How Reporters were Forced to Downgrade the Report of a “Massacre.”

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April 17, 2002

After two weeks of screaming headlines that proclaimed “Massacre in Jenin!”, the news story from Jenin is slowly emerging. This follows the decision of the IDF to allow representatives of the Israeli and foreign press to enter Jenin on Sunday April 14th, for the first time since the fierce battle between the IDF and terrorist cells in Jenin began.

Among the first reporters allowed into Jenin were Serge Schmemann and Joel Greenberg from The New York Times, who reported: “With rumors swirling of massacres and mass burials in the UNRWA refugee camp in Jenin, the Israeli Army estimated that the number of Palestinian dead was not in the hundreds but in the dozens, and it agreed to allow the Red Cross to monitor the collecting of 26 bodies that the army said were still lying about… What today’s visit to the camp showed was more destruction than death, since deaths that can be verified right away.”

In a press briefing last week, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said: “There wasn’t a house that wasn’t booby-trapped and there was no way to neutralize the danger without demolishing the structure.

“We also encountered booby-trapped men, Palestinians who raised their hands to surrender while wearing explosive vests, in an attempt to detonate themselves among our soldiers. It was a very bitter combat. We lost 23 soldiers, which indicates that this was a difficult operation, in which the Palestinians did their maximum to inflict as many casualties as they could.”

“The Israel Defense forces received clear instructions to avoid harming civilians, and that is exactly what they did,” Peres stated.

Yet the fact that for almost two weeks no reporter – Israeli or foreign -was allowed into the refuge camp to give a first hand account of what was really going on only served to fuel the tales of horror, which spread like wildfire. According to Israeli officials, the reason for the refusal to allow the media into Jenin until the fighting ended was fear for their safety since booby trapped explosives were scattered everywhere.

Col. Gal Hirsh, Head of Operations in the IDF Central Command, explained that Jenin was a maintained as a closed military zone even after the the fighting was over. “We are trying to find all these bodies and trying to remove the booby traps from them”, he said. “It is very complicated, very dangerous, and we are doing our best in order not to cause much more damage after the fighting. We are trying to take all the explosives, all the hand grenades, all the booby traps from the bodies and the houses where there are bodies.”

The PLO’s WAFA press service took advantage of Israel’s refusal to allow the media in to Jenin, declaring that the number of killed Palestinians was 500; they said that bodies were piling up in the streets and spread the word that Israel was refusing to bury them.

Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International took the PLO at its word and joined the chorus of groups that alleged that Israel had conducted some kind of mass execution – without verifying facts from any objective source. The allegation of “massacre” was reported as FACT by the foreign media.

For two weeks, media outlets throughout the world devoted huge amounts of ink to unverified tales of conspiracies, rapes, executions, mass murders, and mutilations. The credibility of Palestinian “eyewitness testimony” was barely questioned -despite the PLO track record of fabricating claims. In Lebanon, back in June 1982, the Red Crescent made the fallacious claim that the IDF had killed 10,000 people and made 600,000 homeless. Apparently the media has forgotten this, as well as the fact that the Red Crescent – which continues to be the source of most of the allegations of IDF “war crimes”- is directed by Dr. Fatchi Arafat, the brother of the PLO leader.

Tens of European media outlets and Arab foreign ministries described the fighting in Jenin in terms of “genocide,” “unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” “Sabra and Shatilla #2,” “a campaign of revenge and murder,” and “Nazi ethnical cleansing.”

European media focused on the physical damage to buildings due to Israeli tanks moving through the camp, and failed to mention the fact that many of the buildings and streets were rigged with explosives which were set off by the many terrorist cells operating in the refuge camp.

Since the media moralizes about the ethics of the IDF operating in a heavily populated UNRWA refugee camp, why do they not question the morality of armed members of the PLO, who are wanted by the IDF, using residential dwellings in the camp as places of refuge in the first place? No reporter even raises the issue of whether it is appropriate for a United Nations organization to allow armed personnel to use their facilities. When we called UNRWA, their public affairs spokesman acknowledged that the PLO’s army is indeed based in the UNRWA refugee camps, something which he had little problem with.

The British Press in particular printed unsubstantiated and unverified reports of what took place in Jenin. The British newspaper, The Independent, called what was happening in Jenin, “the Jenin Slaughter House”. The Independent, The Telegraph, and The Times of London all quoted the same lone individual, 28-year-old Kamal Anis, who said that “he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank.” (The Independent)

By contrast, the American press was generally more balanced in reporting from Jenin, though there were some reports like the one from James Bennet, writing for The New York Times, who reported: “Palestinians here describe bodies cut in pieces, bodies scooped up by bulldozers and buried in mass graves, bodies deliberately concealed under collapsed buildings. They describe people drinking out of sewers and people used by Israeli soldiers as human shields.” Although Bennet did say that these were Palestinian sources, his reporting did very little to challenge the tendentiousness and questionable nature of such “eyewitness” testimony.

In contrast, T. Christian Miller of the LA Times writes that Palestinian “accounts, which could not be independently confirmed, painted a picture of a vicious house-to-house battle in which Israeli soldiers faced Palestinian gunmen intermixed with the camp’s civilian population.”

And Washington Post correspondent Molly Moore wrote: “Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has yet surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops.”

Yet Israel’s comments on what was actually happening at the UNWRA Jenin refuge camp were for the most part ignored by world media.

In a press briefing on April 12th, 2002, Mr. Danny Ayalon, the foreign policy advisor to the Israeli prime minister, dismissed Palestinian reports of putting Palestinian dead bodies into mass graves as part of the Palestinian propaganda and advised the press to again check Palestinian credibility. “Most of the people who were killed in the Jenin camp,” said Ayalon, “are Palestinian terrorists and Palestinian gunmen, including major terrorists on Israel’s wanted list who are directly responsible for the murders of many Israelis.”

A statement from Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said: “Alongside the defense activities, we have to undertake an explanatory effort regarding Jenin to stop the flow of rumors. We check the figures well, and the number of those killed in Jenin stands at dozens and not hundreds, and the great majority of them were armed men who shot at our forces. We did not bury a single body, certainly not in a mass grave.”

In a briefing held on April 12,th 2002, Col. Gal Hirsh- Head of Operations in the Central Command said: “When you think of the term refugee camp, you think of poor and helpless people. This is not the case! Jenin Refugee Camp was a strong combat zone. Do not think of Jenin Refugee Camp as the model of a refugee camp but as a real military and terrorist infrastructure. These people decided to fight, and we had to fight back.

“I’ve heard the rumors of 500-600 Palestinians dead. These are lies. We had no choice but to destroy the terrorist infrastructure- everyday there were terrorist acts dispatched from Jenin Refugee Camp. The operation in Jenin cost us the lives of 23 soldiers and many were injured. I regret that some Palestinian civilians were injured and some were killed. We were fighting against armed terrorists. We asked the Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes so they would not get hurt, some chose not to. Most of the Palestinians that were killed were armed terrorists; many had explosive devices strapped to their bodies. We found a lot of evidence of terrorist activity, for example, labs for explosive devices. We are talking about an organized terrorist infrastructure throughout Judea and Samaria.”

The first eyewitnesses from outside of the Jenin refuge camp were able to see for themselves the destruction and devastation that came from the fierce fighting that took place in the camp and the grim results of the terrorists’ booby trapping their own houses, bodies, cars, and streets with vast amounts of explosives which reduced the refuge camp into rubble.

No mass graves were uncovered; the number of Palestinians killed in the battle has been reduced by all the media to dozens as opposed to the reported hundreds.

So there you have it. The media was forced to cope with the fact that an alleged massacre was turned into a few dozen casualties. Some reporters just could not bring themselves to “adjust” their story to the facts on the ground.

Better luck next “massacre.”

The Powell Visit: Israeli Press Reportage of a Disaster

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 17, 2002

— To the question of what repercussions the failure of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s mediation mission will have, the Palestinians respond with a single word: a “catastrophe”

Officials close to Sharon said: “True, it is a catastrophe, but the disaster is the Palestinians’, who did not accede even to Powell’s entreaties that they issue a statement about their willingness to stop the fire”.

In any event, the nightmares of the Bush administration, which refrained from dirtying its hands in the Israeli-Palestinian dunghill for its first 15 months in power, came true all at once.

Bush was made aware of the limits of the American President’s power, even when it comes to Israel — a country that is supposed to act according to his expectations. Sharon did not accept Bush’s demand that he withdraw the troops from the West Bank cities “without delay”

Yesterday a high-ranking official from the Clinton administration was quoted by the Washington Post saying that Bush had erred when he pointed his finger at Sharon. The official said that Bush should have coordinated his ultimatum with Sharon before threatening him.

Bush also failed to take into account the fact that his supporters in the American Right are not prepared to pressure Sharon. As far as they are concerned, the bad guy in this story is Arafat and not Sharon. Sharon maintained more than just eye-contact with his allies in the White House and the Pentagon the entire time Powell was here.

Powell also received a tough lesson in the behavior of the Arab heads of state in the area. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to meet him yesterday as scheduled, claiming to be “sick”.

Mubarak expected Powell to pressure Sharon and to force him to bend. When he saw that Powell was unable to cow Sharon he preferred not to be seen in his company. Powell learned that Mubarak is not prepared to share responsibility for his failure.

The only achievement Powell succeeded in chalking up for the time being was a cooling of the tensions along the northern border and the reduction of the immediate danger of a war breaking out between Israel and Lebanon and Syria. The talks he held with Bashar Assad and leading Lebanese officials in Beirut bore fruit and Hizbullah withdrew from the areas that allowed it to heat up the border along the northern Golan Heights and southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army also began to take action to prevent Palestinians armed with Katyusha rockets from firing them at Israeli communities in the north.

“You Had an Excellent Interview”

On Monday evening the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem was turned into a satellite media center. A CNN team, headed by the network’s top interviewer, Wolf Blitzer, set itself up on the ground floor patio; another team from the British Sky network set itself up in the library on the first floor. Between the one interview and the other a phone call was received from President Bush. “I watched you, you had an excellent interview on CNN”, Bush said in a complimentary opening remark.

The two refrained from mentioning the mutual exchanges of blows between them after Sharon rejected the demand that Bush made a week ago to order the withdrawal of IDF troops from the territories occupied. One official closely affiliated with Sharon said that the phone call was geared to “clear the air” of any ill feelings.

Sharon, for the first time since the beginning of Operation Protective Wall, gave Bush a clear timetable for an IDF withdrawal from the Palestinian cities in the West Bank. “We will leave Jenin within three days, the IDF will withdraw from Nablus within six days, and within a week we won’t be in the West Bank, except for Ramallah and Bethlehem.”

Sharon told Bush that Israel was going to insist that the assassins of Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, who are hiding out in Arafat’s office in the mukataa in Ramallah, be turned over to Israel and that the wanted men who are holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem be deported.

Bush demanded that Sharon commit again not to harm Arafat personally, since this was liable to undermine vital American interests in the region. Sharon pledged that Arafat would not be hurt. He did not promise that the IDF would not find a way of removing Ze’evi’s assassins and Fuad Shubaki, who is responsible for the PA’s military procurement, and bringing them to trial in Israel. Sharon also did not promise Bush that he would not expel Arafat from the territories in the event of a future large-scale terror attack. Sharon’s promised only not to physically do away with Arafat.

In the course of the conversation Sharon reiterated that as long as he was the prime minister of Israel, there would be no negotiations with Arafat. He said he would be prepared for Arafat to attend the international conference, should it be held, but warned: “We won’t talk to him”.

Bush said he was particularly concerned by the turn of events in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Sharon said that Israel was prepared to accept a number of proposals that had been made to resolve the problem, on one condition: that the Palestinians who are holed up in the church agree to leave the territories permanently for a third country that is prepared to accept them.

“School for Diplomacy”

Tuesday afternoon, on his way to a memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers, Sharon received a report about the arrest of Marwan Barghouti, the commander of the Tanzim in the West Bank.

The news immediately spread around the world. One senior White House official quickly called his counterpart in the Prime Minister’s Bureau and said a single word: “Congratulations”

The question of Barghouti’s arrest did not come up even a single time in the conversations with Powell.

Powell’s aides tried for two days to get the Palestinians to make some sort of public statement about their willingness to embrace a cease-fire. Arafat and the other members of the Palestinian leadership refused. They demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from all territories seized as an initial condition for a public statement.

Sharon refused all attempts to get him to co-sign an American document that he believed rendered the work plan set out by CIA Director George Tenet sterile. Sharon said to Powell that Arafat can talk to his people and demand that there be an end to terrorism, that his security forces are capable of acting, and other such familiar arguments.

Then Powell went to the Palestinians and hoped to leave the region with a joint American-Palestinian document, at least. But he failed to achieve that either. At the press conference he convened yesterday to wrap up his visit, Powell said that he had not failed. The term “cease-fire” was simply irrelevant for now. He said that a cease-fire could have been declared, but with the military operation still underway in the backdrop that would have been meaningless. He said that his goal was to achieve a genuine cease-fire and not only a declaration of a cease-fire.

In the meantime, Powell said, Arafat has to take action to end terror, and the Israeli people and leadership have to ask themselves if the time has not come to put an end to the settlements and the occupation, which have a destructive impact.

Powell then left the region, acting on the first advice that diplomats receive in their training: In the event of failure declare a partial success and issue a statement that you are leaving your deputy or staffers behind for continued negotiations over the details. Powell announced that he was leaving here Bill Barnes, the undersecretary for Middle Eastern affairs, and that Tenet would be coming in later on. Powell also intends to return to the region shortly. Don’t hold your breath.

The Moment of Failure

Ma’ariv (p. 1) by Oded Granot [news analysis] — People who took part in yesterday’s meeting in Ramallah reported that Arafat could barely control himself. Secretary of State Powell demanded that he hand over the murderers of Minister Ze’evi, arrest suicide bombers and announce an end to the violence in his own voice, while at the same time Powell gave Sharon the green light to continue the military operation.

And as if that were not enough, when Arafat asked Powell to guarantee that Israel would not forcefully break into the mukataa in order to remove Ze’evi’s killers along with Fuad Shubaki (of the Karine-A affair), Powell told him, according to one participant, that he could not promise that that would not happen.

The conversation with Powell, which in essence signaled the failure of Powell’s mission to bring about a cease-fire, angered Arafat so much that it extracted from him for the first time a public statement that revealed the depth of the distress caused by his prolonged isolation. “Is it conceivable that I not be allowed to leave through this door?” he asked, adding a warning that the continuation of his house arrest in Ramallah could “undermine stability in the Middle East”, as he explicitly put it.

The fate of Powell’s mission was sealed as a failure the moment Arafat rejected all of his demands and the moment Sharon announced that he needed a little more time before pulling the IDF out of Nablus and Jenin. In a press conference in Jerusalem yesterday, the Secretary of State made clear that under these circumstances there is still no room to discuss a cease-fire.

Sharon’s associates are convinced that the US well understands that there is no chance of an agreement with Arafat even if he were to sign one, and that there is no chance that a cease-fire would hold, even if he were to declare one in his own voice. America, according to the prime minister, is facing a serious problem as its embassies throughout the Arab world are attacked by masses of protesters and the US’s Arab friends call on it to increase pressure on Israel. Mubarak canceled his planned meeting with Powell yesterday as an expression of protest that Powell had not pressured Israel enough and had not forced Sharon to pull out of the territories immediately.

Washington understands that the failure of Powell’s mission could herald the escalation of the violence on the ground. The US solution is to create the appearance of activity, or in other words, to create the impression that despite the failure there is still some movement. This, they hope, might help calm things down.

This appearance of activity made up of two parts: Tenet’s return to the region in ten days time, despite the fact that he does not really want to come, and the creation of a flurry of media coverage surrounding the idea of a regional or international summit that was born between Sharon and Powell.

Palestinians Furious: “Bush and Powell Can Go to Hell”

Ma’ariv (p. 2) by Menahem Rahat et al. — There is one thing that Israel and the Palestinians agree about — American Secretary of State Colin Powell’s mission to the region ended in failure. Yesterday at the end of an extended mission and after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak canceled a scheduled meeting with him, Powell left the Middle East and returned to the United States.

Powell failed to achieve either a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians or a Palestinian commitment to act against terror. Powell’s final meeting with Arafat was described by Yasser Abed Rabbo as a “catastrophe” who added: “We say to Bush and Powell — Go to hell!”

In a press conference yesterday, Powell called on Arafat to take action against terrorism and to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. He accused Arafat of having misled the US and the entire world when he spoke about acting against terrorism.

The Palestinians said that the meeting yesterday in Ramallah was difficult and full of deep disagreements between Arafat and Powell. “At a certain stage Arafat was so angry that he left the room and, only after being persuaded by his friends, did he return to the meeting. The Palestinians say that Powell adopted clearly pro-Israel positions, served as an “emissary of the Israelis more than an emissary of the US” and overstepped his role as a mediator.

The Palestinians say that Powell demanded that Arafat turn over to Israel the assassins of Minister Rehavam Ze’evi and the armed activists in the Church of the Nativity. Arafat rejected this demand outright and said that there would be no talk of a cease-fire or of any other arrangement before the Israeli troops withdrew from PA territory. Arafat was also furious about the continued siege that was clamped on him in Ramallah. He later asked journalists: Does it seem reasonable to you that I can’t walk out this door. He added that that would have repercussions for the situation in the Middle East.

The Iraqi Factor in the Powell Visit

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 12, 2002

Part of Powell’s efforts to attain a cease-fire are an American performance meant to neutralize pressure by the Arab countries and Europe on the US to use all its power to stop the mounting violence. The truth is, had it not been for the American wish to bring down the regime of Saddam Hussein, it is doubtful whether Powell would even have come to the Middle East.

The US is trying to recruit the Arab countries for a military action against Iraq, but they say that as long as there is no end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is nothing to talk about. However, even if there were no such confrontation, or if it ended tomorrow, the US would still not receive the desired support.

The Powell mission has internal American aspects. It is understood that if he fails in his mission to attain a cease-fire, this would harm the image and standing of the US in the Middle East as well as elsewhere. However, there are certain people in the administration who would not weep at his stumbling, as he opposed in the past as well as today any use of power, including the plan to strike at Saddam Hussein.

The ability of the Bush administration to increase pressure on Israel is limited, in the light of the war the United States itself is waging against terror. The administration is sensitive to the issue of the time necessary for the completion of a military operation. Bush’s people, who served in his father’s administration, are aware of the fact that Bush senior did not finish up the Gulf War as was necessary and that today the US has to live with the consequences of this. When Sharon says that he cannot stop the Israeli military activity until it achieves its targets, the memory of the unfinished Gulf War comes up and works in favor of the Israeli position.

Recently, Bush himself as well as his people have been giving varying messages stemming from contradictions and constraints in the US position vis a vis the Palestinian-Israeli violence. The administration sees Arafat as the one directing and encouraging the terror, but outwardly describes him as a legitimate leader. Bush affirms Israel’s right to defend itself, and on the other hand calls on Israel immediately to withdraw its forces from the territories. All sides, not only Israel, are not acting according to American demands. And Bush is angry, not only at Sharon, but also with Arafat, who is not doing anything against the terror, and at Arab leaders, who are not pressuring him in this matter.

Thus the American room to maneuver is quite limited.

This article ran in Maariv on April 12th, 2002

The Battle in Jenin: An Assessment

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 12, 2002

The battle for the UNRWA Jenin refugee camp ended yesterday morning. Seven days of fighting — among the hardest the IDF has known in recent years — ended with 36 wanted men who laid down their arms, came out of their bullet-ridden houses, and marched with hands raised towards the troops outside. The most senior of the wanted men who surrendered was Sheikh Ali Sfori, the “suicide bomber sender.

Sfori is responsible for terror attacks in which nine Israelis were murdered and more than 150 wounded.

The 36 wanted men, who at first declared they would fight to the last bullet, surrendered at the end of lengthy negotiations and after they were promised they would not be hurt when they came out. The Palestinians claimed that the IDF threatened that if they did not turn themselves in, the buildings would be demolished on top of them. Another seven armed men turned themselves in last night.

Only after the surrender did it become known that under the compound where the armed were holing up was a network of underground tunnels. It was by means of these tunnels that the armed men could move about the refugee camp and keep fighting the IDF. Brig. Gen. Eyal Shlein, the commander of the reserve division that waged the battle in the Jenin area, said last night that there may still be more attempts to shoot at soldiers. However, Shlein stressed: “The goals of the operation in the camp were reached in their entirety. All the armed men were either caught or killed. A great deal of weapons and explosive material were seized. Suicide bombers who had already prepared farewell tapes and were about to leave to commit terror attacks in Israel were also caught”.

The price of this victory was heavy for the IDF: 23 soldiers killed, 15 of them reservists.

The extent of the destruction in the refugee camp was enormous: all of the infrastructure in the camp no longer exists, and there is almost no house that was not damaged. The IDF broke through the narrow alleyways and blazed roads wide enough for tanks to pass. By means of these roads it could reach everywhere in the camp, which was redivided into three areas. “Children are looking for their parents among the ruins. There are entire families who cannot find their homes, which were blown up by the terrorists or which were destroyed by the army,” soldiers said.

Yesterday morning the IDF allowed the residents of the camp to bury their dead. Around 100 bodies were brought to be buried in the camp area, but there still may be many bodies buried under the ruins of the houses and their recovery will continue today. OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan ordered that the bodies be buried so that the harsh sight not be photographed and broadcast all over the world, and so that disease not spread. Jenin has become a myth in the last few days in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Dozens of women in Gaza who recently gave birth gave their children the name “Jenin”, in solidarity with the besieged refugee camp.

Television stations last night broadcast harsh testimony of the camp residents. “They swept up the shahids in bulldozers and dumped them into the sewage, so that the journalists would not see them” a Palestinian woman said. In contrast, Israeli sources said that “there was no massacre, but a very hard battle because the terrorists refused to surrender”.

Brig. Gen. Shlein accused the Palestinians of wreaking the destruction: “They rigged the camp completely. Civilians were also hurt because they sent their children and wives to be used as human shields. Children placed the bombs and held weapons”.

A senior army source said yesterday that of the 4,185 people arrested in Operation Protective Wall, there were 60 senior wanted men. 30 of them have “blood on their hands”, i.e. were personally involved in terror attacks. Approximately 15 additional wanted men were killed in battle.

The IDF also continued to operate yesterday in Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and some towns and villages in the West Bank. In Dahariya in the Hebron area, soldiers searched the prison, but did not find any wanted men. Searches were also made in Bir Zeit in the Ramallah area and in the Ein Bit Ilma refugee camp near Nablus. 400 Palestinians were arrested there, some of them armed.

Itzik Saban adds: An IDF force last night killed a terrorist who tried to infiltrate the settlement of Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip. Searches continued in the area until last night due to concern of more terrorists.

Yossi Bar in Rome adds: The Vatican yesterday asked Israel to promise not to kill the Palestinians holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem when they leave. The Vatican has asked that the Palestinians there be allowed to go to Gaza. This article ran in Yediot Ahronot on April 12th, 2002

If the IDF Withdraws, Will the Tanzim Enter?

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 12, 2002

Arafat, in his besieged bureau, continues to work. It’s important to him to display a sight of a working PA, someone to talk to. Mohammed Dahlan and Mohammed Rashid are in Ramallah, outside the besieged bureau, busy transferring money. There is no need for meetings and discussions. This is a small staff, which understands the rais, even by a wink.

However odd it sounds, the Palestinian leadership has not changed and is not about to change. The same faces, the same names. The people sitting with Arafat in his office are enjoying it, earning glory for participating in the fighting. General Haj Ismail, commander of the Palestinian army on the West Bank, who fled from Lebanon in ’82 when the IDF invaded, could have lost his entire world this time. Luckily, he happened to be in Arafat’s office, and since he’s there, has stayed glued to him.

In the future, the Palestinian side will make an accounting of who was where during the war. In any case, the real stars produced by the fighting are the local Tanzim leaders, who conducted the fighting in practice in the various cities. Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, in contrast, will have to answer some hard questions. For example, was his disappearance indeed necessary the entire time. Jibril Rajoub will have to work hard to restore his image, after his men surrendered in his headquarters.

The same name, the same faces, while the PA administration, the people under the faces, has fallen apart. The computer system has been destroyed. The population registry, for example, no longer exists. Taxes cannot be collected. The security organizations have been scattered, some of the people arrested. [… ]

The real victor in the present fighting are the Tanzim, and it is they who will set the agenda for the day after. If Arafat wants, ever, to stop the terror, this will only be by means of the Tanzim. Already now they have taken the place of the security organizations, and run matters in the field, although it does not have an authoritative central leadership, only local leaders. Each leadership has its own agenda, which does not necessary conform to Arafat’s.

Powell Will Get Only Gestures

When the security cabinet met to discuss Powell’s visit, there were two issues that were left without an answer: when the IDF leaves the territories, to whom will it leave security responsibility? The second: how do we move on from there to diplomatic talks?

As to the first question, the sense among the top political and security echelons is that Israel will have to talk with the local Tanzim commanders, and reach understandings with them.

Powell’s visit will not end the operation. The Israeli decision, at the moment, is to lower the IDF’s profile a bit, to leave most of the places where it’s possible, and in the cities where it is not possible, to try and at least leave the city centers, or cancel the curfew. These are gestures for the three days Powell is here and it is very likely we will have to pay for these gestures. When Zinni came similar gestures were made, and Israel suffered 126 casualties in terror attacks.

Powell’s visit is liable to end in failure, firstly because of the fact that the Palestinians don’t believe the Americans. Last year senior PA officials went to Cairo for talks with Mubarak and the Egyptian leadership. They were given a seminar in the history of reality. The Egyptians demanded, demonstratively, that the PA cooperate with Powell and reach an arrangement with him. They spoke of a gradual process of stabilization and quiet, the implementation of the Zinni plan, while getting European and American aid for rehabilitating the PA administration and its security organizations.

The Israeli security establishment believes that Powell will at most succeed in bringing Arafat to discuss a cease-fire, but without any commitment to fight terror and stop the terror attacks. In discussions held this week with Zinni’s people, Israel demanded that Powell at least show Arafat the Zinni document, which Sharon has already accepted. Israel does not imagine that the secretary of state will completely ignore what his envoy did, especially since the Zinni document, unlike the Tenet document, is operative, and deals with the battle against terror. There are three principles in the Zinni document, leading to a cease-fire and to a war on terror: arrests, confiscating illegal weapons and dealing with terror infrastructure. It details the stages and the timetables, including how the various charity organizations should be handled, the mosque cells, the terror budgets, its bank accounts. Arafat rejected this before Operation Protective Wall and will not accept it now. The Tanzim will certainly not accept it.

Regardless of what Israel does or doesn’t do, we are going to clash with the Americans. Powell’s arrival reflects a dramatic, fundamental change that Washington’s approach underwent last week to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is not just another trip to see what’s going on, to spread a little cosmetics. For the first time the Bush administration has a strategy for the Middle East, making it possible to compare Powell’s visit to the quality visits of Kissinger in their time.

The change took place when Vice President Cheney returned from his visit to the region and made it clear to the president that any attempt to separate the Iraqi issue form the Palestinian one was impossible. No Arab coalition could be enlisted to keep quiet over the American attack on Iraq if the US could not be shown to be concerned about the Palestinian issue and to be doing something. Cheney also told the president that instability in Egypt and Jordan was no longer theoretical. [… ]

This article ran in Yediot Ahronot on April 12th, 2002

Survivors of the SS St Louis Finally “Dock in Jerusalem”

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 9, 2002

This year, just before Holocaust Remembrance day, I had the honor to meet a group of survivors from the ill-fated S.S. St. Louis ship which embarked from Hamburg on May 23rd, 1939 carrying close to one thousand Jewish refugees seeking a safe haven from the hellish nightmare erupting in Europe. This year, yes davka this year, the SS St Louis survivors decided to hold their “reunion” in Jerusalem, at the Mount Zion Hotel at a time when groups like the US Holocaust Council Board and the March of the Living delegation hesitated to come anywhere near Israel’s shores.

Each of the SS St Louis passengers carried a visa to Cuba, yet they were nevertheless denied entry there. The United States and Canada also turned away the human cargo which included families with small children. The ship sailed the seas for three weeks desperately seeking a country that would give them asylum. For five days, the SS St Louis sailed along the sea shore of Florida. Yet nobody wanted the Jews. Instead, the ship turned around and headed back towards Europe where they were granted temporary entrance into Belgium. Nearly half of the passengers of the St. Louis perished in the holocaust.

The survivors whom in Jerusalem were men and women in their seventies. At the time of their voyage aboard the St. Louis they were small children. Some of them toddlers.

Harry Fuld, now retired and living in Winsdor, New Jersey, whose father had been murdered a year earlier on Kristallnach, was ten years old when he boarded the ship with his mother and 13 year old brother

Fuld said during the SS St Louis Jerusalem reunion that he was getting calls from his nervous daughters in New Jersey to come home. His answer was simple and to the point: “My ship has finally docked in Israel. I see a country which is determined to defend its people. I again reminded my daughters that if Israel had existed in 1939, every passenger on the SS St Louis would have been saved”.

Fuld knew that five days after the SS St Louis sailed, the British government issued their infamous White Paper of 1939, which sealed the gates of Palestine to Jews for the duration of the Nazi horror.

The climate in the world of 2002 is reminiscent of the 1930’s in Germany. Once again the Jews are being demonized as satans, devils, aggressors and racists. The daily diet of hatred and incitement pouring through the Palestinian schools and media and to the world at large has greatly escalated since the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Yet the emergence of the Palestinian Arab human bombs coincided with the era of Israeli conciliation and peace making, recognition of the PLO, repeated concessions of territory, establishment of a nascent Palestine Authority, acceptance of armed Palestinian policemen – culminating in the unprecedented offer of an independent Palestinian state with as capital in a shared Jerusalem. In direct contrast to this most accommodating, conciliatory, most dovish Israeli policy in history, the Palestinian Arab people have responded with more than 12,000 recorded terrorist attacks over the past 18 months against Israeli citizens and soldiers, 435 murders of civilians including babies, nursing mothers and pregnant women and thousands of wounded. There is hardly a person in Israel who has not been directly or indirectly effected by the Palestinian terror.

Meanwhile, the suicide bombers dispatched by the Palestinian Authority were hailed by Arafat as holy martyrs and the Palestinian Authority controlled media, sang hymns of praise for the human bombs while their families were interviewed on PA TV and stated how proud they were of their suicide bomber offspring.

Now Israel has finally concluded that Arafat has no interest in stopping the terror that emanates from the Palestine Authority. Instead, Arafat calls for a million martyrs to pave the way with blood to Jerusalem.

In the early days of the Oslo process, as in the early days of Nazi Germany, Jewish leaders said that these were “only words”.

Yet the massive suicide bombing which killed 27 Israelis and wounded over one hundred at a communal Passover seder in Netanya this year was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who survived a concentration camp as a child, spent the better part of the Passover holiday in search of one Moslem cleric who would denounce the Passover Pogrom. Rabbi Lau took to the airwaves on the night after Passover to announce to the people of Israel that no Moslem would come forward to denounce the murder of Jewish families who sat down to a ritual ceremony.

As Rabbi Lau was speaking, an Arab infiltrated the Jewish community of Alon Moreh and murdered four members of the Gavish family -yhe parents, Rachel and David Gavish, their 25 year old married son Abraham, and Rachel’s father, Isaac.

This was the same Alon Moreh that God had promised the Patriarch Abraham that the Jewish people will inherit the Land of Israel.

Na’ama Gavish, whose husband Abraham died later of wounds from this attack, teaches about the holocaust at the local high school.

Naama described what it was like hiding under the kitchen table while forcibly closing the mouth of her three year old daughter so that she wouldn’t make a sound. “I thought of the holocaust”, she said. From under the table I was able to see the dead body of our grandfather.”

While Gavish family and the Alon Moreh community counted their dead, the Palestinian Authority organized celebrations in the nearby village of Ascar, the town of the killer who had afflicted Alon Moreh.

Pressure mounts around the world to stop Israel. Violent demonstrations against Israel are being held all over the Islamic world, but not only in the Islamic world.

Yet there is a difference between the 1930’s and today. The Jews today have a Jewish state which was created after the holocaust that gives protection to every Jew in the world. Israel is committed to the safety of its citizens. The SS St Louis finally docked in Jerusalem this week. Something that it could not do a generation ago.

From Anti-globalism to a New Anti-Semitism

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 9, 2002

The new anti-Semitism in Europe has finally found its new ideological ally: the anti-global Left.

The margins, and not only the margins, of the European Left are awash lately with radical anti-Israeli-ism. It is not bordering on anti-Semitism, it is real anti-Semitism.

Even the post-Zionism of the European Left has gone a stage further: it is already permissible to speak of a Euro-Arab world after the dismantling of the State of Israel, it is legitimate to predict the expected conciliation between the workers of Europe and the Moslem minorities who live among them immediately after the State of Israel stops existing as a separate Jewish entity, and concentrating the Jewish population of “Palestine” into the coastal strip between Hadera and Gedera can now be talked about.

The link between the movements against globalization and the movement against Israel is becoming tighter. It is not against Israel’s policies, but against Israel’s existence. This alliance was exposed at the UN conference in Durban in South Africa (last September). At this conference, hundreds of NGOs took part. Their resolutions, in practice, called for the destruction of the Jewish state for it being the only racist country in the world and the source of all of humanity’s troubles.

Although the NGOs of eastern Europe and the US left, the western European NGOs continue their campaign of delegitimizing Israel and are working to revoke the UN partition plan of November 29, 1947.

A member of the British Global Opposition Group: “For many people in our movement, the heart of the matter is that Israel has no right to exist.” His colleagues from France, Italy and Spain tell of a rejuvenated spirit among the activists ever since their attention was diverted from multi-national corporations to “Israel’s crimes:” emotions are re-igniting and members are again enthusiastic and enlisting into action. This time against Israel.

The deliberations they had after the terror attacks on the Twin Towers have passed and are gone. Bin Laden is dwarfed by Sharon. The Taliban is a peace-seeker compared to the IDF. The Internet sites of the movement regularly describe Israelis as “Zion-Nazis.” We are no longer simple Jewish fascists, but Jewish Nazis.

The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, which devoted an in-depth investigation to the anti-Semitism of the European Left, notes in wonder that “the main issue of the European movement against globalization today is a comparison between the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were annihilated, and the Palestinian uprising, which has so far cost the lives of about 1,3000 Palestinians.”

Only in Germany; the paper wrote, are “such comparisons not easily made.” Nor in the United States. The anti-Semitism of the European anti-global groups has caused a complete break between them and their counterparts in America, most of whom are of Jewish extraction. The American professional unions have also disavowed them.

It is possible to relate to this phenomenon with derision. When compared to millions of demonstrators in Khartoum and in Casablanca, what importance is there to 2,000 demonstrators in The Hague, 5,000 in Rome, 20,000 in Paris? However, the danger is more complex.

In a collection of articles “Five Moral Meditations,” the author and philosopher Umberto Eco raised an important argument about anti-Semitism (and intolerance in general). He said that the pseudo-scientific anti-Semitic ideology of the 20th century influenced so many Europeans because it fit in well with the latent hatred of Jews that was in their hearts since time immemorial. Primitive, emotional, rooted hatred, hundreds of years old. This anti-Semitism is uncontrollable, is motivated by dark passions and cannot be countered with rational arguments.

The anti-Israel propaganda of the European anti-globalization groups grows in the same soil. It has a familiar ring, and that is why it is dangerous.

This article ran in Yediot Ahronot on April 9th, 2002

The Silence of the Lambs: How US Jews React During the Current Crisis in Israel

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 9, 2002

The lack of reaction among American Jews to the Passover seder massacre in Netanya has been called the `absenteeism of the Jewish leadership’.

New York – Three days after the deadly Seder night attack at a Netanya hotel, a senior Israeli representative in the United States received an urgent telegram. His counterpart in Jerusalem asked him to report on what the Jewish community was doing. He sent a two-word response: “Not much.” In a conversation at the end of last week, the Israeli officials said: “Today I would respond `almost nothing.'” As evidence, he picked up a document from his table – a faxed invitation to an “emergency meeting” called by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “They set a date for a meeting one week later and call it an `emergency meeting,'” he complained.

The silence of the Jewish community was conspicuous against the background of reports of suicide bombings in Israel, accompanied with horrible pictures that were broadcast almost nonstop in the American media. The few demonstrators participating in demonstrations organized by marginal organizations or activists that were aimed at expressing solidarity with the people of Israel only underlined the lack of massive identification and exposed what the senior Israeli official called the “absenteeism of the Jewish leadership.” Sunday ostensibly marked a turning point: about 10,000 people demonstrated in support of Israel at the United Nations building in New York, a demonstration whose numbers were not impressive for this city or, especially, for New York Jews.

But it was this very demonstration that exposed how disconnected the Jewish community is from its leadership and the ineffectualness of the Jewish leaders. The demonstration was organized by an ad hoc group of right-wing activists – Betar, Rabbi Avi Weiss from the Bronx, Americans for a Secure Israel. Shai Rubinstein, Betar’s central emissary in North America, who was among the organizers, said on Sunday that the demonstration was also an indirect protest against the impotence of the Jewish leadership. The Jewish public waited in vain, so we set out to organize the demonstration, he said.

Bridge holiday

Due to the time difference, when the Jews of New York sat down at their seder tables, they already had heard about the massacre in Netanya. But their behavior, which bordered on indifference, could be summed up in the following words: “The Jews of American are on their holiday vacation; please don’t interrupt.” During his sermon on the concluding festival day before the Yizkor prayer, an Orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn cried out that “the Jews of New York will be called to judgment for their silence during this hour of distress for Israel.”

Israel’s consul general in New York, Alon Pinkas suggests a toned down version: “The situation in Israel weighed down on the holiday vacation of American Jews and their leaders, but not enough to cause them to interrupt it.”

Indeed, while the Jews stretched the holiday vacation to bridge another weekend, thousands of Palestinians and immigrants from Middle East countries took to the streets of New York last Friday and held a series of mass demonstrations. Thousands gathered opposite the Israeli consulate building and at Times Square, carrying placards denouncing Israel, which “is conducting genocide against the Palestinian people,” and shouting derogatory chants about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The silence of the community in Israel also applies to the outbreak of violence against Jews in Europe and the burning of synagogues in France and Belgium. Besides a statement of condemnation issued by the Anti-Defamation League, there was no organized Jewish activity to protest the attacks against Jews in Europe. A Jewish activist who asked the head of a central organization why he didn’t convene a press conference and protest the torching of synagogues in France, received the response: “And what will I say to a reporter who asks for my reaction to the IDF’s actions in Ramallah and Bethlehem?”

Alon Pinkas prefers to maintain his working relations with the leaders of Jewish organizations. Unlike his predecessor, Colette Avital, who served in New York during the first Oslo agreement and debated with and even scolded Jewish leaders who were hesitant tover the passive behavior of the Jewish leadership in the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians. But lately, in internal discussions, he has spoken harshly against the representatives of the organized Jewish establishment, arguing, “All they know to do is convene meetings and listen to briefings on the situation in Israel.” Pinkas is especially angry that “even in the information campaign directed at the American media, Jewish involvement is not being felt.”

The information effort required from representatives of official Israel in New York is enormous, especially after the attack in Netanya and the beginning of Operation Defensive Wall. During the Gulf War, CNN was the only network to broadcast news 24 hours a day. Today, there are five networks broadcasting non-stop news and commentary. These networks operate independently of their parent networks, producing their own news programs, with special correspondents in Israel.

On a single day, March 29, Pinkas appeared in 14 interviews broadcast on national and international networks. “As long as I am confronting Palestinian representatives, I have no problem,” he explained. “When I’m invited to appear opposite an American Arab like James Zogby, the head of the Arab American Institute in Washington, I ask myself why there is no American Jewish leader to appear opposite him.” On the other hand, when the television broadcasts show lines of tanks in the streets of Ramallah and IDF soldiers with their guns cocked in the streets of Bethlehem, the leaders of Jewish organizations call to complain about the deficient Israeli information campaign.

With notice of only half a day, the Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn can mobilize 5,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews to demonstrate against Israel opposite the consulate building in Manhattan. It took great efforts by three Jewish umbrella organizations to convene about 500 Jewish leaders for a special meeting during the week before Passover. The address by the head of the Conference of Presidents, Mortimer Zuckerman, was broadcast remotely from Las Vegas, where he was vacationing.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who addressed the participants at the meeting via a videotaped speech, outlined a vision of a million immigrants coming to Israel. When Sharon said that he wants Jews from France, Argentina and South Africa to immigrate to Israel now, the leaders of the Jewish organizations responded with applause. When he mentioned that he would also like to see U.S. Jews make “aliyah,” the sound of chuckles could be heard in the audience. “The prime minister spoke about a million immigrants at a time when the Jews of America avoid setting foot in Israel, even as tourists,” said an Israeli observer.

When the meeting ended, a conversation developed between Pinkas and one of the heads of a large Jewish organization. “Why doesn’t your solidarity take expression in three jumbo jets taking off for Israel full of Jews?” Pinkas asked. One of the Jews responded, “It’s a logistical nightmare.” Pinkas did not let this go unanswered. “The establishment of the State of Israel was also a logistical nightmare, and it’s good that you weren’t among those advising Ben-Gurion what to do.”

Sharon’s lack of tact

Since September 2000, the community has acted passively, with the organized leadership preferring to lay low. It’s not an exaggeration to state, as several Jewish spokesmen here have already said, that the period since the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada will be remembered as one of the ugliest hours of the local Jewish community; in a metropolis which is home to about a million Jews, it could have been expected to see 100,000 take to the streets and demonstrate their support for Israel.

The passive behavior of the Jews and their leaders in the face of Israel’s distress is generally attributed to the lack of an authoritative leadership. But recently, another argument has been added: “The contradictions in the policies of Prime Minister Sharon makes it difficult to formulate an accepted public response by the organizations,” contends Seymour Reich in a conversation with him. According to Reich, a former head of the Conference of Presidents, “The Jews in America are in a tough position. They support Israel’s war against terror but are taken aback by Sharon’s lack of tact in his public declarations, such as his statements about spilling Palestinian blood.” Nonetheless, Reich believes that the main factor blocking the full mobilization of the community in expressing support and solidarity with Israel is “the feeling common among Jews that Sharon is not aiming for a political-diplomatic solution.”

The director of the ARZA organization of the Reform movement, Rabbi Ami Hirsh, speaks about “mixed feelings in the community.” He argues that the moral perspective in the current struggle is not clear enough. Jews oppose terror and support a war against terror, but at the same time, there is an increasing awareness among them of the injustice of occupation and the acts of humiliation against the Palestinians.

Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, admits: “In regard to the question of what to do and how exactly to respond, the Jewish leadership has become paralyzed.” But, he adds, “This doesn’t mean that the American Jew doesn’t care.” Foxman notes that after September 11, there has also been a concern about large gatherings, and this is another reason for not holding a mass demonstration in support of Israel. “The police and other groups advise not to bring together a large number of people in one place,” he says. But it seems that on Sunday, this argument was not longer valid, especially after the sight of thousands of Palestinians streaming toward Times Square.

While the main umbrella groups showed the full extent of their confusion, quiet activities were afoot among groups outside the recognized establishment. A new movement is expressing solidarity with reserve soldiers refusing to serve in the territories. A full-page advertisement was published in the New York Times last week, the first of its kind, which listed the names of rabbis and Jewish activists who support these “refuseniks.” The advertisement was the initiative of Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine.

At the last moment, a group of Jewish activists decided not to send a personal letter to Sharon. The letter was signed by 11 men and women who charged that “the refusal of 313 officers and combat soldiers is an act of conscience and moral courage that should be respected.” The letter ended by declaring: “Prime minister, we stand behind these officers and soldiers who are demanding moral integrity.”

The heads of Jewish organizations do not attribute much importance to such expressions of support for these “refusenik” soldiers. In their view, the refusal issue provided the extreme liberal branch of the community with an easy excuse for criticizing Sharon. But some Jewish officials believe that these quiet protest efforts are liable to proliferate.

The assessment is that the rightward swing identified among wide parts of the community in recent months, including among those known as moderates, has been halted. According to this assessment, the continuation of the conflict with the Palestinians will strengthen the liberal segment of the community.

This article ran in Ha’aretz on April 9th, 2002

Official PA News Agency Threatens the US with “Rage” of the World Warns That US Cannot Prevent a Repeat of September 11th

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 9, 2002

With thanks to IMRA for locating this release.

[Having been in NYC on September 11th, I listened to the WINS newsreels in which the PFLP took “credit” for the attacks on the US throughout that day.]

Gaza, April 7, 2002, Wafa, the Political Editor:

We are at the doorstep of another massacre orchestrated by the war criminal Gen. Mofaz and his highly ranked staff, a massacre against the steadfast Refugee Camp of Jenin, the Camp that is hard to crack by the Israeli invading occupation forces, a failure that led to releasing the Israeli commanding General from his duties.

Mofaz, personally directed by Sharon himself, is committing the ugliest crimes of all, in an era of preserving human rights and era of the modern world; his tanks are using the Palestinian children’s flesh as tank shields, when invading the Refugee Camp, in order to paralyze the Palestinian resistance, a resistance that is legendry determent to confront the invaders.

Does Israel race against time exposing itself to the entire world practicing terror? a programmed racist murder? And commits crimes that consist of one or two targets: termination or deportation and transfer.

Two days ago, countries and organizations that were considered as supportive to Israel, are revising their supportive attitude, unable to accept the Israeli crimes, such as the Royal institute of “Nobel Prize” that expressed its apology for granting Peres a “Nobel Peace” prize, and a distinguish member of the institute suggested to withdraw the prize from him for his part in the Israeli scheme. If this is the position of the institute, then its opinion about Sharon’s role in committing these murders, massacres, and the criminal terror, should be very interesting.

Despite everything, there is an essential question: who is going to pay? And from which account? For rectifying the upside-down situation returning history into its right track. The answer is very clear, but yet there are other questions: when? And can the Palestinians alone shovel the odds and reorganize them? And without Arab clear support and help?

We have said that the Arabs have means that can be used to make a remarkable impact, if used properly, but, the Arabs first, then the Moslems, should free themselves from the mental terror practiced against them by the USA Administration, since the 11th of September 2001, and no Arab or Moslem country should jump to support the USA Administration in fighting the terror as long as it is still unidentified, while considering the legitimate resistance against the occupation as terror, where simultaneously the organized state terror is not considered terror yet but “self defense”!!.

The Islamic and the Arab countries should abandon an issue, they are not responsible for, we mean the attack against the World Trade Center in New York and in the Pentagon in Washington, two monuments considered symbols of the USA power.

Nor the current Administration neither the coming ones can impose their will and desires on the rest of the earth nations, it was tried before, not only proving its failure but bringing disasters back like a boomerang.

We recognize the capability of the modern technology and its precision of enabling unlimited control, but simultaneously we notice that the individuals and the small groups are developing amazing parallel capability of confronting such attempts of control, registering remarkable achievements, aren’t the 11th of September considered as a blow to the technological advance?

Jenin Refugee Camp is facing a criminal massacre, also the most ancient of Nablus’s Quarters. The President “The Symbol” “The Nations Legend” and maybe a legend in the entire world, is being confined and brutally besieged by the Israeli terror, that is blessed by the USA, who deals with this issue as if it does not exist.

The Palestinians have informed the entire world especially the USA and its Administration, that President Arafat IS the Palestinian Address which through Him and only through Him the Palestinians might be approached, and no one has the permission to trespass this Palestinian consensus, because this is a Palestinian decision which all Palestinian individuals, groups, factions, inside Palestine and out have approved and ready to fight for.

Maybe the “New World Order” does not recognize political, cultural and moral references anymore, Israel and the UA have violated the Palestinian reference, represented by the democratically elected President Arafat, who is still receiving full support from the entire Palestinian communities. By this stupid action, Israel has implicated the USA placing it in the midst of not only the Palestinian rage, but also the entire Arab nations’ rage, and the rest of the world’s rage.

The demonstrations throughout the whole world are a living proof to this rage and frustration hitting the citizens of the globe.

That is why we refuse to meet with the USA Secretary of State Mr. Colin Powell, if he does not meet honestly and without maneuvering, with our Address first, and the Arab Leaders should get the Address’s blessing before meeting Powell, because the USA officials meetings with President Arafat show the seriousness of this Administration, furthermore we call on the entire Arab leaders and the rest of the world’s to act immediately to protect Jenin Refugee Camp from the criminal Israeli occupation forces who are committing massacres, in this camp in particular.

This release ran on the “Wafa” wire on Sunday, April 7, 2002

An Open Letter

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

April 9, 2002

April 8, 2002
Jerusalem

Dear Friends,

As we continue to face critical days and mounting pressures, I feel, it important to share firsthand some thoughts on the events of the last few days. President Bush’s statement Wednesday concerning events in the Middle East was of historical importance. He stated with a simple but profound clarity that, “the Palestinian people deserve a government which respects human rights.”

For a decade, the entire civilized world, with Israel and the US leading, betrayed its principles by promoting, supporting, and condoning a corrupt leader who suppressed any Palestinian impulse and aspiration for a free and just society. Israel’s leaders cynically and fallaciously reasoned that this would be good for us because such a dictator would suppress terrorism in exchange for his international rehabilitation and a license to plunder his people. It would be easier, our leaders told themselves, because he would not be hindered by human rights organizations or by a Supreme Court. This bargain with the devil, as all others, was bound to boomerang. Not only did Arafat fail to curb terrorism, he recruited, supported, and directed the terrorists themselves in the most cruel and inhumane acts of wanton and indiscriminate terror yet witnessed.

In the face of President Bush’s clear statement that Arafat betrayed his obligations and refused to fight the terrorists, how can Israel trust him in yet another promise to stop terrorism? Terrorism will be eliminated when we eliminate it, and the terrorists will be incarcerated when we take them into captivity. The Tenet agreement which is being promoted by the US administration as an appropriate exchange for a premature cessation of our efforts at effective self help, is based on an obligation by Arafat to arrest and punish the same terrorists with whom he is closeted in Ramallah. Arafat has not merely failed to thwart terrorism, he has promoted, enlisted and paid the terrorists per suicide bomb assembled. He has perpetuated and exploited the misery of the Palestinian Arabs.

How can anyone seriously treat Arafat and his corrupt gang of terrorists as partners for peace? Arafat has finally been exposed and his naked duplicity, wickedness, and corruption can no longer be clothed by us in self deception.

By ignoring Arafat’s despotism, corruption, and flagrant disregard of agreements, we not only betrayed our own principles, we thereby enabled the growth and spread of terrorism until it reached the inconceivable and monstrous proportions of today.

In the last month, over 150 of us have been murdered either by sitting in a cafe, or by going to the supermarket or by celebrating the Feast of Freedom with our families on Seder night. Statistically, for our small society, this is a loss even greater than that of September 11th. But this story is not one of statistics. For with each family suffering a loss, there is unbearable grief and pain, and a terrible, never ending void. And for each family suffering a death, tens of other families have had members permanently disabled, injured, and scarred. At the funeral of my Housing Ministry colleague, Aviel Ron, and his two murdered children, his widow, the mother of their two children cried out in utter disbelief, “ze lo yachol leeheeyot”–this cannot be happening. This is what all of us are all saying, and all of us we must do everything in our power to make absolutely sure that this does not continue to happen!

What our Defense Forces are doing now is long overdue. Our vast intelligence networks are working together intensively to identify the leaders and carriers of this explosive and venomous terrorism. We are determined to reach the villains and not innocent Palestinians. Because we are so careful to avoid unnecessary losses-on both sides- we must proceed carefully, deliberately, and surgically. Those we seek out hide behind innocent civilians, and especially, children and adolescents. They hide in churches and mosques and take monks and nuns hostage. Those we are chasing, booby trap houses and even churches. Advancing cautiously means moving methodically and slowly. We cannot treat every house as booby trapped and bomb it-lest we risk injuring innocent people; but we must treat every house as if it might be booby trapped-lest we risk the lives of our young soldiers.

Because of these circumstances, we need several weeks to eliminate most of the sources of terrorism. This is a job which can be done effectively. We have already arrested over 400 terrorists, about 100 of whom actually committed the murders. We have arrested those who directed the massacres at the Dolphinarium, at Seafood, and at Sbarro Pizza. The terrorist responsible for the massacre at the Seder in Netanya was killed in a highly sophisticated operation conducted by the IDF and the Security Forces. We can do the job responsibly, effectively, and honorably, but we must be given the proper time. If we are forced to recede before the completion of our mission, we will, at some point, have to return. And the cost to us and the price in innocent lives will be far greater.

History teaches us that Jews have often been killed in cruel and unusual ways. From the harugei hamalchut in Roman times to the inquisition, pogroms, and more recently, the gas chambers. Now, we experience yet another cruel innovation–human suicide bombs.

But this time, things are different. For we have a sovereign Jewish State to defend and protect its citizens. Israel’s first responsibility is to protect us from this recent wave of carnage. And by protecting us from this new weapon of terror, Israel defends freedom and civilized values everywhere. To prematurely end our campaign against this new threat, is to place our innocent civilians in harm’s way to the detriment of all. Israel must be no less resolute in fighting terrorism directed against us than the US in fighting terrorism against its citizens. The wishful thinking of Oslo has long since self destructed and we can no longer pretend that Arafat is a partner for peace.

You are no doubt facing conflicting pressures and will face even more in the next few days. The media is reporting what it understands based on many fragmented sources. I can promise you that the true story is really quite clear. We are a democratic state fighting to eliminate the worst wave of terrorism unleashed against a civilian population in human history. This campaign which will require several weeks, has only one purpose: to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure which was built by the Palestinian Authority and its leader Arafat with Israeli, US, and European resources. To force us to stop before its completion would be a tragic error.

These are not easy times but more than ever they call for us to be united in this campaign to eliminate terror. This is the humane course; this is the only course consistent with President Bush’s forthright stand against terror.

We need your understanding. We need your support. And we need them now as never before. I know the power and glory of Jewish unity and I know that together we can prevail.

Natan Sharansky
Israel Minister of Housing

Israel Behind the News

How Reporters were Forced to Downgrade the Report of a “Massacre.”

The Powell Visit: Israeli Press Reportage of a Disaster

The Iraqi Factor in the Powell Visit

The Battle in Jenin: An Assessment

If the IDF Withdraws, Will the Tanzim Enter?

Survivors of the SS St Louis Finally “Dock in Jerusalem”

From Anti-globalism to a New Anti-Semitism

The Silence of the Lambs: How US Jews React During the Current Crisis in Israel

Official PA News Agency Threatens the US with “Rage” of the World Warns That US Cannot Prevent a Repeat of September 11th

An Open Letter

Column from the Director