Guest Editorial....Prof. Paul Eidelberg
THE TWO ALTERNATIVES...Guest Editorial....Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons

SECURITY
ISRAELI FATALITIES AND INJURIES IN TERRORIST ATTACKS
ISRAEL SENDS AMOS-2 INTO SPACE....Arieh O'Sullivan
LOOKING OVER SHARON'S WALL....Emanuel A. Winston
WITHDRAWAL UNDER FIRE....Evelyn Gordon
SUICIDE BOMBERS IN MACROCOSM: THE INTOLERABLE DANGER TO ISRAEL OF IRRATIONAL NUCLEAR ENEMIES....Louis Rene Beres
MA'ARIV POLL: 51%:37% Oppose Unilaterally Removing Settlements....Aaron Lerner
ISRAEL, BAN THE BOMB....Ariel Natan Pasko

ARAB PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
THE MIDDLE EAST PROPAGANDA WAR....David M. Jacobs
CODED MESSAGES BELY PALESTINIAN 'CONDEMNATION' OF TERROR....Michael Widlanski

ANTI-SEMITISM: THE JEWISH LEFT/ISLAMIC/EUROPEAN
HATRED'S ROOTS: On Hating the Jews....Natan Sharansky
ANTI-SEMITISM- WHAT IS IT?....Laureen Moe

ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN ISRAEL AND AMERICA
ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN ISRAEL'S UNIVERSITIES DURING THE OSLO DECADE: 1993-2003....Prof. Arieh Zaritsky
OF INTELLECTUAL BONDAGE....Caroline Glick

POETRY
THE SILENT KILLERS....Bernard J. Shapiro
ODE TO A DEMENTED MONSTER....Bernard J. Shapiro

A SHORT NOTE FROM THE FREEMAN CENTER

By Bernard J. Shapiro

THE FREEMAN CENTER ENCOURAGES THE ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY TO EXPEL U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL, DANIEL KURTZER, IMMEDIATELY FOR INFERRING WITH ITS DOMESTIC POLICIES AND LEGAL SYSTEM. BARRING SUCH ACTION THEN PERHAPS IT SHOULD PUBLICALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ISRAEL HAS GIVEN UP IT SOVEREIGNTY AND ACCEPTS FULLY ITS ROLE AS A 'BANANA REPUBLIC' SUBJECT TO THE WHIMS OF OTHER NATIONS. AS AN AMERICAN AMONG THE 160 MILLION AMERICANS THAT SUPPORT ISRAEL I AM OUTRAGED. AS A JEW I AM ASHAMED!

WE ARE BEING SOLD OUT!

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

On December 23, 2003, Ha'aretz's Baruch Kra published a summary of a video that links the entire Sharon family to a Greek island tourist resort project. If this summary is accurate--and if it isn't, Ha'aretz can expect a massive libel suit--mass demonstrations should be organized demanding Prime Minister Sharon's immediate resignation. Here are the main points of the incriminating video.

"In October 1999, Omri Sharon said that if the Greek island project succeeded 'there would be enough money to pay us all and get us out of here' (emphasis added). The Prime Minister's son is heard saying this to security firm owner David Spector on a videotape obtained by Ha'aretz... It contradicts Sharon's statement to police, when they questioned him on this issue, that he was never involved in this so-called Greek island affair.

"Omri Sharon's meeting with Spector was several months before Spector was to meet Sharon's other son, Gilad, to help him collect money that real estate contractor David Appel owed him. Police suspect that payments made to Gilad Sharon were intended as indirect bribes to Ariel Sharon--then holding the foreign and national infrastructures portfolios--in exchange for his help to get permission from the Greek government for Appel to develop the Greek island tourist resort. The permission never came.

"In the [video] recording Omri mentions the real estate corruption Appel was allegedly involved in, including the Ginaton lands near Lod. Today it is known that the primary suspect in the Ginaton affair, apart from Appel, is Prime Minister Sharon, who is suspected of exerting pressure to expand Lod to include Ginaton. This would allow Appel, who had bought lands there, to avoid incurring financial losses.

"At a certain stage Omri asks Spector if he knew of 'the megalomaniac project in Greece.' Omri said the chances of carrying out the project were slim but if it succeeded, 'there would be enough money to pay us all and get us out of here' (emphasis added).

"The police are expected to charge Appel in the Greek island affair soon--probably with bribing Sharon when he was Foreign Minister in Netanyahu's cabinet. Appel is suspected of transferring millions of dollars to Gilad Sharon by means of a fictitious contract. This was in exchange for obtaining various favors from Sharon, including the promotion of the Greek tourism venture and political help to Appel's real estate ventures. Police suspect that Sharon gave this help when he was already Prime Minister."

Here the reader should focus on the key phrase linked to the Greek island tourist project: "if it succeeded, there would be enough money to pay us all--the Sharon family--'and get us out of here,'"--meaning, to leave the sinking ship of Israel.

Apparently, Israel's days are numbered. It cannot possibly overcome the fact that 50% of the babies born in the country are non-Jewish, that the Arabs in Israel are never going to be assimilated and become bourgeois democrats, that they will never give up their nationalist aims, and that their higher birthrate will allow them to gain control of the Knesset and the country given the democratic principle of one adult/one vote!

Therefore, if the above mentioned video is genuine, Prime Minister Sharon is selling Israel down the tubes, preparing for his and his family's getaway like a thieves in the night. Instead of standing up to foreign pressure, Mr. Sharon pursues a policy of unilateral withdrawal under fire, abandoning Jewish land and tens of thousands of Jews, all the while knowing that the Arabs have no intention of giving Israel peace.

If Israelis have resigned themselves to a Palestinian state on their doorstep, it is only because they have been anesthetized by Sharon who obviously lacks the courage to win the war against Arafat and his gang of terrorists. This is defeatism.

Instead of defeatism, Yamin Israel offers a detailed plan of action leading to Jewish victory, a plan published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Remember: Even the American people--70%--oppose a Palestinian state, a fact that bolster's Yamin Israel's Jewish Victory Plan.

The public must react vigorously against Sharon's cowardly policy. The video reported by Ha'aretz makes his policy appear as sheer treachery. Massive demonstrations should be organized calling for his resignation, the formation of a new government, and the adoption of Yamin Israel's Jewish Victory Plan.

THE TWO ALTERNATIVES

by Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons

December 2003

[On 14 December 2003, a letter appeared in the "Jerusalem Post" written by Joseph R. L. Simkins of Texas. After analysing the present political situation, he concluded: "There are only two plausible outcomes: the destruction of Israel or the expulsion of the Arabs." This reminded me of two articles I had written some 16 years ago and I reproduce them here.]

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Letter from London

17 August 2005

LIQUIDATION OF THE JEWISH STATE

[I wrote this article in April 1988. It was published in "The Jerusalem Times" (the then Israeli edition of the "Jewish Press" of New York) of "week of July 8 to July 14, 1988", pages 6 & 15, "the Scribe" (the Journal of Babylonian Jewry, London) dated July 1992, page 1, and in a Hebrew translation in the Israeli newspaper "Moledet" dated September-October 1992, pages 24-25. Sadly, it seems more real today than when I wrote it nearly 16 years ago. I am therefore reproducing it word for word as I then wrote it.]

Three years have now passed since the summer of the year 2002 when the Jewish State was liquidated and a P.L.O. state established in Eretz Israel. A few weeks later, in accordance with article 6 of the P.L.O. National Covenant, all Jews and their descendants who had arrived in Eretz Israel since the "beginning of the Zionist invasion" of 1917, were expelled.

Since my family had British citizenship, we were able to go and live in England and together with the tens of thousands of others having British citizenship we arrived in England.

The P.L.O. had allowed for "humanitarian reasons" for every expelled Jew to take one small suitcase of belongings not exceeding $200 in value. Everything else was confiscated. We therefore arrived penniless in England. In view of the high prices of property in England, the best my family could find was a dilapidated property in a slum area of London. As a result of the dampness of the property, two of my children have been hospitalised with rheumatic fever. The strain of such conditions has brought my wife to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

However, Jews who originated from the U.S. or Western Europe were relatively fortunate. We had a place to go to. In contrast, there were over two million Jews who were expelled from Eretz Israel, who originated from Arab or communist countries.

A few hundred Jews from Russia, lacking all alternatives returned to that country. They were almost all arrested as Zionist spies and sent to Siberia or even worse. They had obviously been unaware of a group of Jews, who in the late 1920s, had left Eretz Israel to return to Russia in order to establish a kibbutz there! Stalin had had most of them murdered or sent to Siberia.

Today there are over two million Jews wandering all over the world trying to find a place to live. As in the case of Jews wanting to escape from Hitler in the late 1930s, no country wants to accept them. In those days, President Roosevelt convened an international conference in the French resort city of Evian to discuss their fate, but everyone of the participating 33 countries gave an excuse why not to accept them. Today, there is a slight improvement over the 1930s. The U.S. has agreed to take 2000 Jews and Australia 250. But these numbers are laughable in view of the fact that the wandering Jews number over two million. Every day one reads of cases of these Jews dying of malnutrition and of others committing suicide.

Will this problem ever be solved?

How did we get ourselves into such a mess?

It began in the 1980s, when the Arabs as part of their tactics, began to talk about "peace" in the framework of an "International Conference". The left, who since the Six Day War, had been eager to hand over Judea and Samaria, the heart of Eretz Israel, to the Arabs, jumped on the bandwagon. Groups such as "Peace Now" began to hold rallies and demonstrations with slogans such as "Peace for Territory", and world Jewish "intellectuals", who had never lived in Israel, sent round letters demanding "territorial compromise". They never explained that in view of the fact that over three-quarters of Mandatory Palestine - the area designated as the Jewish homeland - was in Arab hands [i.e. (Trans)jordan], it should be the Arabs who should be handing over land in Transjordan to the Jewish State in exchange for peace. The Arabs played their part to try and weaken the resistance of the Jews, by continually throwing stones, grenades and Molotov cocktails at Jewish vehicles, and attacking Jews in the street.

International pressure to "withdraw" to the pre-1967 borders increased and these were coupled with threats of sanctions. Had the Jews in Israel been united this pressure could have been withstood. But with the left joining forces with the international community, Israel caved in and in 1992 signed an "agreement" with the Arabs to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, and for the removal of all the Jewish settlers who by then had reached over 120,000. The exception was East Jerusalem, and it was agreed that the solution to this "problem" would be "deferred to a later date".

Within three months of signing this agreement, Israel had withdrawn from these areas. There was no money to pay compensation to the 120,000 settlers. All that was available was money to build shacks for these people on the coastal plain. A vague promise was given to build apartments some time in the future, a promise which was never implemented.

A few months later, the Arabs were demanding Israel "returns" Arab Jerusalem, threatening a "Holy War" from the entire Moslem world should they not do so. Here, even the left balked and joined in the chorus that united Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the State of Israel. But this "unity" was sadly not to last long. The U.S., Western Europe and Japan, fearing for their oil supplies, argued that since in 1938, Czecho-slovakia had had to surrender the Sudetenland for the sake of "world peace", Israel in the 1990s, could not be allowed to endanger world peace for the sake of just an old wall and a few dirty narrow streets in Jerusalem.

The subsequent selective sanctions by these countries against Israel caused an erosion of the "consensus" existing in Israel on the Jerusalem question. By 1995, Israel had completely returned to the pre-1967 borders. Within a few months, the Jordanians had, as in 1948, razed to the ground the beautifully restored "Jewish Quarter" including its numerous Synagogues. Tombstones on the Mount of Olives, especially the new ones added since 1967, made excellent latrine covers.

Due to these selective sanctions, Israel no longer had the money to provide all of the 150,000 Jews who had been living in the suburbs of East Jerusalem, even with shacks. Many were just given tents. What a traumatic experience it was for residents of Ramat Eshkol to move from their luxurious apartments to tents.

The next stage in the Arabs' campaign was to argue, "You have returned the territory you captured in the Six Day War. Now return us the territory you captured in the War of Independence and we will recognise the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan borders. We therefore demand that you withdraw from Western Galilee, Ramle, Lod, Jaffa, Ashkelon and Beersheba." At this demand even the extreme left-wing Mapam had apoplexy. They had built many of their kibbutzim in these places.

The United Nations went into special session and mandatory sanctions were applied against Israel. This did the trick and by the end of the twentieth century, Israel was confined to the 1947 borders. This also meant the loss of West Jerusalem as the capital, which was transferred to Tel-Aviv.

Despite this withdrawal, the mandatory sanctions imposed on Israel by the U.N. were never withdrawn. The U.N. "did not have the time" to discuss the question. As a result Israel's financial situation became desperate. She argued that just as UNRWA (United Nation s Relief and Works Agency) was still financing millions of Arab "refugees" (many of whom were fictitious), she should finance the now over one million Jews who had been displaced as a result of all the Israel withdrawals. This was resoundingly defeated in a vote of the U.N. [ 1 in favour (Israel) ; 184 against ; 1 abstention (U.S.A.). ]

"The Negev is not really part of Israel," screamed the Bedouins, "It was added as a result of the intervention of President Truman." The State Department accepted this reasoning arguing that Israel had misused President Truman's generosity by building a nuclear station in the Negev and refusing to allow international supervision, and they demanded Israel's withdrawal from the Negev. By this time, Israel had lost all ability to resist and by April 2002, Israel was reduced to a narrow strip of land on the coastal plain and a narrow strip in Eastern Galilee.

Three months later, Arabs armed with just stones, Molotov cocktails and grenades marched on these two narrow strips of land. The regulation commanding soldiers to only shoot in the air and not at any Arabs, were still in force and so the Arabs had no trouble in conquering the area.

Immediately, a P.L.O. "secular-democratic" state was declared in the entire area of Eretz Israel and within a few weeks article 6 of the P.L.O. National Covenant, which authorised the expulsion of all the Jews who had arrived since 1917 was implemented.

Those who had arrived before that date, naively believed that they would have equality in this "secular-democratic" state. Their identity cards were marked with a big red "J" (in Arabic) as in Communist or Arab countries. "Only for statistical purposes," commented a P.L.O. official to the world press. Two months later, the Jews in the P.L.O. state (who numbered over a quarter of a million), were sent to the south of the country for "resettlement". Apologies were made for the use of overcrowded cattle-trucks for this "resettlement". No communication has been received from any of these Jews since their "resettlement" three years ago. "Due to communications difficulties," explained the P.L.O. spokesman. When one remembers the cordial meeting between Hitler and the Mufti and their identity of ideas on "solving the Jewish problem", and also the statement made in May 1948 by the Secretary-General of the Arab League threatening the Jews with "extermination and momentous massacre", one can only fear the worst.

Near to my London damp apartment, lives a former "Peace Now" activist, who was expelled from Israel at the same time as me. "We were wrong in believing the Arabs," he keeps telling me. How this contrasts from the period following the withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, when "Peace Now" supporters danced in the streets of Tel-Aviv celebrating and naively waving slogans "Now Peace".

The Festivals should be times of joy for the Jewish people. However, when in the Festival prayers, the words "On account of our sins, we were exiled from our land" are said, great weeping is heard in the Synagogues. Maybe, after another two thousand stateless years of wanderings, persecutions, pogroms and massacres, we will again have a state. Let us pray that next time, we will use the opportunity wisely.

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Letter from Israel

August 2005

17August 2005

ISRAEL, THREE YEARS AFTER TRANSFER

[The article "Liquidation of the Jewish State" is one of gloom for the Jewish people. A few months earlier in December 1987, I wrote an article proposing a solution of the Arab-Israel conflict on the basis of transfer. I feel sure that after the initial trauma of the transferees, both Jews and Arabs would live unmolested by each other in their own states and that both peoples would be able to develop the underpopulated and underdeveloped areas of their respective states. I should make it clear that any Arab who would sign his acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state would be able to remain. Also the transferred Arabs would be able to take all their movable assets and would receive as compensation for their immovable assets, the one hundred billion dollars of assets left behind by Jews who had come from Arab countries. As with the last article, I am reproducing it word for word as I then wrote it.]

Three years have now passed since the summer of the year 2002, when the Arabs from both sides of the green line were transferred out of Israel. The green line is now a thing of the past, since three months after this transfer, the Knesset almost unanimously passed a law incorporating Judea, Samaria and Gaza into the State of Israel.

The idea of transfer was first put forward by Theodor Herzl over a century ago. At the same time that Herzl was writing his famous book "The Jewish State", he confided to his diary plans for removing the non-Jewish population from the Jewish State - "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border."

Following in the footsteps of Herzl, many if not most of the Zionist leaders including Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, Sharett, Ussishkin, Tabenkin and Katznelson were to propose such a transfer. Even some members of "Brit Shalom" - an organisation whose aim was for a bi-national Jewish-Arab state - would privately propose transfer!

Nobel Peace prizewinners and American Presidents were to join this list. According to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it." Even the anti-Zionist, Harry St. John Philby, a confidant of King Ibn Saud, proposed that "Western Palestine should be handed over completely to the Jews, clear of Arab population except for a 'Vatican City' in the old city of Jerusalem."

In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed a transfer of population, compulsory if necessary. Following this proposal, the Jewish Agency set up a Population Transfer Committee whose function was to prepare a programme for the transfer of Arabs from Eretz-Israel.

Apart from a transfer of Arabs during the War of Independence and a much more limited transfer following the Six Day War, the idea of transfer remained a dead letter. The Arab problem was swept under the carpet by the Israeli Government who argued that transfer was completely unnecessary. Those solitary voices in the 1970s who proposed it were labelled "racist" and cries of "bring them to trial" were heard.

Instead of transfer, the Government decided that the solution was to raise the educational level of the Arabs - in this way they would become loyal residents of Israel! Universities such as Bir-Zeit and the Hebron Islamic College were opened. The Government's expectations (if one can seriously call them that) were proved wrong. These Universities became the hot-bed of anti-Israeli activity.

Once upon a time, it was safe to travel on the roads. In the 1980s some Arabs decided to change all that. Stones were periodically thrown at passing cars and Egged buses on the roads of Judea and Samaria. When these Arabs saw that not only were the authorities unwilling to take the necessary steps to stop this, but even brought to trial and imprisoned Jewish settlers who took the necessary measures for self-defense, these Arabs gained encouragement and intensified their efforts. "Mere" stones were replaced by Molotov cocktails and bullets.

By the time the 1990s had arrived, these Arabs had extended their operations to within the green line. The knifing and shooting of Jews all over Israel became so commonplace that it ceased to be newsworthy material. Almost every day, buses on the Tel-Aviv - Haifa coastal road were attacked. By the mid-1990s Egged had already armoured-plated most of the windows of its buses. In place of a window, only a narrow slit remained. It was not unusual to see people waiting for an hour in the pouring rain for a bus which was armour-plated. Being was more important than well-being. On rare occasions, a passenger was brave enough to venture outside an attacked bus and capture one of the terrorists. Believe it or not, on arrival at the police-station with this terrorist, it was the passenger who would be arrested on a charge of kidnapping! Profuse apologies would be proffered to the terrorist for having been inconvenienced!

As a result in the deterioration of the situation, long long lines formed outside the American Embassy in Tel-Aviv. Yerida became a torrent, aliyah a trickle. In an interview with the "New York Times" in 1996, a Yored declared, "I feel safer in the streets of New York with all its muggings, than in the streets of Tel-Aviv."

The Arab birth-rate soared and Arab immigration to Israel was encouraged under the famous "family reunification" scheme. Statisticians were already predicting an Arab majority within the green line within ten years.

Over the years, voices advocating transfer increased. They began in the 1980s with the entry of the Kach party to the Knesset. As time went on, voices from the Likud, Mafdal and Techiya parties were added to this sole voice. Towards the end of the 1990s, almost the entire religious and right-wing parties were calling for transfer.

Pressure was even building up on the Labour Party. It was pointed out to them that their mentor, David Ben-Gurion, had enthusiastically welcomed the Peel Report recommendation on compulsory transfer. "We must expel Arabs and take their place," he wrote to his son Amos in 1937. During the following year, he had told the Jewish Agency Executive, "I favour compulsory transfer - I see nothing unethical in it." As Prime Minister during the War of Independence, he was asked by his army chiefs what to do with the Arabs of Lod and Ramla. To this question he retorted "Expel them". He expressed anger at the fact that the Arabs of Nazareth had not been expelled. Ben-Gurion's record swayed the Labour Party and they joined in the chorus for transfer.

There were still some liberals who were stubborn. When however they heard that Chaim Weizmann had regarded the transfer of Arabs as "absolutely essential" and had told the British Colonial Secretary that the Jews "will help in getting Arabs out of Galilee", these liberals dropped their opposition to transfer.

As was to be expected, Mapam was vociferous from beginning to end regarding transfer which they described as "unethical" or "a stain on the flag of the Zionist movement". However actions speak louder than words and a study of the history of the Mapam kibbutzim such as Mishmar Haemek and Merchavia show that these kibbutzim put transfer into practice whilst others were just talking about it.

Having a broad consensus on transfer, the Israeli Government fully implemented it in the summer of 2002. It was planned with military precision - advice being gained from the retired generals who had forcibly transferred Jews from the Yamit area twenty years earlier - and was completed within two weeks.

The cost of the operation was relatively low, since it was felt that as long as the Jews who had left Arab countries following the establishment of the State of Israel had not received compensation for their land and property, payment to the transferred Arabs should be held in abeyance. The magnificent villas owned by the Arabs, were in all fairness, given to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who had lost their property.

Three years have now passed since this transfer and what a change for the better there is in Israel. Jews can walk and travel safely without the fear of stones, knives and shootings. What a pleasure to travel on an overcrowded Egged bus - without the armour-plating it is no longer like a coffin!

Hebron, City of the Patriarchs, is now undergoing reconstruction, under a master plan, to restore it to its original glory. Plans are also being drawn up for Jewish resettlement in the Biblical cities of Shechem and Jericho.

Jewry's holiest site - the Temple Mount - is now truly under Jewish sovereignty. The portions to which it is forbidden to enter under Jewish law have been fenced off and a great Synagogue is at present under construction - in accordance with the proposal made well over half a century ago by Rabbi Yehiel Tukachinsky - on the Herodian addition to the Mount.

Prior to this transfer, billions of dollars were being spent annually to try and maintain internal security. This money has now been transferred to educational and social services. Due to the continual cutbacks in education, schools were ending at ten o'clock in the morning! A full day's education has now been restored and subjects such as music, art and computer-science are now regularly included in the curriculum, (without the need to twist parents' arms for money). Patients who were sent home from hospital only two days after a major operation (unless they had protexia with the hospital staff) can now remain until they have recuperated. Sub-standard old age homes have now been completely renovated. Welfare and happiness of the population has increased by leaps and bounds.

This transfer has also brought benefit to the transferred Arabs. They realise that they no longer live under "occupation" in a "Zionist entity" and they can no longer be utilised by the Arab States as an irredenta. It is reported that some transferees have privately thanked the Israeli Government for having operated this transfer.

Although over a hundred years were to pass from the time Herzl proposed transfer until its full implementation, his motto "If you wish it, this is no fairy tale" has once again been proved right.

<simonschaim@hotmail.co.il>

ISRAELI FATALITIES AND INJURIES IN TERRORIST ATTACKS

900 killed, 6,029 injured, 19,948 attacks 29 September 2000 through 24
December 2003
IDF Spokesperson 25 December 2003

Killed: 632 Civilians + 268 Security Forces = 900 Total Israeli Killed
Injured: 4,274 Civilians + 1,755 Security Forces = 6,029 Total Israeli Injured

Total Attacks*: 8,194 West Bank + 10,974 Gaza Strip + 780 Home Front =19,948 Total

* Does not include attacks with rocks or firebombs.
** "Israeli" includes tourists and foreign workers.

===
For purposes of comparison:

FATALITIES IN TERRORIST ATTACKS SINCE OSLO

SEPTEMBER 11, 1993 = 1400

For another comparison which shows neglegent homicide by the framers of Oslo:
Fatalities in Palestinian Terror Attacks Since 1978
Communicated by the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, September
11,1998

Year; # of Israelis killed in terror attacks
1978: 12
1979: 14
1980: 10
1981: 51982: 2
1983: 6
1984: 7
1985: 14
1986: 7
1987: 5
1988: 14
1989: 32
1990: 23
1991: 26
1992: 39
1993: 38 (thru Sep.9)
15 years before Oslo: 254
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 27, 2003

ISRAEL SENDS AMOS-2 INTO SPACE

By Arieh O'Sullivan

Israel's Amos-2 telecommunications satellite lifted off just before midnight Saturday atop a Russian rocket in Kazakhstan, ensuring Israel's firm membership in the international space market.

The 160-kilo satellite, built by Israel Aircraft Industries' MBT Division, is expected to eventually reach a geo-stationary orbit, where it will provide cellular phone and on-line data links, and television transmissions.

Only seven other nations are capable of developing and producing communication satellites. As much as the design and construction of a communication satellite is a source of pride for this small country, the Zionist endeavor is almost totally a business venture that investors hope will soon recoup the $150 million cost.

David Pollack, director of Spacecom Ltd., the company that markets the satellite services, was monitoring the liftoff from Tel Aviv. Spacecom said that commercial investment is expected to total more than $400 million over the next 11 years.

The Amos-2 is to supplement its sister satellite, Amos-1, launched in 1996. Israel has also built and launched the Ofek-5 spy satellite. Four other Israeli satellites have been launched and since decommissioned.

Spacecom was originally to have launched the Amos-2 atop an Ariane rocket from French Guiana, but this launch was transferred to Starsem, which decided to launch it on a Soyuz-FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakhstan desert.

That large rocket is the same type used to send crews and cargo to the International Space Station. It stands 46.1 meters tall and weighs over 300,000 kilograms at launch.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is Russia's main launch base for larger rockets such as the Soyuz and the workhorse Proton. Russia leases the base from the former Soviet state.

Israeli officials said they were comforted by the reputation of the Soyuz as the world's most trusted launch vehicle, with over 1,600 successful missions.

The satellite is to have final separation from the four-stage rocket about seven hours after liftoff. It will be in an elliptical orbit and over the next 10 days technicians will use booster engines to bring it out to a 36,000 km. circular orbit, which will maintain it in a stationary position enabling it to focus on the Middle East, Central Europe, and, unlike the Amos-1, the East Coast of the United States. It has a 10- to 12-year life expectancy.

Spacecom had sold all of the transponder space on the Amos-1; the Amos-2, with its larger capacity, will eventually take over from its older sister. The Amos-1 has a life expectancy of some 12 years and will eventually die in 2008.

The Amos-2 is expected to be in service until at least 2014, IAI officials said. Spacecom is now embarking on production of the Amos-3.

Copyright 1995-2003 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

LOOKING OVER SHARON'S WALL

By Emanuel A. Winston

Middle East Commentator & Analyst

Few of Israel's planners, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres (perpetual loser) former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin (voted out of his own Party), America's President George W. Bush, etc. have contemplated the full long-term impact of another Arab Palestinian State on the 'other side of Sharon's security wall'. Allow me to suggest a few things that are likely to happen (not necessarily in order of their happening):

1. Each of the nations who have Arab Palestinians on their territory and have refused them citizenship will eject their 'Palestinians' toward the new Arab State of Palestine. Those nations include Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Libya - not inclusive of those Arab Palestinians living now in Europe, America and elsewhere. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia already ejected 700,000 Arab/Muslim Palestinians into Jordan after the PLO betrayed their brethren in Kuwait during 1990.

2. The estimated number of Arab/Muslim Palestinians to be ejected from their current residences in Arab and non-Arab countries ranges from 3 to 5 million - depending upon whose figures you believe. (Note! The neo-State of Palestine would be overcrowded if only 500,000 were allowed to enter.)

3. It would be highly probably that most new Arab/Muslim Palestinians migrating into this volatile area of the Middle East would be located in tents or shack slums, pressed up close to the Jewish State of Israel against Sharon's Security Wall. There they will need water, sewage, food, employment which the U.N. and E.U. will demand that Israel provide. Piling up against the Security Wall will provide a Gaza-like condition which will have intended political and practical consequences not yet understood by Sharon and his cronies.

There they will squat in misery and squalor as they have in refugee camps now going on 50 years. They will howl and scream, not against Yassir Arafat (or whomever takes his place) but against the Israelis who will not allow them past the Security Wall to join their Israeli-Arab brethren. That's what they'll say, appealing to the World to pressure Israel into opening the gates.

4. The virtual "Palestine" CITY OF THE WALL will grow to a typical festering refugee camp of squalor, filth and disease. As in other refugee camps, It will be an incubator for discontented youth who will join other Terrorists who will freely operate close to Sharon's Security Wall/Border.

As in Gaza, the Terrorists of many nations will become operating gangs, recruiting new members, manufacturing missiles, mortars, rockets, explosive devices - with no Israeli troops to interfere or disturb their planning. The removal of Jewish residents and Israeli troops will allow Terrorists to form well-organized and efficient armies of conquest through Terror.

5. Local Arab/Muslim Palestinians manufacturing weapons will now be free to produce mortars, Kassem Rockets, 'et al' but, once it's no longer necessary to use the Egyptian tunnels in Rafah to smuggle in weapons, then larger weapons can be trucked, shipped or flown in. That means that larger missile launchers and artillery can be imported into the Terrorist Center of the World - much the same as the 10,000 missile launchers set up by Hezb'Allah in the area of Lebanon after the IDF retreated when ordered by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Launching mortars, missiles over the Wall into the densely populated near-by Israeli cities will be too easy.

Any documents promising peace and de-militarization to Israel which are drafted by the Europeans, the Arabist State Department, the non-Jewish Leftist Jews mandating a "Weapons-Free Zone" will, as always, be unenforceable - if not comical.

6. WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Since the territory abandoned by Sharon will now be free of Israelis patrols or the IDF's snap raids, the Arab Palestinians can import WMD - including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). Hezb'Allah, Al Qaeda, PFLP, PLO, Tanzim, Al Aksa Brigades, Hamas, 'et al' will have no problem in acquiring NBC - WMD (Weapons of Mass Death) from Iran and Syria which would easily pass into Arab Palestinian hands - and may already have. Israeli intelligence definitely knows that of the 10,000 missiles on the Lebanese border in the zone abandoned by Barak, a substantial number have chemical warheads.

7. It is highly probable that the U.N. and the E.U. will be invited by the Palestinian Authority into the new territory to interfere with any reprisal raids against Terrorists by Israel. Hot pursuit of Terrorists, targeting Terrorist leaders, destroying weapons' depots will be difficult, if not impossible IF the U.N./E.U. troops are interspersed among the 'supposedly' civilian population. That could get worse if American troops are added to the so-called "Peace-Keeping Forces" planned by E.U. through NATO. Be assured that none of these troops would act as Americans are presently doing in Iraq or as Israelis have done to intercept and thwart Terrorist plans. Recall that U.N. troops stationed in Lebanon to stop Terrorists from attacking Israel became a porous line, often assisting Terrorists up and back after their violent missions.

8. I would imagine that Sharon will provoke a civil war when he tries to remove what some of the Media and world governments pejoratively called "settlements" but are really Jewish communities - villages, towns and cities. It has long been the plan of the Arabist State Department, in collaboration with the Labor Left of Israel and now even Arik Sharon, to turn over to incoming Arab Palestinians all the farms, homes, factories, wineries, water, sewage systems and electrical grids all built by the Jews. This will be claimed compensation for the 400,000 Arabs who fled at the behest of the seven Arab armies so they could sweep the Jews from the land into the sea without being impeded by Arab villagers jamming the roads. (As an aside, there is to be no compensation to the some 850,000 Jews who were ejected from the Arab countries where they had lived for centuries, nor will they be recompensed for the properties they were forced to abandoned after the seven Arab countries ignominiously lost the first war of 1948.)

9. Israel (under Sharon) will have also given up the water aquifers under the Judean and Samarian hills that provides Israel with 33% of her fresh water resources. Given the Arab custom of not treating their sewage and allowing it to run down, raw, into the valleys and from there down into the aquifers so that water flowing from it will be heavily polluted. The aquifer will be contaminated and any water coming from there would have to be heavily chlorinated and even boiled in order to drink safely. This situation is already occurring in those areas given over to the Arab Palestinian Authority now under Yassir Arafat's control under the Oslo Accords. Imagine the ground and air pollution when 3 or more million Arabs are packed up against Sharon's Security Wall/Border. Note! The aquifer in Gaza under the control of the PA is now drained so low from excessive pumping that it has been infiltrated with salt sea water. The Arabs call it their "salt tea". Having over-pumped their wells after Israel's Water Authority turned over water control to the P.A., the Arabs then demanded to be connected to Israel's main water carrier.

10. Sharon will have given up the Jordan Valley which was always considered a natural barrier to invasion from Jordan by Arab armies and a natural tank trap. This was confirmed on 6/29/67 by a once secret advisory by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff study of what Israel must keep in order for America NOT to have to rescue her from an attack by any coalition of Arab Armies.

Sharon will also be forced to give up their water rights to the Jordan River. Sharon will have given up the natural barrier of the Judean and Samarian Hills with their steep incline along with their high positions for artillery and the narrow roads that enemy armies would have to navigate to get to the heart of the Jewish country and Jerusalem.

11. Sadly Sharon, along with willing Leftist Jews, seems determined to divide Jerusalem and quit claim on Jewish Rights to the Holy Temple Mount. According to maps and plans developed long ago by Yassir Arafat, Jews, will be allowed to approach the Western Wall - only - with the permission from the Arab Muslim Waqf. The Waqf are the Muslim trustees to whom Moshe Dayan (a non-Jewish Jew) gifted the Holy Temple Mount of King Solomon after Israel liberated the eastern half of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Days War. Like most Leftists he didn't want observant Jews to have a focal point for their rightful historical and religious claims on Jerusalem. The Left started the Oslo process then, although the real planning and conspiracy by Peres, Beilin and Rabin to evict all Jews from the territories began in earnest in the early 1980s.

In effect, under the Sharon/Bush planning, the Eternal Jewish Capital City of Jerusalem will return to the same division when Jordan illegally occupied it for 19 years. King Hussein destroyed 58 Jewish synagogues, drove out the Jewish residents, and turned the ancient Jewish graveyard on the Mt. Of Olives into truck routes with its headstones used as urinal splash plates for Jordanian soldiers. Yes, indeed, Arik, you will surely leave a legacy that no one will forget.

Having free unimpeded access to Sharon's Wall on their side, there will be little problem for the Arabs to dig down 20 or 30 meters (approximately 60 to 90 feet) as they have done successfully in the tunnels from Egypt to go under the Security Wall into Israel's heartland. They can dig - not dozens but hundreds of such tunnels which could only be filled on the Israeli side if and when found. I would imagine that Terrorist operations would ramp up far more viciously than we have seen even in these past 3 years.

In addition, they will have assistance from Arab Muslim Palestinians living inside of Israel as citizens (with full civil rights). Once Sharon has shown the yellow feather of fear and retreat as did Ehud Barak, Israeli Arab citizens will quickly cross over to assist what they consider the likely winner, namely Arafat or his replacement.

Think of Judea and Samaria in terms of a replica of Arafat's mini Terrorist state which he created inside Lebanon. No law except Terror, a free retreat for every Muslim Terrorist to ply his wicked trade - something like the Muslim Jihadists pouring into Iraq through Syria from Egypt, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Chechnya, Yemen, Algeria and even non-Muslim Arabs from France and England. They only will stay long enough to beat or kill enough Americans - if they can and many will move into the new Arab State of Palestine. But, Arafat's new State will be a permanent base of Terror operations against Israel, the Arab nations such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and then, globally, to America and Europe. It will be a more than a safe haven for Terrorists - it will be their new Terror Mecca created by Sharon and Bush.

Should Israel now feel that she needs to engage in hot pursuit of Terrorists or to try to take out missile launchers, be assured the U.N. would vote sanctions as would the E.U. who has been pouring money into Arafat's pockets and the P.A. - most of it embezzled.

As one looks over Sharon's Wall to a land once brought back to civilization by the Jews, your will soon see a backward conglomeration of a compressed howling mob of Arab Muslim Palestinians made into useful refugees by Arafat or his replacement. It will be one gigantic pest house of disease and sewage running down the middle of the street with hostile Terrorists always pushing, bombing, sniping, suicide bombing and pressing against or under Sharon's Wall. They will always be in contact with the Arabs living in the heart of Israel, breeding in extraordinary numbers and subsidized by Arab nations for birthing new Arab Muslim Palestinians - much as they were paid by Iran, Syria, Saddam and Saudi Arabia to martyr themselves while killing Jews. The end will be intended to be the same either way - that is, kill Jews with bombs or with babies who are later taught - from the age of 3 and up - to hate the Jews, kill them when able and advancing toward being a 'Shaheed' (martyr for Islam).

Look over your War Wall, Arik, and see what you have done. You once had forward vision when you were a General and you were one of the truest and best warriors for the Jewish State of Israel. Now you are old, and as happens to old men, you dream of the past when you could think ahead and plan well. Now, you will try to evacuate Jews and give their life's dreams to the millions of incoming Arabs who will be packed tightly against your Wall.

So, now your legacy is to squeeze Israel behind a Walled Ghetto, 9 miles wide from the sea to its very center. As the millions of Arab Muslim Palestinians are packed into the impossibly small area of Arafat's State, they will begin to do what the Arabs promised in 1947, namely, to push the Jews into the sea.

This will be your legacy Arik Sharon IF you continue to assist the creation of another Arab State of Palestine. You will join Haman, Herod or Hitler in the eyes of the Jewish people. Be assured you will have a place in history as a betrayer of the Jewish people and hated for eternity.

Emanuel A. Winston is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies.

The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 22, 2003

WITHDRAWAL UNDER FIRE

By Evelyn Gordon

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's speech to the Herzliya Conference last week was indeed, as this paper's editorial noted on Sunday, something new. But new, unfortunately, is not synonymous with better -- and the plan outlined by Sharon last Thursday represents a significant retreat that will encourage Palestinian terror and worsen Israel's international position.

In his speech, Sharon announced that even if the terror continues abated, Israel will withdraw from an unspecified number of settlements in another few months. But in an effort to pretend that this is not a withdrawal under fire -- the very move that he was twice elected in a landslide on a pledge to prevent -- he said that Israel will compensate for this retreat by "strengthen[ing] its control" over parts of the territories "which will constitute an inseparable part of the State of Israel in any future agreement," and warned that unilateral withdrawal will give the Palestinians "much less than they would have received through direct negotiations."

These caveats have been lauded by the Post and other Sharon apologists as a way of ensuring that unilateral withdrawal, far from rewarding Palestinian terror, will actually worsen the Palestinian position. Unfortunately, one need do no more than read the rest of Sharon's speech to realize just how empty and meaningless these caveats are.

Regarding the threat that the Palestinians will receive less through "disengagement" than through negotiations, the speech makes it clear that this is a strictly temporary measure that in no way prevents the Palestinians from obtaining everything they want in the future. The line to which Israel withdraws, Sharon promised, "will not constitute the permanent border of the State of Israel" or "change the political reality between Israel and the Palestinians;" it will also "not prevent the possibility of returning to the implementation of the road map and reaching an agreed settlement."

In short, the unilateral retreat not only grants the Palestinians short-term gains; it simultaneously assures them that they risk no permanent long-term losses.

Aha, say the apologists, but what about the promise to "strengthen Israel's control" over parts of the territories that Israel wants to keep in any future agreement? This pledge, unfortunately, is vitiated by a series of other promises in the very same speech.

First, Sharon pledged that the plan is "a security measure and not a political one," and that any unilateral steps "will be fully coordinated with the United States," which opposes Israeli annexation of any part of the territories. These statements preclude the possibility that Israel will annex certain areas outright.

Israel could still strengthen its hold by substantially increasing the Israeli population of these areas -- but Sharon also pledged not to do this. Not only will Israel dismantle all unauthorized settlement outposts, even in these areas, but with regard to authorized settlements, "there will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, [and] no special economic incentives." There will also be "no construction of new settlements."

IN OTHER words, Israel will do everything in its power to ensure that its hold on these areas is not strengthened: It will not annex them, it will not build new settlements, it will not expand existing ones, it will dismantle unauthorized outposts, and it will not provide incentives to encourage additional people to move there.

What Sharon's speech boils down to, therefore, is an unadorned withdrawal under fire, with no compensatory moves whatsoever.

It goes without saying that this will encourage Palestinian terrorism. If three years of terrorist warfare can convince even Sharon -- a leading exponent of the perils of rewarding terrorism -- to retreat under fire, the Palestinians have every reason to believe that more of the same will produce more withdrawals. That is especially true now that Sharon and the Likud have broken the taboo against such retreats.

This move will also eradicate all the gains that Sharon has made over the last three years in convincing the rest of the world that Israel has a right to expect an end to terrorism in exchange for a withdrawal. Now that even Sharon has waived this requirement, why should the rest of the world uphold it?

Indeed, the only lesson the international community can reasonably draw from his retreat is the opposite: that with enough pressure, Israel can be forced to concede even its most cherished red lines without a single Palestinian concession in exchange.

This conclusion is almost certain to lead to increased international pressure on Israel for further withdrawals.

Finally, Sharon has almost single-handedly revitalized the Israeli Left. For three years, there has been a virtually wall-to-wall consensus in Israel that the Left's method of unrequited concessions proved itself to be a total failure. That is precisely why Sharon, who twice campaigned on a platform of no concessions without an end to terrorism, trounced first Ehud Barak and then Amram Mitzna by the largest margins in Israeli history. Yet now, even Sharon is adopting the policy of unrequited concessions. And, as Haaretz columnist Zvi Bar'el aptly noted on Sunday, once one accepts the premise that "in order to increase security, it is necessary to retreat a bit," it becomes difficult to explain why it does not logically follow that "in order to increase security even more, it is necessary to retreat even further" -- precisely what the Left has been advocating all along.

Sharon's disengagement plan, though vague on details, appears to envision a much more limited retreat than the massive withdrawal proposed a few weeks ago by Ehud Olmert. Yet the underlying principles differ little -- and by virtue of having been advanced by a popular prime minister rather than a fading politician with no political base, the dangers that Sharon's plan poses are infinitely worse.

The writer is a veteran journalist and commentator.

Copyright 1995-2003 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

SUICIDE BOMBERS IN MACROCOSM:

THE INTOLERABLE DANGER TO ISRAEL
OF IRRATIONAL NUCLEAR ENEMIES

By Louis Rene Beres, Purdue University

The Jewish Press, 12/17/2003

"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman?" asks Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. "Madmen, lucky folk, construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather."

What is true for individuals is true for states. In the always unpredictable state of nations, constructions which rest upon the foundations of ordinary logic may crumble before madness. Understood in terms of Israel's increasingly precarious dependence upon nuclear deterrence, however implicit, this suggests that security built primarily upon threats of overwhelming retaliatory destruction could fail altogether.

For the moment, no single Arab/Islamic adversary of Israel would appear to be irrational. That is, no adversary would appear to be ready to launch a major first-strike against Israel using weapons of mass destruction (in the future, possibly even nuclear weapons) with the recognition that it would thereby elicit a devastating reprisal. Of course, miscalculations and errors in information could still lead a perfectly rational enemy state to strike first, but this decision would not be the product of irrationality.

What is true today, however, may not be true for the indefinite future. Certain enemy states -- Iran now comes immediately to mind -- could ultimately decide that "excising the Jewish cancer" from the Middle East would be worth the costs, however massive they might be. In principle, this prospect might be avoided by Israel with timely "hard target" preemptions, but such expressions of what is known under international law as "anticipatory self-defense" are now exceedingly problematic. The difficulty lies in both tactical and political issues.

Strictly speaking, an Iranian or other enemy "bolt-from-the-blue" CBN (chemical, biological or even nuclear) attack upon Israel with the expectation of city-busting reprisals would not necessarily exhibit true irrationality or madness. Rather, within this state's particular ordering of preferences, the presumed religious obligation to annihilate the "Zionist Entity" could be of absolutely overriding value. Here, the expected benefits of such annihilation could exceed the expected costs of ANY Israeli reprisal.

To a certain extent, an enemy state with such orientations would represent the individual suicide bomber writ large. Just as tens of thousands of Arab males are now willing to die to achieve "martyrdom," so might certain individual states soon become willing to sacrifice themselves to fulfil the presumed will of Allah. In the second case, however, it is conceivable that Iranian or other Arab/Islamic leaders making the decision to strike at Israel would be more willing to make "martyrs" of their own peoples than of themselves. Here, it would be perfectly acceptable to sacrifice huge portions of their respective populations, but only while the leaders themselves were already underway to a predetermined safe haven.

What is Israel to do? It can't very well choose to live, indefinitely, with enemies which might not be deterred by usual threats of retaliation and who are themselves armed with weapons of mass destruction. It can't very well choose to preempt against pertinent Iranian or other military targets, because the tactical prospects of success would be very remote and because the global outcry -- even after America's Operation Iraqi Freedom (or especially after this newest war against Iraq) could be deafening. It assuredly cannot rely too heavily upon the United States, which is continuing to exhaust human and material resources in Iraq and which has serious strategic worries about North Korea. And it cannot place too much faith in anti-tactical ballistic missile defenses, which could require a near-100 percent reliability of intercept to be purposeful in "soft-point" protection of Israeli cities.

The strategic opportunities available to Israel may be very limited; the existential consequences of failure could include national extinction. What shall the Government of Israel do? If Israel's enemies were allpresumably rational in the ordinary sense of valuing physical survival more highly than any other preference of combination of preferences, Jerusalem could begin to exploit the strategic benefits of pretended irrationality. Here, recognizing that in certain situations it can be especially rational to feign irrationality, it could work to create more cautionary behavior among its relevant adversaries. In such a case, the threat of an Israeli resort to a "Samson Option" could be enough to frighten away an enemy first-strike.

If, however, Israel's pertinent adversaries were presumably irrational in the ordinary sense, there would likely be no real benefit to contrived irrationality. This is the case, because the more probable Israeli threat of a massive nuclear counterstrike associated with irrationality would be no more compelling to Iran or any other Arab/Islamic enemy state than if they were confronted by a fully rational State of Israel.

It follows from all this that Israel could benefit from greater understanding of the "rationality of pretended irrationality," but only in particular reference to rational enemy states. In these circumstances where such enemy states are presumed to be irrational in the ordinary sense, something else will be needed -- something other than nuclear deterrence, preemption or ballistic missile defense. Although many believe the answer to this quandary lies in far-reaching political settlements, it is an answer born of frustration and self-delusion, not of deliberate and informed calculation. No meaningful political settlements can be worked out with enemies who seek only Israel's "liquidation" -- a word still used commonly in Arab/Islamic newspapers and texts.

So what is Israel to do? "In the end," we learn from the poet Goethe, "we depend upon creatures of our own making." What shall Israel "make?"

To begin, Israel must understand that irrationality need not mean craziness or madness. Even an irrational state may have a consistent and transitive hierarchy of wants. The first task for Israel, therefore, is to ascertain this hierarchy among its several state enemies, especially Iran. Although these states might not be deterred from aggression by the persuasive threat of massive Israeli retaliations, they could well be deterred by threats to what they do hold to be most important.

What might be most important to Israel's prospectively irrational enemies, potentially even more important than physical survival as a state? One answer is the avoidance of shame and humiliation. Another is avoidance of the charge that they had defiled their most sacred religious obligations. Still another is leaders' avoidance of their own violent deaths at the hand of Israel, deaths that would be attributable to strategies of "targeted killing" and/or "regime-targeting" by Jerusalem.

These answers are only a beginning; indeed, they are little more than the beginning of a beginning. What is needed now is a sustained and conspicuously competent effort to answer in greater depth and breadth.

This effort cannot be confined to Israel or America's established university centers of strategic studies. Rather, it must take place wherever informed and intellectually capable friends of Israel can be found. Indeed, as we are dealing with nothing less than the sacred responsibility of preventing another Holocaust, I submit that the effort to identify workable strategic survival policies for Israel should be undertaken even in the traditional centers of Jewish learning, in all places where Jews gather to study the sacred texts, everywhere that Jews come together in day schools, in Yeshivot and in universities.

Our peril, as always, is great, but our Jewish intellectual resources are also considerable. Our study of Torah must quickly be joined by imaginative teachers and rabbis with the study of looming existential threats to Zion.

The wisdom of Torah must never be detached from our most urgent considerations of survival as a people. Each Jew is responsible for his Jewish brothers and sisters, and every capable Jewish mind must willingly give tangible and timely effect to what beats in each Jewish heart. Moreover, war and genocide are assuredly not mutually exclusive, and preventing a second Holocaust is far too important an obligation to be left to the professional strategists.

© The Jewish Press, 2003. All Rights Reserved.

=====================

LOUIS RENE BERES is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University. Educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) he is the author of many books and articles dealing with Israeli security matters, including Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy. Most recently he served as Chair of "Project Daniel," a small-group effort of senior Israeli generals and academics to counsel the Prime Minister on existential threats to Israel.

Prof. Beres is the academic advisor to the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies.

December 26, 2003

MA'ARIV POLL: 51%:37% Oppose Unilaterally Removing Settlements

By Aaron Lerner

The following are the results of a poll of a representative sample of 602 adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) carried out by New Wave for Maariv the week of 26 December 2003, before the suicide bombing in Petach Tikvah.Survey error +/- percentage points.

If an agreement is not reached between Israel and the Palestinians, would you support or oppose unilaterally evacuating settlements in the territories?
Oppose 51% Support 37% Don't know/refuse reply 12%

[Please note: the wording of the question does not identify this as being Prime Minster Sharon's plan. A poll earlier this week worded "Do you support the Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral separation plan as presented at the Herzliya Conference?" found:
Yes 59% No 22% No reply/don't know 19%]

Should the army punish the Sayeret Matkal soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories?
Yes 44% No 43% Don't know/refuse reply 13%

Are you satisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in general?
Yes 38% No 51% Don't know/refuse reply 11%

Compared to last year, do you feel more or less safe going around public places?
More 15% Less 24% Same 59% Don't know/refuse reply 2%

Compared to last year, did your standard of living rise or fall in 2003?
Rise 7% Fall 48% No change 43% Don't know/refuse reply 2%

Asked to Jews: Did you light Chanukah candles this year?
Yes 90% No 10%

Will you celebrate New Years in any way?
Yes 25% No 67% Don't know/refuse reply 8%

How frequently do you go out to restaurants, cafes, cinema, etc.?
Several times a week 9% Once a week 21%
Once a month 26% Less than once a month 13%
Almost never 29% Don't recall/refuse reply 2%

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
pager 03-6106666 subscriber 4811
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

ISRAEL, BAN THE BOMB

By Ariel Natan Pasko

Israel should get rid of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs - its alleged nuclear arsenal - they say. Yet, Iran is working as we speak to get the bomb. Syria has lots and lots of chemical weapons (CW) and missiles to attack with. So does Egypt. In fact, Egypt like its Arab brother Iraq used its chemical weapons in the past. Egypt in the 1960's in Yemen; Iraq in the 1980's against the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites, and Iranians. India and Pakistan have the bomb, so does North Korea. I won't mention the five permanent members of the UN who do too. And Libya?

Libya, that on again, off again sponsor of international terrorism since the 1970's, has plenty of chemical weapons - about 100 tons of mustard gas and nerve agents, according to the CIA - and missiles that could hit Israel and most of Europe. The Germans sold the missiles to them in the 1980's. They also have Scuds from North Korea. Libya also has sought dual-use capabilities that could be used to develop and produce biological warfare (BW) agents. But now Libya's leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi - or is that gadfly? - has announced that he will scrap Libya's WMD programs. He promised to put his nuclear facilities under greater international inspection. Sounds like, Iran, huh?

So what do all these Middle Eastern "Ban the Bomb" advocates start to do?

Commenting on Gaddafi's actions, Libya's state-run press made clear that Israel would have to follow suit with its weaponry. The Al-Jamahiriya newspaper said Libya's decision had reversed the "race" to produce weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and placed "exceptional pressure on Israel" to come clean on its own nuclear weapons, which it has neither admitted to nor denied possessing. Following Gaddafi's recent announcement, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher called on Israel to follow Libya's example and get rid of its nuclear weapons program. Maher said, "I hope that other countries in the region...would follow such an example...get rid of and put an end to any nuclear weapons production program," Maher said. Maher did not specifically name Israel, but said, "You know, of course, who I mean." When asked if the international community should start looking at Israel's nuclear capabilities, Maher said: "I said that the steps which Libya took should be a model to follow. This is clear. I won't add anything."

The same day, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, joined in saying, "The Libyan position confirms the importance of pressuring Israel to comply with all laws banning nuclear proliferation and joining the NPT" [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. Moussa added, "It is not logical to make an exception or to be tolerant of Israel on this issue." The Arab states have spoken.

Then, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called on Israel to eliminate its WMD. "We welcome the Libyan decision," Mubarak told journalists during a visit to Sadat City, in southern Cairo. "Israel must also eliminate its weapons of mass destruction." Egypt has for some time called on the Israel to ratify the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and make the Middle East a region free of WMD. Mubarak said that in the mid-1990s he discussed with former Israeli prime minister and current opposition leader Shimon Peres (Labor) the matter of Israel dismantling its nuclear arsenal. Mubarak claimed that Peres - father of the Israeli nuclear program - told him that the issue would be resolved following a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

That's Egypt; former user of chemical weapons itself. That's Egypt, who according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies - which tracks weapons issues - has its own stockpile of deadly Sarin and VX nerve agents, and is believed to working on an offensive BW program as well.

Iran also praised Libya's decision to abandon its WMD program, calling for pressure against Israel to do the same. Iranian officials released a statement that the time has come for the international community to exert pressure on Israel to abandon its nuclear program, referring to Israel as the main threat to the region. That's Iran, the country that not long ago was parading around its new Scud 3's that could hit Israel -allegedly - with markings on them for "Tel-Aviv" and "Jerusalem".

What's with all this concern about Israeli WMD all of a sudden?

The answer is that with the fall of Saddam's regime and American occupation, Iraq has been temporarily taken out of the WMD loop, or so it seems. With the Libyan declarations and Iran's recent signing of the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which opens the way for unannounced UN inspections of suspect sites, the door has been opened for increased pressure on Israel. Iran and Syria know there's still a lot of focus on their own weapons programs - US President Bush just signed the Syrian Accountability Act which puts a spotlight on Syrian WMD - so why not try to divert attention toward Israel?

Israel has had a frosty "Peace" with Egypt since 1979, and a not much warmer "Peace" with Jordan since 1994. Israel has been in a "Peace Process" for the last ten years with the Palestinians. That "Peace Process" has cost Israel over 1,300 lives from Palestinian warfare. Although the military balance vis-a-vis the Arab-Islamic world has shifted further toward Israel's favor in the last couple of decades - do to its growing technological edge - Israel's "will to fight" or "staying power" has slowly been eaten away in the last decade. Continuous guerilla war and terrorism from the Palestinians, combined with a world-wide propaganda campaign, has put Israel into a defensive posture, and caused it's leadership to refrain from using its substantial firepower. Now, the Arab-Islamic world is trying to pressure Israel to give up its strategic arsenal as well.

According to the latest accounting - September 2003 - of the Jaffe Center's "Middle East Military Balance," the Arab League states and Iran -minus Iraq - vastly outnumber Israel in conventional forces; men under arms, tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, transport aircraft, and helicopters. Let's ignore their naval advantage for purposes of this discussion. Take a look at soldiers - both regular and reserves - Israel has about 650,000 troops vs. 2,750,000 for the Arab League/Iran. Israel has 3,675 tanks and 3,900 artillery pieces, against 15,075 tanks and 17,400 artillery pieces for the Arab League/Iran. Despite Israel's highly touted air force, in numbers it's vastly outnumbered. Israel has 537 combat aircraft, 64 transport aircraft, and 239 helicopters. The Arab League/Iran combo has 4534 combat aircraft, 558 transport aircraft, and 1897 helicopters.

In conventional terms, Israel is outgunned, period. And I haven't even taken into account the greater Islamic world beyond Iran, or the threat of terrorism. Israel's last line of defense is its non-conventional deterrent. Now it becomes clear why those who would threaten Israel most, have joined the "Ban the Bomb" parade.

Israeli policy has always been that it will, "Never be the first state to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East," a policy of ambiguity. But from Vanunu in the 1980's on, cracks have opened in the Israeli "plausible denial" routine. Even Shimon Peres some years back, slipped, and implied that Israel does have the bomb. Most estimates place it more precisely at about 200 bombs on the low end, up to as many as 500-600. In the last few years, Israel took charge of three German built submarines. They liked them so much, that they requested Germany to sell them some more. But do to reports that Israel had modified cruise missiles with nuclear warheads to be launched from the subs, Germany declined. I don't have any "inside" info on that, but I sure hope it's true. That would give Israel the "strategic triad" of land, air, and sea launched nukes. Just what Israel's "friends" need, to keep them at bay.

As long as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah elements, al-Qaeda, and whoever else wants to destroy Israel; as long as Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and whoever, continue their own WMD programs; as long as the balance of forces favors Israel's enemies; Israel needs to continue to build up its own non-conventional weapons capabilities, and be prepared to use them. Israel has a moral obligation; in fact, it was created to make sure, a second Holocaust never happens.

Sure Israel should "Ban the Bomb". WHEN THE MESSIAH COMES!

================
Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst & consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at:
http://www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko

(c) 2003/5764 Pasko

THE MIDDLE EAST PROPAGANDA WAR

By David M. Jacobs

Anyone reading the World's press or listening to radio broadcasts during the past decade would get the idea that Israel is one of the worst violators of human rights. This impression would have been backed up by the fact that Israel has been condemned at the United Nations more than any other country -- more than China, Iraq or Iran. However anyone with direct knowledge of Israel or who has taken some trouble to analyse the facts would have realized that Israel's human rights record, and standard of democracy, is far higher than that prevailing in any of its neighbouring states.

How has this extraordinary situation come about? The clue lies in the way that the Israeli government and Jewish communities throughout the World have responded to the enemy propaganda onslaught. They have tried to defend themselves by using Public Relations. Now Public Relations were designed for purely peacetime, mainly commercial, purposes. In a conflict situation they are useless. The Israeli Foreign Ministry even calls the department handling counter propaganda the Department of Hasbarah. This Hebrew word, always mistranslated by Israeli diplomats as 'information', actually means 'explanation'. This shows the subconscious defensive role that they take when they 'explain' themselves in public.

The problem is that propaganda or Psychological Warfare, PW for short, is an effective weapon of war, and has little in common with PR. In fact during the Second World War the Americans found that PR specialists tended to be ineffective at propaganda (see Daniel Lerner, Psychological Warfare against Nazi Germany, Cambridge Mass., 1971, p.71).

The purpose of PW is the same as that of all warfare. It is in fact one of the arms of a war machine, and has been referred to as the Fourth Arm, following the Army, Navy and Air Arms. The aim of war as summarized by Clausewitz is 'an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.' PW is more gentle. It employs persuasion and psychological manipulation to achieve the same end. The ancient Chinese sage Sun Tzu, who lived in the Fifth Century BC, who is often considered to be the greatest of all writers on war, wrote: 'To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.' This statement is a good summary of modern propaganda warfare.

PW is operated through Front Organisations and Agents of Influence. There are three types of Front Organisation. Firstly the overt organizations such as the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding or the British Soviet Friendship Society. Secondly the covert ones such as Medical Aid to the Palestinians, which appears to be about giving help to suffering Palestinians whilst its real aim is to rally support for the Arab and Palestinian campaign against Israel. The third type is the infiltrated organization. This is where agents of influence have infiltrated an organization set up for another purpose, and then used it to promote their own cause. The Arabs have been very successful in infiltrating many charities and Church groups in this way. Government departments may also find themselves subject to this type of treatment. There are two types of agents of influence. Firstly the 'useful idiot'. This uncomplimentary term was coined by Lenin to describe the kind of naive ass, often a person in a prominent position, who fell for his propaganda and could be manipulated to publicly aid his campaign. The second type is the conscious agent who fully understands what he is doing and works behind the scenes. Often referred to in the press as a 'mole', he has nothing to do with espionage and his job is to influence policy.

There are various actions that propagandists have to carry out. Some of which need to be described here. One of these is Concealment of Motive, that is pretending to be supporting something, but in reality promoting something else. Next comes Demonisation, this is an unpleasant operation which involves vilification of the opposing side. Then comes an obvious operation, namely Repetition. This is vital in getting ideas across to the public by continuously returning a simple message. Finally comes a complicated concept known as the 'Holy Phrase'. Lasswell (Propaganda Technique in World War, New York 1927, p.66) says of this: ' A propagandist must always be alert to capture the holy phrase which crystallizes public aspiration about it, and under no circumstance permit the enemy to enjoy its exclusive use and wont.'

The great masters of PW were the Soviets. The department concerned with what the Soviets called 'Active Measures' was the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. From there were run all the agents of influence and the front organizations. They were extraordinarily effective in getting their propaganda across. It was they who invented the concept of dezinformatsia, or disinformation. This was not exactly lying, but the putting out of distorted information to confuse, or alter, an opponent's policy.

The reason for the Soviet involvement in Arab PW is that the Arab defeat of 1967 was felt by the Soviets to be a major defeat for Soviet policy and a triumph for the United States. The Soviets also had a traditional Russian reason for supporting the Arabs. For two hundred years the Russians had wanted a 'warm water port' which would give them the opportunity of operating freely in the Mediterranean without worrying about an opponent blocking the Dardanelles. There were a number of Arab ports which could be ideal for this role. Before 1967 Arab propaganda had been totally ineffective. After 1967 with Soviet help Arab PW increased by leaps and bounds. The Arabs were able to use the Soviet front organizations for their own PW as well as many of their agents of influence. Some of the most effective of these were the church organizations, in particular the World Council of Churches which had been set up in Prague in 1948. From that base it was possible to infiltrate not only other church bodies, but the various international charities, especially those giving aid to the Third World.

We now come to the core element in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which is the Islamic dimension. Mohammed got his basic monotheistic ideas from the Jewish and Christian tribes living around him in the Hejaz. He therefore felt that he should get support for his new religion from the Jews. When this failed to materialize it led to bitterness. Islam's relationship with Jews and Judaism thus started off in the Seventh Century very badly, with attacks by the nascent Muslim war band on the local Jewish tribes in the Hejaz, eventually driving all the Jews out of the region. Following these events came the very rapid creation of a mighty Moslem empire stretching from the Indus in the East to the Atlantic in the West and including virtually the whole of the Iberian peninsula, its expansion only being stopped by Charles Martel at Poitiers in 732. This vast conquest took place within a century of Mohammed's revelation. The Moslems regarded the territory they had conquered as the House of Islam and considered it inalienable. The territory outside was regarded as pertaining to the House of War.

With this conquest came the regulation of the status of the non-Moslems, more particularly the Christians and Jews, within the Domain of Islam. These were regarded as the People of the Book as they already had scriptures of their own. They were given an inferior status as dhimmis or protected people. They were protected as long as they accepted this secondary status towards their Moslem overlords. The pact, dating rom the Eighth Century, under which this was laid down was known as the as the Pact of Omar. The jews were automatically regarded as inferior to the Christians as, unlike the Christians, there were no Jewish military powers against whom the Moslem forces were fighting.

Islam and the Arabs had traditional PW techniques long before the modern concept of propaganda had been invented. There are two concepts in particular. These are the idea of Taqiya, or dissimulation, and that of the hila, or ruse. Taqiya implies outward conformity to alien customs whilst remaining faithful to Muslim beliefs. Thus the Arabs are able to maintain outward agreement with Western concepts of international law and practice, whilst keeping faith with Islamic tradition which says that Israel is a dhimmi state and stands on which is part of the Domain of Islam, and therefore must be removed. The doctrine of the hila is based on the saying of the Prophet Mohammed when he stated 'War is a series of actions for deceiving the enemy'. Another statement by the general and politician Al-Muhallab in the generation following that of Mohammed was: 'Have the heart to use deception in war, for it enables you to arrive at your goal more certainly than in a bloody body to body battle.'

The combination of traditional ideas of taqiya and the hila combined with Soviet dezinformatsia have enabled the Arabs to run rings round, not only the Israelis, but the whole of the West.

The reason that I stated that the Islamic component constitutes the core of the Arab-Israeli Conflict now becomes clear. It is essentially the resentment of Islam at the rule of the Jews over part of what they regard as the Domain of Islam, not only that but by setting up a Jewish state in such an area in such an area, defeating several Muslim armies, and ruling over Muslims, the Jews have abrogated their dhimmi status and thus torn up the Pact of Omar. It is this, not the percentage of Israeli withdrawal on the West Bank, which has brought about the sense of Moslem fury and humiliation, which is what the conflict is about. By making the World think that the conflict is about the Palestinians, or the minutiae of Oslo, is thus an excellent demonstration of the PW doctrine of Concealment of Motive.

The term Palestine is a post-Biblical expression. It was originally coined by the Romans following the fierce wars that they had to fight against the Jews in the First and Second Centuries AD. In the early part of this century the concept of Palestine was automatically associated in everybody's mind with the Jews. This continued throughout the 1940s. In 1938 when George Antonius wrote his famous book 'The Arab Awakening', in support of the Arab Nationalist position, he made no mention of the existence of a Palestinian People, because at that time such a concept had not come into being. The first moves in this direction were made at an Arab League Council meeting in Cairo in March 1959, and in September 1963 the Council appointed Ahmed Shuqairi as the 'representative of Palestine' to the Arab League. This was the same man who, as the representative of Syria, had said in the Security Council in May 1956 that 'It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.'

In October 1965 the PLO was still being referred to by the Arab states as representing 'the Arab people of Palestine'. It was not until 1974 that the PLO was invited to participate in a General Assembly debate as 'representing the Palestinian People'. The PLO had managed to gain a platform within the United Nations normally reserved for sovereign states. It subsequently built an impressive power base at the UN, including in the establishment in 1977 of a 'Special Unit on Palestinian Rights'. This meant that the UNICs (United Nations Information Centres) throughout the world were forced to carry PLO propaganda. The final passing of the name Palestine to the Arabs came when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 stated that 'the Government of Israel has decided to recognise the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian People'. The Arabs had captured the Jewish 'Holy Phrase'.

The Israelis however seemed sublimely unaware that anything had happened, in what had been a brilliant Arab PW operation carried across several decades. The result of this particular PW operation in the military and political spheres has been considerable. It means that the Israelis instead of having merely a frontier problem with the neighbouring Arab states are confronted with a land and people which is virtually coterminous with their own.

The PLO issued its Covenant calling for the destruction of Israel in 1968. This, though they agreed to change it at Oslo, has never been changed. In 1974 the Palestine National Council had issued a 10-point programme, in which Article 8 had stated that 'the Palestinian national authority, after its establishment, will struggle for the unity of the confrontation states for the sake of completing the liberation of all Palestinian soil and as a step on the path of comprehensive Arab unity.' This doctrine has been reiterated many times by Arafat and Palestinian officials since Oslo, but only to their own people. To the West they say something rather different. This is why, until these ideas have been genuinely given up, any withdrawals by Israel constitute a foolhardy strategic risk. However the Israelis seem unable to get this point across to the outside World, nor even to many of their own people, particularly to those on the Left.

One of the aims of a good PW campaign is to get behind your opponents' guard. Here the Peace Campaign comes in. Targeted at the Left Wing of both the Israeli and wider Jewish communities it has had a lot of success. The desperate desire of all Israelis and Jews for peace has been successfully exploited by the Arabs, who have copied the old Soviet Peace Campaigners. It is interesting to note that in Daniel Lerner's book (see above) on PW written originally in 1947, he wrote: 'The will to resist dissolves into a desire for 'peace soon', and finally crumbles into a desire for 'peace now'.' It is interesting to note that these words were used many years before the Israeli Peace Now movement came into being. Although Peace Now is very much a minority movement in Israel, its influence is widespread, and many of the Left refer to themselves as the 'Peace Camp', which gives the impression that only they want peace. In their desperation these people have swallowed the PLO propaganda line put forward to the West. The Peace Now propaganda line gets widely reported in the Western media, and helps to undermine the Israeli government's position.

Another facet of the Israeli Left is its secularism. Because they themselves have largely abandoned Judaism, they cannot accept that Arab policy has an Islamic basis. This enables the PLO to emphasise more effectively the Palestinian Nationalist position. Though a Palestinian identity has been created now, while Article 12 of the Palestine National Covenant stresses that this is just temporary, the ultimate loyalty remains to Islam. The PLO regularly use Christians to front their propaganda operations. The Christians are a tiny minority in the Arab population and need, for their own political security, to keep in with the Muslims. By using them the PLO is able to emphasise the nationalist position, which the Israeli Left, as well as the international Left who share their secularist attitudes, easily swallow.

An important development in the propaganda war has been the affair of Mordechai Vanunu. He was convicted of high treason by publicizing Israel's nuclear secrets abroad. High treason in time of war in virtually all other countries, besides Israel, carries the death penalty. Vanunu was thus very lucky that the country he betrayed was Israel. Instead of being sentenced to death he received a long prison sentence. Nonetheless a huge campaign was launched to free him. It was presented as a humanitarian campaign, but its prime purpose was to deprive Israel of its nuclear deterrent. The 'Campaign to free Vanunu and for a Nuclear-Free Middle East' is another example of the PW principle of Concealment of Motive. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear deterrent. The object of the campaign is to shift the balance in favour of the Arabs and Iran with their much larger conventional forces. The campaign, apart from the usual CND crowd, was operated through the 'useful idiot' type of agent of influence. Many of these were actors, who can be very useful in this role, being as articulate as they are politically ill-informed.

In order to deal with the problem of Israel's lack of a propaganda section in the style of Britain's wartime Political Warfare Executive or the post-war Information and Research Department of the FCO, it will be necessary to change the Jewish and Israeli mindset. This is going to be difficult, as centuries of irrational hatred directed at the Jewish People have resulted in a desire to be loved. Hence the emphasis on PR as opposed to PW. Some of the problems of Jewish identity that were examined by the Chief Rabbi in his article in The Salisbury Review (Summer 1998), are very relevant to the ability of Jews to deal with their neurotic block against using PW.

The other issue that has to be faced is the nature of the conflict itself. This is that it is primarily a conflict between Judaism and Islam. Most Jews and Israelis, even those who are not secularists, are very scared of this fact. Once they are prepared to admit it, the problem can be handled in a more intelligent manner.

If Israel's long term diplomatic and strategic position is not to be further undermined, thus putting the whole state in danger, then Israel and the Jewish People will have to copy the rest of the World and run their own PW agencies.

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David M. Jacobs is writing a study of the Middle East Propaganda War. This article was first published The Salisbury Review Winter (1998). It was subsequently reprinted as the editorial of Christian Action for Israel (1^st Quarter Newsletter 1999).

December 25, 2003

CODED MESSAGES BELY PALESTINIAN
'CONDEMNATION' OF TERROR

By Michael Widlanski

Several Israeli media outlets reported that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned the Palestinian human bomb attack tonight north of Tel Aviv.

But the truth is a little different.

Neither Voice of Palestine Radio nor Palestinian State television reported the "condemnation," and VOP radio--which is directly supervised by Arafat-- referred to man who set off the bomb as a "heroic martyr."

He was described as having "died a heroic martyr's death" (Arabic: istash-hada, tenth form reflexive verb for martyrdom). Occasionally the Paletinian media have used more neutral terms to describe the deaths of human bombers, but not in this case.
Describing the "martyrdom" of the human bomber in its 10-PM news was not unique during the Christmas Day broadcasts of Voice of Palestine.

Another Palestinian, who blew up while preparing a car bomb Wednesday night (Christmas Eve) was characterized throughout Thursday's broadcasts as havingdied a heroic martyr's death. (VOP 2PM Akhbar al-Yom news magazine show). So do Yasser Arafat and his hand-picked prime minister Ahmad Qrei'a (also known by his kunya, Arabic nickname, Abu 'Ala) really condemn terror attacks?

In fact the "condemnation" appeared as part of a big headline on the PA/PLO-controlled Palestinian news agency known as WAFA (Arabic: Wikalat al-Anba al-Filistiniyya:Palestinian News Agency), but the heart of the article in Arabic is an extreme denunciation of Israeli "massacres," "crimes" and "atrocities." (See www.wafa.pna.net/AraText/25-12-2003/page052.htm )

Although the article, in line 11, says the "Palestinian Leadership repudiates and condemns all attacks on civilians be they Israeli or Palestinian," its tone is far more condemnatory of Israeli attacks on HAMAS, Jihad and FATAH car bomb makers whose deaths are also treated as Israeli atrocities.

Indeed, the language of the WAFA statement clearly leaves the door open for attacking Israeli civilians "beyond the Green Line" as well as all men and women in Israeli army or police uniforms.

In fact, Palestinian radio and Palestinian television openly encourage attacks against Israeli soldiers, policemen and "settlers" by using songs, coded language and film montages enticing young boys to gain entrance to paradise by becoming martyrs in the struggle against Israeli occupation.

Michael Widlanski, a specialist in Palestinian communications, teaches at Hebrew University's Rothberg School, and he recently completed eight years of research on the Palestinian mass media.

Wall Street Journal, December 2003

HATRED'S ROOTS
On Hating the Jews

By Natan Sharansky

The inextricable link between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.

No hatred has as rich and as lethal a history as anti-Semitism--"the longest hatred," as the historian Robert Wistrich has dubbed it. Over the millennia, anti-Semitism has infected a multitude of peoples, religions and civilizations, in the process inflicting a host of terrors on its Jewish victims. But while there is no disputing the impressive reach of the phenomenon, there is surprisingly little agreement about its cause or causes.

Indeed, finding a single cause would seem too daunting a task--the incidence of anti-Semitism is too frequent, the time span too broad, the locales too numerous, the circumstances too varied. No doubt that is why some scholars have come to regard every outbreak as essentially unique, denying that a straight line can be drawn from the anti-Semitism of the ancient world to that of today. Whether it is the attack on the Jews of Alexandria in the year 38 or the ones that took place 200 years earlier in ancient Jerusalem, whether it is the Dreyfus affair in 1890s France or Kristallnacht in late-1930s Germany--each incident is seen as the outcome of a distinctive mix of political, social, economic, cultural and religious forces that preclude the possibility of a deeper or recurring cause.

A less extreme version of this same approach identifies certain patterns of anti-Semitism, but only within individual and discrete "eras." In particular, a distinction is drawn between the religiously based hatred of the Middle Ages and the racially based hatred of the modern era. Responsibility for the anti-Semitic waves that engulfed Europe from the age of Constantine to the dawn of the Enlightenment is laid largely at the foot of the church and its offshoots, while the convulsions that erupted over the course of the next three centuries are viewed as the byproduct of the rise of virulent nationalism.

Obviously, separating out incidents or eras has its advantages, enabling researchers to focus more intensively on specific circumstances and to examine individual outbreaks from start to finish. But what such analyses may gain in local explanatory power they sacrifice in comprehensiveness. Besides, if every incident or era of anti-Semitism is largely distinct from every other, how to explain the cumulative ferocity of the phenomenon?

As if in response to this question, some scholars have attempted to offer more sweeping, transhistorical explanations. Perhaps the two best known are the "scapegoat" theory, according to which tensions within society are regulated and released by blaming a weaker group, often the Jews, for whatever is troubling the majority, and the "demonization" theory, according to which Jews have been cast into the role of the "other" by the seemingly perennial need to reject those who are ethnically, religiously or racially different.

Clearly, in this sociological approach, anti-Semitism emerges as a Jewish phenomenon in name only. Rather, it is but one variant in a family of hatreds that include racism and xenophobia. Thus, the specifically anti-Jewish violence in Russia at the turn of the 20th century has as much in common with the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia at the turn of the 21st as it does with the massacres of Jews in the Ukraine in the mid-1600s. Taken to its logical conclusion, this theory would redefine the Holocaust--at the hands of some scholars, it has redefined the Holocaust--as humanity's most destructive act of racism rather than as the most murderous campaign ever directed against the Jews.

Reacting to such universalizing tendencies a half-century ago, Hannah Arendt cited a piece of dialogue from "a joke which was told after the first World War":

An anti-Semite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? asks the one. Why the Jews? asks the other.

George Orwell offered a similar observation in 1944: "However true the scapegoat theory may be in general terms, it does not explain why the Jews rather than some other minority group are picked on, nor does it make clear what they are the scapegoat for."

Whatever the shortcomings of these approaches may be, I have to admit that my own track record as a theorist is no better.

Three decades ago, as a young dissident in the Soviet Union, I compiled underground reports on anti-Semitism for foreign journalists and Western diplomats. At the time, I firmly believed that the cause of the "disease" was totalitarianism, and that democracy was the way to cure it. Once the Soviet regime came to be replaced by democratic rule, I figured, anti-Semitism was bound to wither away. In the struggle toward that goal, the free world, which in the aftermath of the Holocaust appeared to have inoculated itself against a recurrence of murderous anti-Jewish hatred, was our natural ally, the one political entity with both the means and the will to combat the great evil.

Today I know better. This year, following publication of a report by an Israeli government forum charged with addressing the issue of anti-Semitism, I invited to my office the ambassadors of the two countries that have outpaced all others in the frequency and intensity of anti-Jewish attacks within their borders. The emissaries were from France and Belgium--two mature democracies in the heart of Western Europe. It was in these ostensible bastions of enlightenment and tolerance that Jewish cemeteries were being desecrated, children assaulted, synagogues scorched.

To be sure, the anti-Semitism now pervasive in Western Europe is very different from the anti-Semitism I encountered a generation ago in the Soviet Union. In the latter, it was nurtured by systematic, government-imposed discrimination against Jews. In the former, it has largely been condemned and opposed by governments (though far less vigilantly than it should be). But this only makes anti-Semitism in the democracies more disturbing, shattering the illusion--which was hardly mine alone--that representative governance is an infallible antidote to active hatred of Jews.

Another shattered illusion is even more pertinent to our search. Shocked by the visceral anti-Semitism he witnessed at the Dreyfus trial in supposedly enlightened France, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, became convinced that the primary cause of anti-Semitism was the anomalous condition of the Jews: a people without a polity of its own. In his seminal work, "The Jewish State" (1896), published two years after the trial, Herzl envisioned the creation of such a Jewish polity and predicted that a mass emigration to it of European Jews would spell the end of anti-Semitism.

Although his seemingly utopian political treatise would turn out to be one of the 20th century's most prescient books, on this point history has not been kind to Herzl; no one would seriously argue today that anti-Semitism came to a halt with the founding of the state of Israel. To the contrary, this particular illusion has come full circle: while Herzl and most Zionists after him believed that the emergence of a Jewish state would end anti-Semitism, an increasing number of people today, including some Jews, are convinced that anti-Semitism will end only with the disappearance of the Jewish state.

I first encountered this idea quite a long time ago, in the Soviet Union. In the period before, during, and after the Six Day War of June 1967--a time when I and many others were experiencing a heady reawakening of our Jewish identity--the Soviet press was filled with scathing attacks on Israel and Zionism, and a wave of official anti-Semitism was unleashed to accompany them. To quite a few Soviet Jews who had been trying their best to melt into Soviet life, Israel suddenly became a jarring reminder of their true status in the "workers' paradise": trapped in a world where they were free neither to live openly as Jews nor to escape the stigma of their Jewishness. To these Jews, Israel came to seem part of the problem, not (as it was for me and others) part of the solution. Expressing what was no doubt a shared sentiment, a distant relative of mine quipped: "If only Israel didn't exist, everything would be all right."

In the decades since, and especially over the past three years, the notion that Israel is one of the primary causes of anti-Semitism, if not the primary cause, has gained much wider currency. The world, we are told by friend and foe alike, increasingly hates Jews because it increasingly hates Israel. Surely this is what the Belgian ambassador had in mind when he informed me during his visit that anti-Semitism in his country would cease once Belgians no longer had to watch pictures on television of Israeli Jews oppressing Palestinian Arabs.

Obviously, the state of Israel cannot be the cause of a phenomenon that predates it by over 2,000 years. But might it be properly regarded as the cause of contemporary anti-Semitism? What is certain is that, everywhere one looks, the Jewish state does appear to be at the center of the anti-Semitic storm--and nowhere more so, of course, than in the Middle East.

The rise in viciously anti-Semitic content disseminated through state-run Arab media is quite staggering, and has been thoroughly documented. Arab propagandists, journalists, and scholars now regularly employ the methods and the vocabulary used to demonize European Jews for centuries--calling Jews Christ-killers, charging them with poisoning non-Jews, fabricating blood libels, and the like. In a region where the Christian faith has few adherents, a lurid and time-worn Christian anti-Semitism boasts an enormous following.

To take only one example: This past February, the Egyptian government, formally at peace with Israel, saw fit to broadcast on its state-run television a 41-part series based on the infamous Czarist forgery about a global Jewish conspiracy to dominate humanity, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." To ensure the highest ratings, the show was first aired, in prime time, just as millions of families were breaking their traditional Ramadan fast; Arab satellite television then rebroadcast the series to tens of millions more throughout the Middle East.

In Europe, the connection between Israel and anti-Semitism is equally conspicuous. For one thing, the timing and nature of the attacks on European Jews, whether physical or verbal, have all revolved around Israel, and the anti-Semitic wave itself, which began soon after the Palestinians launched their terrorist campaign against the Jewish state in September 2000, reached a peak (so far) when Israel initiated Operation Defensive Shield at the end of March 2002, a month in which 125 Israelis had been killed by terrorists.

Though most of the physical attacks in Europe were perpetrated by Muslims, most of the verbal and cultural assaults came from European elites. Thus, the Italian newspaper La Stampa published a cartoon of an infant Jesus lying at the foot of an Israeli tank, pleading, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again." The frequent comparisons of Ariel Sharon to Adolf Hitler, of Israelis to Nazis, and of Palestinians to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were not the work of hooligans spray-painting graffiti on the wall of a synagogue but of university educators and sophisticated columnists. As the Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago declared of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians: "We can compare it with what happened at Auschwitz."

The centrality of Israel to the revival of a more generalized anti-Semitism is also evident in the international arena. Almost a year after the current round of Palestinian violence began, and after hundreds of Israelis had already been killed in buses, discos and pizzerias, a so-called World Conference against Racism was held under the auspices of the United Nations in Durban, South Africa. It turned into an anti-Semitic circus, with the Jewish state being accused of everything from racism and apartheid to crimes against humanity and genocide. In this theater of the absurd, the Jews themselves were turned into perpetrators of anti-Semitism, as Israel was denounced for its "Zionist practices against Semitism"--the Semitism, that is to say, of the Palestinian Arabs.

Naturally, then, in searching for the "root cause" of anti-Semitism, the Jewish state would appear to be the prime suspect. But Israel, it should be clear, is not guilty. The Jewish state is no more the cause of anti-Semitism today than the absence of a Jewish state was its cause a century ago.

To see why, we must first appreciate that the always specious line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has now become completely blurred: Israel has effectively become the world's Jew. From Middle Eastern mosques, the bloodcurdling cry is not "Death to the Israelis," but "Death to the Jews." In more civilized circles, a columnist for the London Observer proudly announces that he does not read published letters in support of Israel that are signed by Jews. (That the complaints commission for the British press found nothing amiss in this statement only goes to show how far things have changed since Orwell wrote of Britain in 1945 that "it is not at present possible, indeed, that anti-Semitism should become respectable.") When discussion at fashionable European dinner parties turns to the Middle East, the air, we have been reliably informed, turns blue with old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

No less revealing is what might be called the mechanics of the discussion. For centuries, a clear sign of the anti-Semitic impulse at work has been the use of the double standard: social behavior that in others passes without comment or with the mildest questioning becomes, when exhibited by Jews, a pretext for wholesale group denunciation. Such double standards are applied just as recklessly today to the Jewish state. It is democratic Israel, not any of the dozens of tyrannies represented in the United Nations General Assembly, that that body singles out for condemnation in over two dozen resolutions each year; it is against Israel--not Cuba, North Korea, China, or Iran--that the U.N. Human Rights Commission, chaired recently by a lily-pure Libya, directs nearly a third of its official ire; it is Israel whose alleged misbehavior provoked the only joint session ever held by the signatories to the Geneva Convention; it is Israel, alone among nations, that has lately been targeted by Western campaigns of divestment; it is Israel's Magen David Adom, alone among ambulance services in the world, that is denied membership in the International Red Cross; it is Israeli scholars, alone among academics in the world, who are denied grants and prevented from publishing articles in prestigious journals. The list goes on and on.

The idea that Israel has become the world's Jew and that anti-Zionism is a substitute for anti-Semitism is certainly not new. Years ago, Norman Podhoretz observed that the Jewish state "has become the touchstone of attitudes toward the Jewish people, and anti-Zionism has become the most relevant form of anti-Semitism." And well before that, Martin Luther King was even more unequivocal:

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely "anti-Zionist." And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth; when people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.

But if Israel is indeed nothing more than the world's Jew, then to say that the world increasingly hates Jews because the world increasingly hates Israel means as much, or as little, as saying that the world hates Jews because the world hates Jews. We still need to know: why?

This may be a good juncture to let the anti-Semites speak for themselves.

Here is the reasoning invoked by Haman, the infamous viceroy of Persia in the biblical book of Esther, to convince his king to order the annihilation of the Jews (emphasis added):

There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different from those of other peoples, and the king's laws they do not keep, so that it is of no benefit for the king to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be written that they be destroyed.

This is hardly the only ancient source pointing to the Jews' incorrigible separateness, or their rejection of the majority's customs and moral concepts, as the reason for hostility toward them. Centuries after Hellenistic values had spread throughout and beyond the Mediterranean, the Roman historian Tacitus had this to say:

Among the Jews, all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral. . . . The rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or intermarry with gentiles. . . . They have introduced circumcision to show that they are different from others. . . . It is a crime among them to kill any newly born infant.

Philostratus, a Greek writer who lived a century later, offered a similar analysis:

For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasures of the table, nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separated from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the more distant Indies.

Did the Jews actually reject the values that were dominant in the ancient world, or was this simply a fantasy of their enemies? While many of the allegations leveled at Jews were spurious--they did not ritually slaughter non-Jews, as the Greek writer Apion claimed--some were obviously based on true facts. The Jews did oppose intermarriage. They did refuse to sacrifice to foreign gods. And they did emphatically consider killing a newborn infant to be a crime.

Some, perhaps many, individual Jews in those days opted to join the (alluring) Hellenist stream; most did not. Even more important, the Jews were the only people seriously to challenge the moral system of the Greeks. They were not an "other" in the ancient world; they were the "other"--an other, moreover, steadfast in the conviction that Judaism represented not only a different way of life but, in a word, the truth. Jewish tradition claims that Abraham was chosen as the patriarch of what was to become the Jewish nation only after he had smashed the idols in his father's home. His descendants would continue to defy the pagan world around them, championing the idea of the one God and, unlike other peoples of antiquity, refusing to subordinate their beliefs to those of their conquerors.

The (by and large correct) perception of the Jews as rejecting the prevailing value system of the ancient world hardly justifies the anti-Semitism directed against them; but it does take anti-Semitism out of the realm of fantasy, turning it into a genuine clash of ideals and of values. With the arrival of Christianity on the world stage, that same clash, based once again on the charge of Jewish rejectionism, would intensify a thousandfold. The refusal of the people of the "old covenant" to accept the new came to be defined as a threat to the very legitimacy of Christianity, and one that required a mobilized response.

Branding the Jews "Christ killers" and "sons of devils," the church launched a systematic campaign to denigrate Christianity's parent religion and its adherents. Accusations of desecrating the host, ritual murder and poisoning wells would be added over the centuries, creating an ever larger powder keg of hatred. With the growing power of the church and the global spread of Christianity, these potentially explosive sentiments were carried to the far corners of the world, bringing anti-Semitism to places where no Jewish foot had ever trod.

According to some Christian thinkers, persecution of the powerless Jews was justified as a kind of divine payback for the Jewish rejection of Jesus. This heavenly stamp of approval would be invoked many times through the centuries, especially by those who had tried and failed to convince the Jews to acknowledge the superior truth of Christianity. The most famous case may be that of Martin Luther: At first extremely friendly toward Jews--as a young man he had complained about their mistreatment by the Church--Luther turned into one of their bitterest enemies as soon as he realized that his efforts to woo them to his new form of Christianity would never bear fruit.

Nor was this pattern unique to the Christian religion. Mohammed, too, had hoped to attract the Jewish communities of Arabia, and to this end he initially incorporated elements of Judaism into his new faith (directing prayer toward Jerusalem, fasting on Yom Kippur and the like). When, however, the Jews refused to accept his code of law, Mohammed wheeled upon them with a vengeance, cursing them in words strikingly reminiscent of the early Church fathers: "Humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them, and they were visited with the wrath of Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelation and slew the prophets wrongfully."

In these cases, too, we might ask whether the perception of Jewish rejectionism was accurate. Of course the Jews did not drain the blood of children, poison wells, attempt to mutilate the body of Christ, or commit any of the other wild crimes of which the church accused them. Moreover, since many teachings of Christianity and Islam stemmed directly from Jewish ones, Jews could hardly be said to have denied them. But if rejecting the Christian or Islamic world meant rejecting the Christian or Islamic creed, then Jews who clung to their own separate faith and way of life were, certainly, rejectionist.

This brings us to an apparent point of difference between premodern and modern anti-Semitism. For many Jews over the course of two millennia, there was, in theory at least, a way out of institutionalized discrimination and persecution: the Greco-Roman, Christian and Muslim worlds were only too happy to embrace converts to their way of life. In the modern era, this choice often proved illusory. Both assimilated and unassimilated Jews, both religious and secular Jews, were equally victimized by pogroms, persecutions and genocide. In fact, the terrors directed at the assimilated Jews of Western Europe have led some to conclude that far from ending anti-Semitism, assimilation actually contributed to arousing it.

What accounts for this? In the premodern world, Jews and Gentiles were largely in agreement as to what defined Jewish rejectionism, and therefore what would constitute a reprieve from it: It was mostly a matter of beliefs and moral concepts, and of the social behavior that flowed from them. In the modern world, although the question of whether a Jew ate the food or worshiped the God of his neighbors remained relevant, it was less relevant than before. Instead, the modern Jew was seen as being born into a Jewish nation or race whose collective values were deeply embedded in the very fabric of his being. Assimilation, with or without conversion to the majority faith, might succeed in masking this bedrock taint; it could not expunge it.

While such views were not entirely absent in earlier periods, the burden of proof faced by the modern Jew to convince others that he could transcend his "Jewishness" was much greater than the one faced by his forebears. Despite the increasing secularism and openness of European society, which should have smoothed the prospects of assimilation, many modern Jews would find it more difficult to become real Frenchmen or true Germans than their ancestors would have found it to become Greeks or Romans, Christians or Muslims.

The novelty of modern anti-Semitism is thus not that the Jews were seen as the enemies of mankind. Indeed, Hitler's observation in "Mein Kampf" that "wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity" sounds no different from the one penned by Philostratus 1,700 years earlier. No, the novelty of modern anti-Semitism is only that it was far more difficult--and sometimes impossible--for the Jew to stop being an enemy of mankind.

On closer inspection, then, modern anti-Semitism begins to look quite continuous with premodern anti-Semitism, only worse. Modern Jews may not have believed they were rejecting the prevailing order around them, but that did not necessarily mean their enemies agreed with them. When it came to the Jews, indeed, European nationalism of the blood-and-soil variety only added another and even more murderous layer of hatred to the foundation built by age-old religious prejudice. Just as in the ancient world, the Jews in the modern world remained the other--inveterate rejectionists, no matter how separate, no matter how assimilated.

Was there any kernel of factual truth to this charge? It is demeaning to have to point out that wherever and whenever they were given the chance, most modern Jews strove to become model citizens and showed, if anything, an exemplary talent for acculturation; the idea that by virtue of their birth, race or religion they were implacable enemies of the state or nation was preposterous. So, too, with other modern libels directed against the Jews, which displayed about as much or as little truth content as ancient ones. The Jews did not and do not control the banks. They did not and do not control the media of communication. They did not and do not control governments. And they are not plotting to take over anything.

What some of them have indeed done, in various places and under specific circumstances, is to demonstrate--with an ardor and tenacity redolent perhaps of their long national experience--an attachment to great causes of one stripe or another, including, at times, the cause of their own people. This has had the effect (not everywhere, of course, but notably in highly stratified and/or intolerant societies) of putting them in a visibly adversary position to prevailing values or ideologies, and thereby awakening the never dormant dragon of anti-Semitism. Particularly instructive in this regard is the case of Soviet Jewry.

What makes the Soviet case instructive is, in no small measure, the fact that the professed purpose of communism was to abolish all nations, peoples and religions--those great engines of exclusion--on the road to the creation of a new world and a new man. As is well known, quite a few Jews, hoping to emancipate humanity and to "normalize" their own condition in the process, hitched their fates to this ideology and to the movements associated with it. After the Bolshevik revolution, these Jews proved to be among the most devoted servants of the Soviet regime.

Once again, however, the perception of ineradicable Jewish otherness proved as lethal as any reality. In the eyes of Stalin