WILTON, CONN. – The fire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is frying some strange fish on Capitol Hill. On the hook are the United Nations, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which for more than 50 years has provided humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees.

In May, Rep. Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat in the House International Relations Committee, complained to the secretary-general that UNRWA was “directly or indirectly complicit in terrorism.” UNRWA officials, he wrote, “have… failed to prevent their camps from becoming centers of terrorist activity.” Shortly thereafter, the American Israel Political Action Committee, the most influential pro-Israel lobby in the US, asserted that “for more than 50 years Palestinian terrorist infrastructures have been developed in UN-sponsored refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza.”

Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief of US News and World Report and new chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, weighed in with the finding that “UNRWA is the godfather to all terrorist training schools.” He broadened the focus to take in the UN as a whole (“disqualified… by the depth of its prejudice” and “a dispiriting factor of hate”) and Mr. Annan personally.

In April, an Israeli military operation caused what one US official called “terrible destruction” inside the Jenin refugee camp. Mr. Zuckerman rebuked the secretary-general for proposing a fact-finding team for Jenin, an “unprecedented investigation.” There were many calls at the time for an international investigation. Mr. Annan instead went along with the US alternative of less intrusive fact-finding. To suggest that Annan is anti-Semitic is absurd; Israel has never done so, although his views on the way to peace differ sharply from the Israeli government.

The fact-finding team’s leader was to be Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland and distinguished as an international troubleshooter. Mr. Zuckerman called him Yasser Arafat’s “favorite European diplomat.” The other two principal members were Sadako Ogata, universally respected as UN high commissioner for refugees, and Cornelio Sommaruga formerly head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These were, he said, known to him as hostile to Israel.

These and similar charges are remarkable on several counts. For one, a fact-finding mission was unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, led by the US, after Annan received assurances from the Israeli ministers of defense and foreign affairs that Israel would cooperate. The Council’s resolution 1405 also called for the lifting of restrictions imposed on the ICRC and UNRWA. The team was canceled when Israel refused to go along.

As for UNRWA, it has been supported mainly by Western countries, with the US the largest contributor – unimaginable had there been any suspicion of terrorist connection. One of the indirect beneficiaries of UNRWA’s work has, in fact, been Israel. Since 1967, UNRWA has helped provide food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education for a refugee population that now numbers 1.5 millionliving in towns and camps in the West Bank and Gaza, a burden that Israel would otherwise have borne under international law. Charges now leveled against UNRWA notably have not come from Israel. Last fall, when the UN General Assembly extended the agency’s mandate for another year, the Israeli delegate said, “Israel supports the humanitarian work of UNRWA on behalf of Arab refugees and we wish to formally record our appreciation…. “

There is much talk about terrorist bases in camps under UNRWA control. But the agency has never been charged with “control” of the people it helps. That was carried out by the Israeli military government in the 25 years after 1967, and then, after 1994, by the Palestinian Authority established in the Oslo Agreement.

It looks like a campaign to reduce, if not end, Kofi Annan’s and the UN’s engagement in Middle East diplomacy. Discrediting UNRWA and its Danish commissioner-general, Peter Hansen, may be followed by an effort to kill the agency by cutting off US support. Should this happen, it would remove an agency which has given millions of Palestinians hope, a certain stability, and a step toward a better life. It would aggravate the region’s deep unrest and complicate further the work of peace.

Richard C. Hottelet was a longtime correspondent for CBS.
This piece ran in the July 9, 2002 issue of the Christian Science Monitor.

Israel Resource News Agency has followed the Boim case for the past six years.

Please note the following articles that appear on previous issues of Israel Resource Review:

• US Consul Won’t Help the Boims: “We Can’t Visit Foreign Jails”
• Father of Murdered Boy Ponders Contradictory Standards of Extradition
• Official Complaints Filed to US Ambasssador Martin Indyk
• A Parent’s Day in Court
• Israeli Family Seeks Justice for Slain Son

After the murder of five Americans last month in Jerusalem — victims of a bomb placed by the terrorist organization Hamas in a Hebrew University cafeteria — the Justice Department dispatched a four-member FBI team to investigate. The U.S. ambassador in Israel raised the possibility that the killers could be extradited to the United States for trial.

Then last week, Israeli police arrested and publicly identified five members of a Hamas cell in East Jerusalem, including a painter at the university who described to police how he had planted and detonated the bomb. But the families of the victims should be wary of thinking that these encouraging developments — including the painter’s apparent confession — will lead inexorably to the prosecution of the perpetrators in an American court. The record shows that past U.S. investigations of murdered American citizens in Israel have been a sham.

A 1986 anti-terrorism law makes the killing of any “national of the United States, while such national is outside the United States” a capital crime, subject to the death penalty. The U.S. government has employed this law in prosecuting cases from other countries, but the Justice Department has not returned a single indictment involving any of the 36 a.m.ericans killed in Israel since the 1993 Oslo agreement. In the past two years alone, as the intifada has raged, 19 U.S. citizens were killed prior to the Hebrew University bombing.

I am intimately familiar with one case. I am the lawyer for the family of David Boim, a Brooklyn-born American citizen who was 17 years old when he was killed by a terrorist bullet. On May 13, 1996, two Palestinians in a car opened fire on a group of civilians standing at a bus stop in Beit El, a Jewish community approximately 10 miles north of Jerusalem. Boim, a student at a nearby yeshiva whose family had moved to Israel when he was 7, was shot in the head. Hamas took credit for the drive-by shooting, and two men were identified as the perpetrators: Khalil Tawfiq Al-Sharif and Amjad Hinawi. Their car crashed as they drove from the scene, and they fled on foot to a nearby Palestinian village.

Neither Al-Sharif nor Hinawi was ever charged under the American law that calls for such prosecution. Little more than one year after Boim’s death, Al-Sharif set off a bomb on Ben Yehuda Street, a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem, killing himself and seven civilians (including an American) and wounding 192.

The Palestinian Authority finally brought Hinawi to trial. On February 12, 1998, in the presence of a U.S. State Department observer, Hinawi confessed to driving the car used in the attack. The State Department’s report says that the presiding judge “asked Hinawi whether he was coerced to give the confession, and he answered in the negative.” Hinawi’s defense, according to a witness he called, was that he had been “deceived” by Al-Sharif. Hinawi claimed that he did not know that Al-Sharif, who was in the back seat, would be shooting.

Since the undisputed testimony was that the car made two trips past the bus stop — shooting first at a bus being boarded and, on a second round, at others who had been waiting to board the bus — Hinawi’s defense was preposterous.

Two days later, on February 14, Hinawi was found guilty of “participation in murder” and sentenced to 10 years at hard labor. Within a few months, according to the best information that we have been able to obtain, reliable witnesses saw him walking freely on the West Bank in Palestinian-controlled territory.

American prosecutors have invoked the Antiterrorism Act of 1986, which is Section 2332 of the federal criminal code, against participants in the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. When two American citizens were killed abroad in a 1995 drug cartel operation, the murderer was convicted in the United States under this provision. And it has been successfully used in the murder of American citizens in the Philippines.

But it has never been enforced by the Justice Department against the murderers of Jewish American citizens who were living in Israel or visiting the country when they were killed. At best, the selective use of this law is mystifying and cruel to the families of the victims. At worst, it is an abdication of the prosecutors’ sworn duty to enforce the law.

Boim’s parents, who were born in the United States (as was their son), became Israeli citizens in 1985. But they have retained their American citizenship and make frequent trips to the United States for family visits. David also had dual citizenship. Those facts don’t change anything: The Antiterrorism Act does not exclude the murder of U.S. nationals who are also citizens of another country, nor does it draw a distinction between Americans killed while living abroad and Americans killed while traveling. Moreover, Justice officials have never claimed — in many conversations with me — that David Boim’s residency in Israel was a factor in their reluctance to prosecute.

Boim’s parents have been pressing their case since 1997, when they wrote to then-attorney general Janet Reno asking that Hinawi be charged and extradited to the United States. They received letters in November 1997, February 1998 and March 1998 from top Justice officials, including the acting deputy attorney general and the chief of the terrorism unit, saying that the department did not have “sufficient admissible evidence” to charge Hinawi.

Believing that this refusal to prosecute was unconscionable, I undertook pro bono representation of the Boims. On March 25, 1999, I appeared before the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Appropriations and asked why there was no uproar in the United States over the failure to seek justice for the coldblooded murder of a young American. Martin Indyk, then U.S. ambassador to Israel, testified that Hinawi had been returned to jail by the Palestinian authorities — a response that was irrelevant (and probably inaccurate). Even if Hinawi had been given a prison term by the Palestinians, that did not foreclose his prosecution in a U.S. court.

Mark Richard, a deputy assistant attorney general who testified at the same hearing, invited me to his office on April 19, 1999. He told me that the department’s only reason for not prosecuting Hinawi was its concern that Hinawi’s confession may have been coerced and might not be admissible in an American court. I replied that, as a former prosecutor, I knew that the federal government had indicted suspects on the basis of far less reliable confessions than Hinawi’s.

Richard also said that the Israeli government had not cooperated with the FBI investigators. I checked with the Israeli Ministry of Justice: Officials there insisted that they had cooperated fully. They even gave me copies of statements from Hinawi’s brother that corroborated Hinawi’s role in the killing, and one from a neighbor of Hinawi who said that Hinawi had told him that he was “a member of the Iz Al-Din Al-Qassam troops of the Hamas and that they did the attack in the name of Hamas.” The Israelis said they had given these statements to the FBI team, and the FBI has acknowledged to me that it received them.

Richard sent me a letter in September 1999, claiming that “the FBI and the Department are actively investigating the Boim incident.” When there was still no indictment by March 2000, I wrote to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee, complaining that there “was no tangible progress” in the investigation. That prompted a letter from then-assistant attorney general James K. Robinson on May 23, 2000, expressing “disappointment” that I had written to Specter rather than contacting him directly. Robinson’s letter stated that FBI agents had traveled to Israel on three occasions to investigate Boim’s murder and had even gone to Gaza “with the U.S. Consulate General to meet with senior Palestinian officials.” Robinson said that there had been “reports” that Hinawi had confessed (failing to note that the “report” was a State Department account of his trial), and reiterated that “our ability to use any such statement in an American proceeding depends on whether there is sufficient foundation for admissibility under the Federal Rules of Evidence.”

Nonetheless, Robinson invited me to yet another meeting. On July 7, 2000, I met with him, two deputy assistant attorneys general and an attorney in the Criminal Division’s terrorism section (who, I was informed, had made “several trips” to Israel on the case). I was astounded to hear these hard-nosed prosecutors express concern that if Hinawi were to be indicted, his defense lawyer would move to suppress his confession as coerced. Jeff Breinholt, the terrorism expert who had traveled to Israel, said, “What if Hinawi said he was beaten or tortured for four or five days before he confessed? How would the U.S. prove that it didn’t happen?” I reminded him that Hinawi had confessed in a Palestinian, not an Israeli, court, and that Hinawi had acknowledged to a Palestinian judge that the confession was voluntary. I also argued that indicting Hinawi and seeking his extradition might be an effective deterrent against potential future killers of Americans in Israel. Let Hinawi present to an American court any possible claim that his confession was coerced, I said.

The FBI and the Justice Department remained unmoved. Since the Boims were not getting justice from U.S. law enforcement, I filed a civil action on their behalf against sponsors of Hamas terrorism in the United States. The federal court of appeals in Chicago recently upheld our right to sue American charities that finance Hamas.

My last meeting at the Justice Department took place in August 2001. By that time, Koby Mandell, a 13-year-old American living in Israel, had been brutally killed when he and a classmate were hiking in the Judean desert. Some Jewish groups wanted the U.S. government to offer rewards for information about the murders of Americans in Israel and the West Bank, but the State Department was resisting. Some of the officials I had met earlier were at the meeting, and when I raised the Boim case, they again gave me the same weak explanations for failing to indict Hinawi.

Invidious political calculations are surely behind this flagrant refusal to provide evenhanded enforcement of a law that Congress passed more than 15 years ago to protect Americans in foreign countries. The refusal to enforce the law — with excuses that no prosecutor or defense lawyer would accept for a millisecond — has encouraged the terrorists to strike at places such as Hebrew University, where, they knew, young Americans would be found.

This piece ran in the Washington Post on August 30th, 2002

BRUSSELS – Apart from a few visits to a limited number of capitals and preciously few calls to brief continental leaders, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not paid much attention to Europe. Nor do ministers in his government walk the extra mile to get close to Israel’s largest trade partner. “Such neglect will cost us dearly in the future,” warns Harry Kney-Tal, Israel’s ambassador to the European Community.

Kney-Tal, 58, who held senior diplomatic posts in the U.S. and elsewhere as an Israeli diplomat, completes his term in Brussels in a few weeks. Preparing to return home, he’s worried and frustrated. The political and intellectual gap between Israel and Europe is widening he says. Without corrective steps, Israel is liable to end up boycotted as a pariah state, like South Africa in the days of apartheid. As he sees it, Israel has done little, if anything, to forestall this eventuality.

European Union states, and Belgium in particular, have in recent years turned into trouble spots for Israeli diplomats. Anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish targets, coupled with vocal, strident support for the Palestinian Authority and vehement criticism of Israel’s military activity – such trends, and others, appear to reflect a one-sided, hostile viewpoint. Tendentious, negative treatment of Israel in the media reinforces this impression. Commentators, particularly on Israel’s right, often argued that Europeans criticize Israel in the name of lofty moral principles which veil what is little more than resurgent anti-Semitism. This view is backed by some U.S. officials.

A few months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted saying that anti-Semitic phenomena in Europe are “manifestations of repressed emotions, ones which were always present in Europe, but which were concealed in the aftermath of World War II.” Such views are superficial and one-sided, Kney-Tal believes. They lead to a faulty understanding of European Union dynamics and goals.

Kney-Tal adds that relations between Europe and Israel have also worsened because the EU leadership “recoils from information which contradicts its value systems and perceptions, some of which are based on stereotypes” regarding Israel, the dispute and the Middle East.

Perceptual Gap

A clear illustration of the perceptual gap between Israel and the EU involves the connection between Palestinian incitement and suicide attacks. “Both Israel and the Europeans denounce incitement,” Kney-Tal explains. “But when it comes to the meaning of the phenomenon, the sides express differing interpretations. In Israel, a close link is made between the school texts, media reports, official statements, mosque sermons – and suicide attacks. In Europe, this interpretation is totally rejected. We recognize that there is terror, the Europeans tell us, but their reference is to terror attacks like those of the Catholic underground in Northern Ireland, or the Basque underground in Spain: these were aimed mostly at political figures or symbols of government, and were not designed to kill indiscriminately, as happens in our case.” Often terrorists in Western Europe give advance warning about where explosives have been put, in order to limit casualties.

“Up to September 11,” Kney-Tal says, “the Europeans would use the term `cycle of violence’ in the Israeli-Palestinian context. In their view, it wasn’t clear which side initiated violence; nor was this issue of who started it very important. There is an attack and then a response, which inevitably leads to another attack and so on. They didn’t attribute special import to suicide attacks; they viewed them as a local Israeli problem.

“We, of course, saw things differently: there is a process of incitement, which causes terror attacks and, then, escalation of violence. There were also differences of opinion regarding incitement in Palestinian schoolbooks. We warned about the phenomenon; they promised to look into it. Their findings differed from ours. They wanted to show that incitement in Palestinian school texts was disappearing. We said: take a closer look, that’s not the case. But they’re not conscious of nuances which are very sensitive issues for us. That’s not because they are anti-Israel; it’s because they relate to the issue on an emotional plane which differs entirely from our own.”

The Europeans, says Kney-Tal, after having reached a rational decision in favor of reconciliation, and having lived for six decades under peace and economic prosperity, have a problem in grasping Israel’s difficult plight. “After the Second World War, Europe decided to abandon the use of force as a means to resolve disputes, and to set up the European Union, which operates on the basis of shared interests…. What drives them [the Europeans] crazy is states in the world like the U.S. and Israel, which don’t recognize purely rational-legal rules of the game, and which believe that there are situations which require them to exercise their right of self-defense by resorting to the use of massive military force. The Europeans don’t believe in a zero-sum game; instead, they try to cultivate interests shared by all the sides, while trying to create the widest possible common denominator.”

After two devastating world wars, Kney-Tal says, Europe doesn’t want to believe that there are situations in which arrangements can’t be forged by negotiations. It has succumbed to cognitive dissonance: were the Europeans to indicate agreement with the claim that the Palestinian Authority uses incitement, and that such incitement leads to irrational actions such as suicide attacks, such agreement would contradict the manner in which the situation has been analyzed up to now, and the way they have wanted to view matters.

“They simply cannot accept this turn of logic – incitement leads to suicide attacks. Such acceptance would entail rejection of the creature they’ve created, the Palestinian Authority, an entity established largely through European assistance and funding,” Kney-Tal says.

The European Union is proud that it enabled the Palestinian Authority to survive in recent years, in a period when Israel enforced severe economic sanctions against it.

“Their claim is that they haven’t done so because they are especially altruistic, but instead because they’ve understood – unlike Israel, and now unlike the U.S – that the legal Palestinian framework needs to be preserved in the long term, and that this system is headed by a leader, Arafat, who was elected legitimately, in order to guarantee negotiations, and progress in the diplomatic process,” Kney-Tal says. “In other words, the Europeans are basically telling us we know better than you, because we’re not so involved emotionally in this story, and we can look at the situation in a sober, detached, neutral way, relating to the two sides equally. Thus, they are extremely critical of the American position, which is so supportive of Sharon and Israel’s government.”

“The dispute with Europe,” explains Kney-Tal, “worsened in tandem with the degenerating crisis with the Palestinians… For us, it became clear that the rational negotiation framework, which was constructed in the Oslo process and which featured gradual progress for both sides toward the establishment of two states for two peoples, went awry, and collapsed. The Europeans have a different view.”

The EU has refused, and continues to refuse, to play any part in a process that might lead to a collapse of the Palestinian side. Such a process, the EU believes, would paralyze the diplomatic process, and create a situation of absolute terror and anarchy.

“Such a state of chaos is the exact opposite of what Europe wants right now,” says Kney-Tal. “Europe assumes that if the Palestinians will, in the end, have a state, then they would be involved in building their nation; and that is why the PA has to be preserved at all costs, if the Palestinians are to have such a role. For years, they [the Europeans] were apathetic both to our appeals calling for reforms in the PA, and to our claims that incitement leads to attacks and that EU assistance allows Arafat to divert money to terror. The challenge, as they see it, is to prove that these claims are unfounded, and that we are basically exploiting such charges manipulatively in order to force them to sever their assistance, and turn their backs on the PA.”

For the Europeans, “the rational negotiating process comes before everything else. It has to continue, come what may, because once we make it to the end of the process, and a solution is forged, then a new era of healing will arise, and the time will be ripe for really dealing with incitement. In other words, [Europe’s view] is that fundamental, root problems must be dealt with first, and then their symptoms can be addressed. And, as they see it, the root cause of the dispute is the occupation. Take care of the occupation, they say, finish it, and then one of two things will happen: either there will be quiet, or we will understand that there’s no quiet because the Palestinians have wider goals. We say the opposite: We can’t deal with the root problems without first taking care of their symptoms. In this respect, the difference [in interpretations] is vast.”

Europe remained adamant, Kney-Tal explains, even when the Camp David and Taba talks broke down. “This was a rational process; the sides sat around a negotiating table. But then it became clear that this [the talks] doesn’t work; but they refused to accept this could be so. In a way, they were in a state of denial. At first, they had to be satisfied with versions offered by Ehud Barak and Shlomo Ben-Ami. A year later, a counter version propounded by former Clinton adviser Robert Malley came out, refuting Israel’s claims. The French loved it. His articles were translated instantly and circulated in the media. They accorded with the world view which held that there are two sides, and responsibility for the failure rests equally with both. Once again, this European view reflected a rationalist approach to conflict resolution.”

As Kney-Tal sees it, those in Israel who present themselves as belonging to the peace camp have helped the Europeans abide by their refusal to draw a logical connection between incitement, funding and suicide terror attacks. These Israelis say claims about incitement leading to terror belong to the right-wing, which wants to topple the PA. The European Union relates to the peace camp as a potential partner for the continuation of dialogue with the Palestinians, Kney-Tal says.

Attitude change

During the last year, after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. and the steep rise in the number of suicide attacks in Israel, the European Union’s tone and approach have changed. “There has been some progress in the EU’s position,” Kney-Tal says. “They are talking now explicitly about taking action against Palestinian terror… They are more balanced, and even express solidarity with Israel. The list of terror organizations deemed illegal by the EU has grown, and now includes Hamas’ military wing, and Islamic Jihad. Recently, they added eight Palestinian and Arab organizations, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Of course, in order to maintain balance, they added the [Jewish] Kahane Hai and Kach groups. They also toughened up terms for the conferral of money to the Palestinians, and tightened supervision of this funding.”

Kney-Tal is worried about a new generation of Western European leaders who grew up on on the Palestinian-Arab narrative. “That narrative, which is reinforced by Israeli or former Israeli researchers, has nearly totally taken over the academic, polticial and media discussion of the issues,” he says. “It is appropriate to the popular world view in Europe nowadays, which is pacifist and post-modernist, full of guilt toward the former colonies and full of sympathy for oppressed nations demanding self-determnation. It also serves electoral interests as well as the traditional interests of realpolitik, which takes up a large part of EU policy.

At the same time, he fears, there is a an accelerating process of delegitimization of Israel, which is gradually being perceived – though at this stage only in intellectual circles, but the trend will grow – as a crude, brutal, and racist country that tramples on civil rights.

“I’m worried about the fact that Israel and Europe have not been able to build a framework which enables and facilitates Jewish-Christian dialogue,” says Kney-Tal. “The Europeans are building frameworks for deep and profound discussion only with those Israelis whose viewpoints are close to their own, with Israelis who justify the EU line and thereby provide moral validity to the European position. They [Europeans] understand neither Israel’s reality, nor Israel’s rich cultural diversity.

“The second problem is the absence of an intellectual dialogue. Academics in Israel are keeping mum, and I’m worried that the intellectual elite [in Israel] still hasn’t grasped that its in the same boat: should Israel be engulfed by the waves, it, too, will go down. I remain flabbergasted that some academics from Israel signed a European petition calling for the severance of scientific and cultural connections with Israel.”

As Kney-Tal sees it, Israel has no choice but to “draw Europe into a serious, genuine dialogue, one which will deal not only with ongoing events, but also with deeper levels. That’s what is really lacking. Our relations with Europe are asymmetrical, due to our small size and their large one. This asymmetry has to be converted into a different sort of cooperation, one unlike what we have had up to now. We must initiate this; we need to sharpen the messages, and reach understandings based on shared interests in security and democracy.”

This article ran in Ha’aretz on August 22, 2002