Three years ago, Esther Wachsman’s life was shattered. Her son, Nachshon, a 20-year-old corporal in the Israeli army, was kidnapped and killed by Palestinian terrorists.

But instead of becoming a militant, like those members of Hamas who murdered her son, Wachsman has sought to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. As part of their effort, Wachsman and her husband, Yehuda, Orthodox Jews who live in Jerusalem, established a center in their son’s memory to promote the idea of tolerance and coexistence. Esther, who was in the United States last week to speak at Ohio State University, has traveled around the world to gain support for their efforts.

“My son’s blood cries out to me from the earth and I have his voice, and this is why I am not sitting home and just taking care of my children and doing my job,” Esther Wachsman said last week in an interview with WJW. “I feel at this point this might be my mission to cry out.”

The Wachsmans, who are not affiliated with any political group in Israel, have used their circumstances to be consensus builders with the ability to bring their message to Jews across the political spectrum.

They also have reached out to Palestinians. Yehuda Wachsman even met with the father of the Palestinian who shot Nachshon as Israeli commandos burst into the terrorists’ hideout in a failed-rescue attempt. Nachshon’s murderer also was killed in the raid.

Before the meeting, however, Yehuda demanded and received a letter from the father condemning terrorism and declaring that anyone engaging in terrorist acts deserves the death penalty. After the meeting, the terrorist’s father received death threats from Arabs and is no longer active in any kind of dialogue.

“There are [Palestinians] who are promoting coexistence, but it is a losing battle if they are afraid for their lives,” says Wachsman, originally from Kew Garden Hills in New York. “It’s got to come from an authority. The atmosphere has to be one that promotes tolerance and coexistence. The message that we are there to stay, and we are aware that they are there to stay, is a very simple message.”

One Palestinian promoting coexistence at the grassroots level, Zoughbi Zougbhi, director of the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, says there are many Palestinians working with this goal in mind, but are discouraged by what they see as harsh Israeli restrictions on their daily lives.

“Through justice we can reach a better solution,” he tells WJW. “Through justice we can have a better relationship, and here people will feel that rights are important, that dignity is preserved and they are on equal footing with others. Otherwise, it will not be a peace, it will be a truce. And we don’t want any more truces in the Middle East.”

Zoughbi, a Christian, says Arafat is committed to fostering peace but are in a difficult position, trying to reign in the militants while not appearing to be servants of Israel and the United States.

Even though he is committed to peace and non-violence, Zoughbi says he “can’t guarantee myself to be all the time a peacemaker,” reflecting the frustrations felt by the Palestinians. He is upset that his wife, who is American, has been denied a visa to live with him in Bethlehem.

After Israel and the Palestinians reached their historic agreement in 1993, Israeli schools added to their curriculum the theme of peace and coexistence with the Palestinians, says Wachsman, a teacher.

The Palestinians, however, have not followed the same path, she says. “I have not seen that kind of educational message” says Waxman. “On the contrary, I hear from the mosques, from the schools, from the television, from their leader, messages of incitement to hatred, violence and murder.” Waxman says Arafat has not spoken the words of peace as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did when he made his journey to Jerusalem in 1977.

“Everyone hears [Sadat’s] words still ringing in our ears, ‘No more war. No more blood,'” Wachsman intones. “You never heard Arafat say that, and he got a Nobel Peace Prize.”

The announcement that Arafat had won the peace prize, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, was made on the same day — Oct. 15, 1994 — Nachshon was murdered.

Last Tuesday, Wachsman made a quick visit to Washington to raise the issue of how U.S. taxpayers’ money is being spent by the Palestinians, especially the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), which is funded by direct grants from US ID, the “Agency for International Development”.

Wachsman joined David Bedein, media research analyst and bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency, who has closely monitored Arabic-language PBC radio and television. They showed Capitol Hill staffers excerpts taken from PBC broadcasts, which are examples of how Palestinian children still are being taught to hate Israel.

One clip shows a young girl reciting a poem for Arafat:
“I am finished practicing on the submachine gun of return… We swear to take a vengeful blood from our enemies for our killed and wounded. We will board a bustling boat which will take us to Jaffa.”

“The American people are under the presumption that you are out there helping poor widows and orphans, or feeding the hungry, or clothing the needy, and this is not what’s happening,” Wachsman says, reiterating what she has told lawmakers on several occasions. “What you are doing is supporting this kind of propaganda, which I don’t think the American taxpayer is aware of.”

On the second anniversary of the Rabin assassination, it is plain that leaders of the Israeli left still demand an ongoing soul-searching from the right. But they seem to be having trouble doing this themselves. Perhaps recalling some of the more important facts can help them get started.

The theme, now a permanent part of the country’s political folklore, is that poisonous rhetoric and verbal violence eventually created a climate in which assassination seemed acceptable. If so, then the sanctimony on the left should give way to some introspection on their part, for certainly there was no lack of violent and hateful rhetoric on the left side of the political spectrum. Moreover, no one’s rhetoric was more poisonous than that of the late prime minister himself.

Those who opposed his government’s policies were no less than “enemies of peace.” When Arab terrorists murdered Israelis, it was the fault of the opposition, called “partners of Hamas,” and “murderers of the peace.” Or it was the victim’s fault.

During 1995’s demonstrations on the hills in Efrat, we saw Peace Now on television at a public solidarity rally in the neighboring Arab village of El Khadr with Arab leaders, including Hamas. It does not seem to have occurred to the left that they might be the partners of Hamas, not even when Peace Now folks were shoulder to shoulder with their Arab brethren, stoning our vehicles.

Eyewitnesses testified before the Shamgar Commission that, at those demonstrations, one Yigal Amir spent days trying to incite Efrat residents to attack police. Numerous people who did not do so were arrested. Amir was never arrested. Why not?

The Rabin-Peres government never recognized the slightest legitimacy in complaints of the residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza over their safety and their fear of abandonment.

Rabin assured the Jews who live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza that “we will not dismantle a single settlement.” This was repeated numerous times by other Cabinet ministers.

Shimon Peres was quoted in a similar vein about a year later, and Rabin, in the spring of 1995, answered a similar question by explaining that the Israel Defense Force is pulling out, the PLO is coming in and he promised that “we will do our best to take care of the wounded.”

On the other hand, compensation for the residents who choose to leave places to be turned over to the PLO was considered out of the question because they will still own their homes in the Palestinian Autonomy, “the same as Americans own homes in France.”

Clearly then, what the honeyed words “we will not dismantle a single settlement” mean is that “we will abandon the settlers.”

Professor Moshe Zimmerman of Hebrew University compared the Torah with “Mein Kampf,” as a racist blueprint for the destruction of other peoples and likened the children of Kiryat Arba, the Jewish community outside Hebron, to Hitler Youth. How was Professor Zimmerman’s hateful extremism answered? He was recruited to the Ministry of Education and placed in charge of developing history curriculum for Israeli schools.

In the commemoration of the first anniversary of the assassination, the media recalled the rally at which the photograph of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform was displayed. I heard no one recall, however, that the person who displayed it and who called it specifically to reporters’ attention was Avishai Raviv, a Shabak agent, an employee of the Prime Minister’s Office.

The government put out a lot of dramatic press after the assassination about uncovering “Eyal,” the putative organization that claimed responsibility for Rabin’s murder. But it quickly became clear that Eyal was created by Raviv, who also recruited Amir.

Raviv, speaking for Eyal, took responsibility for the murder of an Arab in Halhul by gunmen wearing knitted skullcaps and otherwise disguised as Jewish settlers. The U.S. State Department called it a “settler execution” and opined that “this is how the settlers treat the Arabs.” In the end, the murderers turned out to be Arabs in an ordinary crime, but the damage to the settlers, the religious community and the right in general was done, and it was done by Raviv, a Shabak agent, an employee of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Raviv is only the tip of the iceberg. The use of agents provocateurs by the Shabak was first noted by Norwegian observers in Hebron in a report given to the mayor of Hebron and to Prime Minister Rabin. They reported that security personnel, dressed as Jewish settlers, regularly shot out windows and solar collectors and beat up children when people threw stones at them. Why were they doing something that could likely foment a pogrom?

The Rabin government also failed to answer a number of questions, including why they continued to trust our “peace partners” or how it will all lead to peace when in the last stage, Israel will be required to resettle between two and three million Palestinian refugees inside the Green Line or scrap the peace process. Rather, it employed repressive measures: manipulation of the media, disinformation, agents provocateurs, arbitrary arrest and detention, police brutality, show trials on trumped-up charges supported by police perjury, politicization of the police and the army, and public calumnies and incitement by members of the government, first and foremost, the late prime minister himself.

Take administrative detention, for example. The left never failed to denounce Likud governments’ resorting to this extreme measure as “fascistic.” But in the 13 years of the Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir governments, which included the height of the intifada, they resorted to it no more than five times. In the three years of Rabin’s government it was resorted to more than 80 times against Jews, more than 400 times against Israeli Arabs and more than 4,000 times against Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. This goes beyond abuse of power; these were political prisoners, and on a grand scale.

The litany could go on, but this should be enough to kickstart a little soul-searching on the left. It was, after all, the leftist Rabin-Peres government that declared war on the settlers, the religious community and the whole right wing, focusing on Kiryat Arba. Perhaps this can help the left to leave off their sanctimony and find it in their hearts to do something about healing the country’s wounds.

The writer is a lawyer practicing in Jerusalem and a former Los Angeles law professor. His practice includes issues of human rights and governmental abuses.

This weekend Hamas leader Ibrahim Makadmeh came out of hiding and returned to his Gaza home. Israel believes the Makadmeh is linked to a series of terrorist attacks.

IMRA interviewed Gaza Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in English, on 16 November, 1997. The entire interview follows:

IMRA: I wanted to ask you about the return of Ibrahim Makadmeh to his Gaza home. Did he make any promises to the PA to remain silent, not to be active politically or anything like that?

Rantisi: No. But I myself promised that Dr. Makadmeh would be a politician and not a military leader, as they thought. I told the PA that Makadmeh was a political figure and he will continue just as a political leader.

IMRA: Was he only a political leader before?

Rantisi: Yes. He was a political leader. I promised that he would continue as that.

IMRA: So whatever he did in the past he will continue doing the same in the future?

Rantisi: I told then that if he would continue underground then there is the possibility that he would act as a military leader. We want him to be a political leader and they agreed and so we closed that file.

IMRA: As a political leader he can say things in favor of military actions but he can’t plan them?

Rantisi: For example, you heard Sheik Yassin. He can freely say the things he believes. Just the things which are forbidden is a violation of the law.

IMRA: So he can call for attacks against Israel but he just can’t plan them?

Rantisi: We said, as political leaders – either me or Sheik Yassin, for example, that if the occupation will continue then Hamas will continue the struggle. We did not speak about operations as operations, since the political wing is completely separate from the military one. But we talk about ideology of Hamas. And the ideology of Hamas is that the continuation of the occupation is the continuation of the struggle. And Makadmeh can say that easily.

IMRA: And the continuation of the struggle is a struggle which includes actions by the military wing.

Rantisi: All kinds of struggles. Because our Israeli enemy uses all kinds of aggression: killing and destroying homes and arresting people, Judaization of Jerusalem, building settlements. They use all kinds of aggression against human beings. Against Palestinians. And they continue still going on in their occupation of our land. We want to liberate our land. If they will give us our rights peacefully we will be happy. But if they refuse the only way there is is to continue our struggle using all means.

IMRA: So the political wing of Hamas doesn’t call for any limitations or restrictions on the scope of the activities of the military wing.

Rantisi: We have a political wing and a military wing and both are wings of one organization So we have the ideology, the same thinking, the same strategy and the same goals.

IMRA: But does the political wing turn to the military wing and say “do this but don’t do that – throw rocks at settlers but don’t blow up bombs in Tel Aviv.” Does it say anything to the military wing?

Rantisi: No. Not at all.

IMRA: Did it ever?

Rantisi: No. From the beginning it was difficult for both wings to act together or for the military wing to get its instructions from the political wing because of the security conflict here. So we prefer that the military wing be free with its leaders. Just its leaders can direct the action and we choose complete separation between both wings.

IMRA: Are the military wing leader located inside the PA or overseas?

Rantisi: I believe that Israelis and the PA talk about two underground leaders. I believe that the military leaders are who are inside but underground.

IMRA: You were quoted as saying last week that in terms of actions that Hamas would take actions but not ones which would hurt the PA. Is that the position of the political side or, the military side of both?

Rantisi: I think this is the position of the military side. Because the political side really knows nothing about operations carried out before they take place.

IMRA: You are saying that Dr. Makadmeh could have become active on the military side – so its possible for someone active on the political side to switch over to the military side?

Rantisi: I said that if you continue in putting pressure on one person to keep him underground then he will think to act as a military one rather than as a political one.

IMRA: So its possible for someone from the political wing to switch to the military wing.

Rantisi: No. He will act by himself. No need to join the military wing.

IMRA: What do you mean himself? He will go out by himself with a gun or a bomb?

Rantisi: Yes. I am talking about things which have occurred in this area. If you are going to put someone in a corner then you will push him to be aggressive.

IMRA: How old is Dr. Makadmeh.

Rantisi: 45.

IMRA: So you are saying that he himself sneak into Israel and do something.

Rantisi: If I will be underground for the time and hiding from the PA I can’t keep myself inside a room without thinking about doing something.

IMRA: Last Thursday night two members of the Tzurif cell, Ismail Ranimat and Gamal Jibril Alhour, were captured by Israeli forces when they were in one of Jibril Rajoub’s cars. Do you think it was a set-up between the PA and Israel?

Rantisi: This is one possibility. The second possibility is that collaborators working inside PA’s secret forces tipped the Israelis off.

Dr. Aaron Lerner,
Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
P.O.BOX 982 Kfar Sava
Tel: (+972-9) 760-4719
Fax: (+972-9) 741-1645
imra@netvision.net.il

In the early years of the Tawheed (Islamic conquest of the Arabian peninsula) and in the Fatah (Arab-Islamic invasion and conquest of the upper Middle East and the outside world), a Muslim concept was devised to achieve success against the enemy, Al-Taqiya.

Al-Taqiya, from the verb Ittaqu, means linguistically dodge the threat. Politically it means simulate whatever status you need in order to win the war against the enemy.

According to Al-Taqiya, Muslims were granted the Shar’iya (legitimacy) to infiltrate the Dar el-Harb (war zone), infiltrate the enemy’s cities and forums and plant the seeds of discord and sedition. These agents were acting on behalf of the Muslim authority at war, and therefore were not considered as lying or denouncing the tenants of Islam. THey were “legitimate” mujahedeen, whose mission was to undermine the enemy’s resistance and level of mobilization. One of their major objectives was to cause a split among the enemy’s camp. In many instances, they convinced their targeted audiences that JIhad is not aimed at them, that indigenous people are not targeted, only Bysantium power. They convinced many Jews that they will be protected from Christians, called pagans), and they convinced many Christians that Jews were the mortal enemies, because they killed Issa (Jesus). THey convinced the Aramaics, Copts, and Hebrews that the enemy is Greece, and signed peace agreements with the Bysantines Greeks at the expense of Maronite Aramaics, etc.

This Jihadic agency of subversion was one of the most fascinating and efficient arms of the conquest. In less them four decades the MIddle East fell to the Arab-Islamic rule, followed by north Africa and Central Asia. Al-Taqiya was a formidable weapon, used by the first dynasties and strategists. Today, scholars may identify it as deception. But the JIhadic deception was and still is more powerful than the James Bondian methods of Western classical intelligence tactics, for the simple reason that it has a civilizational, global dimension versus the narrow state interest of the regular Western subversive methods.

Al-Taqiya is still in use today but not necessarily state-organized. One can easily detect Taqiya in the two discourses used by Islamist strategists. On the one hand, one comprehensive Islamist theory is attempting to mobilize Middle East, and sometimes Western Christia leaders and intellectuals, against “evil Jews.” We see considerable success on that level. And on the other hand, another Islamist comprehensive theory is attemting -with success also- to mobilize the Jews against “evil and pagan Christians.” One can easily detect the sophisticated work of Taqiya, for the strategic objective of Islamists is to destroy the foundations of the Judeo-Christian civilization, as a prelude to the defeat of an isolated Israel.

Taqiya is not a unique phenomenon in History, many strategists from all backgrounds implemented subversion. But the uniqueness of today’s Taqiya is its success within advanced and sophisticated societies. Taqiya is winning massively because of the immense lack of knowledge among Western elites, both Jewish and Christian.

For interesting examples of Taqiya methods, visit Christian discussion groups and forums and note the discourse of Islamist visitors, aimed at undermining the Christian perception of Jews, and visit Jewish discussion groups and forums and note the subtle anti-Christian discourse of Islamists visitors. It is really informative and fascinating.

Prof. Walid Phares works for the Department of Religion, Florida International University and is the author of “The Arab Mind”