Different Worlds, Different Values

Remarks of Brigitte Gabriel to be delivered at the Duke University Counter-Terrorism Speak-out
October 14, 2004
(via Naomi Ragen)

I'm proud and honored to stand here today as a Lebanese speaking for Israel--the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised in an Arabic country I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon, where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians City after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17 without electricity eating grass to live and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon . My mother was wounded by a Moslems shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room I was shocked at what I saw. They were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christian Lebanese and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.

For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital, those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government about the Jews and Israel that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds as shouts of joy of "Allahu Akbar"-- "God is great"--would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers. One such family member wasRina, whose only child was wounded in his eyes.

One day I was visiting with her and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started waking out of the room, and this mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me. She holds me crying and says: "It is not your fault." We just stood there, crying, holding each other's hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still able to love me the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians!

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism versus civilization. It's democracy versus dictatorship. It's goodness versus evil.

Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian "armed struggle." However, once such behavior is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized every where in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of god.

Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York , from Moscow to Madrid , from Bali to Beslan.

They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation" Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent. On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel 's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem . Fifty-four people were killed and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" or "occupation," but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up and support and defend the state of Israel , which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

Thank you.

Joel adds: If you were to translate the songs played by the Israeli Army band mentioned above, or any songs played or sung in Israel at any time, you would not find A SINGLE ONE calling for death of Arabs, or of any enemy. Even in today's secular Israel, all the music, all the art, and the longing of all hearts, is about peace and love.

Check it out if you don't believe me. And ask yourself: Do I have the right understanding of this conflict?

MYTH #153: “Israel was responsible for the 1973 war.”

FACT On October 6, 1973 — Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — Egypt and Syria opened a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. The equivalent of the total forces of NATO in Europe were mobilized on Israel's borders (Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars, NY: Random House, 1984, p. 230.).1 On the Golan Heights, approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks. Along the Suez Canal, fewer than 500 Israeli defenders were attacked by 80,000 Egyptians.

Thrown onto the defensive during the first two days of fighting, Israel mobilized its reserves and eventually repulsed the invaders and carried the war deep into Syria and Egypt. The Arab states were swiftly resupplied by sea and air from the Soviet Union, which rejected U.S. efforts to work toward an immediate cease­fire. As a result, the United States belatedly began its own airlift to Israel. Two weeks later, Egypt was saved from a disastrous defeat by the UN Security Council, which had failed to act while the tide was in the Arabs' favor.

The Soviet Union showed no interest in initiating peacemaking efforts while it looked like the Arabs might win. The same was true for UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

On October 22, the Security Council adopted Resolution 338 calling for "all parties to the present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity immediately." The vote came on the day that Israeli forces cut off and isolated the Egyptian Third Army and were in a position to destroy it (Herzog, p. 280).

Despite the Israel Defense Forces' ultimate success on the battlefield, the war was considered a diplomatic and military failure. A total of 2,688 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Source: Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, http://www.JewishVirtualLibrary.org.

MYTH #152: “The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.”

FACT: A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back.

In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.

The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises:
1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land;
2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people;
3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and
4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.

Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.

The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century — years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement — more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel (Dan Bahat, ed. Twenty Centuries of Jewish Life in the Holy Land, Jerusalem: The Israel Economist, 1976, pp. 61-63.).

The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.

“Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its 'right to exist.' Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement.... There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its 'right to exist' a favor, or a negotiable concession.”

— Abba Eban, New York Times, (November 18, 1981)

Source: Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, http://www.JewishVirtualLibrary.org. To order a copy of the paperback edition of Myths and Facts, click HERE. Myths & Facts is also available in Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese and Swedish.

Ali Sina: Eradicate Islam

In this amazing blog piece, former Muslim Ali Sina argues for the adandonment of Islam by its followers; that it is an illogical occult cult that cannot be fixed. I'm with him.

Naomi Ragen: Who is the Enemy?

I have not been able to recover from the terrorist attack in Beslan. Terrorism is not the enemy. Terrorism is a tactic of the enemy. Who, then, is the enemy that fights all those who identify with the civilized world -- the world in which children and their mothers are cherished and protected, even in war? The world in which school buildings, and ambulances, and hospitals, and holy places are respected and left out of armed conflicts as neutral zones? The world in which children are taught to love thy neighbor, even if he is different and follows another religion? A world in which there can be no excuse for wiring a school building with explosives, starving children and shooting them and their mothers in the back when they cry, and finally blowing up the roof over their heads, burying hundreds in rubble?

The enemy is the man who shot Tali Hatuel when she was nine months pregnant and then shot her four little girls in the head at point blank range. The enemy is the man who blew up elderly Holocaust survivors at their Passover Seder in Netanya. The enemy is the man who blew up the nightclub in Bali, who laid the bombs on the train tracks in Madrid. The enemy is the political framework that train this man and rewarded him. The enemy is the country or countries that financed the political framework. The enemy is the leader of these countries.

The enemy is the religious leaders of these countries, who did not teach their people right from wrong. The enemy is the congregations who sat through the hate-mongering sermons. The enemy is the head of the family who went home and beat his wife, and strapped suicide belts on his sons, and slit the throats of his daughter and sister for supposed violations of the family honor. The enemy is the child who grows up in such a culture and becomes one of its perpetrators.

The enemy is the Western nations who turn a blind eye, looking to excuse this behavior so it will not have to do anything about it. The Sunday Telegraph, Le Monde, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Bild, all claiming the problem is that the Russian government has brought this on itself by angering the Chechans. It is the victim who is to blame. Just as Israelis deserve what they get. Tali Hatuel deserved what she got. Her little girls. The little children of Beslan. The only way to stop the murderers of children from murdering is to give into their demands, these newspapers claim [http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/06/202.html]

I disagree. The only way to stop murderers from murdering is to destroy them.

And if you say this is impossible, I say: think back sixty years. The Thousand Year Reich is the dust of history. We destroyed their leaders, their governments, their buildings, their youth movements, their philosophy. We destroyed it all. We didn't negotiate. We didn't appease. We didn't try to show them our softer side. We uprooted the evil from mankind, because no negotiations, no fence, no signed agreement,no borders, no words were effective against them.

Long before September 11, I wrote to this list: If an Israeli grandmother and her grandchild are not safe in a playground, than no grandmother and no grandchild anywhere in the world are safe in a playground.

If the children of Beslan were not safe in their school, then no child and no school is safe anywhere in the world. Until this enemy is destroyed root and branch, without mercy or equivocation.

The breakdown in morality which we witness everyday is finally engulfing us. Those in the Western news media who call armed terrorists, men who wire schools with explosives and murder women and children, "hostage-takers" and "militants" are setting themselves up to mourn their own children.

A generation ago, fifty million people died because the reaction of their governments and their religious leaders and their press came too late. The Neville Chamberlains saw to that. Too late. And for us, who have our Shimon Peres', and our Yossi Beilins, and our Chiracs, and our Kofi Anans, and Michael Moores and John Kerrys will it also be too late?

For the children of Beslan, the answer is yes. And for your children?

Copyright Naomi Ragen, 2004.

----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
To subscribe, send a blank message to NaomiRagen-on@mail-list.com

John Loftus on the origins of Al Qaeda

This is a "must read"; long, but eye-opening.

John Loftus Speech Yom Ha Shoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day2004 Jewish Community News, August 2004

It always seems a little strange to have an Irish-Catholic talking about Yom Ha Shoah. I had an unusual education in the Holocaust. When I was working for the Attorney General, I was assigned to do the classified research about the Holocaust, so I went underground to a little town called Suitland, Maryland, right outside Washington, D.C. and that's where the US Government buries its secrets - - literally. There are twenty vaults underground and each vault is one acre in size. Anyone see the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? The last scene of that movie is what the underground vaults are really like, only not as organized as they are in the movie. And in those underground vaults I discovered something horrible. I learned that many of the Nazis that I had been assigned to prosecute were on the CIA payroll, but the CIA didn't know they were Nazis because the British Intelligence Service had lied to them. What the British Intelligence Service didn't know was that their liar was Kim Philby, the Soviet communist double agent - - a little scandal of the Cold War. But our State Department swept it all under the rug and allowed the Nazis to stay in America until I was stupid enough to go public with it.

What do you do when you want to go public with a story like this one? You call up 60 minutes. We had a great time. Mike Wallace gave me 30 minutes on his show. For a long time, it was the longest segment that 60 minutes ever did. When the episode about Nazis in America went on the air back in 1982, it caused a minor national uproar. Congress demanded hearings, Mike Wallace got the Emmy award, and my family got the death threats. It was a great trip.

Then a funny thing happened. Over the last 25 years, every retired spy in the U.S. and Canada and England all wanted me to be their lawyer, for free of course. So I had 500 clients, they paid me $1 apiece. So I am the worst paid lawyer in America, but among the better employed.

Let me give you an example. This year a friend of mine from the CIA, named Bob Baer wrote a very good book about Saudi Arabia and terrorism, it's called "Sleeping with the Devil". I read the book and I got about a third of the way through and I stopped. Bob was writing how when he worked for the CIA how bad the files were. He said, for example, the files for the Muslim Brotherhood were almost nothing. There were just a few newspaper clippings.

I called Bob up and said, "Bob, that's wrong. The CIA has enormous files on the Muslim Brotherhood, volumes of them. I know because I read them a quarter of a century ago." He said, "What do you mean?" Here's how you can find all of the missing secrets about the Muslim Brotherhood -- and you can do this too. I said, "Bob, go to your computer and type in two words into the search part. Type the word "Vanna," V-a-n-n-a. He said, "Yeah." Type in "Nazi." Bob typed the two words in, and out came 30 to 40 articles from around the world. He read them and called me back and said,"Oh my God, what have we done?"

What I'm doing today is doing what I'm doing now: I'm educating a new generation in the CIA that the Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist organization that was hired by Western Intelligence that evolved over time into what we today know as al Qaeda. Here's how the story began.

In the 1920's there was a young Egyptian named al Bana. And al Bana formed this nationalist group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Bana was a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler and wrote to him frequently. So persistent was he in his admiration of the new Nazi Party that in the 1930's, al Bana and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm of Nazi Intelligence. The Arab Nazis had much in common with the new Nazi doctrines. They hated Jews; they hated democracy; and they hated the Western culture. It became the official policy of the Third Reich to secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as the fifth Parliament, an army inside Egypt. When war broke out, the Muslim Brotherhood promised in writing that they would rise up and help General Rommell and make sure that no English or American soldier was left alive in Cairo or Alexandria.

The Muslim Brotherhood began to expand in scope and influence during World War II. They even had a Palestinian section headed by the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the great bigots of all time. Here, too, was a man - - The grand Mufti of Jerusalem was the Muslim Brotherhood representative for Palestine. These were undoubtedly Arab Nazis. The Grand Mufti, for example, went to Germany during the war and helped recruit an international SS division of Arab Nazis. They based it in Croatia and called it the "Handjar" Muslim Division, but it was to become the core of Hitler's new army of Arab fascists that would conquer the Arab peninsula from then on to Africa - - grand dreams.

At the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood was wanted for war crimes. Their German intelligence handlers were captured in Cairo. The whole net was rolled up by the British Secret Service. Then a horrible thing happened. Instead of prosecuting the Nazis - - the Muslim Brotherhood - - the British government hired them. They brought all the fugitive Nazi war criminals of Arab and Muslim descent into Egypt, and for three years they were trained on a special mission. The British Secret Service wanted to use the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood to strike down the infant state of Israel in 1948. Only a few people in the Mossad know this, but many of the members of the Arab Armies and terrorist groups that tried to strangle the infant State of Israel were the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Britain was not alone. The French Intelligence service cooperated by releasing the Grand Mufti and smuggling him to Egypt, so all of the Arab Nazis came together. So, from 1945 to 1948, the British Secret Service protected every Arab Nazi they could, but they failed to quash the State of Israel. What the British did then, they sold the Arab Nazis to the predecessor of what became the CIA. It may sound stupid; it may sound evil, but it did happen. The idea was that we were going to use the Arab Nazis in the Middle East as a counterweight to the Arab communists. Just as the Soviet Union was funding Arab communists, we would fund the Arab Nazis, to fight against. And lots of secret classes took place. We kept the Muslim brotherhood on our payroll. But the Egyptians became nervous. Nasser ordered all of the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt or be imprisoned, and we would execute them all.

During the 1950's, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood like Azzam, became the teachers in the Madrasas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabiism. Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not. They think that Islam - the Saudi version of Islam - -is typical, but it's not. The Wahhabi cult was condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. The Wahhabiism was only practiced by two nations, the Taliban and Saudi Arabia. That's how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It has always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence. For the Saudis, there was a ruler in charge of Saudi Arabia, and they were the new home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and fascism and extremism were mingled in these schools. And there was a young student who paid attention- - and Azzam's student was named Osama Bin Ladin. Osama Bin Ladin was taught by the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood who had emigrated to Saudi Arabia.

In 1979 the CIA decided to take the Arab Nazis out of cold storage. The Russians had invaded Afghanistan, so we told the Saudis that we would fund them if they would bring all of the Arab Nazis together and ship them off to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. We had to rename them. We couldn't call them the Muslim Brotherhood because that was too sensitive a name. Its Nazi cast was too known. So we called them the Maktab al Khidimat il Mujahideen, the MAK. And the CIA lied to Congress and said they didn't know who was on the payroll in Afghanistan, except the Saudis. But it was not true. A small section CIA knew perfectly well that we had once again hired the Arab Nazis and that we were using them to fight our secret wars.

Azzam and his assistant, Osama Bin Ladin, rose to some prominence from 1979 to '89, and they won the war. They drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. Our CIA said, "We won, let's go home!" and we left this army of Arab fascists in the field of Afghanistan. Saudis didn't want to come back. Saudis started paying bribes to Osama Bin Ladin and his followers to stay out of Saudi Arabia. Now the MAK split in half. Azzam was mysteriously assassinated apparently by Osama Bin Ladin himself. The radical group - - the most radical of the merge of the Arab fascists and religious extremists - - Osama called that al Qaeda. But to this day there are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood all through al Qaeda. Osama Bin Ladin's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the results of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There are many flavors and branches, but they are all Muslim Brotherhoods. There is one in Israel. The organization you know as "Hammas" is actually a secret chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel assassinated Sheik Yassin a month ago, the Muslim Brotherhood published his obituary in a Cairo newspaper in Arabic and revealed that he was actually the secret leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. So the Muslim Brotherhood became this poison that spread throughout the Middle East and on 911, it began to spread around the world.

I know this sounds like some sort of a sick fantasy, but go to your computer and type in the words "Vanna," V-a-n-n-a and the word "Nazi," N-a-z-i, and you will see all of the articles come up. Those are all the pieces of information that the CIA was trying to hide from its employees. It did not want them to know the awful past.

So, in 1984, when I was exposing European Nazis on the CIA payroll, at the same time they were trying to hide from Congress the fact that they had Arab Nazis back on the payroll to fight the Russians - - a stupid and corrupt program.

So, when Bob Baer studied his files, he was just stunned. A whole generation: the current CIA people know nothing about this. And believe me, the current generation CIA are good and decent Americans and I like them a lot. They're trying to do a good job, but part of their problem is their files have been shredded. All of these secrets have to come out. So, of course, my clients in the intelligence community said, "Well, what are you doing?" They gave me an example. They said, "Here's how the Saudis finance these groups. The Saudis have established a group of charities on a street in Virginia. It's 555 Grove St., Herndon, Virginia." So I said,"OK, the Saudis are terrorists, so what?" These charities fund Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda. The Saudis are getting tax deductions for terrorism. They have set up front groups so all the terrorists groups in the U.S. and the front groups get the Saudi money as a charitable donation.

I said, "You're kidding me." Nope. And they told me that right near where I lived in Tampa, Florida was one of the leading terrorists in the world. There were these two professors at the University of South Florida. One had just left - - and he was now in Syria - - and he was the world head of Islamic Jihad. His number two, the head of Islamic Jihad in the Western Hemisphere, was Dr. Sami al-Arian, who is still employed as a professor at the University of South Florida. You've got to be kidding. This can't be true. Yes, these guys are raising money all across America and shipping it to Syria to go down to Palestine, the Palestinian areas, and hire suicide bombers to kill Jews.

They sent me the video tapes. There was Professor al-Arian on stage and one of his friends gets up and says, "Now, who will give me $500 to kill a Jew? There are people standing by in Jerusalem who will go out in the street and stab a Jew with a knife, but we need $500." And he said, "All of this money will go to the Islamic committee for Palestine." And that is the front group in the United States for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

So I had all my friends in the FBI and CIA send in these files. I said, "Why haven't you prosecuted this guy? You've known about him since 1989." "We'd love to. We've tried to prosecute him but we were told we couldn't touch him because he gets all of his money from the Saudis, and we are all under orders not to do anything to embarrass the Saudi government." I said,"I don't mind embarrassing them."

You know what I did? I donated money to the charity that was the terrorist fund, because under Florida law, that gave me the right to sue the charity to find out where my money was going. It was hilarious. In early March, 2002, I drafted a long lawsuit exposing Professor Sami al-Arian, naming all the crimes he'd committed, all the bombings in Israel, the fundraising in America with terrorism. I mentioned how his money got to him from the Saudis and how the Saudis had convinced our government not to prosecute him for political reasons. Because of my high-level security clearances, everything I write is sort of classified material and has to be sent back to the government before publication, for censorship. So I sent my long lawsuit complaint to the CIA, and they loved it. They said, "Oh, great.We don't like the Saudis either. Go sue them." Three days later two FBI Agents showed up at my door, saying, "You know, there are only 21 people in the U.S. government that knew some of this information, and now you're 22. How did you find out?" I said, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you, attorney-client privilege." That's why my clients pay me $1.00 each.

The day before I went to file the lawsuit, I got a frantic phone call from the United States Department of Justice. They said, "John, please don't file the lawsuit tomorrow. We really are going to raid these Saudi charities. We're going to close them down. Just give us more time." "Oh yeah, you're going to raid them. That's what you told me in January - -and again in February, and now it's March. You want more time? I'll give you until 4:00 o'clock tomorrow. I'm filing my complaint at 10:00 a.m., so that at 4:00 p.m., I'm going to release the address of the Saudi charities. Back tomorrow. I filed my lawsuit at 10:00 o'clock, and told the press. I was going to hold something back for a little bit. At 10:15, the U.S. Government launched Operation Greenquest, a massive raid on all the Saudi charities in homes and businesses, and in one hour we shut down the entire Saudi money- laundering network in America.

From March 20, 2002 to the present, the government has found more and more evidence seized in those archives on that single raid that day. The evidence was so compelling that Professor al-Arian is no longer giving his speeches. He is now in federal prison awaiting trial. His accomplice, Hammoudeh, has also been indicted. Some 32 different people have been indicted in the United States as a direct result of these efforts.

But not the Saudis - - not the Saudis. A month after I filed my lawsuit against al-Arian, I did it: I caused some trouble. I invited some 40 of the top trial lawyers in America to come down to St. Petersburg, Florida. Boy, did I have a deal for them. I wanted them to put up millions of dollars of their own money - I'm poor, I had no money to give them - - but I wanted to do something for America. These are lawyers like Ron Motley that had won billions of dollars in their lawsuits against the tobacco industry and the asbestos industry. I said, "What I want you to do is look at the evidence I've collected. It's the same Saudi banks and charities that funded Sami al-Arian that also funded al Qaeda." I said, "I want you to bring a class action in Federal Court in Washington on behalf of everyone who died on Sept. 11th. I'm going to work for free and collect all the evidence, introduce you to the experts, provide all the exhibits and documents. and we have to do this for America." The lawyers studied all the documents I collected, and on August 15, 2002, they filed the largest class-action lawsuit in American history in the Federal District Court in Washington D.C., asking for one trillion dollars damages against the Saudis.

The lawsuit said essentially that all these Saudi banks had one thing in common. They were bribing Osama bin Ladin 300 million dollars a year to stay out of Saudi Arabia and go blow up someone else. Well, on 911, we found out we were someone else, and the Saudis had to pay for their negligence. So that lawsuit is coming along very well. And more and more people in the CIA and FBI are sort of using me as a back channel to get our information. So, believe it or not, they've actually given me my own TV show now on Sunday mornings on FOX TV nationwide. I'm on at 11:20 eastern standard time. And ABC Radio has given me a national radio program, but I'm on at 10:30 at night and it's past your bedtime.

What I've become in my old age is a teacher. Twenty-five years ago I was a lot younger, a lot thinner, but now every day I get 500 to 1,000 e-mails from honest men and women around the world from the intelligence community. And we have to end the evil in this world. We have to recognize that al Qaeda simply didn't spring up on its own. The evil route was Nazism. The al Qaeda Doctrine is the same as the Arab Nazis held. They hated Jews, they hate democracy, and they hate Westerners for Western culture. Al Qaeda is nothing more than the religious expression of Arab Fascism. We allowed this branch of the Nazi trunk to survive, to flourish, and it has come back to haunt us.

We must do a better job. Look at these children. They are our legacy. If we are to keep our children safe, we must teach them the lessons of the past. Every generation should know what these candles mean. Not only that one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the world really happened, but the evil that caused it - - Nazism - - survived because we didn't fight hard enough. We didn't finish the job. But we must tell our children that in every generation the men and women of America have stood side by side with our Jewish, Christian, and Moslem brothers. We have risen up together against hatred. America is united now. We will win the war on terror, and we will finish the job that these soldiers and survivors started more than a half century ago. We must set the standard that to teach a child to hate is the worst form of child abuse. We must work together to end racism in our children's lifetime. We must teach our children to remember the Holocaust and be proud, so proud of those who survived and inspired us with their courage. In their name, in their honor, let us go forward and fight together.

NEVER AGAIN.

An Arab Living in Israel

Circulated by Naomi Ragen

I am A Lucky Arab
by Anonymous

I am a lucky Arab. My grandfather, Mohammed, travelled on foot from his home in Iraq in the early part of the last century looking for work.

Jews had come to British-controlled Palestine in the thousands, joining the Jews that had always been here, buying up land from absentee Turkish Muslim owners, and they needed many workers to help them build the land. He married,raised a large family, worked hard, and lived quietly.

I live in Haifa in Israel. In 1948 when Israel declared its independence, Arab armies from surrounding Arab states attacked with the intention of destroying the new state. I was about 15 years old and remember well the radio broadcasts from Arab states telling us to leave our homes and move eastward 'temporarily' while the advancing Arab armies wiped out the Jews. They told us we would then return in triumph to our homes and would have the joy of taking over all the Jewish assets-their homes, farms, shops, cars, and bank accounts.

My father, Ibrahim, was a very wise man, a learned man, and a man of peace. We had good relationships with our neighbors, Christian, Jew, and Muslim. He gathered the entire family and explained why he did not believe it wise to flee, that he did not believe the Jews would mistreat us. We stayed put. We are still here.

Today I still live in my father's old stone house with my wife and the youngest of our eight children. My older children and my many grandchildren all live nearby. We have never been mistreated, and we are much better off than those Arabs who fled and who ended up in miserable refugee camps being supported by the UN and charities.

I want you to know what my life is like as an Arab citizen of Israel. I was educated in Israeli schools and universities. I became a pharmacist and worked in a large pharmacy in Haifa. I was paid the same salary, and received the same benefits as Jewish colleagues. Now I'm retired. I receive two pensions; one based on the investment plan to which my company belonged and I contributed. The other comes from the Israeli government National Insurance plan.

I have eight children. Every month I received child allowance paid from the government until each became 18. I know of no other country where this happens, certainly not any Arab nation.

Our entire family is covered by the National Health Plan which provides good medical care. All my children were born in hospital, my wife received excellent ante and postnatal care. All medical and surgical is covered from the first Shekel from birth to death, and when we die even the cost of burial is covered!

My children went to school with Jewish children, they were members of the same sports clubs and the community center, and they all received university educations, some with state scholarships.

I pray in a Mosque, which was built on land donated by the Jewish National Fund. I am a citizen, I have a passport, can travel anywhere, anytime. I vote in local and national elections, and we have a number of Arab members in Parliament.

I have a very good life, and so has my family. I feel for those forced to live under Arafat, for they are being used and abused badly. I long for the day that Arafat is no more, that a real peace treaty can be negotiated with Israel, so that the Palestinian Arabs can have a better life also.

I long for the day I can travel to visit cousins in Ramallah without fear of being called a collaborator and executed. I thank Allah my grandfather came here. I thank Allah my father didn't leave in 1948. I thank Allah my children were raised here, in the only free country in the Middle East.

We are very lucky Arabs.

[Name withheld for security reasons]

Stay Quiet and You'll be OK

By Robert Spencer

FrontPageMagazine.com | June 23, 2004

Here's a new slogan for the zeitgeist: stay quiet and you'll be OK. This was the message, according to the tapes released last week, that Muhammad Atta gave to the passengers on the ill-fated airplane that he and his fellow terrorists had commandeered.

Stay quiet and you'll be OK. Don't mention that a Saudi imam who spoke at the opening of a large new Islamic center in London once preached a sermon in which he called Jews "evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race 'whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs," and "an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption." AP noted that in London he said that Islam's history was "the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony." The BBC called him "one of Islam's most renowned Imams" and reported his praise for British Muslims for having "taken great steps towards achieving community cohesion."

Neither said anything about his hate speech.

Stay quiet and you'll be OK. Have you heard about the churches destroyed in Kosovo? "To keep the Serbs from claiming this area as part of their national heritage," says Mikhael de Thyse of the Council of Europe, "some Albanians are attacking their churches." In March, the cathedrals in Pristina and Prizren, Kosovo's two main cities, were burned to the ground. Others that have been destroyed include the Holy Archangels Monastery, a charming and, of course, irreplaceable jewel dating from the fourteenth century. The local bishop has had harsh words for NATO peacekeepers, who he says have done little or nothing to protect the churches. But the media establishment has kept mum. Jihad in Kosovo? Come on. Everyone knows the Balkan Muslims are the victims, not the perpetrators!

Stay quiet and you'll be OK. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan went to Harvard to give the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree. The intrepid Charles Jacobs of the American Anti-Slavery Group was ready for him, saying at a rally the day before: "Kofi Annan does not need to come to Harvard tomorrow, he needs to go to Sudan. ... He needs to go to the North, and he needs to tell Khartoum to free the slaves. There are tens of thousands of slaves like Francis Bok, still serving their masters in Sudan. Kofi Annan needs to tell the truth:
For a decade Khartoum wages ... what they call a Jihad against Christians and tribalists in the South. Kofi Annan never once said that the war was a Jihad.
It's not diplomatic to say...but it's the truth. Two million people died because of this war. Tens of thousands were enslaved. Arab militias storm African villages, kill the men and capture the women and children like Francis Bok. Kofi Annan needs to tell the world about Jihad slaves. It's not diplomatic...but it's the truth."

Stay quiet and you'll be OK. In Saudi Arabia, a young Indian Catholic, Brian Savio O'Connor, has been imprisoned and tortured by the religious police, the mutawa. Says L'Osservatore Romano: "Officially the Mutawa has accused O'Connor of using drugs and praying to Jesus Christ, accusations which imply he runs the risk of being punished with the death penalty. The family says that the proofs of his use of drugs have been fabricated by the police, while it does not deny that Brian is a good Christian." Where is the outcry? Why haven't you read about Brian O'Connor in the New York Times? Why hasn't 60 Minutes gone to Riyadh to put a Saudi official or two on the hotseat?

As Ralph Peters has had the courage to declare, "It's time to end the politically correct baby-talk insisting that Islam isn't the problem. In the decaying Arab world, Islam is the problem - because of the way bitter old men interpret and deform its more humane precepts while embracing its cruelest injunctions." It's time to end the baby talk, and the silence. For whatever combination of political correctness, fear, and indifference has made for the silence on these stories and others like them, it does nothing but play into the hands of those who would destroy us.

Stay quiet, and the jihad will continue to advance: in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Israel, and Indonesia, and Nigeria, and the Philippines, and Western Europe, and elsewhere - and if you think we will not feel its impact here, just remember where Atta was when he said those words, and what happened next.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim
Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).

Liat Ben David mourns Naomi Shemer (from the Jewish Agency site)

Last night, when I heard that Naomi Shemer had died, I felt as if music itself had died. What hasn't she given us? Her songs are the melodies of everything we know and hold dear:

The joy of our childhood songs - "We went on a hike/ and found an anemone/ on the grass-filled hill/ in the west", a childhood filled with simple, naive symbols: "The mail has arrived today/ in a red car/ and it brought me a letter/ a letter with a stamp".

The bitter-sweet longing of the songs that lovers sing - "The wind, the darkness and the water/ told me that you walked here barefoot", and "On the path, in the field/ a couple is walking alone/ and her hand is held in his/ as a blessing of Shalom".

The beauty of our country - "The daffodils are blooming in the nature reservations/ fields of flowers are blossoming along the shores"

The special culture we are building here, filled with colors of different voices - "So eat and drink, and enjoy the wine/ today you are young, tomorrow you will be old..."

Her songs are filled with our reality - "In our garden, every summer/ guests come from all over the world/ and each one of them has his own language/ and his own way to say "shalom" - and her spirit has given us the great songs that have become the milestones of our most challenging times, with the compassion of "all that we shall ask - let it be", the sensitivity of "Over all these/ please keep guard/ my dear lord", and the greatest prayer of all, the immortal "Jerusalem of gold".

So much longing, happiness, joy and and pure love Naomi Shemer has introduced into our lives. She has written the soundtrack of our modern history. She was the undefeated queen of Israel's best poetic yearning. She has left us with a legacy that will continue to be part of the core of our identity for many generations to come. She will be gravely missed, and today we are all mourning. But tomorrow - tomorrow we will take comfort in the legacy she has left behind - as she has told us in her own words:

"To wake up tomorrow morning
with a new song in our heart
to sing it with all our might,
to sing it with pain,
to hear the flutes playing in the free wind -
and to start all over again."

Liat Ben David

Ahmed Shuqeiry invented "Palestine"

Ruth Matar, Women in Green, writes:

The following was sent to me by Gilbert Simons from his as yet unpublished book on this subject.

"How did this artificial Arab country of Palestine come into being? Ahmed Shuqairy, a lawyer, created it out of thin air, at the bequest of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. From his pen came the Palestine National Covenant, a historical revisionist document creating a mythical state, concurrently eliminating Israel from the history books. He then created an organization, The Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO), to destroy the reborn state of Israel, while 'liberating' his fictitious Arab Palestinian state, a circular tour de force. Nasser appointed him the PLO's first Chairman. No 'Palestinians' were involved.

"In his memoirs, Shuqairy reminisces: 'Firstly, I started by laying down the Palestinian entity on paper, like the engineer who traces the plan of a building with all of its foundations, details and measurements. I wrote, altered, erased and changed the order of the articles until I formulated the 'National Covenant' and the 'Fundamental Law' of the Palestine Liberation Organization.' (From the Summit to Defeat, with the Kings and the Presidents). Ahmed Shuqairy himself acknowledged before the Security Council: 'It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria' [which itself was not a nation, but a province of the Ottoman Empire for about 700 years until the Empire was carved up by the victorious Allies in 1918].

"PLO Claim: Ahmed Shuqairy, the author of The PLO Covenant or Charter, set down in Article 4: 'The Palestinian personality is an innate, persistent characteristic that does not disappear, and it is transferred from father to son....,' Article 7 reads: 'The Palestinian affiliation and the material, spiritual and historical tie with Palestine are permanent realities.' But then, Shuqairy ran into a problem. Creating a Palestinian identity on paper was one thing, but getting Arabs to behave as if it was real was another. Arabs had to be taught these 'innate characteristics,' an oxymoron. Blithely ignoring the contradiction, in the same Article 7, quoted above, Shuqairy added: 'The upbringing of the Palestinian individual in an Arab and revolutionary fashion, the undertaking of all means of forging consciousness and training the Palestinian, in order to acquaint him profoundly with his homeland, spiritually and materially, and preparing him for the conflict and armed struggle, as well as for the sacrifice of his property and life to restore his homeland, until the liberation - all this is a national duty.'

"Another contradiction which did not bother Shuqairy was to claim that the Arabs of the area were uniquely 'Palestinians,' while simultaneously asserting that 'The Palestinian people are a part of the Arab Nation,' (Article 1), thus no different from the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa, which of course is a fact."

There has never been a distinct-Arab Palestinian culture, literature, dialect or national consciousness. Zuhayer Muhsin, head of Sa'iqa [sub-group of the PLO], in an interview with James Dorsey for Trouw, 31 March 1977 put the whole matter in perspective, admitting: "It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in contrast to Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity."

This is the Enemy

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=article&id=3732.

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz May 30, 2004

[WARNING: The following contains graphic descriptions of violence.]

Nick Berg, an American from Philadelphia, was kidnapped and tortuously beheaded by Arabs in Iraq sometime in May. The murderers filmed the deed and proudly displayed the victim's severed head.

After killing six Israeli soldiers in an attack on an armored vehicle in Gaza on May 11, the Arabs near the scene of the carnage gleefully held aloft human body parts in front of rolling cameras. One of the Arab terrorists was later interviewed on film with what appeared to be a human head in front of him.

The week before, after shooting at Tali Hatuel's car, causing it to skid and stop, Arab terrorists walked over to the vehicle to finish the occupants off. They looked at the heavily pregnant mother and her four no-doubt frightened girls; the youngest was two years old. And then shot them all. At point-blank range. With sadistic satisfaction, they systematically murdered Tali Hatuel and her unborn son, as well as all of Tali's daughters - Hila, age 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav.

In Fallujah in March, crowds of townspeople dragged four American civilians out of their vehicles, shot or beat them to death, mutilated their bodies, dragged them through the streets, suspended them from a bridge and burned them.

And they danced and cheered.

With their children.

In Ramallah in 2000, two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, beaten, stabbed countless times, had their eyes gouged out, and were literally disemboweled and dismembered by an Arab lynch mob.

The people - and I use the term loosely - who carried out the initial beatings threw one of the victims down to the waiting mob, where his face was further crushed with stones, feet, fists and even a heavy metal window frame. One Jew was set on fire and dragged along the street as Arab onlookers danced and cheered. Some of the butchers celebrated their crimes with the victims' internal organs. One of the killers, famously captured on film, proudly displayed his blood-soaked hands to the cheering Ramallah crowd.

And it gets worse. In 2003, nearly two years later, Arab parents in Gaza cheered again when their little children dressed up as members of the Ramallah lynch mob, complete with hands painted blood red, for a kindergarten graduation ceremony.

According to a report by Dr. Michael Widlanski, an Israeli Arabic expert, the Voice of Palestine called the attack on the Hatuel girls "an act of heroic martyrdom". The targeted children and their mother, the PA radio reported only as "five settlers".

Among the participants at the funerals of the Hatuel family members was President of Israel Moshe Katzav. He said, "This day of blood will be engraved in our history. An earthquake has happened. No one in the world can stand apathetically by in the face of these acts by such evil people. Where are those who speak in the name of Allah?"

National Review contributing editor David Frum posed the same question in his May 12 "Diary" on NRO: "Where are the imams?" he asked.

Some of "those who speak in the name of Allah," Mr. President, were busy sawing Nick Berg's head from his body in Iraq. "Allah is great!" they shouted in triumphal glee as they killed their bound and helpless victim. The imams are in the mosques, Mr. Frum, waving swords and exhorting their followers to behead a Jew: "Allah willing, we will cut off his head! Oh Jews! Allah is great! Allah is great!" They are also in Saudi Arabian palaces, telling their subjects that they are 95% certain Zionists are behind Islamist terrorism. They are also writing for the Arab media, explaining that Jews are behind all the evil in the world. And they are even organizing soccer matches, Mr. President, honoring mass murderers.

This is the enemy. Don't look away.

Perhaps when another rally is held in support of Iraqi "resistance" or "Palestinian liberation" somewhere in the world, counter-protesters can remind the ever-so-sensitive and progressive demonstrators of Nick Berg's scream of pain, or of two-year-old Meirav Hatuel cowering in her car seat, or of the Ramallah or Fallujah savages dancing with human entrails.

During the lynch of the two IDF soldiers who had taken a wrong turn into Ramallah in 2000, one of the Arab murderers paused in his savage beating to answer a cell phone belonging to one of the dying soldiers.

He told the worried voice on the other end of the line, "We are killing your husband."

There is a Talmudic dictum that states, "One who is merciful to the cruel, will ultimately cause cruelty to the merciful."

It seems to me that we, Israelis and Americans, have proven the Talmudic sages absolutely correct. Please, no more mercy.

THE BIG LIE WHICH PLANTED THE SEEDS OF GLOBAL JIHAD

LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN) JERUSALEM

Dear Friends,
This is probably the most important letter that I have ever written to you. I implore you to forward this letter or a letter in your own words, accompanied by the original PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER OF 1964, to President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, your Senators and Congressmen, your local newspaper, your family, friends and acquaintances. It would be preferable, when sending your letter to government officials, to print the accompanying Charter and send it by registered mail. E-mail, unfortunately, often does not get the proper attention of the recipient.


THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER

(Al-Mithaq Al-Kawmee Al-Philisteeni)*

* "Al-Kawmee" has no exact equivalent in English but reflects the notion of Pan-Arabism

INTRODUCTION

We, the Palestinian Arab people, who waged fierce and continuous battles to safeguard its homeland, to defend its dignity and honor, and who offered all through the years continuous caravans of immortal martyrs, and who wrote the noblest pages of sacrifice, offering and giving.

We, the Palestinian Arab people, who faced the forces of evil, injustice and aggression, against whom the forces of international Zionism and colonialism conspire and worked to displace it, dispossess it from its homeland and property, abused what is holy in it and who in spite of all this refused to weaken or submit.

We, the Palestinian Arab people, who believe in its Arabism and in its right to regain its homeland, to realize its freedom and dignity, and who have determined to amass its forces and mobilize its efforts and capabilities in order to continue its struggle and to move forward on the path of holy war (al-jihad) until complete and final victory has been attained,

We, the Palestinian Arab people, based on our right of self-defense and the complete restoration of our lost homeland- a right that has been recognized by international covenants and common practices including the Charter of the United Nations-and in implementation of the principles of human rights, and comprehending the international political relations, with its various ramifications and dimensions, and considering the past experiences in all that pertains to the causes of the catastrophe, and the means to face it,

And embarking from the Palestinian Arab reality, and for the sake of the honor of the Palestinian individual and his right to free and dignified life,

And realizing the national grave responsibility placed upon our shoulders, for the sake of all this,

We, the Palestinian Arab people, dictate and declare this Palestinian National Charter and swear to realize it.

Article 1. Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland.

Article 2: Palestine, with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate, is a indivisible territorial unit.

Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation. It shares the sufferings and aspirations of the Arab Nation and its struggle for freedom, sovereignty, progress and unity.

Article 4: The people of Palestine determine its destiny when it completes the liberation of its homeland in accordance with its own wishes and free will and choice.

Article 5: The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from fathers to sons.

Article 6: The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian.

Article 7: Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine.

Article 8: Bringing up Palestinian youth in an Arab and nationalist manner is a fundamental national duty. All means of guidance, education and enlightenment should be utilized to introduce the youth to its homeland in a deep spiritual way that will constantly and firmly bind them together.

Article 9: Ideological doctrines, whether political, social, or economic, shall not distract the people of Palestine from the primary duty of liberating their homeland. All Palestinian constitute one national front and work with all their feelings and material potentialities to free their homeland.

Article 10: Palestinians have three mottos: National Unity, National Mobilization, and Liberation. Once liberation is completed, the people of Palestine shall choose for its public life whatever political, economic, or social system they want.

Article 11: The Palestinian people firmly believe in Arab unity, and in order to play its role in realizing this goal, it must, at this stage of its struggle, preserve its Palestinian personality and all its constituents. It must strengthen the consciousness of its existence and stance and stand against any attempt or plan that may weaken or disintegrate its personality.

Article 12: Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary goals; each prepares for the attainment of the other. Arab unity leads to the liberation of Palestine, and the liberation of Palestine leads to Arab unity. Working for both must go side by side.

Article 13: The destiny of the Arab Nation and even the essence of Arab existence are firmly tied to the destiny of the Palestine question. From this firm bond stems the effort and struggle of the Arab Nation to liberate Palestine. The people of Palestine assume a vanguard role in achieving this sacred national goal.

Article 14: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty. Its responsibilities fall upon the entire Arab nation, governments and peoples, the Palestinian peoples being in the forefront. For this purpose, the Arab nation must mobilize its military, spiritual and material potentialities; specifically, it must give to the Palestinian Arab people all possible support and backing and place at its disposal all opportunities and means to enable them to perform their role in liberating their homeland.

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual viewpoint, prepares for the Holy Land an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace, in which all the Holy Places will be safeguarded, and the freedom to worship and to visit will be guaranteed for all, without any discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. For all this, the Palestinian people look forward to the support of all the spiritual forces in the world.

Article 16: The liberation of Palestine, from an international viewpoint, is a defensive act necessitated by the demands of self-defense as stated in the Charter of the United Nations. For that, the people of Palestine, desiring to befriend all nations which love freedom, justice, and peace, look forward to their support in restoring the legitimate situation to Palestine, establishing peace and security in its territory, and enabling its people to exercise national sovereignty and freedom.

Article 17: The partitioning of Palestine, which took place in 1947, and the establishment of Israel are illegal and null and void, regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and its natural right to its homeland, and were in violation of the basic principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination.

Article 18: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate System, and all that has been based on them are considered null and void. The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood. Judaism, because it is a divine religion, is not a nationality with independent existence. Furthermore, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states.

Article 19: Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims. Israel, in its capacity as the spearhead of this destructive movement and as the pillar of colonialism, is a permanent source of tension and turmoil in the Middle East, in particular, and to the international community in general. Because of this, the people of Palestine are worthy of the support and sustenance of the community of nations.

Article 20: The causes of peace and security and the requirements of right and justice demand from all nations, in order to safeguard true relationships among peoples and to maintain the loyalty of citizens to their homeland, that they consider Zionism an illegal movement and outlaw its presence and activities.

Article 21: The Palestinian people believes in the principles of justice, freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, human dignity, and the right of peoples to practice these principles. It also supports all international efforts to bring about peace on the basis of justice and free international cooperation.

Article 22: The Palestinian people believe in peaceful co-existence on the basis of legal existence, for there can be no coexistence with aggression, nor can there be peace with occupation and colonialism.

Article 23: In realizing the goals and principles of this Convent, the Palestine Liberation Organization carries out its full role to liberate Palestine in accordance with the basic law of this Organization.

Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

Article 25: This Organization is in charge of the movement of the Palestinian people in its struggle to liberate its homeland in all liberational, organizational, and financial matters, and in all other needs of the Palestine Question in the Arab and international spheres.

Article 26: The Liberation Organization cooperates with all Arab governments, each according to its ability, and does not interfere in the internal affairs of any Arab states.

Article 27: This Organization shall have its flag, oath and a national anthem. All this shall be resolved in accordance with special regulations.

Article 28: The basic law for the Palestine Liberation Organization is attached to this Charter. This law defines the manner of establishing the Organization, its organs, institutions, the specialties of each one of them, and all the needed duties thrust upon it in accordance with this Charter.

Article 29: This Charter cannot be amended except by two-thirds majority of the members of the National Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization in a special session called for this purpose.

*Adopted in 1964 by the 1st Palestinian Conference

***

Dear Friends, the question is often asked: since the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was founded in 1964, what were the Arabs liberating at that time? The answer is: that part of the Holy Land which the Jews were able to hold on to when five armies, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan, attacked Israel in the bitterly fought War of Independence, in 1948. 6,000 Jews were killed in the War of Independence, 1% of the nation's total population. As a result of the War, Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. TransJordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, which it then named the "West Bank." At that time, King Hussein of Jordan significantly changed the name of TransJordan (across the Jordan) to just plain Jordan. By the way, this illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria, was recognized by only two countries, Britain and Pakistan.

It is important to pay great attention to article 24 of the PLO National Charter of 1964, which reads as follows: "THIS ORGANIZATION DOES NOT EXERCISE ANY TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE WEST BANK IN THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN, ON THE GAZA STRIP OR IN THE HIMMAH AREA. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields."

When did the PLO discover its passionate attachment to the Biblical Homeland of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, declaring it to be their fictional Palestinian homeland, even though these areas are repeatedly mentioned in the Judeo-Christian Bible as promised to the Jewish People by Hashem? Of course, there never was such a country called Palestine, or a nation called Palestinians.

The Arabs themselves make it clear in this 1964 Palestinian National Charter (in the Introduction of the Charter) that they are part of a larger Arab people (Arabism), and that it is incumbent on all Arab people to move forward on the path of HOLY WAR (AL-JIHAD) until complete and final victory has been attained.

Here in this 1964 Palestinian National Charter we see the planting of the seeds of "global Jihad."

Specifically:

"Article 1: Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland"
"Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation..."
"Article 12: Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary goals; each prepares for the attainment of the other..."
"Article 13: The destiny of the Arab Nation and even the essence of Arab existence are firmly tied to the destiny of the Palestine question..."

And finally, article 14 clearly spells out the necessity of Jihad: "The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty. Its responsibilities fall upon the entire Arab nation, governments and peoples, the Palestinian peoples being in the forefront. For this purpose, the Arab nation must mobilize its military, spiritual and material potentialities; specifically, it must give to the Palestinian Arab people all possible support and backing and place at its disposal all opportunities and means to enable them to perform their role in liberating their homeland."

Unfortunately, the United Nations and the European Union have bought into the fantasy of a Palestinian nation and a Palestinian state, to replace the Jewish Homeland. Tragically, even the United States, supposedly Israel's best friend, is working with the Arab world to make the realization of another Arab state a reality. Shouldn't the US State Department and the rest of the Unites States government take a good thorough look at the PLO National Charter of 1964 and the lies contained therein?

In the Jerusalem Post of May 5, 2004 there was an article by Michael Freund about the U.S. National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice fundraising for the PA.

"According to a May 3 article in The Washington Post, the Bush administration has launched a 'diplomatic offensive' aimed at allaying Arab concerns regarding the president's recent embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan.

"Among other things, the paper notes, 'the administration in recent days has tried to emphasize its concern for the Palestinians.' This has included an effort to drum up financial support for the PA. 'As part of the diplomatic offensive,' the report says, 'national security adviser Condoleezza Rice last week called some Arab countries that were behind in making payments to shore up the Palestinian Authority.'

"Isn't that thoughtful of her. With American casualties mounting daily in Iraq, Osama Bin-Laden still on the run, and North Korea threatening to develop more nuclear weapons, doesn't Rice have better things to do than making sure Arafat can balance his checkbook? Indeed, Rice's telethon on behalf of the PA is particularly astonishing in light of some of the Palestinians' recent actions.

"Just this past weekend the PA transferred funds to Hamas-affiliated organizations in Gaza, claiming that economic conditions in the territories were the reason for the move. But if the PA itself is truly in such need of funds that the US national security adviser must intervene, why is it showering money on Hamas terrorists?"

The pressure on Ariel Sharon from the United States Government to evacuate Jewish Communities to make possible the establishment of another Arab state within the Promised Land, has been enormous. This coming Sunday, May 30, Prime Minister Sharon is trying to force the Israeli Cabinet to approve his unilateral disengagement plan to abandon the Jewish Communities in Gaza, as well as some in Samaria. In Gaza alone, this plan, without any reciprocal agreement from the Arabs, will hand over hothouses, factories, homes, schools and synagogues to the Arabs, making at least 8,000 people homeless. Sharon has said that even if the Cabinet does not support him, and even though his own Likud party overwhelmingly in a referendum rejected his plan, he will go ahead, because he knows best!

Now the question is, will the most important democracy in the world, the United States, support such blatantly undemocratic behavior?

It is up to you dear friends, to remind the United States Government of the intentions of the Arab world as spelled out in the Palestinian National Charter of 1964, which were the seeds planted for the Muslim Global Jihad, which the Judeo-Christian world will have to defeat in order to survive.

With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar

And the world still remains silent

Rachel Raskin-Zrihen


There are only a couple of possible explanations for why the world is not out even now, protesting the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters by Palestinian gunmen.

I think it's clear that had the shooters been Israeli soldiers and the victims a Palestinian family, millions of righteously indignant protesters would have hit the streets and the airwaves calling for the capture and punishment of the murderers and, no doubt, the immediate dismantling of "the Zionist entity."

They do that when a Palestinian civilian gets unintentionally caught in the crossfire. They do it when actual gunmen and terrorists are killed. They do it when fences are constructed to keep the killers out. They do it when terrorists' houses - their houses, not their families - are destroyed. They do not do it when defenseless Jewish women and children are gunned down in the street.

There are only a limited number of explanations for this - none of them very pleasant.

One must realize that we are talking about the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and four little girls. Someone had to take aim at and shoot an obviously pregnant woman and four small children ages 2 to 11. This was not a case of accidental collateral damage. This was a targeted killing. And, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no moral equivalency between the targeted killing of an armed (or even an unarmed) terrorist mastermind, and the murder of an unarmed pregnant woman and her children, no matter how much certain people would like there to be. It is the difference not between apples and oranges, but between apples and skyscrapers.

Had the victims been any other pregnant woman and her children, practically anywhere else in the world, there would have been a deafening hew and cry.

So, either much of the world is OK with the Jews as victims or they have a very low opinion of Arabs.

What I mean is, that unless there is a collective understanding that Jews are unimportant, expendable or worse, justifiable targets, the only other explanation is that the world feels the Palestinian Arabs are simply incapable of civilized behavior. Unless the world is collectively thinking, "well, they're Arabs, what do you expect?" then we can explain the deafening silence over this atrocity only through worldwide, systemic and deeply entrenched anti-Semitism.

I'm not crazy about either explanation, but I think I hope it's the former, because there is some chance for the Arabs themselves to change that perception by behaving in a civilized manner, and by calling on their misguided brethren to do so, too.

The latter explanation, on the other hand, has terrifying and far-reaching implications that I'd prefer not to contemplate, and which people all over the world, in the United States in particular, are dismissing as impossible.

Unfortunately, those of us familiar with history know that dismissing unpleasantness out of hand doesn't make it go away. On the contrary, it allows it to fester and grow.

If the international acquiescence to or rationalization of the murder of that Jewish family isn't a function of anti-Semitism or a belief that no better behavior can be expected from Palestinian Arabs, then it can only be a fear, a terror as it were, that to speak out against the wholesale slaughter of innocent Jewish men, women and even children may bring the wrath of the proverbial Hun down upon the protester.

If that's it we're all doomed, of course, because that means the terrorists have already won.

(What make these murders even more horrendous, is the fact that the Arabs involved deliberately came up to the car afterwards and slaughtered the children at close range.)

Remembering

From Naomi Ragen:

Friends,

One of ther reasons I started this mailing list was to try to share that which we in Israel are experiencing. All day long today, Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and (for the first time) victims of terror, I tried to think how I could explain to someone outside the country what we here go through.

How can I make someone who doesn't live here understand what it means to sit by your television set hour after hour watching family after family break down in tears as they describe the pain of losing a beloved son or daughter? And the pictures of the fallen, how they flash by, the handsome young men, the winning grin, the dark blue eyes, the strong young bodies, the beautiful young women --and all so young, so young, so very young.

There was one show that filmed mothers and fathers describing the last conversation they had with their child, and then how they learned the terrible news. Some feared it all along; others never suspected. Some were furious at the soldiers who came to tell them; others didn't want to open the door at all; and still others didn't believe a word, trying again and again to call the cell-phone number.

There was the Russian immigrant who had lost her lovely young daughter in a Tel Aviv disco bombing: "I dreamt about her wedding, having grandchildren. Now that will never happen." Was she sorry she'd moved to Israel? "No," she said. "This is our country. This is what my daughter wanted. It was her dream." And the Ethiopian mother who had lost her soldier son....and the friends we have known for years talking about losing their son, a war hero. I remember when David Granit was born. His mother didn't know she was pregnant with twins, identical twin boys, redheads like their mother. Their father Menachem saw one son born, then went home. When he came back to visit his wife, she said: "We have a son." I know, he answered, confused. "No, another son." How we all laughed at this story. David was killed in Lebanon saving the lives of his soldiers who were under heavy fire. "I didn't want a hero," his sister wept. "I wanted my brother."


On the radio, I heard a bereaved mother talking about the importance of memorial day. "For one day the whole country feels like I feel every day." It was important for people to call, to enquire, to comfort. To make those suffering from loss feel surrounded by a cocoon of warmth and love and solidarity, she said. That is so hard, I thought. Because the last thing in the world you want to do is intrude on someone's private grief. But Memorial Day makes that grief public, giving all of us a chance to say: We live because your son, your daughter, your father, your brother, your sister gave their lives to guard and protect us. Our country continues to function because your grandmother, your little girl, took a bus, bought a pizza, sat in a park, and in so doing, lost their lives to those who wish to take our country away from us. Too cowardly to fight our soldiers, they fight our old people, our babies.

When Memorial Day is over, we will dry our tears. We will go out into the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, our hearts still heavy with cumulative grief, and watch the fireworks. And little by little, we will start to smile again, to celebrate that our little country--our little miracle-- is 56 years old. And that, despite everything, we love her and wish her well and would give anything --anything--to protect and nuture her and her people, the bravest and most compassionate people in the world.

Happy Birthday Israel. God Bless the Jewish people, the People of Israel. May He heal our wounds, and dry the tears from all faces.

Poor "Palestinians"

From http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200404230833.asp


The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be
now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an
apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on
Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on
Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on
Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male,
conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday.

Thanks, Naomi!

Naomi's back

Dear Friends,

I'm back! I had a wonderful time (sunsets, rainbows, beaches, orchids. Peace.) But I have to say my eyes misted when my plane finally touched down on my little country. And of all the wonderful sights I saw, and all the joy I experienced, there is was nothing like the coastline of Tel Aviv as it neared. The weather is warm and balmy, with no cloud in sight.

My short stay in London was enough to fill me with compassion for the British. Their climate is their punishment. Freezing cold and rainy. As for their security, it is non-existent. Those deep underground subways are a terrorist's dream. After Madrid, Mr. Frost shouldn't be sympathizing with terrorists and condemning Israel. He should be urging his own government to follow suit. But appeasement seems to be part of the British arsenal when it comes to dealng with evil. I have no doubt the British will eventually figure it out as they did the last time. I shudder to think at what cost.

I return to you and my list with renewed vigor and faith. The present of Sheik Yassin in little pieces on the morning of my return was cause for real celebration. As we near Passover, I can't help remember that it was this little Hitler that targeted my family at the Park Hotel on Seder night two years ago.

As for all the remarks on how "now-you've-made-them-mad. Now -you've- made-them- really-really- mad", please. I have always felt that our enemies will kill us as long as they can, and they'll stop when they can't. May all those who mourn the passing of Yassin soon follow in his footsteps. After all, didn't Yassin say that the day of his martyrdom would be the happiest day in his life? I wish all of his mourners many, many such happy days in their lives.

I'm enclosing Bret Stephens' excellent piece.

Every blessing,

Naomi


The Fear Factor

By BRET STEPHENS March 23, 2004; Page A22, The Jerusalem Post

JERUSALEM -- Are Palestinians weeds? It would seem many people think they are. Following Israel's assassination early yesterday morning of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, the gist of international reaction was that the strike would bring new converts to the Islamist cause and incite a fresh wave of terrorist violence against Israel. In other words, Palestinians are weeds: Mowing them down, as it were, only has the effect of making them grow back stronger and faster.

There are moments (Monday morning was one of them) when I find myself tempted by the metaphor. As I write, my TV screen is filled with images of Palestinian mourners thronging the streets of Gaza, praising Yassin as a martyr and vowing deadly vengeance. This looks like the reaction of an emboldened people, not a frightened one. So what's the sense, in purely utilitarian terms, of further Israeli attacks? Alternatively, what's the sense of showing any restraint at all? If the weed metaphor is right, either Israel should sue for peace on whatever terms the Palestinians extend or it should resort to extreme measures like population transfer. Anything else just fruitlessly prolongs a cycle of violence.

But of course Palestinians aren't weeds. They're human. They think in terms of costs and benefits, they calculate the odds, they respond more or less rationally to incentives and disincentives. And what makes us afraid can also make them afraid.

This is a trite observation, but it's one Palestinians would rather have us forget. Over 42 months of conflict, their strategy has been to persuade Israelis that they, the Palestinians, are made of different stuff. Why else the suicide bombers? Not because of their proven capacity to kill civilians in greater numbers than any other weapon currently in the Palestinian arsenal. That's only a second-order effect. The deep logic of suicide bombing lies in the act of suicide itself. People who will readily die for their cause are, by definition, beyond deterrence. By showing that Israel's tanks and fighter jets are just so much scrap metal in the face of the Palestinians' superhuman determination, they aim to disarm Israel itself.

How does one respond to such a logic? It helps not to be fooled by it. Again, allow me to make the trite observation that Palestinians love their children too. To date, there has not been a single instance in which a Hamas leader sent one of his own sons or daughters on a suicide mission. I once interviewed a Hamas leader, since deceased, as he bounced his one-year-old girl on his knee. Contrary to myth, this was not a man who was afraid of nothing. Unsparing as he was with the lives of others, he was circumspect when it came to the lives of his own.

Indeed, when one looks closely at just who the suicide bombers are (or were), often they turn out to be society's outcasts. Take Reem Salah al-Rahashi, a mother of two, who in January murdered four Israeli soldiers at the Erez checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel border. In a prerecorded video, Rahashi said becoming a shaheed was her lifelong dream. Later it emerged she'd been caught in an extramarital affair, and that her husband and lover had arranged her "martyrdom operation" as an honorable way to settle the matter. It is with such people, not with themselves, that Palestinian leaders attempt to demonstrate their own fearlessness.

In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.

The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.

In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers.

Now a few words about Yassin, the international reaction to his killing, and the likely result for Israel. It may be recalled that Israel released the good sheikh in 1997, after having sentenced him to life in prison, with the promise that he would never again promote terrorism. This was during the Oslo years, when serious people actually thought that such conciliatory gestures served the interests of peace. Today, that is beyond comprehension. At any rate, Yassin didn't keep his promise.

Meanwhile, assorted foreign ministers are in full throat against Israel. "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself -- and it is fully entitled to do that -- against the terrorism that affects it, within international law," says British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing."

It would be interesting to know exactly what, according to Mr. Straw, Israel is lawfully allowed to do in self-defense. Perhaps it would be as well if the minister also reminded the Palestinian Authority of its obligations, under the Road Map, to "undertake visible efforts . . . to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning attacks on Israelis." But if Mr. Straw and his colleagues do not do so, it is not from an excess of respect for the Palestinians, but rather its lack. They will, after all, be viewing them merely as weeds, not as humans capable of acting in their own best interests.

Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108000585017162510,00.html (Requires WSJ subscription)

=======================================
Naomi Ragen
Please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com
and subscribe to my mailing list by sending an empty email to: naomiragen-on@mail-list.com
email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com

Sarah Honig in JPost: Sleep no more

Jerusalem Post, March 11, 2004


It came to me while trying to avoid decking myself out in a full-blown Purim costume for a party we were invited to. Why not go as a replica of myself, my own impostor? So I drew and cut out a giant lapel-label in the shape of a seedpod and imprinted a bold "snatched body" inscription across it.

My humble homage to the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a sci-fi cult classic about human doubles hatched from mysterious pods, became an unexpected attention-grabber and conversation-sparker. In no time, the chitchat gravitated to current affairs and speculation about which leading politico's body may have been replaced.

By the end of the evening there was unanimity among the merrymakers. Though Ariel Sharon may look, sound, and move like his old self, he's no Arik. We hypothesized elaborate scenarios about his alien abduction, takeover by a mind-controlling physical look-alike, eventual altering of his life-force, and erasure of all emotions and ideals that had moved him previously.

Then someone quipped that "it's as good an explanation as any" for Sharon's bizarre behavior and disquieting surprises, which no longer shock the desensitized population.

Why indeed search for an elusive psychoanalytical diagnosis to account for the settlement champion's out-of-the-blue resort to the term "occupation"? Why construct fanciful concoctions to account for the "constriction minister's" submission to an outsider's road-map-to-ruin? Why burrow for clues to account for the super-hawk's sudden penchant for cowering behind a fence with very mutable lines? Why beat our tired brains trying to account for the quintessential warrior's quizzical propensity for retreat?

We don't need to conjure undying devotion between the PM and his erstwhile produce marketer, who was also the erstwhile father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, to account for the hardliner's suddenly turning soft on Hizbullah and submitting to its extortionist ransom demands.

THE BODY-SNATCHING theory is as valid as any convoluted cerebral contortion to make sense of the strange goings-on around the national control-board. In fact, it probably makes better sense. The bottom line is that the Sharon currently in the prime minister's office isn't the Arik we once loved or feared, each according to his/her political predilection.

Someone inhabiting Arik's exact likeness is behaving in ways diametrically opposed to Arik's. Thus the very notion that Sharon today can regret Begin's refusal to allow the Egyptian army into Sinai boggles the mind. The whole idea was to make the Sinai vastness a buffer, military movement into which would tip Israel off in time to counter any offensive. The basic logic was to keep the still-menacing Egyptian military machine away from Gaza, the historic highway for numerous invasions of Eretz Yisrael. The rationale was to prevent a re-enactment of 1948, when attacking Egyptian forces endangered Tel Aviv.

Equally mind-blowing is the notion of these chillingly unfriendly Egyptians curtailing weapons smuggling into Gaza. Who's Arik kidding? These are the very Egyptians who at present aid and abet such illicit arms-supplies. They honestly caution that they've no intention of becoming our guardians, so why should we delude ourselves otherwise and not take their word for it?

We already tried to entrust our fragile defense into enemy hands (the Oslo fiasco), and see where that brilliant stroke got us. Who's to guarantee that the latest gamble would pay off, while its predecessor literally keeps exploding in our faces?

How do we know we can now trust Sharon's professed omniscient wisdom any more than we could safely swallow his assurances on the eve of the swap that brought Tannenbaum back? That deal, which only risked returning terrorists to their training bases, was finally exposed as a folly at best. Sharon's grander schemes could risk lots more.

Even his words erode our position. Only the concessions remain, none of the compensations. In the Tannenbaum affair, we didn't rescue a tortured compatriot. Israel's 14 road-map reservations are forgotten. The security fence's beyond-the-Green-Line bulges are fast disappearing, and the mooted annexations in return for a Gaza withdrawal are ephemeral red herrings.

Only dupes would put their trust in anything Sharon advocates or extraterrestrial duplicates.

Maybe Sharon isn't the only leading Likud light snatched. That would explain not only his increasing strangeness but also the lack of resistance from his party's cabinet contingent. Perhaps the Likud ministers too aren't who they claim to be. Their reactions also appear eerily modified. They don't seem to be themselves. That's what comes of prevaricating, acquiescing, letting one's guard down, shutting the eyes.

Indeed, in the relentlessly haunting flick, zombie-like aliens propagate only when folks sleep, when they aren't vigilant. The dormant victim is replaced by an emotionless drone. Eventually the entire town is possessed by pod changelings, and everything is threatened.

The B-picture's original name was Sleep No More. A message for us?

Fence Cartoon

 Barrier For Peace

From Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons.

Daniel Gordis: Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today

*** To join Daniel's list, send a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Or see www.danielgordis.org for more information.

*** Just published ..... The last five years of these Dispatches (a revised version of IF A PLACE CAN MAKE YOU CRY), plus other brief essays on life in Israel, are now available as "Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press).

The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400049598/


I remember the day they died. And I remember the day that they died again. They were killed, we now know, 1210 days ago in the attack in which they, or their bodies, were captured. The number 1208 was mentioned today by Hayim Avraham, Benny's father, as the number of days that they survived without knowing. Now, he's getting his son back. Not alive, but back. And for the first time in 1208 days, he and his family will go to sleep knowing with certainty that Benny is dead, that he's not in the hands of the same sorts of "people" who blew up a bus full of children and civilians in the heart of Jerusalem today, or who for more than three interminable years kept the most basic humanitarian information -- that the boys were dead -- from their suffering families.

Those families will go to sleep now knowing that their boys are not suffering. That they didn't suffer, at least for long.

The prisoner exchange, in which earlier today we returned more than 400 prisoners for three dead bodies and a probable criminal who apparently got himself captured by Hizbollah only by virtue of his involvement in some nefarious attempt to make money, has been the subject of intense, and now impassioned, debate in Israel. There are those who think we've made a grave mistake. And those who aren't sure. And those who believe that you simply have to "bring the boys home."

That's been the refrain of everyone today, those who agree, and those who don't. Israel "brings the boys home." No matter what. It may make strategic sense, it may not. It may get us information about Ron Arad, the navigator who was shot down five days after our daughter, Talia, who's now being drafted, was born. It may not. It may have been worth it. It may not have. But it has made one point clear. We bring the boys home.

Israeli national television has been broadcasting nothing else (except for periodic interruptions for coverage of the aftermath of the bus bombing -- the bomber, by the way, was a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem .) all day. At one point, Avi had a friend over, and they joined me watching TV. Here they were, two 14 year olds, headed out to the same army, and perhaps the same fronts, in just a few years. I watched their eyes as they watched the screen, as they watched the video segments of parents who've been interviewed over the past three years and four months, who didn't know whether to mourn or to hope, as they watched the more recent pictures of parents who now know that the hope is over but that relief is ironically just beginning, and I saw them processing. Wondering. What will be. What could be. What would be. Who would do what. At what expense.

And for that moment, at least, it seemed worth it. Without question. Those kids watching TV with me need to know that we bring boys home.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. But they came home to a very different country than the one from which they were stolen. A country that's been at war for three years. A country that when they were killed was just weeks post Camp David, when we thought that virtually anything and everything was possible. To a country that no longer yearns for a peace that we suspect will not be, but still hopes for the sort of quiet that we had for a while. Until this morning. They were stolen on October 7, 2000, just weeks after everything began, when we were foolish enough to imagine that things were bad. We had no idea back then how bad they could get. Or would get. But we're still here. They've come home to a country that has stared evil in the eye, and has persevered. And that brought them home, against all odds.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. They came home to a country that is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut, and of the air force base at Ben Gurion airport. Beirut, with the fireworks lighting the sky, the backslapping among the prisoners, the sickening, endless speech by Nassrallah in which he intimated a threat of more kidnappings, and hinted at the possibility of information (just information, though) on Ron Arad in exchange for all the remaining hundreds of prisoners we still have, evoking laughs, jeers and clapping from the throngs of people listening. And then to the air force base, at which a quiet ceremony took place. A ceremony in which no one laughed. Where people cried. Where you could have heard a pin drop, and where you watched fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and a few grandparents, stifle their cries and wipe their tears away.

They came home to a country in which the carnage of burning buses in our cities, in parts of the country far from anything contested (unless, of course, the whole country is contested, which is clearly the case) has grown so intolerable that we're building a wall, a wall which keeps them out but also pens us in. But it's also a country in which many of us see, sadly, no real alternative to that fence, as problematic as it undeniably is. They've come home to a country that will be "brought to trial" at the Hague for the "crime" of that wall, a country that's now referred to in some quarters as an Apartheid State because of that fence.

I thought about that Apartheid accusation a few times tonight. When the coffins were carried from the plane to the jeeps waiting for them, and the coffin of Omar Souad, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish State was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home. Four who looked Jewish. One who looked Bedouin, though it was hard to tell. And one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Souad, and then, all saluting him. And then the Chief of Staff, and the bearded IDF Chief Rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an Apartheid state.

And then during the ceremony, the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an Imam, by the side of Omar's father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the Prime Minister, the President, the Chief of Staff and others. So much for the Apartheid state.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. To a country that's not been weakened by the past three years, but that's been hardened by it. I drove Talia's carpool for the first time in years, yesterday morning. She's got a five minute walk to school, so we never drive carpool, but this wasn't school. She and some friends had to be at the Jerusalem Convention Center at 7:00 a.m. to be bussed someplace else for part of their draft process, so I drove them. Three kids, not really kids anymore, whom I remember just years ago as chatty adolescents, now talking quietly as I drove through the still awakening city and its mostly empty streets, talking about what forms they'd filled out, what they'd have to do during the day. And when I got home from work at about 9:30 that night, she still wasn't home. She got home closer to 10, grabbed a bite, and went to sleep. No fanfare. No complaints. In the past three years, those girls have learned a lot. That the battle to stay here isn't over. That to stay here, they, too, are going to have to do their share. That we have real enemies.

We went to a parents' meeting about a month ago for parents of religious girls about to enter the army. One particular unit was trying to attract these girls, and this evening was for parents to find out more about it. Some of the parents were worried that the unit would make their girls work on Shabbat. The unit had assembled a few of the soldiers, a couple of them kids whom we knew from when they lived in the neighborhood before they left for the army, and a couple of rabbis (among others) to talk about life in this part of the army. Well into the meeting, one father got up and asked one of the rabbis, in a rather aggressive tone, whether the girls work on Shabbat. The rabbi paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, when one of the girls stared the father right in the eye and said, "Of course we sometimes work on Shabbat. The enemy works on Shabbat."

I almost laughed out loud. These kids get it. They understand that there's nothing automatic about our being able to stay here. They understand that staying here means having real enemies. And watching the ceremony tonight, watching the agony of families who should have known three years ago that their sons were dead, I watched Tali watching them. With eyes of steel. Because she, like her friends, knows that the enemy isn't a concept. They bomb the cafes she eats in. The blow up the buses she still rides. And they keep these parents awake for 1208 nights, not knowing if their sons are alive or dead, suffering or in peace. Our kids get it. They know what sorts of neighbors we have.

And they're not running. They grow up too fast, I think, but they know who they are and what they stand for. Few of us would want it otherwise.

These kids get it long before they get drafted. A father of one of Israel's POW's (not one of the three returned tonight) came to Avi's class last year. He talked about how his son was captured, and what they're doing (and have been doing for more than twenty years) to try to get him back. But kids will be kids. They're not afraid to ask what they want to know. So at the end, one of the kids asked him if he's worried that they're torturing his son. No, he said, he didn't think about that. "But when I get into bed each night," he continued, "I worry that maybe he's cold." Avi talked about that for days. And on the rare occasion that he still lets me tuck him into bed at night, I think about that, too. You know, at moments like that, that we just have to bring the boys home. No matter what.

The country to which the boys came home tonight is one in which kids who shouldn't have to be hardened, unfortunately are. When we heard the news of the attack on the bus this morning, I SMS'ed the kids to make sure that they were OK. They were supposed to be in school, but who knew where they really were? So I SMS'ed them on their phones: "There was an attack in Jm this morning. Sms me to tell me you're OK." Talia wrote back to say she was fine. Avi wrote back a short while later.

He wrote, in classic SMS fashion: Im fine and all my friends are fine.

It was my friends bus tho so if he would have been late 2day he would have been killed

That was the whole message. When Adi, Avi and Benny were captured, it would have been unthinkable to us that a fourteen year old could talk about such things so matter-of-factly. Or that he could home and tell us that the mother of one the kids in his school is still unaccounted for, but half an hour later want to discuss the relative merits of the iPod versus the new Dell MP3 player. But that's what things have come to. And perhaps because of that ability to compartmentalize, and to stare evil in the face, we're still here. And no one's thinking of budging.

I remember the second time that Adi, Benny and Omar died. For a year, every Shabbat, our shul had been mentioning them, and the other six (Tenenbaum among them) just after the Torah reading, in a prayer for Israel's captured soldiers. First a prayer for the State. Then for the

army and its soldiers. Then for those in captivity. Nine names only,

so after a while, you know the list. You know it almost by heart, and you certainly notice if someone changes it. Then, about a year after they were captured, the army declared them dead based on new intelligence. Some of the families sat Shiva, but didn't really believe it. And in our shul, that next Shabbat, the person reading the "mi she-beirach," the prayer in which their names were mentioned, started reading, and then stopped. It was as if he couldn't bear to read the list without their names. As if even though he didn't know them, he couldn't give up on the hope. So he didn't mention any of the names, and instead, said something like "all those held in captivity." It was a moment that few of us who were there will ever forget. I was struck then by how personal this was. How despite everything that is wrong here, and that's quite a bit, there is so much that is right. And how, the more they push us, the more we are bonded even to people we never knew. It is, I think, one of those immeasurable things that makes living here so compelling, despite everything. It's one of those things that remind us what a real home is.

As does the evening news. Throughout the entire broadcast tonight, there were two Hebrew words at the bottom right hand side of the screen -- "ve-shavu vanim." "And the sons will return." It's a quote from Jeremiah 31:16, of course. The entire verse reads, "And there is hope for your future, declares the Lord, your children shall return to their country." And that's exactly what happened.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. Tomorrow we'll bury them, along with the victims of today's bus bombing.

Yehi zikhram barukh. May their memories be a blessing.


(c) 2004 Daniel Gordis

You are welcome to forward this e-mail if you would like, but only in its entirety and unedited, including the information below. However, this material may not be published in print or posted on a web site without the express, written consent of the author.

You can subscribe to the list at www.danielgordis.org (see the box on the top left of the screen) or at www.topica.com/lists/gordis. You can also subscribe by sending a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Topica will automatically send you a confirmation message to which you must reply. Unsubscription information is included automatically in each newsletter.