Israel Radio reported today that Israeli security sources say Palestinian Arabs living in Bethlehem and Beit Jalah are so frustrated with the reign of terror they are subjected to by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Tanzim that they are providing Israel with information so that they might be stopped from attacking Israel.

The Palestinians are not just concerned about the return fire that Tanzim attacks draw to Palestinian neighborhoods, they also complain of Tanzim violence against their own community.

Recently a local Palestinian girl was raped by Tanzim members in the Tanzim’ s club in Beit Jalah. The girl’s family slaughtered her since the rape defamed the family. No action was taken against the rapists.

The report also noted that Tanzim collects protection money from local businesses. They also get payments from the PA for attacks against Israeli targets. The reporter observed that while Arafat may not be able to instantly halt Tanzim attacks, his control on the purse strings that PAY for the attacks enable him to put a halt on the action within a short period of time if he wants to.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director
IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)

This appeared on the May 16th, 2001 internet edition of “IMRA” at www.imra.org.il

Thousands attended the double funerals held at the Gush Etzion Junction of 14 year old Yossef Ishran and Kobi Mandel, who were discovered in the early morning hours following a night long nerve wracking search.

The bodies were found next to the Haritun Caves, half buried under a pile of blood-soaked rocks with only their feet sticking out, a short distance from their homes in Tekoa. Next to their bodies were strewn their bags containing their uneaten sandwiches and water which they had taken with them on what was going to be a fun day of seeking out a suitable place to hold the traditional Lag B’Omer bonfire on Thursday night.

The massive crowd of mourners included hundreds of children, friends from the two schools which they attended in Efrat and Alon Shvut as well as their many friends from Tekoa. The crowd, who arrived for the scheduled 4:30 p.m. funeral was turned back after the loudspeaker announced that there would be a two hour delay of the funeral procession leaving Tekoa. In silence the huge crowd slowly emptied back into their cars and the buses. Only after returning to the funeral site did we learn the reason for the delay. Lab test results. Not satisfied with crushing the skulls of the two youngsters, the inhuman murderers continued to mutilate and abuse the bodies long after their last breaths were drawn. Those who discovered the bodies reported that the faces were so badly mutilated that they were no longer recognizable as human beings. The only way to make a definite identification was through fingerprints.

The massive crowd awaited the funeral procession that was on its way from Tekoa. Two stands awaited the bodies which would be laid out for the eulogies before being taken to the two respective cemeteries – Kobi would be laid to rest in Kfar Etzion and Yossef in Jerusalem. Psalms were chanted over the loudspeaker and the crowd chanted back the words of the psalms written centuries ago by King David – many of these psalms were written in the very caves near where the boys were found dead when King David hid in the Judean Desert caves when fleeing from King Saul and his soldiers.

A choked hush went through the crowd when the family was announced. The hundreds of children held on to each other, tears streaming down their faces. The mass of mourners, covering every inch of ground, parted like the Red Sea to make way for the families. The crowd made an audible gasp and broke into quiet sobs as first the small talit (prayer shawl) wrapped body of Yossef Ishran was brought forth and lowered onto the stand followed by his family who huddled around the body, hugging, holding and weeping over their dead son and brother. Then came the body of Kobi, wrapped in his father’s talit, the same one his father wore when he proudly held his first-born son Kobi at his circumcision ceremony when he was eight days old. Following came Kobi’s father, Seth, holding six year old Gabi in his arm while trying to hold on with his other hand to eleven year old Lilliana and twelve year old Daniel. The heartbroken sobs of the small children who stood over their big brother’s body was too much to bear. The whole crowd weeped along outloud. Then Kobi’s mother, Sheri was led/carried to the body of her first born child. The sight of the raw pain on her beautiful face cut like a knife into the hearts of all. Sheri, a talented author and teacher of creative writing lay her head down on her sons body weeping inconsolably and we felt like our hearts would break. For long moments we stood there crying, speechless. School children crying on their friends shoulders, adults, friends and family.

In his eulogy, Saul Goldstein, regional mayor of Gush Etzion, talked about the need to close down the PLO’s broadcasting networks where there are daily calls for murder of the Zionists and incitement against the Jews is broadcasted 24 hours a day.

Before the rocks, bullets, knives, bombs – it is the words that kill. Hate is contributed through education, incitement, the general environment. There is a direct connection between incitement calling for killing the Zionist enemy blasting daily from Palestinian media to Syria’s dictator Assad pointing at the Jews as Jesus’ murderer and humiliater of Prophet Muhammad, while his Defense Minister Dr. Mustafah Tallas was quoted in the L.B.C. Lebanese network saying “If every Arab kills a Jew, then there will be no more Jews”. He also said “I want to stand in place and kill the Jew standing opposite me”. This incitement goes along with Egypt’s very popular no. 1 hit number called: “I hate Israel”, played constantly over the Egyptian airwaves. This is the climate which produced the murderers who butchered two sweet beautiful innocent Jewish boys looking for a place to build a bonfire.

The children of Tekoa promised to hold their bonfires tonight at the site of the murder. The cave where the bodies were found is situated at the edge of the Judean desert, less than a kilometer from Tekoa. These big caves, the largest in the Middle East, where the prophet Amos, as is written, tended his flocks in “Tekoa” held all the mysteries and adventure of Adventureland. It was the place the children of Tekoa go to hang out, talk to wandering Bedoiuns tending their flocks, paint, meditate and celebrate the beauty of nature. For the children of Tekoa it was the extention of their backyards. The beautiful landscape this time of year is covered in the bloom of spring. Now it is sprinkled with blood.

Wake up Israel. Wake up world. Smell the blood.

Citi Bank, one of the largest banks in the U.S., has offered former Prime Minister Ehud Barak a position as special adviser to the bank’s branch in Israel.

It is customary in the U.S. to hire former senior officials as consultants for financial groups.

The assumption is that their status canhelp business. Thus for example, Merrill-Lynch hired former Bank of Israel Governor Ya’akov Frenkel.

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that Barak received the initial offer on Independence Day, at a social event where he met with the president of CitiBank in Israel.

Last week, Barak met with top bank executives in Israel.

The bank spokesman did not deny there were initial contacts but said nothing had been decided.

This appeared on the May 3, 2001 edition of Yediot Aharonot

Almost eight years ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yassir Arafat on the White House lawn, most people in Israel and abroad expected that Arafat would form a new Arab entity to restrain the violent Moslem movements known as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

That was the rationale behind what later became known as the Oslo Peace Process, wherein Israel was expected to cede land for a new Palestinian Arab entity, while Arafat’s PLO was expected to fight Hamas/Islamic Jihad and other Arab terror groups that continued to threaten the lives of Jews in Israel.

Yet, from day one, the opposite has occurred: instead of cracking down on Hamas, Arafat has created an alliance with them. When I asked him about Hamas at his press conference in Oslo where he was about to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in December, 1994, Arafat answered, “Hamas are my brothers. I will handle them in my own way”.

And when the PLO celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in January, 1995, Arafat delivered a series of lectures to his own people in Gaza and in Jericho, praising suicide bombers and refusing to condemn the spate of Hamas terror attacks which had taken place at the time Arafat’s speeches of praise for Hamas were televised by the new Palestinian TV network, the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, that is owned, controlled and operated by Arafat himself. Video cassettes of Arafat?s harangues became popular in the Palestinian Arab open market.

Arafat’s strategy was best summed up by U.S. Ambassador to Israel and presidential confidante Martin Indyk, who told the Los Angeles Times on March 1, 1996, that Arafat had decided to co-opt, rather than to fight, the Hamas. Arafat’s co-option of the Hamas was not only in words but in deeds.

On May 9, 1995, our news agency dispatched a Palestinian correspondent to cover the Gaza press conference held by Arafat?s local Palestine Liberation army police chief Ghazzi Jabali, in which the representatives of Arafat?s Palestine Authority officially announced that they would license weapons for the Hamas – this, only one month after Hamas had carried out an attack on an Israeli civilian bus near Gaza, killing six young Israelis and one American student, Aliza Flatow. Two days after that attack, the Voice of Israel carried a news item that the PA would indeed licence weapons for the Hamas. That news item was soon changed from “license” to “confiscate”.

At Jabali’s packed press conference, carried live on PBC radio, Jabali announced that Hamas leaders such as Dr. Muhammed Zahar – who was present at the meeting – would be allowed and even encouraged to own weapons under the protection of the Palestine Authority. On the same day, our Palestinian TV crew filmed an armed Zahar, standing in front of a skull and crossbones imposed on a map of Israel, as he addressed an angry mob in Gaza and called for the bloody overthrow of the State of Israel. PA police chief Jabali would later assure the Associated Press on May 14, 1995 that he was expecting Hamas and Islamic Jihad to “keep their licensed weapons at home”.

In late October, 1995, shortly before Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination, I asked him at a public forum about Arafat?s decision to provide weapons to the Hamas. Rabin acknowledged that this practice existed and quipped, “Maybe they’re for peace, too”.

For the past six years both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have openly operated with weapons licensed by the P.A. Meanwhile all levels of Arafat?s miliary forces acknowledge that they have recruited radical Islamics to join forces with them.

Arafat?s alliance with Hamas was exposed when the semi-official Egyptian newspaper Al Aharam broke the story of the formal PLO-Hamas accord, signed between the two organizations on December 15, 1995, in Cairo. That accord allowed Hamas to carry out attacks in “areas of Palestine that had not yet been liberated”. PLO General Secretary Marwan Bargouti, justifying a Hamas attack at a bus stop on the outskirts of Netanya, appeared on Saudi Arabia’s MBC TV and explained that the PLO could not condemn such an act since the territory “was not yet liberated” by the PLO.

And on each occasion when Arafat was asked to “crack down” on these Islamic groups that took credit for fatal terror bombs against Israel, he ordered the mass roundups that resulted in mass confessions followed by mass release of prisoners.

In thirty-seven documented instances since 1994, the Palestine Authority has offered asylum to Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who murdered Israelis and took refuge in the new safe havens of Palestinian Arab cities that were protected by Arafat?s armed forces.

Under pressure from Israel and Western countries, Arafat eventually did arrest twenty-two Hamas members who had been involved in bus bombings throughout Israel between 1994 and 1996 – all of whom were released at the latest round of riots that broke out in September, 2000.

A case in point. Muhammad Deif roams Gaza freely, armed and at liberty. Deif is the admitted Hamas mastermind of the October, 1994 kidnapping and killing of Nachshon Wachsman, the nineteen-year-old American Israeli. When I asked Arafat’s commander of the Palestine Liberation Army about Deif, he told me that he was under direct orders from Yassir Arafat not to touch Deif.

This, despite the fact that U.S. President Bill Clinton declared at Nachshon Wachsman’s grave in March, 1996, that Israel should not continue any negotiating process with Arafat and the Palestine Authority until and unless Arafat hands over Deif to stand trial.

Many close followers of the Middle East situation wrongly assume that the two entities – the PLO and the Hamas – are in conflict when, in fact, they closely coordinate every move under the administrative framework of the Palestinian National Authority, which represents the Palestinian state-in-the-making.

Our news agency has obtained a copy of the PNA-approved constitution of the new Palestinian state, jointly agreed upon by the PLO and the Hamas. That document, whose cover page thanks UNESCO and the Italian government for funding its law committee, declares that Islam will be the state religion of Palestine, that its borders will encompass all of Palestine – not just the west bank and Gaza – and that no other religion will have any status in the future Palestinian state.

And yet an unwritten rule seems to exist in the media – even in the Israeli press – to downplay any reportage of the PLO-Hamas alliance and their confluence of objectives.

This appeared on the May 3rd, 2001 edition of Washington Post