Bethlehem: Recounting an “Incursion”

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April 9, 2002

The IDF entered Bethlehem on March 29th following massive missile, mortar and machine gun attacks upon the Jerusalem Gilo neighborhood that emanated from Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and the UNRWA refugee camps in and around Bethlehem.

Instead of firing at the IDF from Palestinian military positions throughout Bethlehem, the PLO dispatched 150 trained sharpshooters to take cover and fire from the safe haven of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem while holding more than 100 Christian clerics hostage over the weekend, using the world’s major Christian shrine as an armed refuge and firing sporadically at Israeli troops, while the IDF issued straight orders not to respond with fire on holy places.

IDF officials said that these men are armed with automatic weapons and that a number of them are highly wanted terrorists. Meanwhile, the PLO armed forces holed up in the church rejected the IDF’s offer to evacuate the wounded and to allow the armed men to turn themselves in, if their safety was assured.

Over the weekend the IDF evacuated five priests and three nuns from the Church of the Nativity. Security sources said that Franciscan and Catholic patriarchates claim that the armed Palestinians had treated them violently and had caused damage to the church. The impasse continues, with the Catch-22 situation which prevents the IDF initiating any action to free the hostages and capture the terrorists because they are located within a Christian holy site. Vatican officials presented a plan for solving the crisis: The Palestinians would lay down their arms and leave the church premises, while Israel would lift its siege on the site.

However, the Palestinians rejected the offer.

Meanwhile, the Vatican Ambassador to Israel, Msgr. Pietro Sambi, vehemently denied the rumor spread by the PA and reported on in Palestinian PA media, which claimed that the IDF had murdered a priest in Bethlehem.

The military successes of the operation have been largely ignored by Western media.

Kaes Adwan, the most senior of the wanted Hamas operatives was killed on Friday.

In the course of the fighting, the forces noticed a suspicious car parked at the entrance to the house where the wanted men were hiding. The force fired at the car and it exploded. It was discovered that this was a car bomb which had already been prepared for detonation. The IDF believes that Adwan planned to sneak the car into Israel in order to perpetrate a massive terror attack.

“The killing of Adwan is a tough blow to Hamas, said a senior figure in the IDF. Dr. Abed al-Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader who sits in Arafat’s cabinet, expressed his sorrow at the killing of Adwan.

He promised that the response would be “tough and extremely painful”. However, Rantisi said that the assassination would not harm Hamas activity. “Kaes Adwan is no more then one percent of the people at his level who operate in the Izzadin Kassam troops”, he said. He said that Hamas’s revenge would be “a serious operation against Israel that would undermine the stability of the Zionist state”.

Kaes Adwan was responsible for the murder of 77 Israeli. Palestinian sources agreed that his killing is a harsh blow to the military branch of Hamas. Adwan, 25, was a senior figure in Izzadin Kassam, Hamas’s military branch. with Hamas. Adwan was wanted in Israel over the past few years for his involvement in many terror attacks. He was responsible for:

The terror attack at Mei-Ami, in which the terrorist Zayid Kilani detonated a bomb he was carrying, killing an Israeli civilian.
The terror attack at Sbarro’s in Jerusalem in August, 2001. Adwan recruited and dispatched the terrorist who blew himself up, killing 15 Israelis and injuring dozens more.
The terror attack at the Nahariya train station in September, 2001.
Adwan recruited and dispatched the suicide bomber, Shaker Hibeishi, an Israeli Arab from Abu Snan, who murdered three Israelis and injured dozens.
The terror attack on the bus in Haifa in December 2001, in which 16 Israelis were killed and dozens injured.
Dispatching a suicide bomber to perpetrate a terror attack in Jerusalem, which did not succeed because the GSS captured the terrorist. The terrorist, Rassan Abu Smada, said during his interrogation that he had been recruited and sent by Adwan.
The terror attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya in which 26 Israelis were killed and more than 100 injured.
The terror attack at the Matza restaurant in Haifa. Adwan located and sent the suicide bomber who killed 16 Israelis.
On a Tangential Note:

Two companies of reservists serving in Bethlehem were forced to sleep in an apartment adjacent to the Church of the Nativity. The soldiers entered the home, sent the entire family into one of the rooms, and when they received instructions to leave the place early in the morning, they collected a kitty of NIS 1,500 and gave it to the family.

“We went into their home, used their rooms, and therefore they deserve to be paid, explained one soldier. When the soldiers gave the money to the family, they expressed their regret to the family and added, “This is a time of war”.

Other reservists in the Nablus sector sent hot meals to families, giving up their own lunches. Avi, a reservist, said, “We encountered an entire Palestinian family, elderly people with their children and grandchildren. They were frightened and thought we were going to kill them. When we received a hot meal, we gave it to them. They were shocked”. The next night, those same soldiers returned to the home and discovered that a member of this family suffers from an ingrown toe-nail and must undergo surgery. They called in the doctor, Dr. Eyal Dekel, who carried out the procedure, ending the pain.

In Kalkilya, IDF troops entered a home, searched it and before they left, the soldiers made a point to clean the house: they swept up and put the furniture back where it was.

The Real War has Begun

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 4, 2002

What we saw up until now was just the preface, with a strong opening chord in Ramallah. This war even has a new name, albeit not officially. “This war should be called the ‘war for the home,” the chief of staff told regular paratrooper soldiers before they left for the battle to conquer the capital of Palestinian terror, the city of Nablus. And they sat facing him in tense silence, with the knowledge that they were about to see fighting that very few armies, including the IDF, had experienced: combat inside a large, crowded city with tall buildings, with a casbah, with the radical A-Najah University, which gave birth to a large number of the suicide bombers, with the largest concentration of wanted men who know that the IDF is on the way, and who have had enough time to prepare for it. “This is a very crucial time,” Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz told them, “and the minister of history has summoned you to be participants in the battle for our home. Each one of you understands the great responsibility on your young shoulders.”

As of last night, the preliminary military operations were undertaken to enable the reservists to get ready, put the units in order, complete the battle orders and began the mission of completing the occupation of the territories. Control over these areas is mainly by means of the regular army units, who go from one sub-section to another. In the less problematic places, the reservists are the ones who take control or help to do so. The sub-sections in the West Bank, which until the most recent operation were handled by brigades, are now being handled by three divisions. The West Bank is saturated with army troops on a scale never seen before.

The IDF decided to work, in the first days of fighting, from the outside inwards. First it entered Ramallah, Tulkarm, Kalkilya, Bethlehem. These are cities that the IDF entered and exited recently, and they are already a pretty squeezed lemon as far as combating terror infrastructure goes. The addition of isolating Arafat is a political act, and the more time that passes, its damage outweighs its benefits. The world is busy today dealing with the question of how many pitas Arafat’s besieged office ordered, and not with the question of how many terror attacks this man is responsible for.

On Tuesday, we went up a grade. The reserve troops, meant both for combat or as backup in case of military deterioration, became ready, and the army began to deal thoroughly with Samaria, the heart of Palestinian terror. On Tuesday the incursion into Jenin began. And last night was the climax: the incursion into Nablus.

However, this climax may also signal the countdown of the diplomatic clock. If this were just a conflict between ourselves and the Palestinians, Israel could conquer the area and cleanse it, an act that could last even several weeks without any real diplomatic pressure. However, there was a change in the last 24 hours. The Egyptian announcement of cutting diplomatic ties, which will most likely lead to a similar Jordanian announcement, is a very worrisome signal, and it is still unclear how it will develop. The heating up of the northern border and the danger of this border burning within a few days may halt the military operations in the territories.

The pressure from Europe and the UN on Israel is secondary. But with the Americans worried about the rift with Egypt and a possible flare with Syria, the IDF operations in the territories could be shortened to a week. Israel needs more time to achieve its central goal of reducing the volume of terror.

So far, the operation has produced 1,000 Palestinians who were arrested. Around 70 armed Palestinians were killed. Among those arrested are only a few dozen major terror activists. At Jibril Rajoub’s headquarters, for example, while around 200 people did give themselves up, only 13 of them were mid-level terror activists. The intelligence aspect and the confiscation of weapons is important, but the thing that will put a stop to the wave of suicide bombers and the reduction of terror is the number of wanted men who are neutralized. We need a few dozen of such high-level people and a few hundred mid-level ones to achieve this. And for that, the IDF needs time.

This time can be obtained if there is no deterioration in the north, if we don’t do anything stupid in the territories, and if we are able to show the Americans that we are getting direct results in the war on terror. One result of the present war is already evident: The Palestinian Authority, as we knew it, does not function and apparently no longer exists. The big unknown is what sort of political creature Israel will face the day after, in the hope that all the chilling predictions of a fundamentalist mutation do not come true.

This article ran in Yediot Aharonot on April 4th, 2002

PA Funded Terror – Documents Seized from the Office of Yassir Arafat

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 4, 2002

This week, Israel revealed a document seized early this week from the office of Fuad Shubaki, in charge of PA money matters, proving that the PA funded terror attacks against Israel. A detailed request for money appears in the document sent by the El-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the Tanzim operational arm, for carrying out terror attacks, including suicide attacks.

“This is a shopping list for terror,” said Col. Miri Eisen, from IDF Intelligence, who showed the document together with Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN. Shubaki, who was behind the Karine A weapons ship, is now believed to be in Arafat’s besieged office.

In the first four sections of the document, sent on October 16, 2001, the El-Aksa Martyrs Brigades ask for NIS 2,000 for printing posters in memory of shahids (martyrs), NIS 1,250 for funding mourners’ tents in their memory, NIS 1,000 for preparing wooden boards and NIS 6,000 for funding memorial ceremonies.

The fifth section asks for NIS 20,000 for preparing bombs. “Various electronic components and chemical material for making bombs and mines — this is our biggest expense,” the authors of the document write, and ask for money to fund from five to nine bombs a week at an average of NIS 700 per bomb.

The last two sections deal with funding for buying ammunition for Kalashnikovs and M-16s. The authors explain that that the price of one Kalashnikov bullet is NIS 7-8, NIS 2-2.5 for a Kalashnikov bullet and “we need this ammunition on a daily basis.” The authors come up with a “price proposal”: 3,000 Kalashnikov bullets for NIS 22,500 and 30,000 M-16 bullets for NIS 60,000. Military sources believe that these are “inflated” prices, because the authors assumed that the PA would not give them as much as they asked for.

On the document, which also mentions a “debt” of NIS 38,888 for terror attacks already committed, there are handwritten scribbles, apparently written by Shubaki himself.

Col. Eisen said that IDF Intelligence does not know whether the money was indeed transferred, but after the letter was sent, eight suicide bombers from the El-Aksa Martyrs Brigades blew up in Israel. “The document proves the direct involvement of the Palestinian Authority and of Arafat in terror,” Eisen said.

Other documents which were seized attest that Shubaki funded the salaries of El-Aksa Martyrs Brigades operatives in Bethlehem and was involved in funding the acquisition of weapons that were stolen from IDF soldiers. “We managed to put our hands on a long list of documents that the Palestinians were about to destroy, for good reason,” said Eisen. Government sources said that some of these will be revealed in he next few days, and some of them are “hair-raising.”

Many weapons, including RPGs, and counterfeit Israeli currency were also seized in Shubaki’s office and in Tawfik Tirawi’s office next door.

This article ran in Yediot Aharonot on April 2nd, 2002

An Open Letter to The Age in Australia: Double Standard of Reporting

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 4, 2002

I would appreciate you passing the following note along for me to the Labor Party of Australia, as mentioned in the Age news report below.

My daughter Malka Chana was born in Melbourne in November 1985 and murdered in Jerusalem in August 2001. To the best of my knowledge, her violent and ugly death at the hands of Arab “resistance forces” did not merit any protest — or indeed any attention — from you.

Like Kate Edwards (or Kate Irving), she was an Australian energetically in favour of peace. Entirely unlike Ms Edwards-Irving, Malki engaged in meaningful actions which brought good to the world, chiefly by working with teenagers and children suffering from profound disabilities. Ms Irving-Edwards, in contrast to my sweet daughter, chose to make her grand contribution in the one place which, more than any other, outstandingly exemplifies the hypocrisy and shallowness of logic of Israel’s enemies.

Beit Jala is a hamlet on the edge of Jerusalem. It’s the place from which Arafat’s forces have directed deadly fire into the suburbs of Israel’s capital on a daily and nightly basis for eighteen months. There’s no strategic point to it whatever. Their agenda is pure terrorism. The Israeli army is well equipped and professional, but also civilized and restrained. Had Israel chosen to do to Beit Jala what Arafat’s thugs have done to the Park Hotel in Netanya, to the Matza restaurant in Haifa or to the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem — the place where Malki and fifteen other innocents were viciously robbed of the remainder of their lives — it could have solved the problem by making it completely and permanently go away.

But there is no moral equivalence between our side and their side. I don’t know of any actions taken by other governments which compare with Israel’s restraint in the face of the evil emanating from Beit Jala and places like it.

The dangers we face here are real, as my wife and children and I can explain in detail to you, if you’re in any doubt about the issue. Thanks to Arafat, we find ourselves on the battlefront when we’re sitting in our living room, traveling to work, or going out for a coffee. Israelis are entitled to the fullest protection that the government can provide. No “peace” protestor like Kate should ever be allowed to compromise that protection in any way.

I realize the Middle East seems far away to you. But the terrorist evil against which Israel’s citizen army is engaged in these difficult days deserves a healthy degree of respect. The dangers of that evil are real, concrete and international. You may even see them in Australia. If not now, then perhaps in the future.

The foolishness and woolly thinking typified by Ms Edwards-Irving’s presence in suburban Jerusalem, and its political echoes in Australia, bring no credit to her, to her colleagues or to those who confuse right from wrong in the name of partisan politics. With terror on the agenda, you have to pick your side, which is what Kate did.

Thanks,

Arnold Roth

Arnold Roth is Father of Malka Chana, murdered last August by PLO terrorists

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 1, 2002

Thomas Schmelzer
Efrat 90435

Office of the Prime Minister
Honorable Ariel Sharon, Director General of the Office of Prime Minister
c/o Uri Shani

Via Facsimile Transmittal and Registered Mail

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

I am a lawyer practicing in the United States but I spend more than 60% of my time in Israel. I am the son of survivors. I dreamt of making Aliya ever since my parents pulled my brothers and I off a bus to the airport in Vienna to a plane to Israel in 1963. My wife came to share my vision and my family, including my three daughters, made Aliya in August 1994.

I am writing because of the amateurs in the strategic planning and public relations departments of our government. We have consistently lost the initiative against the Palestinians because I believe that we have amateur psychologist working for us, as opposed to professionals employing common sense. As a result, our policies lack focus and have the appearance of being made without prior planning, preparation or goals. In contrast, our foes come of as professional and focused.

Since the start of the “Al Aqsa” intifada, our political strategic planners have employed a strategy of symbolic acts in the hope of dissuading our enemies from carrying out acts of terror. This took the form of warning the PA of the targets we would strike so that they would suffer no casualties. The hope was that by seeing out power, the terrorists would be cowed from carrying out further acts. Did anyone stop and consider whether the suicide bombers care what our reaction would be. All this strategy has accomplished was to alert the PA as to the nature of our responses. Thus, we no longer have to warn them that we are coming, they automatically evacuate potential targets and we end up hitting empty buildings. This strategy is a proven failure.

Our more recent efforts at going after the “terrorist infrastructure” have been no more effective because again, we telegraph our moves through a cumbersome decision making process, i.e., the security cabinet and the kitchen cabinet. It amazes me that after almost two (2) years of terror our governments have not had a set of pre-selected targets to hit in the event of a terrorist attack. Or if such a list exists, the authority to hit them has not been given. It is my opinion that retaliation is effective only if it is guaranteed and immediate. It has been neither. By the time the cabinets hold their meetings, everyone in the world knows what we are going to do. Thus, because we are a democratically elected government, we end up looking like bloodthirsty warmongers and the Palestinians as the victims. This has happened in almost every instance. By the time we hit them, the visions of our mangled victims are forgotten and the world sees the poor Palestinian widow who lost her husband who had nothing to do with the terrorist act. I want to know why are the helicopters and troops not on the way within minutes after credit is taken for an attack. These people mock us and make us look like fools. To add insult to injury, the leaders of these terror groups, like Sheik Yassin and Rantizzi have become media stars and are immune from harm because they are “political” personae. It amazes me that a country that could send planes to Uganda and hunt down the murderers of the 1972 Olympians doesn’t have the will to find a blind old man in Gazza or the Hamas spokesman in the West Bank.

And then we have our government spokesmen, and I include the Prime Minister and the defense minister among them. If you are going to give interviews in English, learn the language. Both Mr. Sharon and Fuad are unqualified to give interviews in English. That also goes for our UN representative and most of the foreign ministry and IDF spokesmen. In contrast, the PA representatives that appear on television are smooth and excellent English speakers. I would trade all of ours combined for either of Ashrawi or Erakat. Why can’t we have competent spokesmen who are trained in public relations and have their “talking points”. Theirs mention occupation so many times that everyone now talks about it. Ours “ahh” and “ehh” so many times that it hurts your ears. Ours appear unprepared and theirs the exact opposite.

The topper for me has been the recently announced policy of “isolating” Arafat. Whoever came up with this idea must be a Ph.D. from the school of symbolism. Since when can you humiliate a liar, especially one who a significant part of the world believes? Hasn’t anyone there read Aldous Huxley’s book, 1984, or perhaps Mein Kampf”, the basic premise of which is the bigger the lie and the more frequently it is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed. We have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with this policy of isolation. The U.S. has practically begged us to get rid of Arafat, but we come up with this brilliant plan to “isolate” him. We have isolated him with CNN interviews, by candlelight, BBC interviews, and, one day early for an April fools joke, with forty foreign “peace” activists. He was shown kissing the women and posing for the cameras. I expect that Washington will make us pay for this fiasco, because we just made President Bush look like an idiot. He says that Arafat is responsible for the terror, and we reward him by letting Arafat look like a grandfather everyone wants to have. He really looked the part of the terrorist. Mofaz says letting the activists in was a “mistake”. That was a career change mistake.

Who is responsible for these fiascoes? Arafat and the PA have outsmarted us every step of the way. We have squandered the lives of our terror victims by not taking advantage of their public relations value. We, in essence, killed them a second time by making their deaths forgettable and irrelevant. We have trivialized their deaths by neglecting to make any use of it and by reacting late if at all. Now we have the strategy of “isolation” and the repeated promise not to hurt Arafat. If he gets a hangnail or has a heart attack, we will pay in blood. The stupidity of this policy is not to be believed. Now, we can’t kill him no matter what he does. Let us ship him out before the Supreme Court decides that we can’t isolate him.

In business, people who expouse such strategies would have long ago lost their jobs. I know that no government would employ persons who have the proven record of failure of our strategic planners and public relations people have demonstrated. In my opinion, start over by getting people with some common sense to do the job. If they can speak English, all the better.

For God’s sake, stop the symbolism, the world is not buying it, and call it as it is. The Palestinians are liars, murderers and thieves. Arafat has been kicked out of every country that gave him sanctuary. He broke over 150 cease-fire agreements in Lebanon and nearly destroyed that country. The suicide bombings started after the Oslo Agreements and after Arafat has 97% of the Palestinian population under his control. Repeat this mantra at every opportunity, before any explanation of policy and events. React immediately, and not after eight hour middle of the night meetings. Let us put them on the defensive for a change.

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I want to volunteer my services in any capacity so long as I can help Israel develop a reasonable strategic plan in dealing with our predicament. I want no compensation. I also don’t want my family slaughtered because someone thinks that it is a good idea to declare Arafat and enemy, but not to touch him because he is being isolated with hundreds of his gunmen and supporters.

I look forward to prompt response to the points raised by this letter.

Thomas Schmelzer is an Attorney at Law

Arab leaders Organize Protests

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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April 1, 2002

Cairo, Egypt (AP) – The crowds are large and their chants fiery, but Arab protests – such as those against Israel’s pressure on Yasser Arafat – are often used and even choreographed by the region’s governments to send messages abroad and keep anger over domestic problems in check.

Tens of thousands of Arabs have protested every day since Israeli forces seized control of the Palestinian leader’s compound in Ramallah on Friday and began taking over other West Bank towns in a major offensive that follows 18 months of violence.

Demonstrations have erupted on university campuses across Egypt, in squalid Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, and along the sidewalks of Jordan’s capital, Amman. Some of the largest have been in countries such as Iraq and Syria, whose governments keep the tightest grip on self-expression – but use their media and security forces to organize mass demonstrations when they want to make a point to the outside world.

The region’s less repressive leaders keep a close eye on protests against Israel and the United States, allowing demonstrators to vent anger that might otherwise be directed at their own governments but reining them in when they get out of hand.

Egyptian police used tear gas and fire hoses Monday to disperse demonstrators who tried to march from Cairo University to the nearby Israeli Embassy.

Students who have held daily protests across Egypt have not been allowed to venture off their campuses.

Both Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, have come under pressure to annul their treaties or sever diplomatic ties.

Roughly 60 percent of Jordan’s 5 million people are Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their homes in the 1948 and 1967 Middle East wars, and calls for steps against Israel are growing. However, a senior government official said Monday that Jordan would maintain ties with Israel. Egypt has taken a similar position.

Officials say maintaining relations offers crucial influence in the conflict, though Egypt and Jordan both recalled their ambassadors to Tel Aviv more than a year ago to protest the violence that erupted in September 2000.

On the so-called Arab street, anger at Israel and the United States, its closest ally, has built up over half a century of wars and Arab-Israeli rivalry.

In Syria, the government uses the media it controls to fan that anger, With articles like a recent one in the in al-Baath, the ruling Baath Party’s official newspaper, that called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a Nazi.

Across the Arab world, television images of Palestinian corpses on the streets of Ramallah and Arafat’s police surrendering to Israeli troops also increase the anger.

In countries where opinion is giver freer rein, independent and state television, government officials and opposition columnists have been speaking much the same language – the language of outrage – on the Palestinian issue.

But as united as Arab media, people and politicians are against Israel’s crackdown on Arafat and the Palestinians, governments in the Mideast are not acting on calls to wage war on Israel or end all contacts with the Jewish state.

Few Arab leaders have to answer to voters, and fewer still want to take any step that might undermine their authority.

“There is no democracy in this part of the world and no Arab ruler cares what his people think on any issue, let alone the peace issue,” said Labib Kamhawi, a Jordanian political scientist.

In the calculations of the region’s leaders, analysts say, holding onto power is less a matter of appeasing their citizens than of containing threats and currying favor with the United States by supporting attempts to find a peaceful end to the Israeli-Arab crisis.

And yet Egypt’s government, which has great influence over the country’s media, has taken no steps to calm emotions fueling the protests.

Egyptian sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim said the government was happy to let its people vent their anger over the plight of the Palestinians instead of focusing on unemployment, inflation, lack of economic or political opportunity or other problems.

“It is a God-sent issue for the government for the time being, to sidetrack and deflect attention from problems at home,” Ibrahim said. But “whenever it threatens to spill outside the university gates, then the ugly face of the security forces is shown.”

Abouleila Madi, one of the organizers of Monday’s failed march on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, said the tear gas and streams of water that met the peaceful protesters “reveals a real dilemma” facing the region’s governments.

“Arab regimes are incapable of doing anything, and when their people demand they do something, they confront them with violence,” he said.

This appeared on the AP wire of April 1, 2002

Why was the Arab Suicide Attack in Efrat Different from Other Terror Attacks?

By

David Bedein

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April 1, 2002

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, March 31, 2002, which this year was both the fourth day of Passover and on Easter Sunday, an explosion rocked Efrat, my wife, typing away yet another e-mail to one of many corresponding women from the world over, looked around the living room to see that the children were OK, and resumed her correspondence, including the “boom” in her closing graph.

Elchanon, our almost sixteen year old son who helps me in every aspect of my work, ran to the scene of the blast, cell phone in hand, stood on a hill overlooking the evacuation of the wounded so that he could report to me at the press center in Jerusalem. From where our office was able to place the story on the wire services, and to his brother Noam, now soldier on the Lebanese front.

Elchanon’s first words said it all. This attack was different from all the other attack. This time, an Arab blew himself up at the emergency mobile medical unit that dispatched a medic to treat him.

As the terrorist blew himself up, the medic that came out to treat him, Assaf Perlman, was riddled with shrapnel, sustaining injuries in his head and chest. Assaf is fighting for his life. Assaf is the same medic who risked his live under fire at the Joseph Tomb compound in October 2000 to try to save the life of a Druze Israeli soldier, Mamduch Yusef, who wound up bleeding to death in Assaf’s arms. Five other paramedics were also hurt, including Elchanon’s tenth grade classmate, Netanel, whose parents, from Moshe and Debbie, are old friends of mine who went to graduate school with me in New York 25 years ago and who, like us, settled in Efrat.

After many threats, this attack was clearly aimed against Efrat’s policy of providing medical services for the two Arab villages that are contiguous to Efrat. As a matter of policy, the Rabbi of Efrat, Shlomo Riskin, raised substantial funds from liberal Jews for medical clinics and schools in these nearby Arab villages a policy that earned the wrath of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

Rabbi Riskin made such a policy decision in the spirit of the Torah states 36 times that which a non-Jew who lives at peace with you in the land of Israel must be treated with dignity, respect and service.

In Januray, Last month, without warning, Channel One of Moscow filmed the Arab villages near Efrat, expecting to hear stories about the “Israeli occupation” and tensions between the small Arab village and the 16 expanding Israeli Jewish settlements of Efrat and the Etzion Bloc. The Russian TV crew heard the opposite message only praise for the people of Efrat and the Etzion bloc, and seething anger against Arafat and the “PLO occupation” of their fellow Palestinian Arab brethren in the Bethlehem region.

Family after family in these Arab villages told Russian TV that they were getting the best medical treatment possible from their friends in Efrat, while their families in Bethlehem had to bribe officials just to get the basics of treatment from the PA. They also spoke with pride about the school that Efrat had built for them

All this was aired on Russian TV Channel One very recently.

It would seem that the PA was watching. The clear purpose of the attack was to disrupt a proper relationship between a Jewish city and an Arab village.

Despite the threats to their lives from Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the people of Efrat’s nearby Arab villages gathered in an emergency town meeting to issue a statement that denounced the attack in the strongest of terms. It surprised nobody in the villages that Arafat’s police force took credit for the attacks.

The Arab League Summit Closing Statement

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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March 29, 2002

The Saudi Plan, as presented by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia contains three elements: “… withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of refugees”. Such a plan represents a formula for Israel’s dismemberment, since this would require that Israel relinquish strategic hills that overlook its coastal plain, forfeit its capital city and repatriate 3.6 million Arab refugees (and their descendents) from the 1948 war to 531 Arab villages that have been replaced by Israeli cities, collective farms and woodlands WITHIN Israel’s 1949-1967 cease fire lines.

Beirut – March 28,2002 WAFA (Official Palestine News Agency)
These are excerpts from the final statement issued at the end of the deliberations of the 14th regular session of the Arab summit conference in Beirut, at which the leaders praised the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in face of Israeli occupation and paid respect for the Palestinian martyrs and supported the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people until fulfilling the demands of the right of return, the right of self-determination and the establishment of the Palestinian state with Holy Jerusalem as its capital.

The declaration of Beirut pointed out that the Arab leaders had comprehensively evaluated the changes and challenges, notably that pertaining to the Arab region and the occupied Palestinian territories and the destructive war launched by Israel under the pretext of fighting terrorism, exploiting the tragic incidents of September 11 in the US

The Arab leaders reviewed the peace process and the Israeli practices that aim at undermining the stability of the middle east, and followed up the heroic Palestinian Intifada as well as the Arab initiatives that aim at realizing just and comprehensive peace in the region in the light of the resolutions of the international legitimacy pertaining to the Arab Israeli dispute and the Palestinian problem.

‘Shouldering our national responsibility, and in line with the conventions of the Arab league and the U.N., we would like to announce our determination to go ahead on the path of the Arab solidarity in all spheres, and to work for abortion of foreign plots hatched to undermine our Arab regional safety’, said the declaration, and added ‘we would like to salute the heroic Intifada of the Palestinians and their resistance to Israel’s occupation and its destructive military machinery and repressive measures against them.

The declaration hails the courageous martyrs of Intifada, stressing the strong support for the Palestinian people in all forms and for their legitimate heroic struggle against the occupation to achieve their just demands for the right of return, self determination and the setting up of their state with Alquds as its capital.

It expressed solidarity with Lebanon to complete the liberation of its territories and expressed its support for Lebanon’s development and reconstruction.

It demanded the immediate release of Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails and condemned the repeated Israeli aggression against Lebanon’s sovereignty notably the violation of its airspace and territorial waters, shouldering Israel full responsibility for the serious consequences of its provocations.

The Arab leaders stressed their solidarity with Syria and Lebanon against Israeli aggressive threats that undermine the security and stability in the region, considering any attack on the two countries as an aggression against all Arab countries.

“In light of the setback of the peace process, the leaders stressed their commitment to halt any relations with Israel and to activate the Arab bureau for boycotting Israel so that Israel implements the resolutions of the international legitimacy, Madrid’s peace reference and withdrawal from all Arab occupied territories to the border lines of June, 1967,” the declaration said.

The declaration emphasized that peace in the middle east will not be successful if it is not just and comprehensive in line with security council resolutions numbers 242, 338, 425 and 1397, and the principle of land for peace.

The declaration also emphasized the unity of the Syrian and Lebanese tracks and their organic linkage with the Palestinian track in realization of the Arab goals of solution comprehensiveness.

The Arab leaders asked Israel to reconsider its policy, adhere to peace and announce that just peace is its strategic choice too.

They also demanded that it carry out the following:

Total withdrawal from occupied Arab territories including the Syrian Golan to the lines of the 4th of June 1967 and the territories still occupied in south Lebanon.
Reaching a just solution to the Palestinian refugees problem to be agreed upon in accordance with united nations general assembly resolution number 194.
Acceptance of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza strip with Alquds as its capital.

Then, the Arab countries will carry out the following:

Consider the Arab Israeli conflict as finished and enter in a peace agreement between them and Israel to achieve peace for all countries in the region.
Establish normal relations with Israel as part of this comprehensive peace.
guarantee the rejection of all Palestinian settlement forms contradicting the special status of some host Arab countries.

When the English version of HaAretz differs from the Hebrew version

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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March 29, 2002

[Note from David Bedein: Ever since HaAretz pioneered an English edition for its daily Hebrew paper, with English translations overseen by David Landau, many astute readers who know both languages have noted that the English language version tends to sanitize the PLO.

David Landau was the co-author (with Shimon Peres) of The New middle East, and has served as the bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Israel for the past 25 years, and has also worked for many years as the Israel correspondent for The Economist. Previous critiques of Landau’s JTA editorial policies can be found on this site here and here.

In reading the article entitled “Israeli killed in shooting attack near W. Bank town” (Ha’aretz English edition March 24, 2002),I was struck by what seemed to be the extraordinary efforts made by your writers to avoid using the word “terrorist” to describe the Palestinians who had infiltrated across the Jordanian border into Israel last night and were killed by the Israeli Army near Kibbutz Tel Hatzir.

The use of neutral language to describe these individuals, who came across the border armed with Kalachnikov rifles and hand grenades, was particularly striking, because it contrasted so starkly with the language used by another article I had read earlier on the same subject.

Much to my surprise, the other article turned out to be the original Hebrew version of the very same article as published by “Ha’aretz” itself.

Consider the following examples. In each case the Hebrew text describes the Palestinians as “mechablim”, contemporary Hebrew for terrorists, while the English version uses a language that could imply that the Israeli Army hunts down and kills illegal immigrants:

Ënglish version: “Earlier Sunday, following a long chase on the southern slopes of the Golan Heights, IDF troops killed four men Sunday afternoon near Tel Katzir, who had infiltrated across the Jordanian border into Israel”.

In the original Hebrew version the phrase was “IDF troops killed four terrorists Sunday afternoon near Tel Katzir, who had infiltrated across the Jordanian border into Israel”.

English version: “At around 2 P.M., soldiers from the elite Egoz unit spotted the four close to the border with Jordan and opened fire. Three were killed instantly, while one managed to escape. Troops tracked down the fourth man a short while later and shot him dead”.

Hebrew version: “At around 2 P.M., soldiers from the elite Egoz unit spotted four terrorists east of Tel Katzir in the vicinity of the Haon cliffs and opened fire… “

English (translated) version: “The search for the infiltrators was launched after soldiers discovered tracks near the Israeli-Jordanian-Syrian border… “

Hebrew (original) version: “The search for the terrorists was launched after soldiers discovered tracks… “

The translator seems to confuse the Hebrew word for infiltrator (“mistananim” ) with the word for “terrorist” used by the author of the article. However a few lines later, when the original article actually uses the word “mistananim”, he or she does manage to translate it correctly. If so, why translate “terrorists” as “infiltrators’ unless the goal is to raise doubts about the moral right of the Israeli Army to hunt and kill them?

I suspect that these examples indicate a problem far more serious than the sloppiness of the English translation used by Haáretz staff.

The translator – or the English editor- has taken it upon his or herself to distort both the original article and the event itself.

The men who crossed the Israeli-Jordanian border armed to the teeth with automatic rifles were not seeking to better their standard of living by sneaking into Israel.

Bitter experience indicates that their mission was to kill as many Israelis as possible.

The authors of the original article got it right- such men are terrorists.

It behooves the editor and translators of the English version of Ha-aretz to share this information with their English readers.

How the IDF Must Make Order

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

March 29, 2002

The time has come to instate order and the time has come to restore to Israel its power of deterrence. We are a country with enormous power, yet almost every day its weak enemies make a mockery of it without its might coming to the fore in a response, in deterrence and in prevention. We unsuccessfully try to defend ourselves and, in the meantime, terror dictates the tempo of our lives and their contents. A cloud of paralyzing gloom and fear hovers upon us. National morale is at a low, the economy is wavering on the verge of collapse and the streets and places of entertainment are deserted.

Terror has been defeating us for a year and a half. Today we wonder what we could have done a year ago, half a year ago, that perhaps might have prevented so many awful events, but we were wary and now we need to take much firmer steps to help — and again we are wary. What will we do in another year?

There are moments in which a country must place its differences and internal rifts behind it and unite to fight for its life. On the blood-filled Passover eve in Netanya, we reached such a moment. Before we renew the arguments over accepting or rejecting the Saudi initiative, a separating fence, over withdrawal from the territories or holding onto them, we must gather together for a war for the defense for our souls, for our safety, for our lives, which have become truly impossible.

Even humane people, full of good will and with moderate outlooks, must realize that if we don’t now teach the Palestinians a lesson they will not forget, if we don’t teach them that they have something to lose and give them a live example of such a stinging loss, and if we don’t restore our power of deterrence, we will decline into even worse situations.

We must not be deterred by what is said about us. Great praise was heaped on us when we signed the Oslo agreement and brought Arafat and his armed men here, and look what happened. The world praises us when we are restrained, but immediately afterwards, like in the last poll in Newsweek — it poses big question marks on the very chances of our existence. We will not win this war in television broadcasts and newspaper columns all over the world, but based on what we do in practice, on the ground, in the heart of the Palestinian darkness.

Once we had pretensions of being a world spearhead, a guiding light, in the war against terror. Today we are displaying weakness and hesitation in this war. We must not continue this way.

Even we in the media must think seriously about what we do and ask: Do we not, with a cloak of arguments over the public’s right to know and the press’s right to be everywhere and expose everything, in fact in many cases, try to bring, under a guise of the facts, one dominant political view, one that is supported by many of the journalists and editors? Are we not thus causing the knees to shake and the hearts to be filled with trepidation of the political and military echelons and the fighters in the field? Do we indeed have nothing to learn from the glorious democratic press in the United States and the UK, which are able to bring strength in times when they must not weaken, to encourage in times when we must not be idle. True, in times like this we must not be a press of boiling blood and preaching for hatred and for going all the way, but we are allowed to demand comprehensive and firm action to protect our lives and we are allowed to unite to encourage those who must decide this and those who have the task of carrying it out.

This ran as a front page editorial in Ma’ariv on March 29, 2002

Israel Behind the News

Bethlehem: Recounting an “Incursion”

The Real War has Begun

PA Funded Terror – Documents Seized from the Office of Yassir Arafat

An Open Letter to The Age in Australia: Double Standard of Reporting

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

Arab leaders Organize Protests

Why was the Arab Suicide Attack in Efrat Different from Other Terror Attacks?

The Arab League Summit Closing Statement

When the English version of HaAretz differs from the Hebrew version

How the IDF Must Make Order

Column from the Director