Pollard: Israel AG Conspired to Obstruct Justice

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October 13, 1997

Israeli Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein conspired to provide false testimony to the U.S. Justice Department, according to Jonathan Jay Pollard.

The former civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel on the United States, made the charge in papers filed on Sept. 18 with Israel’s Supreme Court.

Pollard is seeking to bar Rubinstein from representing the Israeli government in a case now before that court. He wants the court to force the Israeli government to reveal details of its relationship with him during the period in which he was supplying it with classified U.S. material. He is also demanding the release of the full text of the commissions on inquiry appointed to investigate the Pollard affair.

According to Pollard’s attorney, Larry Dubb, there is a “strong reason to presume that these documents establish definitively that [Pollard] was an Israeli agentx and not part of a rogue operation.” The case is scheduled to be heard on Oct. 29.

It was Dubb who submitted Pollard’s petition to disqualify Rubinstein from representing the government on the grounds that he participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Pollard case.

On Nov. 21, 1985, Rubinstein was deputy chief of mission at Israel’s Washington embassy when Pollard attempted to enter in order to avoid arrest. He was refused entry and immediately taken into custody by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pollard’s quest to force the Israeli government to acknowledge that he was a formal, official agent lies at the heart of his current legal strategy. If he was an official agent, he and his attorney will argue, Israel has a legal obligation to secure his release. Since his arrest, Israel has sought to blame the operation on a “rogue” element within military intelligence, and to deflect responsibility from the top political echelons.

This latest twist in the long Pollard affair comes as a confidential State Department document sheds light on the tense relations between Washington and Jerusalem that followed Pollard’s arrest and the decision to promote his Israeli contact, Aviam Sella. The cable was released to Pollard under the Freedom of Information Act and has been made available exclusively to the New Jersey Jewish News.

During the period after Sella had been indicted by the Americans and promoted by the Israelis, the Israeli government was portraying the intelligence services and air force as virtually out of control.

The March 1987 cable on “Pollard Case Aftermath” was sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to then secretary of state George W. Shultz. The cable details the record of a March 11, 1987, discussion between the U.S. deputy chief of mission, in effect the embassy’s number two man, and a senior Israeli official or politician.

Arthur Hughes, now retired, was the embassy’s DCM in March 1987. The identity of the senior Israeli is not known; the individual’s name was blanked out of the FOIA-released document. Although Pollard expressed surprise that a member, or participant, in an inner cabinet meeting would “spill his guts” to the Americans, a high-level U.S. source has indicated to NJJN that the working lunch was routine.

The discussion came a little over a week after a federal indictment was handed down against Sella on March 3, 1987, charging him with three counts of espionage. Eighteen days after the meeting, Israel would announce that Sella would not be promoted to the command of the Tel Nof Air Force Base.

The Israeli who met with Hughes was sufficiently highly placed to have come to the embassy straight from a lengthy crisis meeting of the inner cabinet. The discussion took place “over a crackers-and-cheese luncheon,” after the Israeli failed to keep a “restaurant luncheon date with DCM, [because] the prime minister had asked him not to leave until the inner cabinet meeting on the Pollard affair was over.”

In March 1987, Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister, heading a national unity government that included the Labor Party. Members of the inner cabinet included Shamir, Moshe Arens, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, among others. Traditionally, aides and advisers are also present at such meetings.

According to the cable, the senior Israeli believed “that the Pollard case had the potential to bring down the national unity government. If Sella were fired, he would become a folk hero, as has Pollard, and the public outcry could lead to collapse of the NUG [the national unity government]. GOI [the Government of Israel] is coming under increasing public pressure because of mounting dissatisfaction with the way the Pollard affair and its aftermath have been handled and some kind of official inquiry would be the best way of dealing with it. The domestic Israeli aspectsxhave the precedence over the U.S.-GOI aspects.”

Pollard’s charge against Rubinstein stems from evidence in a new book by Leonard Garment, the Brooklyn-born attorney who served in various capacities in two administrations, including as president Richard M. Nixon’s confidante and White House counsel.

The key evidence supporting Pollard’s charge is found on pages 369-374 of Garment’s book Crazy Rhythm (Random House Publishing, 1997).

Following Pollard’s arrest, Garment was retained to represent Sella, the Israel Air Force colonel who had helped “handle” Pollard. During a trip to Israel to meet with Sella and his circle, Garment was told two contrasting versions of Sella’s role. The “official” version, favored by Sella’s Israeli team, essentially dismissed Sella’s role. On the one occasion when Garment spoke at length with his client alone, however, he received Sella’s account of his extensive involvement and took notes.

In June 1986, Sella’s Israeli team arrived in Washington and told Garment they wanted him to give the Justice Department their version alleging Sella’s non-involvement. Rubinstein was one of the Israelis at the critical meeting at Garment’s home.

Garment’s proposed draft was overruled and the Israelis insisted that theirs would be the one handed to Justice. Garment told the Israelis he would have no part in it because it “was demonstrably false, and the U.S. prosecutors could prove it.”

The Israelis demanded to know how Garment could be so certain that his version of events was correct. When he read them his handwritten notes from his conversation with Sella, they heatedly demanded that he hand them over. He refused. After some shoving, the Israelis huddled, then told Garment that he was fired. Now that he was no longer Sella’s attorney, they continued, he had no claim on, and no need for, the notes. Garment stood his ground and the confrontation subsided.

As a result of his having been there at the time, says Pollard, Rubinstein “was involved in a conspiracy in 1986 to obstruct justice in the U.S.”

According to Garment, Israel “tried to keep Sella’s name out of the investigations, [because] U.S. intelligence experts would have known that if an officer of his importance was involved in the operation, it would never have taken place without high-level approval.”

Sella was the up-and-coming IAF star who had commanded the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear facility in Osiraq; following Pollard’s arrest, Israel initially denied that he had a senior Israeli handler. Meanwhile, Sella was promoted and assigned to command the Tel Nof base.

This infuriated the American government. U.S. government sources intimately familiar with the Washington-Jerusalem dialogue at the time have confirmed to the NJJN the substance of the March 11 cable.

The senior Israeli complained that “the government had to figure out a way to keep the intelligence services under control, but he was not sure how that could be done” – a comment that implied that in the Pollard affair, the top political echelons had not known what the intelligence services were doing.

For the Americans, it was “intolerable” that Sella should be promoted and that LAKAM chief Rafi Eitan, Sella’s senior, also received a plum new assignment. If Pollard was a rogue agent, they argued, why promote his handlers? The American message to the Israelis was: Resolve this.

According to the cable, the senior Israeli felt the government was “in a squeeze with respect to Sella” and “thought that some kind of inquiryxwould diffuse the situation and allow things to cool off. Moreover, it would relieve the government itself from the tough decision of what to do about Sella. If the result of the inquiry was that he or others had to go, then no one could blame the government.”

The senior Israeli said “the government had to figure out a way to keep the intelligence services under control, but he wasn’t sure how that could be done.”

The DCM replied that if, as Israel maintained, Sella and Eitan “had violated policy andxhad ignored procedures,” they should be “punished. The symbolism of Sella and Eitan being rewarded not only would give encouragement to others in the future to engage in similar operations, but was a major contributor to the difficulties at present between our two countries. The advancement of Sella was a clear contradiction of Israel’s commitment to the U.S. that individuals involved in the Pollard case would be dealt with accordingly. Sella and Tel Nof were now off limits, as far as we were concerned.”

Pressed on Sella’s promotion, the Israeli “again referred to the possibility of the government falling if it were to fire Sella. He blamed [then defense minister] Rabin for getting the government into this mess because he had not stood up to the Israel Air Force and Chief of Staff Levy in quashing Sella’s assignment as Tel Nof commander.” The Israeli “said that Rabin’s reputation as a strong Minister of Defense with strong relations with the forces was ‘no more.'”

The fact that the Israeli underscored a close tie to the prime minister, and then blamed the intelligence services for the Pollard affair and the air force for imposing the Sella promotion on a weak defense minister indicates the possibility that he was delivering a message from the prime minister to the U.S. secretary of state, sources said.

In the event, the strategy of appointing inquiry commissions to get the government off the hook backfired. According to Pollard, the Eban and Rottenstreich-Tzur commissions “pointed a finger at the Ministry of Defense, all way to the top.”

The Eban committee report, most of which remains classified, stated that the “decision to run Pollard and all the stages of implementation were made by officials of the state who drew their authority from the government and, more accurately, from the intelligence services of the State of Israel.”

Pollard, however, said those responsible for his espionage included the top political leaders. “Some tasking orders bore the stamp of the military adviser to the prime minister,” he said. “It was not a ‘rogue operation,'” Pollard insisted. “My material was discussed in the cabinet.”

In trying to limit the damage, Pollard said, the Israeli government “submitted fraudulent testimony” about Sella “designed to obscure the fact this was an official operation.”

Pollard believes that Israel’s Sella strategy brought Washington’s full “wrath” on his own head. “The U.S. government was hysterical about Eitan and Sella being promoted, and they took it out on me.”

David Twersky is NJJN Editor-in-Chief

Permission to Reprint with Appropriate Credits

View from Fourth Circle: The Real, Historic Dangers, Opportunities in the Middle East

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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October 13, 1997

Cloak-and-dagger-style assassination attempts, urban car chases, midnight releases from jail, rumours of detainee swaps, and on-again,off-again diplomatic negotiations dominate the news headlines in the Middle East these days – but don’t be fooled, for the real contours of our region’s history are to be found elsewhere.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has become almost marginal to most Middle Easterners by any measure of accounting, and appears to be inching towards a clumsy compromise that promises to fully satisfy no single party.

It is possible that the sort of Arab-Israeli peace being negotiated these days will be a replay of two other flawed peace accords in recent memory – the U.S.-Vietnamese peace treaty of 1973, and the May 1993 Lebanon-Israel accord. Both unravelled or were never implemented, because they did not achieve a balanced and fair compromise; rather, they institutionalized the prevailing power imbalances and chronic humiliations that plagued one of the key parties. The Arab-Israeli peace process may follow a similar route, though I personally hope that things will not prove so gloomy.

The more interesting trend these days throughout the Middle East, especially in the Levant area, is how so many people from all walks of life appear to have put the Arab-Israeli conflict aside or even behind them, in terms of their day-to-day preoccupations. This is not because they feel it has been resolved – rather, they feel it is unlikely to be resolved fairly, and so more and more people in the region focus their energies on equally pressing but more attainable issues.

Consequently, and broadly speaking, Arab passions are steadily subsiding over traditionally hot and often humiliating issues like the Arab-Israeli conflict and the encounter with Western imperial and colonial powers. The main issues that drive ordinary people’s concerns and mobilise them politically are domestic, often very local – issues about social and legal equity, economic well-being, family security, personal respect and freedoms, and a wide sense of human dignity. The pressing power relationship on the minds of most ordinary Arabs, I would suggest, is not vis-a-vis Israel or Western powers, but rather vis-a-vis our own central governments and domestic political powers.

Three Arab countries are particularly worth watching in this respect – Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. They may offer a glimpse into whether domestic political attitudes are likely to promote future political stability or turbulence in this region. All three countries have opened up sufficient political space for the free expression of ideas, ideologies and identities, and what we witness in these lands is instructive.

In Lebanon, the former leader of the Hizbollah organisation, Sheikh Subhi Tufaili, has launched a civil disobedience drive that he calls “the revolt of the hungry.” His mass movement, centred on the economically depressed Bekaa Valley and Hermel regions, aims to check the deterioration in many Lebanese people’s living standards and basic education, health and employment conditions. Even the rightist Phalangist leader Karim Pakradouni has warned that the Lebanese government’s focus on laissez-faire economics and its lack of attention to rising poverty threaten to spark massive social and political unrest. He has warned that the continuing shrinkage of the Lebanese middle class and the advent of 30 per cent of the population living in poverty are promoting anger and disillusionment that are not confined to the Shi’a poor, but also plague other Lebanese Muslims and Christians. An estimated 200,000 people are impacted by the economic recession in the Baalbek-Hermel areas in Lebanon.

In Egypt, a potential mass movement against the government has been sparked by the implementation of a new law that lifts long-standing rent controls on agricultural land. The law allows landowners to renew their leases with tenant farmers on terms much more favourable to the land owners, or to terminate the leases (with compensation) and throw the peasant farmers off lands that they have worked for decades. Violent and peaceful protests against the new land law have already resulted in deaths, injuries and imprisonment. Up to five million Egyptians may feel the consequences of the new land law.

In Jordan, a combination of stringent economic adjustment policies, the still controversial peace accord with Israel, and increasingly vocal concerns about the quality of political liberalisation has sparked a potentially powerful but still slightly diffused opposition coalition comprising leftists, pan-Arab nationalists, Islamists and Transjordanian nationalists. About 20 per cent of Jordanians are thought to live at or below the poverty line. Not surprisingly, the expressions of discontent and fear by ordinary Lebanese, Jordanians and Egyptians have generated economic and political resistance that is being tapped by a new breed of political activists in all three countries. Coincidentally, also in all three states the International Monetary Fund and World Bank continue to issue upbeat reports on the potential benefits of impressive macro-economic adjustment. Expressing the common dilemma that their central governments can routinely call on built-in majorities in their national parliaments, opposition forces in all three states are attempting to mobilise new constituencies comprising alliances of the economically poor, the socially marginalised and the politically discontented.

At stake here is not only the immediate material well-being of citizens and their families, but also the fate of law-based political cultures based on foundations of respect, trust, dialogue, and consensus-building. Even though all three states enjoy open, democratising political systems that permit public expression of opposition to state policies, the three systems have also repeatedly failed to achieve workable compromises on important domestic socio-economic issues such as food subsidies, employment, education, medical care, low-cost housing, and other such basic needs issues.

The slow shift in people’s concerns at the grassroots level from Israel and imperialism to bread and jobs looms now as the single greatest test of these and other Arab states’ political capacity to respond to their citizens’ mounting concerns in an effective, peaceful and sustained manner. The worst-case scenario danger is that continued tension and stalemate in addressing real-life socio-economic needs may result in corrosion in political trust, discrediting of democratic pluralism, widening disparities in living standards and political power, and polarisation of society into bitter and violent camps of haves and have-nots. The corresponding opportunity is to accept the expressions of discontent as genuine manifestations of real, indigenous concerns by loyal citizens, and to respond to them through a strengthening of democratic consensus-building and the political culture of reasonable compromise and power-sharing.

Algeria, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and other fractured Arab states stand as frightening reminders of what can happen when the opportunity is missed and the danger is activated – when power elites and political systems ignore or only pay lip service to the early warning signs of genuine domestic discontent rooted in socio-economic disparity. The real historic events taking place in the Middle East these days are only marginally related to the Arab-Israeli peace-making process that dominates the headlines; they are more centrally anchored in contentious political, social and economic contests and trends within individual countries.

Hamas Chief Rantisi

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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October 13, 1997

Suicide attacks prevent massacres of Arabs.
Israel’s occupation of Palestine will end when the Arabs and Muslim world are strong.

Excerpts from interview:

“When Mr. Arafat kissed me, it was a routine kiss, not a political kiss”, said Hamas’s political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, smiling.

Rantisi was referring to the now famous photograph that captured him being embraced by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at a Palestinian “National Unity” conference…. the image has since been used by Netanyahu as evidence that Arafat is more interested in “embracing terrorism” than “fighting” it.

Rantisi cuts a remarkably relaxed figure…. That may be because he knows he is unlikely to be netted in the PA’s current sweep…. the PA’s Gaza head of Preventive security, Mohamed Dahlan, declared that there would be no mass arrests… and that Rantisi was not on the PA’s “wanted list.”

There are reasons for the PA’s reticence.

One is Rantisi’s pedigree of struggle. Born in the Palestine village of Jibna in 1947… Rantisi has been a refugee since 1948 and is a pediatrician who has spent the better part of the last decade in Israeli prisons. In 1992 he acquired international renown as the spokesperson of the 415 suspected Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters Israel expelled to… South Lebanon.

…

But a stronger reason is Rantisi’s position in Hamas. By common assent, he is the Islamist’s most senior political leader in Gaza and probably throughout the Occupied Territories. He is credited with healing the breach that appeared between Hamas’s Gaza and Jordan based leaderships after the mauling the movement received at the hands of the PA following the 1996 suicide operations.

Over the last six months Hamas partially reactivated its network of social services throughout the Gaza Strip and, following the collapse of the Oslo process, scored impressive political victories in elections for Gaza’s UNRWA and Engineers’ staff associations….

Unlike some Islamist intellectuals, he [Rantisi] has little time for talk of alliance with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement to unite Palestinian ranks at a time of national crisis. “I see Fatah as part of the PA,” he says, “I hope Fatah will soon realize its mistake in supporting Oslo.” Nor is he overly troubled as to whether suicide bombings hurt or help the Palestinian cause. “I don’t know if the military operations [suicide bombings] make Palestinians stronger or weaker”, he says. “I only know what every Palestinian knows [namely] that without revenge, Israeli attacks like the massacre in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque will be repeated.”

Rantisi’s overall vision for liberating Palestine is similarly basic. “We must wait”, he says. “Israel’s occupation of Palestine has lasted 50 years, which is not a long time in the life of a state. Palestinians must be patient until they and the Arab and Muslim world are strong again.”

Who Says that Baseball is Not a Religion?

By

David Bedein

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October 13, 1997

Having just finished Yom Kippur in Israel, I read a thoughtful internet news column by a Rabbi Rami Shapira, who appealed to South Florida’s Jewish community to respect Yom Kippur more than the baseball playoffs that took place on the same day between the Florida Marlins and the Atlanta Braves.

As an observant Jew, I would agree that Rabbi Shapira’s point is well taken, except that the Rabbi goes on to make an inappropriate comment, which is that, after all, “baseball is not a religion”.

I beg to differ.

On the eve after Yom Kippur, the time has come for some true confessions.

Yes, I have sinned with my mitt and scorecard in place.

You see, I grew up in Philadelphia, a place where the Phillies never won. Prayers never helped. And then 1964 came, the year after my Bar Mitzvah, when my chabad teacher had told me that it was now up to me to keep Mitzvot or not. I was of age.

The Phillies looked like they were going to win.

I put in a special prayer for the Phillies on the first day of Rosh HaShanah, reciting the lineup and even the bullpen when the ark was open for special prayers.

But I decided that the second day of Rosh HaShanah would require a personal pilgrimage to Connie Mack Stadium.

So after I heard the Shofar at Overbrook Park Congregation I quietly moved to the back of the schule, feigning a tummy ache to my little brother and sister.

I had five crisp one dollar bills that wouldn’t jingle, which I had saved from my summer paper route for the Inquirer and I looked this way and that, feeling like Moses who had just killed the Egyptian and made a dash from the bathroom near the old men who were talking in the back, and calmly walked two blocks to the bus that took me to 69th street and then the subway.

Wearing my bar mitzvah suit, I was on my way to Connie Mack, in line for great unreserved seats behind home plate.

I had thought of everything: My Phillies Hat was in my Talis bag.

I kept the machzor with me and had it set next to my score card. The Phillies were playing the hapless Mets. 12 games left in the left in the season. six and a half games ahead. In the Fifth inning, mincha time, Frank Thomas, The Phillies much-needed right handed power whom they had recently acquired, was on first. Thomas routinely sprinted to second base on an infield ground ball.

Suddenly, Frank Thomas slides head first into second base, breaking his finger. That never happens.

I heard Richie Ashburn, say on the radio that the Thomas would be out for the season. Ashburn, the Phillies star turned play by play announcer who died last month, has been a Whiz Kid in the last Phillies victory and he represented the past and the future for the Phillies. Richie died last month, and that reminded me of 1964.

The Phillies lost. I made it back for Maariv to Overbrook Park. Or that is at least what I told my mother.

Little did I know that this would be the beginning of the Phillies ten game loss, and I felt that I had junxed them, since it began on the second day of Rosh HaShanah. Everything that could go wrong in those ten days went wrong for the Phillies. By Yom Kippur, there was no joy in Philly mudville. I remember my despondency that Sukkot, when the World Series Yankees of on Mantle, Maris, Berra and Ford were not facing our holy Phillies. So I phoned a call in show on WCAU, then the CBS affiliate in Philly, to ask the last Richie Ashburn what had gone wrong. Ashburn gave me an answer that I felt like a reproach for going to the ball game on second day Rosh HaShanah. Richie said that a great lesson is never to be overconfident and not to do things that you shouldn’t do. He was referring to Phillie manager Gene Mauch overplaying his star pitchers, Jim Bunning and Chris Short.

I thought he was referring to my Overbrook Park Congregation escape to Connie Mack stadium.

Baseball as a religion? It has all the trappings.

Two Myths Surrounding the Events Preceding Rabin’s Murder that Need to be Debunked

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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October 13, 1997

Two events haunt Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from the anti-Oslo protests: the “Rabin in Gestapo Uniform” poster in Zion Square and the “Rabin Coffin” at Raanana Junction. And while both are frequently raised by Netanyahu’s opponents, there is a critical difference between the two incidents.

In the case of the posters – really legal sized photocopies of a photomontage – unless Netanyahu is Superman in disguise, there is no way on this God’s earth he could have seen it from his position on the balcony. And when one considers GSS agent provocateur Avishai Raviv’s role in the Zion Square story it takes on the stench of a “dirty trick” to discredit the nationalist camp.

This is not the case with the “Rabin Coffin” story. There’s no question that then candidate Netanyahu came to Raanana Junction and there’s also no question that a full size mock coffin was paraded around Raanana Junction while he was there. Not only that, the coffin was not intoduced to the scene by some mysterious unknown group. Similar coffins were used as props by the group demonstrating at Raanana Junction for many weeks.

But here’s where coverage of the story goes awry. And it all starts with the label which has been given to that coffin – “Rabin Coffin”. Because it wasn’t Rabin’s coffin. Period.

Take a look at the pictures from Raanana Junction and you’ll see for yourself. There were two slogans on the coffin. One side read “Rabin is burying Zionism” and the other side declared “Rabin is killing Zionism.”

That’s right – the coffin wasn’t Rabin’s coffin – it was Zionism’s coffin!

Please recall, the slogans were not in some obscure foreign tongue – they were in Hebrew. And the lettering was large enough to be clearly read in the photographs which have been published of the “Rabin Coffin” in various newspaper articles.

Whether or not Rabin’s policies would ultimately spell the end of Zionism is of course subject to debate. But it certainly was a legitimate position.

Yes, the message of the protest focused on Prime Minister Rabin rather than his administration, but that’s nothing unusual. The papers today are full of political advertising attacking the man Netanyahu – including a new ad sponsored by Yuval Rabin’s own Dor Shalom group.

Was the use of a coffin as a protest prop at Raanana Junction something radically new to Israel? Far from it. Just a few examples:

Back on December 20th 1992, Israel Military Industries workers blocked Kaplan Street in a huge protest of the planned firing of 2,500 IMI workers. A few demonstrators carried a coffin, which they said symbolized the government’s recovery plan for the industry – and they burned it!

On January 20, 1993 over 1,000 Jews and Arabs marched in Jerusalem with a black coffin representing peace at the head of the procession.

Coffins continue to be used as props in demonstrations after the Rabin murder.

On May 16, 1996 Tel Aviv University students carried a coffin representing higher education in protest against a proposed tuition hike.

I don’t expect Leah Rabin and her children to be able to discern this simple truth when they peer at the photographs from Raanana Junction through their veil of anguish and hatred. But there’s no excuse for the likes of Ehud Barak and others from the opposition.

There are enough legitimate sources of strife within Israeli society today. The time has come to bury the “Rabin Coffin” myth.

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

Comments for Yom Kippur

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

October 13, 1997

First two quick comments about the operation in Jordan: When President Clinton commented that its illegal for the U.S. to send agents to knock off people there was an implied air of moral superiority.

Let’s think back to 1989. The U.S. wanted to put the leader of Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega, out of business. So instead of sending a hit team to kill one man, the United States invaded Panama. The cost in Panamanian lives has been estimated at over two thousand, with 10,000 wounded and property damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The operation also cost the lives of more than 20 American soldiers.

It’s far from clear to me that America took the morally superior route.

Did all the talk from the Left against covert hit operations convince the Israeli public? Far from it. Last Monday Shvakim Panorama did a special survey of adult Israeli Jews for Israel Radio on the Jordan incident. They found that only 35% would oppose sending a hit team to Washington D.C. if a Hamas leader lived there.

I’m an optimist at heart and when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued a statement on the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations something encouraging struck my eye: Albright mentions “further redeployments in accordance with Secretary Christopher’s letter of January 17, 1997 and the U.S. Note for the Record.”

Now in case you’ve forgotten, the Note for the Record was written by Dennis Ross to seal the redeployment from Hebron. It was considered the crowning achievement of the Netanyahu Administration because, Netanyahu claimed, for the first time there was clear and indisputable linkage between Israeli and Palestinian compliance.

RECIPROCITY.

Israel was going to carry out the redeployment from Hebron and the Palestinians were going to immediately – the word “immediate” is in the text – set about to take care of a whole laundry list of problems including amending their Charter, cutting their so-called police force down to size, seizing illegal weapons etc.

But the Note doesn’t talk about the second redeployment. So when Albright mentioned the Note, I thought that that must mean that she wanted to reiterate the fact that the redeployments are linked to Arafat taking care of his side of the Ross note.

I checked with David Bar-Illan, Director of Netanyahu’s Policy Planning & Communications Office and he agreed that the interpretation made sense because otherwise it made no sense to mention the Note.

I asked Bar-Illan if Israel would carry out a further redeployment without first getting Palestinian compliance and he reminded me that there is a cabinet decision not to move an inch until the PA cracked down on the terrorist infrastructure. He went on to explain that the illegal arms, number of police and extraditions are all part and parcel of the requirement to crack down on terror. So I felt pretty good. That is, until I heard the PM office’s response today to concerns raised about further redeployments and a settlement freeze. Netanyahu’s Office said that these concerns were baseless. That’s comforting. But then they went on to claim that Netanyahu never hurt the settlements in the last year. Now I am nervous again.

Because Netanyahu did hurt the settlements in the last year. The redeployment from Hebron was a botched job and the first redeployment also was not necessary. Netanyahu also pushed through approval of the first further redeployment. And each time he did this he turned his back his holy principle of reciprocity. Now its one thing to make mistakes. But its hard to correct them if you refuse to admit that you made the mistakes in the first place. If Netanyahu claims now that he didn’t do it when he buckled to pressure in the past and forfeited Israel’s legal and moral right to insist on reciprocity I have no way of knowing if he won’t pull the same stunt in the future.

The last couple of days Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin has been talking about Israel having to end the occupation if it wants peace. But it seems that most reporters don’t want to ask the obvious question: what does he mean by “the occupation”?

I don’t speak Arabic, so I didn’t talk with him. But Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who heads Hamas in Gaza and is his confidant, speaks a terrific English. He told me, and I quote, that when Sheikh Yassin says “the occupation” this means the occupation of all of Palestine.

By the way, I asked him what he thinks should happen to all the Jews who moved to Israel from Europe, the Arab countries, Russia, etc.. Now this is his reply. Word for word:

Rantisi: I will tell you something. I feel that it is justice for us to do with Jews as they did with us… In the same way that they dispossessed our people. They killed thousands of Palestinians in tens of massacres and they destroyed homes. So I think it is just to do with them as they did with us.

Sometimes there are obvious questions with obvious answers. But the questions should still be asked.

Here is an example:

This Monday I was talking with Dr. al-Za’bout, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council associated with Hamas, and he told me that he is convinced that Hamas would be realistic and would have to rethink its position if there was a Palestinian state – even one limited to the West Bank and Gaza.

Well, what if the situation changes – I asked him. What if the balance of power turned against Israel’s favor?

I know the answer is obvious. But sometimes its seems some of us forget. So here it is: “Believe me, all the time the policy depends on the strength of the countries. So I don’t know what the future holds. Right now if the Palestinians can establish a state in part of Palestine and achieve their rights then I think that Hamas will accept it. But as for the future – we don’t know what will happen.”

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

Official Palestine Authority Paper Mocks U.S. Secretary of State Albright

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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October 6, 1997

The following is a translation of an article which appeared in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, on 3rd October, 1997. The translation was provided by the “Palestine Media Review”

Antipathetic Woman
by Hafet al-Barghouti, Editor
Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda
October 3, 1997

In the past, when Maelein Albright served as representative of her country and Israel to the United Nations, she adopted vulgar and insolent positions against the Arabs, which she would follow with sycophantic flattery. But after becoming Secretary of State and discovering her [Jewish] origins, she stopped the flattery. Two days ago she declared that the settlements are legal. a position which contradicts the declared American position for decades.

Settlement is actively taking place with the blessing of American blood-suckers such as Moskowitz, and with official American financing… but the position adopted by Albright indicates she has reached the stage of “immorality”, in the popular understanding of the expression. She is no longer perturbed any Arab condemnations.

The lady visited the region and spat like a snake in the face of Arab statesmen. They praised her and would have sung love songs to here were it not for her advanced age and the fact that she has passed her prime and is no loner fit for anything, except for serving Israel and defending it….”

Netanyahu: Apologize if You Want Canada to Understand New Hamas Threat

By

David Bedein

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October 6, 1997

On October 1, 1997, a few hours before the New Jewish Year began this year, Gazan Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantissi declared that he would dispatch more suicide bombers into Israel, to kill Israelis indiscriminately, whether they are civilians or military personnel.

On October 5, following the Jewish new year, you might have expected that Rantissi’s incitement and an appropriate Israeli government response would lead the news.

It did not.

Instead, the lead news items were the botched assassination attempt of a Hamas leader in Jordan, where two Israelis were caught with fake Canadian passports, and Israel’s freeing from jail of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Achmed Yassin to Jordan, and Yassin’s imminent to a hero’s welcome by Arafat in Gaza.

The continuing rancor in the Israeli and world media over the Israeli’s prime minister’s handling of the assassination attempt in Jordan served to distract everyone from the real and present danger posed by the Hamas.

A case in point:

One of Israel’s leading Arab affairs correspondents, Gidon Levy, who at times does not hide his personal identification with the Palestinian Arab national movement, reports how the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Arab refugee camp of Deheishe, whose open sewers and “temporary housing” are located just south of Bethlehem, has become “hamsified” of late.

Gidon Levy warns that Hamas incitement, not discouraged by Arafat’s Palestine Authority, is now “inspiring” every part of the Deheishe community, including grade school children, are preparing massive suicide attacks against Israeli targets, unless and until Israel allows the Deheishe residents to return to the village of Zacharia where they left in 1948. Zacharia, located just west of Jerusalem, is populated by Jews who left Arab countries in 1948. However, the UN resolution #194, passed each year at the UN, assures Arab refugees that they have the “inalienable” right to return to the homes that they left in 1948.

Canada, for one, leads the effort to fund the facilities of the UNRWA camp in Deheishe. Under normal circumstances, Israel would ask Canada to play a restraining role with UNRWA.

However, these are not normal circumstances.

If Israel is to regain the trust and confidence of Canada, so that Ottawa can again understand the security challenge posed anew by a reinvigorated Hamas, the Israeli prime minister should use the occasion of Yom Kippur, the traditional Jews “day of atonement”, to sincerely apologize to Canada for Israel’s recent bad judgment.

Palestinian Anti-Semitism

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 22, 1997

When General Ghazi Jabali, commander of the Palestinian police, heard about the arrest warrant issued against him by Israel, he said: “This reminds me of Goebbels’ methods”. The comparison is not surprising if one monitors the official publications of the Palestinian Authority. For example: “Every year, the Jews inflate the number of Holocaust victims. Having profited from talk of their murder, they increase the numbers from time to time.” Another quote: “The Jews belong to a colonialist entity, they are nothing but thieves.” This is not the way peace is built.

On Monday, Commander of the Palestinian Police General Ghazi Jabali reacted with derision to the arrest warrant and extradition request issued against him by Israel the previous day. He said, “This reminds me of Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda minister) who said ‘tell lies and lies, and in the end they will believe you. ‘The same is true of the Jews. It is a disgrace that they are issuing an arrest warrant against me. Apparently they have learned Goebbels’ methods.”

The extradition request against General Jabali was issued by Justice Minister Tzahi Hanegbi in the wake of Jabali’s involvement with the Palestinian police unit which, according to Israel, was sent by Jabali to kill Jews. At the end of last week, an arrest warrant was issued against Jabali by an Ashkelon court.

Against this background, Jabali’s remarks should have provoked a storm. But anyone who monitors the statements and publications of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in recent weeks would not have been surprised. Charging Israel, Zionism and its leadership with Nazism, as well as denying the Holocaust, have become a daily routine, meshing with theories of nefarious Israeli plots. This educational battle is being waged by the official PA radio and television, as well as the newspapers financed by Yasser Arafat, which have recently adopted a strident, uninhibited and undisguised anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist line.

Resemblance Between Ben-Gurion and Hitler

Last Wednesday, for example, just one day before the suicide bomb attack at the pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, a wide-ranging article appeared in Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, the official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority. The article, authored by Palestinian writer Nabil Salam, presented a learned historical analysis which concluded: “Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror. This proves the shared roots of Nazi and Zionist thought. This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which was revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period.”

Prior to these observations, the writer assesses the historical development of Judaism and Zionism, asserting they have sought to rule over great financial wealth, and have “influenced the formulation of racist-terrorist theories such as the Nazi theory.” Citing quotations from the Talmud through David Ben-Gurion, the author enlightens his readers with the following conclusion: “There is no difference between Hitler and Ben-Gurion, and if there was a difference at all, it was one of quantity and not one of substance. Anyone who investigates the crimes of the Zionists…discovers explicitly the complementary traits between Zionism, which is a racist terrorist movement, and the Nazi movement.”

The Holocaust as a Profitable Investment

That which was said in abridged form in Nabil Salam’s text was said explicitly and more extensively in an interview with Palestinian writer Ahsan al-Agha during a “cultural program” broadcast two weeks ago on Palestinian television. Al-Agha’s interviewer outlined the factual basis for the conversation: “It is well-known that every year the Jews exaggerate what the Nazis did to them. They claim there were 6 million killed, but precise scientific research establishes that there were no more than 400,000.”

The guest, Mr. al-Agha, who is a teacher in Gaza, replied: “I think we are talking about an investment. They (the Jews) have profited materially, spiritually, politically and economically from the talk about the Nazi killings. This investment is favorable to them and they view it as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of victims all the time. In another ten years, I do not know what number they will reach. Last year, for the first time, a statistic appeared according to which 1.5 million children were killed by the Nazis. This number was not previously known…If this number was indeed correct, then someone would certainly have remembered it…In my opinion, it is an investment, and as you know, when it comes to economics and investments, the Jews have been very experienced ever since the days of the Merchant of Venice.”

The head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority is Nabil Amar, a former PLO ambassador in Moscow. Amar serves as an adviser to Yasser Arafat and is a member of the Higher Committee in the talks with Israel. He is also the publisher and chief editor of the newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, whose employees receive their salaries directly from the PA budget. It is therefore not surprising that in tandem with the official radio and television, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda conveys the line dictated from above. And the line is unmistakable.

For example: three days before the suicide bombing on the Jerusalem pedestrian mall, the newspaper published two instructive articles. The first was an interview with an “Islamic author” by the name of Safi Naz Kassam who offered a number of diagnoses regarding Judaism and Zionism: “There is no people or land named Israel,” she said. “Israel is our patriarch Yaaqoub, peace be upon him, and the children of Israel are the sons of Yaaqoub…. We are the children of Israel…. These people are the children of the Zionist entity, they are the children of the colonialist entity, they are nothing more than thieves. They came and took land which does not belong to them. Therefore, the normalization of relations with them is impossible… even if Palestine remains occupied for hundreds of years.”

And with regard to Zionism, the author states: “These Zionists are not fit to establish a nation or to have their own language or even their own religion. They are nothing more than a hodgepodge.

To complete the reader’s education, the same issue of Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda surveys “research” carried out by Ahmed al-Awadeh under the headline: “The History of the Conflict Between Muslims and Jews.” The research claims that the Jews live by the Talmud and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The conflict between Muslim and Jews is an eternal conflict, similar to the conflict between mankind – the Muslims, and Satan – the Jews, and how unfortunate the Palestinians are that they have to serve as the Muslims’ avant garde in the eternal battle of the Muslims and all the nations against the “nation of Jews.”

The Attackers – Rabin’s Assassins

These anti-Semitic publications, accompanied by breathtaking “factual diagnoses” regarding the character and soul of Jews and Zionists, appear daily in the Palestinian media. They are intended to provide broad popular education to the readers, which serves as the infrastructure for the charges against Israel and its leaders floated by the PA.

In the wake of the most recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the allegations became more pointed and turned into an explicit theory regarding a wide-ranging Zionist plot. Last Friday, the day after the bombing, the official PA news agency published the Palestinian leadership’s decisions. It was a gripping document in which a number of instructive items were raised. “All the facts we have, which were supplied by the Israelis,” says the statement, “show that behind these operations stand foreign elements who were aided and assisted by extremist Israeli elements, those who also murdered Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.”

But that is not all. The Israeli government, according to the official Palestinian statement, is aware of this and is attempting to hide the details from the public, as well as the collaboration which the killers received from within the Israeli establishment.

And so the circle is closed and the modus operandi of the government of the Zionist-Jewish entity is revealed, one which is not at all surprising in light of the basic characteristics of Zionism, as they are known to the Palestinians from previous official publications of the Palestinian Authority.

The Vatican’s Jerusalem Agenda

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 22, 1997

Did Shimon Peres make a deal with the Vatican?

Consider the evidence:

On Sept. 10, ’93, just three days before the signing of the Declaration of Principles in Washington, the Italian news magazine La Stampa reported that part of the peace deal was an unwritten understanding that the Vatican would receive political authority over the Old City of Jerusalem by the end of the millenium. The newspaper reported that Shimon Peres had promised the pope to hand over the holy sites of Jerusalem the previous May and that Arafat had accepted the agreement.
In March ’94, the Israeli newsmagazine Shishi published an interview with Mark Halter, a French intellectual and close friend of Shimon Peres. He said he delivered a letter from Peres to the Pope the previous May, within which Peres offered the Vatican hegemony over the Old City of Jerusalem. The article detailed Peres’s offer which essentially turned Jerusalem into an international city overseen by the Holy See.
In March ’95, the radio station Arutz Sheva announced that it had seen a cable sent by the Israeli Embassy in Rome to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem outlining the handover of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Vatican. Two days later Haaretz published the cable on its front page. The Foreign Ministry explained that the cable was genuine but someone had whited out the word “not.” ie We will not transfer authority to the Vatican. Incredibly, numerous Bnei Brak rabbis who had cancelled Passover meetings with Peres over the issue of the cable accepted the explanation and reinvited him to their homes.

The Foreign Ministry’s Legal Affairs Spokesperson, Esther Samilag, publicly complained about “various capitulations” to the Vatican. She was immediately transferred to a post at the Israeli Embassy in Katmandu, Nepal.

MK Avraham Shapira announced in the Knesset that he had information that all Vatican property in Jerusalem was to become tax exempt and that large tracts of real estate on Mount Zion were given to the pope in perpetuity.

Jerusalem’s late Deputy Mayor Shmuel Meir announced that he had received “information that properties promised to the Vatican would be granted extra-territorial status.”

Beilin was forced to answer the accusations. He admitted, “Included in the Vatican Agreement is the issue of papal properties in Israel that will be resolved by a committee of experts that has already been formed.” If so, this committee has not since released any proof of its existence.

With all this in mind, how do we interpret the Vatican’s current position on Jerusalem?

The following report, circulated by MSANews may shed some light on that:

Vatican City, Jun 14, 1997 (VIS) – Archbishop Renato Martino, apostolic nuncio and Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations, spoke June 9 on the status of Jerusalem at the New York headquarters of the Path to Peace Foundation. The archbishop addressed members of this foundation as well as U.S. members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. He began by briefly summarizing the “well-known and long-standing position of the Holy See with regard to Jerusalem. He stated that Jerusalem “for us, of course, along with the rest of the Holy Land, is that special link between heaven and earth, that place where God walked and ultimately died among men. And of course we recognize that others revere Jerusalem as the city of David and the prophets and the city known to Mohammed…. It is a spiritual treasure for all of humanity, and it is a city of two peoples, Arabs and Jews, and of the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.”

Archbishop Martino added that “in recent years it has been increasingly difficult to break through the political and media-imposed stranglehold on the question of Jerusalem.” he recounted Jerusalem’s recent history, recalling in particular the UN’s General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 calling for Jerusalem to be considered a ‘corpus separatum’ under the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations,” a resolution which Israel accepted. He pointed out that, in addressing the gridlock which has resulted from the 1967 Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, “the Holy See has therefore advocated the granting to Jerusalem of an ‘internationally guaranteed special statute. That is the phrase used by Pope John Paul II in his 1984 Apostolic Letter ‘Redemption is Anno’.”

This statute “asks that regardless of how the problem of sovereignty is resolved and who is called to exercise it, there should be a supra-national and international entity endowed with means adequate to insure the preservation of the special characteristics of the City, its Holy Places, the freedom to visit them, its religious and ethnic communities, a guarantee of their essential liberties, and its city plan’.”

The apostolic nuncio recalled the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel in 1993, when both signed the ‘Fundamental Agreement.” He noted Article 4 of this agreement where “both the Holy See and Israel affirm their continuing commitment to the ‘Status quo’ in the Christian Holy Places.”

He also spoke of the problems sparked by Israel’s recent authorization of “a project for the construction of settlements in occupied territory in East Jerusalem” for which “there was wide-spread international condemnation.” This issue, he reminded those present, was brought before the UN Security Council on March 7 and March 21 of this year, but without resolution “because the sole country on the Security Council which opposed the Resolution was the United States.”

An Emergency Session of the General Assembly, “organized only nine other times in the history of the United Nations” was held on April 24-25. The Holy See delegation was contacted and asked for suggestions for a Resolution, Archbishop Martino said. And he recounted the meetings, rough drafts of proposals and negotiations which followed.

The approved texts of the eventual Resolution, he underlined, contained “those points championed by the Holy See…. The General Assembly has here called for ‘internationally guaranteed provisions’ – the equivalent of the ‘internationally guaranteed special status’ called for by Pope John Paul II. This is particularly noteworthy because in this case, the Arab delegations all voted for this Resolution and therefore for this provision.”

“The Holy Places within Jerusalem,” concluded Archbishop Martino, “are not merely museum relics to be opened and closed by the dominant political authority, no matter who that might be at any given moment. They are living shrines precious to the hearts and faith of believers.” DELSS/STATUS JERUSALEM/UN:MARTINO VIS 970616 (640)

Could that supra-national entity which will oversee the international city of Jerusalem be the Vatican just as Peres promised? And how do we react to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert’s recent announcement that he will begin negotiations with the Vatican, but “only over holy sites?”

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