Does the United States Intend to Pursue Terrorists Who Murder Its Citizens . . . Or Doesn’t It?

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August 18, 1998

Since the terrorist bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya mad Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, President Clinton and officials of his administration have been vehemently proclaiming that terrorists who murder U.S. citizens will be pursued to the ends of the earth.

This pledge was similar to the platform Clinton had presented to an anti-terrorism summit meeting of world leaders held at Sharm El-Sheik in March 1996. I covered that conference that was hastily organized after Palestinian bus bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv took the lives of more than seventy people and threatened to scuttle the peace process.

Indeed, rather than in mere rhetoric, what effort did the Clinton administration make to “bring to justice” the terrorist-murders of American citizens who were among those who were murdered in terror attacks that were perpetrated by Palestinians:

Leon Klinghoffer, 76, a U.S. citizen, was a passenger aboard the Italian cruise ship “Achille Lauro” when it was hijacked by Arab terrorists in 1985. Mr Klinghoffer, who had been disabled by a stroke, was in a wheelchair. The terrorists, under the command of Abu Abbas, shot him and threw his body overboard still in the wheelchair. The PLO spokesman at the United Nations suggested that Mrs. Klinghoffer had murdered her crippled husband for the insurance money.

Abu Abbas himself has most recently been awarded asylum under the personal protection of Palestine Authority chairman Yassir Arafat, without the slightest protest from the US, even though he is still wanted for murder by the United States and Italy

Upon his arrival to Gaza, Abbas gave an interview to Reuters in which he explained that he ordered Klinghoffer to be shot because, even confined to a wheelchair, he was “making trouble” for the terrorist-hijackers.

Nachshon Wachsman, 19, a U.S. citizen, was kidnapped by Hamas in 1994, held hostage and finally killed. President Clinton met his parents, U.S. citizens Yehuda and Esther Wachsman, at Nachshon’s grave on Mt. Herzl, on the day after the anti-terrorism summit in Sharm El Sheikh. Clinton placed a stone, as is the Jewish custom, at Nachshon’s graveside. When the President asked Esther Wachsman what he could do to comfort her at this time of mourning, and she replied that wanted to know about U.S. government pursuit of Muhammad Deif, the Hamas leader who had planned the kidnapping and death of her son.

Clinton replied that the arrest of Deif and his transfer to U.S. custody was the highest priority of the U.S. government, and that Deif was a most-wanted criminal by the U.S. legal authorities.

Deif was also free in Gaza, under the control of the Palestine Authority, and President Clinton stated that Israel should not proceed with the surrender of Hebron to the PA until Arafat surrendered Deif.

Four months later, the head of the PA police force in Gaza informed Yehuda Wachsman that there were strict orders from Arafat not to arrest Deif.

Muhammad Deif is still free in Gaza. There is no record that Clinton or the U.S. State Department has ever called upon Arafat to arrest Deif or to hand him over ro stand trial in Gaza, Israel or the US.

When a journalist asked US Secretary of State Madeline Albright about this, she said that she had never heard of Deif.

Alisa Flatow, 20, a U.S. citizen, was studying in Israel when she was one of seven people murdered in the bombing of a bus by Islamic Jihad terrorists in 1995. President Clinton assured her father, Stephen M. Flatow, that he would fulfill his obligation to the slain American girl by pursuing the arrest and conviction of the murderers.

Today, however, Steve Flatow has trouble getting any information from the Clinton administration concerning the whereabouts of his daughter’s killers.

Yet Nabil Sharihi, accused by Israel and even by the Palestine Authority of taking part in this terror attack, was detained only briefly by the PA, not put on trial, not in the Palestine Aurhoity, not in Israel and not in the United States.

Meanwhile, the AP reported that he had been set free by the PA

Joan Davenny, 45, a U.S. citizen, was a school-teacher in Connecticut. She was on a visit to Israel when she was one of six people murdered in the bombing of a bus in Jerusalem by Hamas terrorists in 1995.

Abd al-Majid Dudin, accused by Israel of participation in preparing this act of terrorism, is living within the PA.

Israeli requests to the Palestine Authority for his arrest have been ignored.

The US has made no such request.

David Boim, U.S. citizen, was murdered in 1996, shot by two Arab terrorists while he was waiting for a school bus. He was 17 years old.

His parents, Stanley and Joyce Boim, both U.S. citizens, were assured by U.S. ambassador Martin Indyk that Imjad HaNawi, one of the killers, had been arrested by Arafat’s police, but the PA would not confirm this.

Indyk also said that the PA police were in pursuit of the second killer.

The PA also denied this.

Imjad HaNawi was not arrested by Arafat’s police until February 1998, after Joyce Boim had made four visits to Capitol Hill.

HaNawi was convicted in a Palestinian court of law as a accmplice in the murder of David Boim, and sentenced to ten years of hard labor.

However, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem cannot confirm whether HaNawi is still in jail or not.

Matthew Eisenfeld, U.S. citizen, was a theology student when he was murdered in a Hamas bombing of a Jerusalem bus in 1996. He was then 25 years old. Sara Duker, U.S. citizen, was murdered in that same terrorist bombing. She was then 22 years old, and engaged to be married to Matthew Eisenfeld.

Nafez Sabih, believed to have taken part in the preparation of this terrorist bomb, has taken refuge within territory controlled by the Palestine Authority. Israeli requests to the Palestine Authority for his arrest have been ignored.

The US has made no such request.

Yael Botwin, U.S. citizen, age 14 was among the four teenagers murdered in an Arab-terrorist attack in Jerusalem in September, 1997. The perpetrator of that attack was the second of the two men who had murdered David Boim.

The question remains: As a matter of policy, is the Clinton Administration really prepared to take action against terrorist-murderers of U.S. citizens, even when the identities and whereabouts of these killers of U.S. citizens are known to the US government.

So far, the Clinton record has registered no official protest against those who have sheltered and harbored those who have murdered American citizens.

It would seem that President Bill Clinton is committed to pursing terrorists to the end of a soundbyte.

Al-Ahram: Terrorism, Ngo’s, Arafat’s New Cabinet

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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August 18, 1998

Fertile Ground
Salama Ahmed Salama

Excerpts

The success of international terrorism in breaking through seemingly impenetrable security barriers and outwitting advanced intelligence techniques in the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings lays bare a new fact. A far more complex form of terrorism has begun to flourish, spurred on to ever more horrifying peaks by US policy.

The task of mapping international terrorism — its sources of funding, policy and executive branches, international routes and arms suppliers — has become the major focus of intelligence services, governments and many think-tanks in the West. These institutions have targeted Islamism as their archenemy and braced themselves to destroy it, instead of reconsidering their own policies, which have created the ideal global arena in which terrorism can thrive and attract ever greater numbers of “fanatics” and “extremists” who believe in very different things, and whose only common ground may be their dispossession and desperation.

The gravity of the Middle East crisis, which has exacerbated Arab feelings of incapacity to breaking point, Israeli intransigence, US double standards, the indifference of the international community, and the humiliation of the Palestinians are not the only factors nurturing terrorism. The systematic and organised humiliation and mass murder of the Iraqi people are also unprecedented in the history of modern warfare. The West’s attitude toward Iraq is provoking hostility and hatred of the US and the West in general, generating an urge for retaliation among a large and diverse array of factions. Terrorism is feeding off this hostility. The attacks on US troops and US interests in the Gulf were only the most visible expression of a generalised sense of outrage at the US’s massive presence there. Arabs and Muslims have had enough.

President Mubarak’s repeated warnings that the present state of affairs in the Middle East can be more destructive than an all-out war seem to have been proven accurate.

The environment created by the West is spawning seemingly limitless violence.

US endeavours to assassinate Saddam Hussein, organise acts of sabotage and overthrow the regime in Baghdad violate international law and supply terrorist movements with justification to engage in extreme violence. The events taking place every day in Kosovo constitute systematic and premeditated ethnic cleansing.

The Serbs are slowly but surely eliminating the Albanian Muslims. The operations which have been going on for months under the auspices of NATO are yet another episode in the Bosnian tragedy….

The US can indeed track down and punish the men who plan terrorist operations, but flagrantly unjust and biased US policies will continue to provide the ideal environment for terrorism to flourish. As for us, we will pay the price for whatever Bin Laden — or “Bin Clinton” — chooses to do.

Book Review
by Mahmoud El-Wardani

Full Text

Qissat Al-Gam’iyat Al-Ghayr Hukoumiya… Tamwil wa Tatbi’e (The Story of NGOs: Funding and Normalisation), Sanaa El-Masri. Cairo: Dar Sina Lil-Nashr, 1998

The noble intentions of NGOs aside, their proliferation in Egypt since the early ’90s and the plethora of international agencies and organisations funding them give one pause for thought. Delving into the phenomenon, Sanaa El-Masri has conducted interviews, gathered statistics and sifted with a thin comb through reams of leaflets and reports issued by NGOs. Demonstrating that there is no such thing as a free lunch, El-Masri skillfully traces the strings attached to donations and funds in return for which NGOs (the vast majority of whose members come from the opposition) are expected to deliver detailed, extremely revealing reports. Despite its grim conclusions, the book also makes for an entertaining read, thanks to El-Masri’s witty accounts of the goings-on in NGO meetings and their no-expense-spared five-star hotel settings.

EDITORIAL: “Cause and Effect”

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The synchronised bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last Friday are, in essence, a declaration of war on the primary advocate and executor of the New World Order. The choice of targets, the magnitude of the attacks (which left some 200 dead and 5,000 wounded), the precision of the operation and the solemn vows of retribution by Washington all indicate that the war will be widespread, vicious and protracted.

Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were the last places one would have expected to be the stage of a massive terrorist attack. But then, that is probably the very reason the terrorists targeted them. As the two capitals have never been known to harbour extremist organisations or to suffer from the plague of terrorism, security there was not at its tightest. This must have facilitated the logistics considerably.

In the absence of either a definitive claim of responsibility or official accusations from the US, Kenya or Tanzania, speculation has been rife as to the identity of those who planned and carried out the attacks. Islamist organisations, however — any or all of over half a dozen groups, acting singly or collectively — are the prime suspects for the moment.

The suspicion is well-grounded. Six such groups banded together last February and formed the so-called Islamic Front for Jihad (struggle) Against the Jews and the Crusaders — meaning Israel and, principally, the United States. The front’s founding statement included a fatwa (religious opinion) according to which Muslims are duty-bound “to kill Americans and seize their assets wherever they can be found”. The front included the Jihad Organisation, which has a record of violent activity inside Egypt, including the 1981 assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat. This group issued a threat against the Americans a few days before the East African bombings.

All of this means that the United States and its allies, notably Israel, are up against an highly professional organisation with a wide sphere of influence. All the Pentagon’s power may help in fighting terrorism, but it will never be fully effective as long as discontent and the will to resist persist. A better approach would be policy shifts in favour of the oppressed, such as the Palestinians, and away from Israel.

Rejecting Arafat’s “Formula”
Former Minister of Agriculture (PA), interviewed by Sherine Bahaa

Full Text

Why did it take Arafat a whole year to shuffle his cabinet despite repeated demands by the Palestinian Legislative Council?

Palestinians have been waiting this year to find real change whereby officials accused of corruption more than a year ago would be reprimanded and punished. In fact, people really thought that those corrupt officials will be referred to court.

Yet those people were reinstated in their positions. This led to deepening frustration and disappointment among the Palestinians. This was done in a way which would undermine the future of Palestinian democracy.

Do you think that the new cabinet will live up to Palestinian expectations?

If this government can guarantee the salaries of the old and new ministers (a total of 32), this will be an achievement in itself. I cannot understand the absence of a solid council of ministers who are really devoted to their cause, with determination to build their institutions, to build the bases towards sustainable development.

I am afraid this government is not the right choice for all these challenges.

What were the reasons behind your immediate resignation?

On 26 June, when the budget was submitted to the Legislative Council, I rejected it for a number of reasons. First, the absence of an institution called the cabinet and as such the absence of any institution which could really set priorities and draw conclusions on how we could really challenge and confront the expansionist policies of [Israeli Prime Minister] Mr Netanyahu.

Second, corruption and the formation of Mafia-type pockets within the system, wherein government positions are abused for the sake of personal profit. Third, the lack of respect for human rights. Fourth, the absence of any clear planning and division of responsibilities.

This was my position before knowing whether or not I was going to be included in the new cabinet. To be a minister under these restraints and problems is very difficult.

For the past three years, we have really failed to put an end to corruption or the lack of respect for human rights. I felt that I could not again be a part of this formula.

More of the Same
by Graham Usher and Tarek Hassan

Excerpts

A full year after 18 of the 21 ministers of the Palestinian Authority (PA) tendered their resignations, Yasser Arafat last week got round to presenting his “reshuffled” cabinet to the elected Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). The unveiling was greeted with relief by a few hounded ministers, outrage by many PLC members and absolute cynicism by the majority of Palestinians.

The call for a new government had followed a special PLC investigation into mismanagement across the PA ministries.

Published in July 1997, the report exposed a misuse of public funds to the tune of $326 million out of the PA’s overall budget of $800 million and, in the cases of three ministers, evidence of criminal corruption. It recommended that the three ministers concerned be put on trial. It also called on Arafat to replace his existing executive with a new one made up of “technocrats and experts” authorised not only to clean up the PA’s act, but also to ensure respect of the separation of powers required for any genuinely independent legislature and judiciary.

Arafat’s response to these demands can only be described as one of contempt. The new executive not only retains the three accused ministers in their posts, but, far from streamlining in the name of efficiency, inflates it from 22 ministries to 30, adding eight new “state” ministers without portfolios.

In his speech commending the new government to the PLC, Arafat said its role would be to “build Palestinian institutions, reinforce law and order and the foundations of an independent judiciary”. Many PLC members took this as so much moonshine.

Ashrawi declined Arafat’s offer of the Ministry of Tourism. “I cannot be part of this cabinet,” she said on 6 August. “It reflects neither the attitudes nor the structural, procedural and personal reforms that are needed.” Ashrawi was joined in her resignation by Abdel-Jawad Saleh, former agriculture minister.

Saleh, who was made a state minister without portfolio in the cabinet, accused Arafat of running a “school for corruption” in which “effective ministers are kicked out and corrupt ones are retained”.

Nor was the discontent confined to “independents” like Ashrawi and Saleh. In an acrimonious PLC debate on the new government on 8 and 9 August, many members from Arafat’s own Fatah movement vented their anger at their leader’s new dispensation. Fatah member for Nablus, Hussam Khader, mused that Arafat should no longer be referred to as the PA’s “Rais” (president) but rather as “god of the Palestinian people”.

Alarmed by the possibility of a split in Fatah’s ranks, Arafat was quick to take preventive action. On 6 August, he convened the movement’s highest decision-making body, the Central Committee (FCC), and, the next day, followed up with a “special” meeting of PLC members. Sources say that at this session Arafat resorted to a mixture of personal pleading, calls for national unity and implied threats of force to haul his truculent followers into line.

As so often in the past, these methods worked. On 9 August, the PLC approved the new government by 55 votes to 28, a majority ensured by virtue of the fact that affiliates make up 64 of the PLC’s 87 members.

The vote certainly marked the temporary end of a struggle between two currents within Palestinian nationalism that has been simmering ever since the PLC was elected in January 1996. This tussle has been less about the merits and demerits of the Oslo process than over the vision and content of any future Palestinian polity.

For Arafat and many of the PLO functionaries who returned with him from Tunis, however, issues like democracy, accountability and law are wholly secondary to the “main” struggle against Israel. For them, the only response to the crisis is the establishment of a “national unity” leadership, with “unity” measured in terms of fidelity to the leader rather than by suitability or competence to do the job.

With the countdown to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood now only nine months away, Arafat appears to be relying on the leadership methods he forged during earlier national crises such as Black September and the siege of Beirut.

The problem is that such methods ended in defeat in Lebanon and squandered the political opportunities thrown up by the mass, popular and potentially democratic struggle released by Intifada. For many PLC members — especially those who were formed by the uprising — the saddest aspect of the cabinet reshuffle was that it proved that, 30 years after he took over the helm of the Palestinian national movement, Arafat has neither forgotten anything nor learned anything.

Underlining that as far as he was concerned the issue of the new cabinet has been closed, Arafat left for South Africa on an official visit.

[The Debate] Before The House of Representatives on 5th August, 1998

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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August 18, 1998

Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, and Judiciary, and related agencies appropriations act, 1999 (House of Representatives – August 5, 1998)

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Chairman: The Clerk will designate the amendment.

The text of the amendment is as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr Saxton:

At the end of the bill, insert after the last section (preceding the short title) the following:

Title IX–Additional General Provisions
Sec. 901. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by the United States to intervene against a claim for attachment in aid of execution, or execution, of property of a foreign state upon a judgment relating to a claim brought under section 1605(a)(7) of title 28, United States Code.

The Chairman: Pursuant to the order of the House of today, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Saxton) and a Member opposed will each control 5 minutes.

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Saxton) for 5 minutes.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment is known as the International Terrorist Must Pay amendment. In 1996, the Congress passed and the President signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. This Act allowed victims of State-sponsored terrorism to sue foreign governments in Federal court for damages arising from terrorism.

In 1995, a young New Jersey woman named Alysa Flatow was killed in Israel by a suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist operation financed by and sponsored by Iran. Her family sued under the aforementioned statutes and proved that Iran had financed the activities of the Islamic Jihad, and received a judgment of $247 million in damages.

Needless to say, Iran did not voluntarily step forward to pay the judgment. As a result, the Flatows sought to locate Iranian-owned property in the United States. Recently they located three properties in Washington, D.C. owned by the Iranian government. They proceeded to go to court to have the court attach the properties for subsequent sale.

The court issued the writs of attachment, and the Federal Marshals were ordered to serve Iran with the papers. The State Department at that time stepped in and raised objections to the sale, in effect taking the side of Iran, and asked the Justice Department to intervene on the side of Iran.

The Justice Department subsequently made an appearance in the trial and argued that the property should not be seized, their argument being that it would allow the seizure of Iranian assets. Of course, if their argument holds, this would defeat the purpose of the bill that Members on both sides of the aisle voted in favor of in 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Iran therefore would be allowed to continue to finance terrorist activity without a price to pay. This amendment finalizes the process and creates a price for international terrorism.

Mr Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr Obey: Mr Chairman, I do not really want to oppose the amendment, but I ask unanimous consent to claim the time so we can explain why we are accepting it.

The Chairman: Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Wisconsin?

There was no objection.

The Chairman: The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr Obey) will control the time.

[Time: 21:30]

Mr Obey: Mr Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

It is my understanding that the committee intends to accept this amendment on both sides. I would simply like to say that, as some Members may remember, this matter was brought up before the House once before several weeks ago on a previous appropriation bill. It was then offered in a form which was technically not germane to the bill and was subject to a point of order.

We felt that the Congress had not had sufficient time to examine the amendment and to understand its implications in terms of the administration’s ability to negotiate and to conduct foreign policy. So we were concerned at that time.

We have now learned a bit more about the status of the law. There are still, frankly, some questions about the advisability of going exactly this route, but, frankly, the State Department has not been as clear as we would like in laying out what other options might be available.

So under these circumstances, I think it is advisable for the committee to accept the amendment with the understanding that it will need to be worked on in conference to make certain that it is consistent with U.S. national interests.

Mr Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr Engel).

Mr Engel: Mr Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

I rise in strong support of the amendment of the gentleman from New Jersey. This will help American victims of terrorism collect on judgments they have been awarded against state sponsors of terrorism.

As the gentleman from New Jersey pointed out, the Flatow family has gotten a judgment against the government of Iran, which sponsors terrorism. It is absolutely obscene that we would be in a position of taking the side of Iran. Iran must understand, as an outlaw nation, that we will never stop in trying to combat terrorism. This is certainly justice for the Flatow family.

By allowing this seizure of Iranian assets, this is something that teaches Iran, hits them where it hurts and let us them understand, again, that we will not accept state-sponsored terrorism.

It is ludicrous that the State Department had opposed this. Iran must pay a price for the continuing support of terrorism. I compliment my friend from New Jersey.

Mr Obey: Mr Chairman, I would simply say that there are some questions, also, the State Department has with respect to who should be ahead of whom in being able to make claims against countries like Iran.

Mr Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Menendez).

(Mr Menendez asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

[Page: H7268] Mr Menendez: Mr Chairman, I want to rise in strong support of the Saxton amendment.

We clearly gave the right to victims of terrorists to sue foreign entities for compensation as a Congress. That is what the Congress passed in the law. And it is right for us to do so, to give a victim with a court-ordered judgment, to be allowed to enforce that judgment against any and all assets of a country in the United States.

It is offensive, in my view, that any department or entity of the United States Government would actively seek to inhibit such a judgment. This amendment would allow the family of Alysa Flatow, who is someone who in fact died at the age of 20, a resident of the State of New Jersey, a young, vibrant woman who had a lifetime of opportunity ahead of her. Her life was cut short and her family devastated by a bomb which exploded on the bus she was traveling on in Gaza. She was absolutely innocent.

They have a court-ordered judgment. The judge actually gave them a writ to go ahead against property. We should not be interfering. We should be standing up on behalf of the rights of United States citizens to be able to pursue such a judgment.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Pascrell) who represents the Flatow family.

Mr Pascrell: Mr Chairman, Alysa Flatow was a student at Brandeis University. She was a woman of great character, both in life and in death. Those who received her organs can attest to the kind of woman she was. Her heart was successfully transplanted to a 56-year-old man who had been waiting for a year. Her liver was donated to a 23-year-old man; her lungs, pancreas and kidneys to four different patients. Her corneas were donated to an eye bank.

New Jersey will not forget Alysa Flatow or the struggle and trauma her family have gone through as a result of this heinous act and this senseless loss of a promising young woman.

Mr Chairman, we have had enough victims. We do not need to victimize the family any longer. Personally, I have had enough of negotiating leverage, quote unquote. It is time that we stood and stood tall for the Flatow family.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr Fox).

(Mr Fox of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr Fox of Pennsylvania. Mr Chairman, I rise in support of the Saxton amendment.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Andrews).

(Mr Andrews asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr Andrews: Mr Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Saxton). I congratulate him for it.

The life of Alysa Flatow was only 20 years long, and I am sure that her family feels a pain that is beyond description. But I am also sure that we can do something collectively here tonight that will help her life have even more meaning than it has already had.

We can change the law of our country and say to terrorists, whether in Iran or around the world, that in this country you will be held accountable. If you appear before our courts and you are adjudicated guilty, you cannot find a loophole or an escape.

This is a legacy that this young woman’s life can leave for generations to come that if, God forbid, if someone else is a victim of terrorism, those terrorists can and will be held accountable in a U.S. court of law.

I urge the amendment’s adoption.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr Rogers).

Mr Rogers: Mr Chairman, we have no objection to the amendment. As the gentleman from Wisconsin indicated, this needs to be discussed at some point before and during conference to be sure we are consistent on our policy. But we have no objection to this amendment and congratulate the gentleman.

Mr Obey: Mr Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr Saxton: Mr Chairman, I thank very much the chairman and the ranking member and all those who have spoken in favor of this amendment tonight.

Mr Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

The Chairman: The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr Saxton).

The amendment was agreed to.

The Timing of Terror

By

David Bedein

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August 11, 1998

In the wee hours of the morning of August 5, 1998, an Israeli patrol jeep was fired on near the Israeli west bank community of Yitzhar. It was a well planned ambush. The two young civilians, only one of whom was armed, were dragged from the jeep, and each shot in the nape of the neck, to ensure their death.

The tracks of the attacking vehicles led to Nablus, a city under the control of the Palestine Authority and the Palestine Liberation Army.

The background to the timing killings provides some insight into why the attack took place when it did.

On August 4, a discrete gathering took place in an East Jerusalem hotel, where members of the Palestine Authority Legislative Council met with Palestinian Arab human rights activists to prepare for the special PLC that was planned for the next day. On the PLC agenda: allegations of massive fraud.

Three Palestinian citizens groups have presented documented evidence that armed tax collectors of the Palestine Authority have been systematically embezzling funds from the health, education and welfare funds of the Palestine Authority.

Allegations of fraud are not new to the Palestine Authority, whose official Bank Leumi account on Hashmonaim street in Tel Aviv is nothing other than the Palestine Authority Yassir Arafat’s personal account, which can only be drawn on with Arafat’s personal signature.

That was the arrangement made between Arafat and Israel’s late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and such a “funding procedure” appears in writing in the Palestine Authority-Israel economic agreement that was signed in April, 1994.

The previous time that the Palestine Legislative Council had scheduled to deal with wide allegations of corruption in the Palestine Authority was on July 30, 1997, at a special session of the PLC that gathered for that purpose on that date at 4PM. However, at 1:30 PM, some Palestinian Arabs planted bombs at the crowded Machaneh Yehudah open market in Jerusalem, killing sixteen people.

Needless to say, as an American consular official reported to me, the subject of corruption was obfuscated by matters of security at the July 30, 1997 meeting of the PLC.

And so it is with the PLC session for August 5th. The corruption issue is off the agenda. Israel’s demands for security take its place.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Authority educational system has formally incorporated the Palestine National Covenant into its official school curriculum.

That means that Palestinian Arab school children learn that their role in life is to engage the state and people of Israel in a state of war.

Palestine Television airs daily scenes of little Palestinian Arab children who begin their daily classes in the Palestine Authority schools with the call to kill the Jews and to liberate Palestine.

That will most certainly divert the education for Palestinian nationalism from the civics of nation-building to an instinct to terror.

The focus of the PA curriculum remains the million Arabs who continue to dwell in the 1949 “temporary shelters” of the Palestinian Arab refugee camps, operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, on the premise and the promise of the “inalienable right of return” for Palestinian Arabs to reclaim the lands where hundreds of Israeli kibbutzim and cities have sprung up since the genesis of the Jewish state.

The Palestine Legislative Council could have devoted its August 5th session to take a major step towards housecleaning. After the murders of two Jews, the matter was deemed irrelevant. That is especially because the Hamas has been officially incorporated into the Palestine Authority. Advocates of the peace process had assumed that Hamas would be crushed by the PA, not welcomed as Arafat’s partner in the direction of the new Palestine Authority.

Yitzhar’s Neighbours

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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August 11, 1998

The following was culled from the August 7, 1998 column of Nachum Barnea, one of Israel’s outstanding correspondents and political observers, published in Yediot Ahronot, the country’s largest daily.

Barnea describes a visit to the Shehadeh Family in Burin, an Arab village near the Jewish community of Yitzhar, on Wednesday, the day two young Jews, killed by Arab terrorists, were being buried.

“Is there a difference between the residents of Bracha [another nearby Jewish village] and those of Yitzhar”, we asked.

Um-Basem, with the authority of the head of the house, her gray hair peeping out from her scarf, volunteered to reply. “A big difference”, she said. “Those of Bracha are better”.

“How”, we asked.

“In the beginning, they were the same. Afterwards, we killed one of Bracha’s head residents, and now they are okay”.

The room filled with smiles of approval. The sons smiled, and the daughters-in-law smiled and the grandchildren acted most joyfully, they who had previously acted nonplused in the face of the non-invited Jewish guests [Barnea here refers to himself]. who suddenly entered into their home.

“Now”, said of the daughters-in-law, “we are initiating Yitzhar“.

Israel’s Spy Was Right About Saddam

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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August 11, 1998

Former naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard confessed to passing classified documents to Israel without authorization between 1981 and 1985. For this, he was rightly sent to prison for espionage. People who spy for allied countries and who spare the U.S. government the revelations of a trial usually get sentences averaging four years. What extraordinary things, then, must Pollard have done to draw a life sentence?

Prison sentences are supposed to be proportional to the harm done. The preface to the still-secret memorandum filed with the court by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger states that “it is difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by [Pollard].” But while Pollard’s espionage subverted US policy in the Middle East, it barely hurt Washington’s intelligence operations.

Pollard gave the Israelis a roomful of analysts’ reports and satellite photographs — bread-and-butter intelligence products. He is not accused of giving away operating manuals or descriptions of the functioning of the satellites or of any other collection systems.

The kind of documents Pollard passed are written carefully to disguise the communications and agents on which they may be based. No U.S.communication intercept system was taken out of service or had its budget affected because of the Pollard case. Nor was any U.S. agent forced “out of the cold.”

Pollard’s damage to these sources and methods was theoretical.

The U.S. had given — and was continuing to give — Israel photos taken by the very same satellites from which came the secrets Pollard passed. There were no technical differences between the pictures Pollard was passing illegally and the ones the U.S. government was passing legally. These photos did not help the Israelis learn more about the satellites than they already knew. In fact, the U.S. government had briefed them and other U.S. allies on the capability of the satellites — especially after CIA officer William Kampiles sold the KH-11 satellite operating manual to the Soviets in 1978.

The difference between the pictures the U.S. government was giving to Israel and the ones that it was withholding lay not in sources or methods, but in the subject. Some senior officials of the U.S. government had decided that Israel should not have certain information about Iraq and other Arab countries because the officials did not like what Israel was doing with it. By passing precisely that information, Pollard damaged U.S. foreign policy. The fact that U.S. policy toward Iraq during the 1980s was bad did not give Pollard any right to subvert it.

Some senior U.S. officials were angry at Israel for getting in the way of their Middle East policy. In 1981, shortly after Israel had bombed the Osirak reactor that had been the centerpiece of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, Deputy Central Intelligence Agency Director Bobby Ray Inman went to Capitol Hill to criticize the Israelis, who had used U.S. satellite pictures to plan the bombing. Mr. Inman said they had harmed sophisticated U.S. efforts to build an important relationship with Saddam.

Therefore he personally had just cut Israel off from satellite information about Iraq and later began to send satellite pictures to Saddam.

Mr. Inman was acting on behalf of many of the principal makers of U.S. foreign policy, including Mr. Weinberger and later Secretary of State George Shultz, who during the 1980s sacrificed much for their vision of a fruitful relationship with Saddam. Mr.Inman reported to incredulous senators in 1982 that U.S.intelligence no longer supported the conclusion that Iraq was a major sponsor of terrorism. High-level officials dismissed concerns about Baghdad’s purchase of a chemical facility that became the centerpiece of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons program and during the 1980s these officials provided Saddam with U.S. weapons and intelligence. These officials also knew about — and failed to hinder — the transfer of German technology to the Saad 16 missile factory in northern Iraq.

This policy, vigorously pursued by Washington until the very eve of the Gulf War, turned Iraq into a danger to mankind. This policy helped supply the technologies that killed U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War — the technologies for which inspectors now are searching fruitlessly and that may well kill other Americans in the future. Pollard’s sin is blowing the whistle on an embarrassing policy — a sin for which he is serving a life sentence instead of four years.

Messrs. Weinberger, Shultz and Inman had every right to be wrong about foreign policy; Pollard had no right to express his disagreement through espionage. Nevertheless, it is wrong to criminalize differences over policy, and to use the justice system for personal vengeance. In the U.S., the penalty for subverting policy is being fired. For espionage on behalf of allies,the usual penalty is four years. Pollard has more than paid his debt.

Mr. Codevilla, a professor of International Relations at Boston University, served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985.

Report on Palestine Authority Summer Camps

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

August 4, 1998

Part 1. Educating Children to Violence
Part 2. Children’s Summer Camps are Military Training Camps
Part 3. Education Children to See Land of the State of Israel as Palestine and Israeli Arabs as Palestinians

1. Introduction

The Palestinian Authority runs official summer programs and activities for children that they publicize daily via their official television and newspaper. The main program is a network of summer camps run under the auspices of the PA. The declared aim of these camps is political education and military training of the children.

The child undergo training in weapons, hand to hand combat, as well as jumping through rings of fire. This training is mixed with open calls to violence, including a chant calling to push Israel into the sea. A clip broadcast tens of times tells that “they” destroyed and “took everything in 1948”. Finally, the map the children are taught has “Palestine” replacing the state of Israel while the children in the camps are divided into platoons named as regions in Israel. Numerous activities are geared to teach them that all the land of Israel is Palestine and they stress joint activities with Arab children in Israel, who are also called Palestinians. The box to the above right lists educational messages from television broadcasts and news articles from the summer camps.

Part 1 – Educating Children to Violence

Introduction:

The Palestinian Authority openly and actively educates to violence through summer camp activities, as broadcast on its daily television program which reviews the camp’s activities.

Education and Activities

* From a report on the Children’s Committee on Education
Girl: “I felt like an adult I held discussions with them and I may do so in the future, until we defeat the Zionist enemy with the help of the children, supervisors, teachers and soldiers “

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* On the summer camps broadcast, the announcer says:
“Jihad is the principle belief which will never end regardless of how many fall”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 12, 1998)

* “The camp theater group is planning to put on a play called “The Land My Land”, a national play which talks about the Palestinian’s devotion to his land even if it costs him his life.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 14, 1998)

* Member of Parliament, Jamilla Zidam said: ” These camps are a realization of our determination to mention the “tragedy” [Israel’s creation] in light of our right of return [to land in Israel]. She stressed that “these camps come to emphasize our determined position to continue in the paths of our fallen martyrs”.

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 22, 1998)

Songs

* Han Yunes Summer Camp

Boy sings:
I came to you with my sword in hand we will oust them [Israel] out to the sea. Your day is coming, conqueror, then we will settle accounts. Our accounts are unending in stones and bullets.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 2, 1998)

Girl in other framework

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* In a Han Yunes summer camp a boy calls out and his class shouts after him:

Boy: Youth win!
Class: Youth win!

Boy: Trained with weapons
Class: Trained with weapons

Boy: Revolution
Class: Revolution

Boy: Revolution until victory
Class: Revolution until Victory

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 2, ’97)

* In the program on the summer camps, on the parade grounds, one of the military trainers calls out and the children repeat after him:

“We have an obligation towards our country
We will protect her, both young and old
I am in a group of 500
My children are my redemption
My children, my children, oh, my country
are in the suicide squad

As long as the mine explodes
In a cry: Allah Akbar [battle cry “God is Great”]
I return to you, my country
The beloved land of Jerusalem

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* In the program about the summer camps, one trainee recites:

“With stones and bullets I will come to you, my country
Your soldiers and prisoners are guarding you
Young men and women and stones protect you
And where are you my country?”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 15, 1998)

* In the program about the summer camps, one boy sings:

One day they attacked
Attacked my country,
They killed the old and slaughtered the young
They burned the Koran and destroyed the house
They marched upon my heart
You are my country

Onward, to Jihad
Onward capture my country
Alla Akbar, [God is Great], Ah
Alla Akbar [God is Great], Ah
Alla Akbar, [God is Great] Ah
Alla Akbar, [God is Great] my country

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

* In the summer camp a boy recites:

“Palestine rebelled
Palestine was devoted
The belief is in its martyr
Blessed is Allah
Rebel, oh Palestine
Be devoted, oh Palestine”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 9, 1998)

* In the summer camp, and boy sings:

“Long live the intifada,
Long live those who participated
May your father die (Israel)
All who participated in you (in the intifada) are heroes
May your father die

[Later in the song] We will yet show Netanyahu [4x]

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

Part 2. Children’s Summer Camps are Military Training Camps

Introduction

* The atmosphere in the summer camps is that of a military camp. At the head of the camp staff is a camp commander and: “on the staff there are National Security men, military personnel and National Political Direction figures.”

(PA TV, July 12, 1998)

Summer Camp Goal Military Training for Children

* “Lieutenant Mahmad Matir of the Presidential Security Forces, who is responsible for the military training in the camp, believed that military training is obligatory for all participants in the struggle of our people, until we arrive at the point where all our people are well versed in military subjects. He added: “we also teach the girls the same military commands that the soldier learns.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* “The camp commander explained that the program has a number of aspects and among them is the focus on the military side, this is in order to create a generation which will be able to handle all possibilities. According to him: “Our people know the one truth and that is that the past is over, the present is here, and the future is open to all possibilities”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* The camp commander said: “The purpose of the establishment [of these camps] was to promote the coming generations from the cultural, educational, health and military aspects the deputy commander of the camp said that the camps are like a mission under the auspices of the political guidance to build a generation who is capable of shouldering the responsibilities of the present and the past, who can arrive at Jerusalem, fight the settlements and build the independent Palestinian state”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 1998)

* The camp commander says: “I thank the military supervisor of the summer camps we have 9 military trainers and a training staff that are headed by 2 people holding the military ranks of lieutenant “

(PA TV, July 7, 1998)

* In the program on the summer camps, dedicated to the issue of food supplies to the camp, the narrator says: “There are those who believe that because these young girls and boys are little, they need less food, however, there are orders from the President that the quantity should be like any other soldier”.

(PA TV, July 16 98)

* In the program about the summer camps, the person in charge of supplies says: ” we are coming close to a state under the leadership of Arafat and then we will need all these trained young boys and girls”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 16, 1998)

Training, Symbols and Texts:

* “Lieutenant Manzar Zwayd held a lecture on the technical and tactical characteristics of the rifle”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 9, 1998)

* “The military trainer, Lawy Abu, gave a training session alone to children on the subject of the art of battle and self defense using samples made of tires, plaster and nails”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 12, 1998)

* “Children scream ‘commando’ and jump into a burning ring.”

(Three times on different days – PA TV, July 1998).

* “Mahman Alnamar, the trainer, noted that the young boys are learning many military commands such as those being learned by the soldiers”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* “Hareb Abu Nahel, the trainer, said that he teaches the young boys about all parts of the rifle and about the way to use them militarily”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* A huge picture of the Temple Mount is shown, covered with blood, arms and heads and with Arabian horses going up to the Mount, while the anthem is being played in the background. This picture is hanging on the wall of a school and girls are standing at attention, some of them saluting.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

Additional military activities for youth:

* The second training course in memory of the fallen soldier Halil Elwazir began yesterday. This course is military and voluntary, closed [held] in coordination with the Prevention Arm of the Security Staff at Tel Alhu Headquarters. Also, the first volunteer training course, ‘Jerusalem’, for ages 12-16 started yesterday and will continue for one month, in coordination with the Naval Police and with the participation of 80 young men. It has also been decided that a third training course in memory of Halil Elwazir will begin today, with the participation of 100 young men and in coordination with the Military Intelligence Apparatus and it will continue for a full month.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

Part 3. The Land of the State of Israel is Palestine. Israel’s Arab are Palestinians.

A prominent message in the summer camps is that the territories of the State of Israel are part of Palestine and that their Arab inhabitants are Palestinians. This idea is expressed through activities, symbols and songs.

Activities:

* Summer camp activities will begin tomorrow with the participation of boys and girls from the West Bank, Gaza and within the Green Line, with the purpose of continuing the integration among the children of our people two camps will be situated in Jaffa and Nazareth [Israeli cities]

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 14, 1998)

* (From occupied Jerusalem) “Under the title ’50 years of Occupation’ and under the slogan: ‘we will not forget and we will not forgive’, the Palestinian Training Center opened the summer camp that will concentrate its activities this year on the subject of 50 years of occupation. The activities will include visits to the destroyed villages in the Jerusalem region: Dir Yassin, Ein Karem, Malha, Amuas, Lifta and the Old City of Jerusalem [all in Israeli]”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* A “Kite Happening” was held in Gaza under the name ‘Kites with No Borders. The kites bore the names of the Arab villages [in Israeli] that were destroyed in 1948. One of the organizers: “This happening is called ‘Kites with No Borders’ so that the names of the villages that were destroyed will reach over the borders to the Palestinian youth.”

(Palestinian Authority TV, June 27, 1998).

* “A delegation from the program: ‘Children with No Borders’ from the Alfuar Refugee Camp concluded its visit in the city of the fallen soldiers Sachnin [in Israel] at the request of the new party, in Lod [Israeli city] the delegation visited the mayor, the monument for the martyrs of Land Day and the villages from which they were banished the delegation also accepted an invitation to participate in the summer camps in Acre and Nazareth [Israeli cities]…

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* The directors of the program ‘Children with No Borders, which belongs to the Palestinian Child Cultural Center in the Alfuar Refugee Camp, received an invitation from the Arab Academicians Institute in Acre [in Israel] to participate in a meeting in order to coordinate the participation of the [children of] the program ‘Children with No Borders’ – within the camp program ‘Connection with No borders’, which will take place at Acre Beach [in Israel]

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 22, 1998)

Symbols:

Group names:

The Children in the summer camps are divided into brigades. The brigades are named after areas in the State of Israel.

* “Abed El Aziz Abu Hatmah, the Political Coordinator gave a lecture to the “Safed” brigade, and the Political Guide Fuzy Braha gave a lecture to the Dir Yassin and Tiberias brigades on the subject of the geography of Palestine”.

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 11, 1998)

* “The commander [of the camp] said they were divided into four brigades, which carry the names of the Palestinian cities that were destroyed by the occupation in 1948.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* The commander of the ‘Scientists” summer camp: “the names of the children’s groups are the names of the villages and cities of before such as Dir Yassin, Dir Snin, Almajdal, etc.”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 17, 1998)

* “[The camp commander said] The directorship for political and national guidance has taken upon itself to inform the camp participants that Palestine and all its cities and villages are our property and we are hers He added that there is a committee that deals with the preparation of maps which display our Palestinian villages and cities that the occupation destroyed in the process of conquering our land.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

The map of Palestine includes all of the State of Israel:

* On a report from the summer camps displays a giant map of “Palestine”, which erases all of the State of Israel. The reporter, standing next to the map, describes the self-sacrifice needed for Palestine.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

* In a report on the Children’s Conference on Education, the participants wore shirts with the map of “Palestine” erasing all of the State of Israel.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

Songs and Training

Four girls sing and dance:

“My country, I love her
My home is Gaza
My roots are in Haifa”

In a report on the summer camps:

Reporter: Where are you from?
Girl: From Beer Sheva
Reporter: Beer Sheva is one of the Palestinian cities now occupied

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* Vice General Abu Salam [The General Supervisor of the summer camps] said that we will not forget the names of our cities and the villages that were destroyed by the occupation, and we say to Netanyahu and his party that we will always work for the liberation…

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* A children’s television clip which was aired tens of times in the last months, depicts all of the country as Palestine and the Israelis as those who “took everything in 1948.”

The following is the some of the main text:

“My Country Her Name is Palestine” (children play and sing:)

“My box in my room, the room of my house, the house of my neighborhood, the neighborhood of my country and my country is very beautiful, there are houses and oranges and neighbors and trees ” [In the background there are children playing, and a multi colored model of the hills on which the children are “building” houses and “planting” trees]

One girl stops the singing and says: “Do you know what happened in 1948? They took everything! They emptied our room, they broke the house, they burned the forest, they changed the names, changed the names….

“This is still my country, she is very beautiful, the name of my country is Palestine”.

At the end of the clip, the children introduce themselves by first name and city, identifying their homes as places in Israel: a boy from Kfar Kassem, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa and others.

(Palestinian Authority TV, June 4, 19, 25, 29, and July 2, 7, 10, 12, 20, 27, 28, 1998)

Palestinian Media Watch
59 King George St. Jerusalem
Phone: (+972-2) 625-4140

The Odd Couple Fight an Odd Traffic System to Reduce Speed and Save Lives

By

David Bedein

-

August 4, 1998

To alleviate the many traffic concerns of the public, the Israeli government is planning to build Route 6, the Trans Israel high-speed superhighway that will connect the country from North to South. Israel’s first tollway, Highway Six, planned by the Trans-Israel Highway company, has been on the maps of Israel since 1976, planned as a 135 kilometer road, reaching from area north of Acre to the areas south of Kiryat Gat in the Negev.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem suddenly sports three superhighways that criss-cross the city.

The Finance and Transportation Ministries are confident that superhighways will be the appropriate solution to an increasingly automobile dependent nation.

It is exactly this dependency on automobiles and the repercussions thereof that Zvi Weinberger – the president emeritus of Machon Lev – Jerusalem College of Technology and member of the advisory council to the Israel Ministry of Transportation’s National Road Safety Authority – has been assessing.

Weinberger also heads the Center for Driver Research at Machon Lev

Also evaluating the risks is Dr. Elihu Richter, a medical doctor who heads the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Hebrew University-Haddasah School of Public Health. Dr. Richter also heads the Betts Project for Injury Prevention. also located at the Hebrew University-Haddasah School of Public Health.

Although both Weinberger and Richter are men in their sixties who both originally hail from the United States, the similarities would seem to end there.

Weinberger, always wearing distinguished dark suit, conveys a peaceful presence and character, lives in the Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, a man who is a scientist and Torah scholar in his own right, He stands in contrast to Dr. Richter, a self-styled secularist Jew, and a different persona altogether- conveying a very outspoken and passionate personality.

Yet Weinberger and Richter are the seemingly odd couple who have teamed up to combine their energies and scientific insight to spend now and the years to come to fight for better road transportation polcies.

When you see them together, it’s like imagining Agudat Yisrael and Meretz in a coalition.

Weinberger sees nothing unusual about a physicist working with a doctor, explaining that while a physicist can analyze a factor like the impact of increasing speed on the increasing death rate on the road, Dr. Richter brings the discipline of medicine, disease control, and epidimeology to bear on the matter, viewing hundreds of people dying on the roads as you would understand the spread of a plague that would have to be cured.

In the view of Weinberger and Richter, the contagious behavior that people have learned from one another on the roads, the increase of speed limits and the government’s obsessive urge to increase the amount of motor vehicles on the road are all contributing to the victims that this plague is claiming every day.

Dr. Richter has introduced the concept of The Case Fatality Rate to measure the influence of increased speed on the road that will increase the number of of people killed amongst all those injured. The studies produced by Richter and Weinberger show that any 1 percent increase in speed will translate into a 4% increase in fatality.

In other words, the Case Fatality Rate relates to likelihood of getting killed of the people involve in a crash.

For people from North American who understand baseball jargon, it is like calculating a baseball player’s slugging percentage, based on how many extra-base hits he has in relation to his total amount of hits.

Only five years ago, Weinberger and Richter warned that the increase of the speed limit on interurban ‘roads (from 90 to 100 on main roads and 80 to 90 on smaller interurban roads) would have the effect of increasing the fatality rate by 20%, and that is exactly what happened. The Death rate on interurban roads went up from 259 to 319 in the first year after the speeds were raised, and the rate has remained steady ever since.

This Case Fatality Rate, once increased, has stayed high.

This is what Weinberger and Richter term ” a sustained impact”.

This contrasts with what happened when the government lowered the speed limit following the Yom Kippur War, in 1974, you witnessed a drop in road deaths from 719 in 1974 to 399 in 1984. The point is that when you raise the speed limit, you induce people to drive faster.

The new Highway Six – the Trans-Israel Highway, will raise the speed limit to 110 kilometers per hour, while the speeds on the highway are expected to go much higher. After all, the brochure issued by the Trans-Israel Highway Company and Sonol Oil Co, promises travel times of thirty minutes between Haifa and the Sharon area, which is a distance of 65 Km, implying a speed of 130 KPH while assuring only a forty minute ride from BeerSheva to “the central part of the country”, implying even higher speeds

Meanwhile, the Orthodox investor on Highway Six, Mr. Lev Leviav, does not want to collect tolls on Shabbat, recently telling Globes that this will be an incentive for people to drive faster on his road on Shabbat and spend less time on the road on Shabbat. What Leviav may not know is that there is already a 20% increase of deaths on the interurban roads on Shabbat.

To be considered too the overall economic implications and the direct additional costs to families and it is obvious why this topic has attracted such a high level of attention from a vast and varied section of the public.

Translate these new high speeds together with the resulting spillover effect onto the and similar lack Weinberger and Richter warn that Highway Six will also cause an immediate increase in fatalities on tributary roads as well as the road itself. They predict that the Highway Six will cause a rise from its current average of 550 per year to something approximating 750!

“Speed addiction has certain parallels to nicotine addiction,” Dr. Richter explains. This country caters to an addiction which is deadly. The population needs to realize that the time is now to stop advertising, “the fastest” roads and cars and start educating dangerous drivers.

Weinberger and Richter sadly surmise that the government incentive to higher speed on the Trans Israel highway will therefore increase the Case Fatality Rate, on weekdays and on Shabbat.. Since the specific government-directed mandate of the National Road Safety Authority is to bring down fatalities on the road, and since the government has now embarked on a policy that will increase deaths on the roads, Zvi Weinberger took an unusual step last week.

Weinberger initiated a “rump session” of the advisory council to the National Road Safety Authority the Belgian House on the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus, and invited Richter to lead a session of experts from all fields – engineers, environmentalists, transportation specialists, concerned citizens and Ministry of Health officials.

Weinberger would not wait for the government-appointed chairman of the advisory council, Mr. Yisrael Kaz, to call a special session of experts. Mr. Kaz is the Israel representative of Volvo and also acts as the representative of the Israel car import industry on the advisory council. Only last week, when Kaz was asked by Israel radio about more cameras on the roads that would photograph speeding drivers at every possible place, Kaz responded by saying that Israeli drivers ( his customers – d.s.b) should not be harassed so much.

The presentations outlined how Route 6 will fail to meet the public’s needs and will not serve their best interests.

At that session, scientist, Dr. Gary Ginsberg provided risk assessments which indicated that particulate emissions from increased vehicle transport, notably diesel, will increase death tolls by several hundred persons per year and gave person year. These risk assessments indicate that induced travel, higher speeds, and spillover effect from the Trans Israel Highway could bring us to death toll of more than 1000 or so victims by the year 2010.

Mortality from tailpipe vehicular emissions alone in Tel Aviv is around ten times that from motor vehicle accidents.

If Route #6 is built, the main avenue/mode of transportation for the next half-century will be automobile based.

This will increase the amount of car ownership which puts more and more people at risk from emissions of toxic gases. Lung diseases, bronchitis, and respiratory illnesses such as asthma will all prevail.

All the experts present concluded that only a a massive shift to rail travel, and speed restriction could bring death toll down to under 300 per year

Almost all the experts present at the meeting had pressed the Ministries of Transportation and Public Security for their own studies about the results of the rise in the speed limit. Neither government agency has been forthcoming, although the statistics speak for themselves..

Professor Gerald Ben David gave a report about the introduction of speed camera technology that was used in a project in Netanya for a period of six months, a program that reduced fatalities to zero during its test period.. Ben David detailed how the program could easily be applied throuout the country, using the five year program learned from Australia that introduced hundreds of speed cameras, combined with a brutal ad campaign. The government has not continued the funding of the Netanya program, nor will it consider the “Australian model”.

I met with Shmuel Hershkowitz, recently appointed by the Israel Ministry of Transportation to direct the National Road Safety Authority. This was an opportunity to ask Hershkowitz about government transportation policy. Hershkowitz rejects any notion that lowering or raising the speed limit will affect the amount of deaths on the roads. Hershkowitz’s passion is to get everyone to drive at the speed limit and a little bit above, with the thought that this will prevent collisions. He rejects the idea that corollary roads to main highways carry any spillover effect with increased collisions.

And he also rejects the notion that Israel will adapt Australia’s five year program of speed cameras and brutal advertisements that reduced the deaths on the road down under by half. Hershkowitz characterized the Australian model as a “terror” policy which Israeli drivers need not fear from our government in Israel.

All you have to do to get a shudder out of Hershkowitz is to mention Weinberger and Richter, whom he characterizes as “irresponsible populists”. He was particularly angry at Weinberger’s initiative to call a special session of his advisory council, which has not met since January.

Herhskowitz constantly brought in Germany as a model of traffic laws. So I asked him about the rule that I had witnessed in Germany that absolutely restricted trucks to the right lane of traffic, with a maximal speed of eighty kilometers an hour. Hershkowitz’s response was simple: In Israel, trucks of course drive in the right hand lane, except when they are passing.

Trucks seem always to be passing on Israeli interurban roads, and not at eighty Kilometers an hour..

Hershkovitz had little to say about another study of Dr. Richter, which shows that Israeli truck drivers are forced to drive 15 hour days, and that the Ministry of Transportation has done little of nothing to challenge the trucking contractors who force drivers to work in such dangerous conditions, with the threat that any driver who will not drive for 15 hours will lose his job. Hershkowitz spoke about going after the truck drivers, not the contractors, whose power may exceed that of the government.

A tragic case in point: In June,.1996, an unlicensed cement truck driver from Ramallah, working for the contractor, Tzvi Barashi, ran through a red light at French Hill and smashed a fiat in the oncoming lane, instantly killing journalist Michele Coraine and her visiting colleague from Belgium.

The driver was brought to trial and given a light sentence by then-judge Eli Rubenstein, now the Israeli Attorney General, on the condition that he would testify against the Barashi contractors who had hired him, knowing that he was unlicensed and unable to drive a cement truck. Despite the driver’s testimony and an order from the Israel High Court of Justice to indict Barashi, the Israel District Attorney’s office has dropped the case, “for lack of public concern”.

It is for lack of “public concern” that Herhskovitz could not delineate any new policy of enforcement or inspection of the truck driver companies, except to say that he had invited five trucking representatives to his office to warn them that the government could use its powers to close them down. When I asked Hershovitz if this included T’nuva and the other trucking giants in Israel, he was surprised at the question.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Highway Six has been the reduction of train service in Israel, despite the fact that more than seven million train tickets were sold in the first six months of 1998. Suddenly, the forty million dollars needed to upgrade the train tracks to accommodate the new fast trains for Jerusalem were quietly transferred to the paving of Highway Six, which costs $2 million a kilometer to pave. Suddenly, on July 19, 1998. trains service that had operated to Jerusalem since 1892 came screeching to a halt.

This, despite the fact that the transportation of goods by rail rather than truck involves ten percent of the risk involved.

Meanwhile, at Weinberger’s rump session of the advisory council, members heard another surprising report that toll roads have lost money all over the world. The contract for Route 6 includes a clause that the government will make up any losses on the Highway Six toll road. Mike Friedman, a road specialist originally from Southern California, explained that in all three toll roads that he is familiar with, the Dulles toll road in Virginia, the Denver Airport Connection, and the Newport Beach, California toll road, are all rarely used and have failed miserably. Even though the banks own the road, the government shoulders the responsibility of paying the Africa-Israel group. In Israel, this “subsidy” could approach $1 billion! As taxpayers, is this a sure bet? Do high taxes have to become higher? The question that people in Israel need to ask themselves is whether health and education budgets have to be slashed in order to fund a dangerous, polluting, and sprawling blacktop?

“Whoever saves one life is as if he has saved the world.” The sages emphasize the value of even one human soul. The time is now and the power is in our hands to tell the government that we should reconsider our transportation future. 61% of the population think that the government should be spending money on building public transportation such as trains, subways and monorails. “Pikuach Nefesh” – the Jewish law of saving a life takes precedence of even the Sabbath.

The question that remains is whether “Pikuach Nefesh” be bought with special interest money?

In the coming weeks, Weinberger and Richter have assembled a new coalition to fight Highway Six, and the new government incentive to speed.

One new element that they are turning to is the religious sector of the country, to ask Rabbis and rabbinical courts to intervene to stop a policy that will cost lives. Most recently, the National Road Safety Authority organized a one day seminar on the Trans Israel Highway at Bar Ilan University, where they invited Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz of Bar Ilan University to provide an invocation. Rabbi Rabinowitz, who was going to give a tepid speech in which he was going to mention the importance of highway safety and to encourage drivers to be more responsible. Yet once Rabinowitz took a look at the studies prepared by Weinberger and Richter, the Rabbi termed Highway Six as a threat to human life, and he warned that the planners of such a road must place the value of human life over the incentive to profits.

Weinberger and Richter postulate that a proper combination of environmental activists, scientific data and the Jewish moral precept of Pikuach Nefesh can still galvanize public opposition to the speed plague of death on Israel’s highways.

Hershkovitz and other government employees of the National Road Safety Authority may now be affected by Weinberger-Richter induced ulcers that may be painful and that may save lives.

Next week, Zvi Weinberger and Dr. Eli Richter have an appointment with the Chief Rabbinical council of Israel, where Rehovot’s chief Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook will be placing Weinberger and Richter’s conclusions on the agenda of the Rabbis of Israel. Richter, who often says that skullcaps just don’t fit his skull, will make an exception this time.

Human lives are at stake.

Rabbi Kook lives with the memory of his older brother, the previous Rehovot Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Kook, who lost his life, together with his wife and two of their children, all killed in a fiery collision in 1972.

Hatred Goes to Summer Camp

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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July 28, 1998

This is part of the material presented by Minister of Communications Limor Livnat at the July 1 cabinet meeting.

#1 Article On Summer Camps In Khan Yunis – 7 July 1998

a. Boy sings:
“I came to you; I came to you with sword in hand; I came to you to join and stand strong; so they won’t be insolent to me….

“I call for revolution in my land; we will carry it to the quiet sea; your day is near, occupier; and then we will close accounts; our account has no end in rocks and bullets.”

b. One of those responsible for the camp on behalf of the “Authority for the Direction of Policy and Concepts” explains that they are training the youngsters in various areas among them “firearms of course.”

c. Boy calls out and class responds:
“Children are victorious; Training with weapons; Revolution, revolution until the victory”

#2 Children’s Club Program – 19 June 1998

a. Girl sings:
“Hey hello Jerusalem, I am the salvation…; I will never be silent, never; I will return with tomorrow; And with me my heart and determination for Jihad; And after the religion you are the most important thing to me… “

b. Boy sings:
“We are your children Palestine, standing strong, standing strong;
Whatever the occupiers do, they continue with their blows;
We will learn the religious verses and fight our enemies;
We have abandoned the entire world, in the conflict we have abandoned;
Standing strong, standing strong, until the liberation of all of Palestine;
We will oust the occupiers, we will live in security;
No… and no flexibility, until all of Palestine returns to our homeland in peace, flying the flag of victory.”

#3 Film clip broadcast scores of times in last months

“My Country Named Palestine”

Children playing and singing:
“My box in my room. My room in my house. My house in my neighborhood. My neighborhood in my country. My country is very nice, it has houses and oranges and neighbors and trees… “
(In the background are pictures of children playing and a colorful model of hills upon which are being built homes and trees planted. Between frames for a split second the picture of an Israeli soldier advancing with a rifle is shown).

A girl stops the song and says: “You know what happened in 1948? They took everything! They emptied the room, broke the house, burned the city, changed the names, changed the names… They put my heart in a box and closed the box. It is still my country. It is very beautiful. The name of my country is Palestine.”

At the end of the clip children present themselves by first name and home, among them, Kfar Kassem, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa etc.

Source: Palestine Media Review, directed by Itamar Marcus.
Translated by Aaron Lerner, Director, IMRA.

Israel Prepares for Trouble

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

July 28, 1998

Israel radio on Monday, July 13, reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met secretly with seven cabinet ministers for the third time on Sunday, to develop a “strategic policy” for dealing with the Arab Israeli population. The secret committee, including intelligence and security officials, reportedly determined that a “tough hand” may be needed to handle an increasing fanatical and fundamentalist tendency among the Arab Israelis, who comprise roughly 18 percent of Israel’s population.

Israel is feeling pressure from the Palestinians, neighboring Arab states, and even the United States, and is preparing for trouble. Egypt has effectively abandoned Israel and the United States over the impasse in the peace process, and Jordan this weekend also suspended relations with Israel. Jordan’s Petra-JNA news agency reported that Jordanian Senator Dhawqan al-Hindawi, head of the Jordanian delegation to the Arab-European Parliamentary Dialogue conference in Damascus, said in a speech to the conference that, “Jordan is currently freezing, without announcement, its dealings with Israel regarding issues stipulated in the peace treaty with Israel until the latter changes its current anti-peace policy and resumes the peace process on the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese tracks.”

Jordan’s action further paves the way for an Arab summit that has been in the works for the past few months. Syria announced on Monday that it was opposed to an Arab summit until Arab states freeze all ties to Israel and reactivate the Arab economic boycott. Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam told the London-based Arabic newspaper “Al-Quds al-Arabi” that the 1996 Arab summit in Cairo had “adopted secret binding resolutions, stipulating a freeze in the normalization with Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his expansionist policies, the construction of settlements, and the destruction of the peace process.” With relations with Egypt and now with Jordan souring, Israel is running out of friends in the region.

The United States is also not hiding its frustration with Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu said Israel only awaited Palestinian adoption of commitments on Israeli security before it would accept the U.S. plan for troop withdrawal from the West Bank. Furthermore, he claimed, “In the recent days, we have made a significant progress in our understanding with the United States.” But responding to the Prime Minister’s comments, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said, “The ball is not in the Palestinian court. The ball is in the court of the Israelis to try to work with the Palestinians and work with us…” In a meeting following Netanyahu’s speech, the Prime Minister and his security cabinet once again postponed a decision on withdrawal from the West Bank.

In a last ditch effort to forge an agreement, the United States has called for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, and has reportedly threatened to abandon its role as mediator if talks do not show positive results. Both sides have agreed to hold a meeting, but the Palestinians have refused to reopen negotiations on the scope of the Israeli withdrawal. The Palestinian position is that the current U.S.-backed plan to turn over 13 percent is a compromise, and if negotiations are reopened, they will begin with their stated desire for control of 40 percent of the West Bank.

The London-based Arabic newspaper “Al-Zaman” reported on July 10 that ten days of secret Israeli-Palestinian talks had concluded in a European city, perhaps Oslo, and had ended in failure. The Israeli side, which supposedly included an advisor to Netanyahu and the deputy head of Mossad, reportedly turned down Palestinian compromise offers of 12 or 11 percent Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and instead held firm to an offer of only a nine percent withdrawal. If this report is true, the prospects for talks later this week are grim.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa on Monday said that the planned talks were a “waste of time.” He told the UAE newspaper “Al-Ittihad” that “matters are at such a dangerous point they cannot be saved by negotiations here or there.” He told the newspaper “Al-Hayat” that he did not expect a solution to the West Bank situation by the end of July, and that the “general feeling” among members of the Clinton administration was that Washington would abandon the negotiations with Israel at the end of the month, whatever the result.

Finally, Radio Monte Carlo reported on Sunday that a group of 1,000 Islamic Jihad members met July 11 in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Shati. At the meeting, Sheikh Abdullah al-Shami, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, reportedly called for renewed suicide operations against Israel.

As its plans for dealing with Arab Israelis reveal, Israel is scared. It is losing the support of Egypt, Jordan, and the United States, and its Arab neighbors are drawing closer together, preparing for a summit to devise a common Arab response to the stalled peace process. Parallel to plans for an Arab summit are hints of an “Arab NATO.” Meanwhile, the potential for another Intefadeh is increasing, and radicals are preparing for a suicide bombing campaign.

The revelation of Israeli planning for internal trouble says a number of things. First, it is a signal to Arabs that Israel will take a very hard line against a renewal of violence within Israel. But moreover, the existence of Netanyahu’s secret committee reveals a rush to address the country’s strategic weaknesses. As we wrote in our June 30 Red Alert (http://www.stratfor.com/services/gintel/region/stories/063098.html), Israel is undergoing a fundamental strategic review. Israelis have long prepared for medium to high intensity warfare–armor and air battles. They now appear to be shifting to a U.S.-like, two-pronged strategy of deterrence combined with unconventional, low intensity conflict. Israel’s plans to purchase submarines capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads is the deterrent side. Preparations for the Intefadeh are the other side.

Israel can not stand another six months of news footage of soldiers firing plastic bullets at stone-throwing children. It can not tolerate suicide bombers destroying buses and markets. The question is, how can Israel stop it? Israel can attempt a total lock-down of the occupied territories, but can Israel also detain 18 percent of its population? It can attempt a decapitation attack, arresting or killing the leaders of the Palestinian unrest, but complete success at this strategy is nearly impossible, and new heads grow. It can attempt to infiltrate and disrupt the new Intefadeh, also a difficult and possibly futile task. Or, Israel can return to the table.

However the negotiations go, Israel is in a rush to revise its strategic doctrine to meet reality. Yes, Israel is scared, but Israel’s advantage is that, when it panics, it takes action to rectify the situation. Still unknown is whether Israel can complete preparations ahead of the Arabs.

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