Arafat odds and ends

Arafat odds and ends

I expect that Charles Krauthammer's column tomorrow will be the equivalent of a rhetorical 21 gun salute delivered right to the gut of Arafat's many synchophants, apologists and enablers in the West.

Loved LGF's cute photoshop memento of the occasin.

Liked WizBang's thoughts for the funeral. (I harbored a similar thought. Did someone drive a stake through his heart to make sure?)

On a more serious note Jeff Jacoby used his column today, "Arafat the Monster," to remind us of the names of some of Arafat's victims.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.

24 years ago when I was studying in Israel, I visited Ma'alot for a Sabbath. I remember going to the school. If these children had lived they'd likely be parents now. Instead, to much of the world, they matter less than the man who saw to their murders.

In his column at NRO, Aaron Mannes of Terrorblog concludes:

But Arafat's life's work was to justify the use of random violence and equip a generation with the means to do so. He helped set in motion the web of alliances that has manifested itself in today's super-terrorists. This is Yasser Arafat's terrible legacy.

It is a point that is too often missed - the Washington Post calling Arafat a "dreamer" - and I'm glad to see it reinforced. This is the same point that the late Michael Kelly made in "When Innocents are the Enemy:"

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

Finally, for now, (via Instapundit ) there's Max Boot:

Though Arafat, of course, bore ultimate responsibility for his many sins, he could not have been so destructive without so many outside enablers, ranging from the Soviet Union, which supported him from the 1960s to the 1980s, to the European Union and the United States, which stepped into the sugar daddy role in the 1990s. And let us not forget his fan club among the Western intelligentsia, many of whom even now weep for his passing as if he were a great man instead of a criminal with a cause.

Yes the enablers are still at it. As if Palestinian nationalism innoculates one against all manner of crimes.

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Mendacity Alert I

Mendacity Alert 1

In the coming days the media will be filled with puff pieces soft pedaling Yasser Arafat. I hope to have time to do an ongoing series.
We'll lead off with "A Terrorist Leads his People to Disaster." Whoops, I mean "A Dreamer Who Forced His Cause Onto World Stage" by long time Israel correspondent of the Washington Post, Lee Hockstader. There are a number of items that can't go unmentioned. For example:

Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini was born Aug. 4, 1929, the sixth of seven children of a moderately successful merchant from Gaza and his wife, a descendant of a prominent Jerusalem family. He adopted the name Yasser -- Arabic for "easygoing" -- as a college student.

According to his college record, and most of his biographers, Arafat was born in Cairo, two years after his parents had moved there from Jerusalem. Arafat generally insisted he was born in Jerusalem's Old City, though occasionally he said he was born in Gaza -- assertions that underscored his solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

"Assertions that underscored his solidarity with the Palestinian cause?" How about "lies to give himself an aura of a romantic revolutionary that was easily swallowed by many a gullible journalist?" If Arafat couldn't keep his place of birth straight it was a sign of his dishonesty. The paragraph should have been written more like this: According to all available evidence Arafat was born in Cairo. Despite this evidence Arafat liked to claim that he was born in Jerusalem or alternatively, in Gaza. This claim was likely false.

Next to ponder is:

The following March, Palestinian gunmen murdered two senior U.S. diplomats in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum; some American officials believed Arafat ordered the killings, although the evidence was inconclusive.

How does Hockstader know that the evidence was inconclusive? This is from an unofficial website about Arlington Cemetery:

Cleo A. Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore were among a group of men seized by Black September terrorists during a reception held at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum [Sudan]. The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert Kennedy, as well as terrorists being held in Israeli and European prisons. President Nixon refused to negotiate. The tape was of conversations between Arafat in Beirut and his thugs in Khartoum. Execute the diplomats, ordered Arafat. The terrorists obeyed, machine gunning the unarmed, hapless Noel and Moore. They also killed a Belgium diplomat. The authenticity of the tape was verified in U.S. laboratories by both the State Department and the White House.

Then there's the testimony of James Welsh an NSA officer who heard the tapes and of Ion Mihai Pacepa a fomer high ranking Rumanian intelligence. Inconclusive? Sounds like a whitewash to me.
We continue:

The Beirut idyll came to an end in June 1982 when Israeli forces, directed by Ariel Sharon, then the defense minister, launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, sweeping north and subjecting Beirut to a three-month siege. The aim, said Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was to rid Lebanon once and for all of the "malevolent criminal terrorists," as he referred to the PLO.

"[I]dyll?" Arafat and the PLO created a state within a state in Lebanon, fatally destabilizing the country and embroiling it in a civil war. But Hockstader isn't interested in the damage Arafat did, just in undermining the Israeli claims against him. Scare quotes around "malevolent criminal terrorists?" It was apt description of the PLO.

Do we learn about the amount of weaponry Israel recovered (I read one report that put the value of materiel captured by Israel at $1 billion) when Israel chased the PLO out of Southern Lebanon or the cross border shelling by the PLO? Nope. Or the assassination attempt against Shlomo Argov? Nope.

In 1988:

The uprising caught Arafat and the PLO in Tunis by surprise, but gradually they were able to harness it somewhat and use it to reassert their leadership. As the street battles raged, the Israelis, convinced the uprising was organized by the PLO, sent a commando team to Tunis to assassinate Arafat's military commander and closest aide, Khalil Wazir, known as Abu Jihad.

What convinced the Israelis that the PLO had organized the intifada? If I remember correctly Israel found a briefcase with documents showing that the intifada was not spontaneous but controlled out of Tunis. Why no mention?

When Arafat set foot in Gaza on July 1, 1994 -- his first return in 27 years to what had been Israeli-occupied territory -- he knelt and kissed the ground. Hundreds of thousands of delirious Palestinians wept and danced in the streets, greeting him as a conquering hero.

His relations with the United States warmed for a time, and some Israelis began to view him as a pragmatist. In 1994, the man once regarded in the West as a master terrorist -- widely photographed in the early 1970s with his thick mustache, dark glasses, AK-47 assault rifle and pearl-handled pistol -- shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

I wish that he'd included the less romantic view that Michael Kelly (who was there) recounted about Arafat's return to Gaza:

Arafat's entry into Gaza was an object lesson: a purposely uncaring display of brute power. He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat's bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader's way.

Nor is there any mention of why some Israelis might have been skeptical of Arafat's change. Hockstader could have bothered to mention Arafat's infamous "Koraish" speech in Johannesburg in 1994. But again Arafat's outrages don't seem to concern Hockstader.

Still, some Palestinians, including some of Arafat's oldest comrades-in-arms, viewed the accord as a sellout that did nothing to recover what had been Palestinian homes, villages and towns before Israel's founding in 1948. Others, hopeful at first, soured over time as the promise of the peace agreement was only partly fulfilled.

Israeli troops did pull back from additional, disconnected chunks of the West Bank, including large Palestinian population centers. But in many ways the Jewish state continued to control the daily lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, whose travel, work and movements were still subject to Israeli permission. The fate of a couple of million Palestinian refugees, and the ultimate disposition of Jerusalem, which both sides claimed as their rightful capital, remained uncertain.

Here Hockstader toes the PA line. The peace process didn't work because the Israeli occupation persisted.

In the Palestinian-controlled territories, an ascendant group called the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, denounced the peace deal and carried out terror attacks and suicide bombings against Israelis. In Israel, a right-wing Israeli fanatic opposed to the peace accord assassinated Rabin. And the election of a new, hard-line Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, ushered in a period of stagnation in the peace process.

No word of what Arafat did to prevent the ascendancy of Hamas. Of course it was nothing. But part of Arafat's obligation was to fight terror and he rarely did. After arguing that the peace process was badly off because Israel controlled too much of the Palestinians' lives, Hockstader writes that there was "stagnation" of the peace process with "hardliner" Binyamin Netanyahu in the Prime Minister's office.

What stagnation? Netanyahu ceded most of Judaism's second holiest city, Hebron to the PA and demanded that the PA adhere to some of its commitments. That's stagnation? The stagnation resulted from the PA's refusal to abide by the terms of any of the treaties it signed.

And it's interesting to note this press release from Netanyahu's goverment in 1998:

The number of Palestinians working in Israel is steadily growing. Lawfully employed Palestinians in Israel today number about 60,000, of whom some 13,000 work in industrial zones and in the settlements. All told, more than 100,000 Palestinians are estimated to be employed in Israel approaching the record number employed in 1992.

So under Netanyahu Israel surrendered a significant city to the PA and the Palesitnians had the greatest freedom of movement since 1992 and that's stagnation? Give me a break. It is this sort of dishonesty that allowed Arafat and the PA to break every single agreement they signed with impunity. There was no accountability.

Finally we get to the latest violence:

Even as the negotiations sputtered on after Camp David, in September 2000 a bloody new Palestinian insurrection erupted at the very site that had been central to the talks -- the Temple Mount -- following a visit there by Arafat's longtime nemesis, Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader. The new intifada spread, with Arafat's blessing or consent, and in the process it destroyed his dreams of self-determination in the near term for his people.

As I've pointed out several times before, the violence started prior to opposition leader Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Here's an excerpt from a letter from then Ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry to Kofi Annan:

The events in these areas represent the latest and most severe developments in a wave of violence that has been building over the past few weeks. The attacks began with the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity of the Netzarim Junction on 13 September. This was followed by the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb on 27 September, and the murder of an Israeli police officer by a Palestinian policeman in a joint patrol on 29 September.

Finally, I'd like to comment on a two paragraph summary of Arafat's later years from the beginning of the article:

In his late sixties, Arafat attempted to transform himself from an archetypal revolutionary figure into a statesman and chief executive of the first self-ruled Palestinian territories. His handshake on the White House South Lawn with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Sept. 13, 1993, was one of the indelible images of the late 20th century, and the peace agreement they signed -- and for which they won the Nobel Prize -- seemed to hold the promise of a new future for the Middle East.

But his transformation was ultimately incomplete, and in U.S.-brokered negotiations at Camp David and in the Middle East in 2000 he was unwilling or unable to close a deal with Israel to put an end to the two sides' century-long conflict. Many concluded that Arafat had never truly reconciled himself to Israel's existence or the permanent exile of Palestinian refugees expelled from their ancestral homes by Israel. Under his rule, the Palestinian Authority was said by many to be riddled with corruption. When a bloody new Palestinian insurrection erupted in September 2000 -- if not led by Arafat then with his acquiescence -- he became a pariah to Israel and the United States.

Note the peace making Arafat made an "indelible image" but the contrary views are qualified by "Many concluded" (that Arafat hadn't reconciled himeself to Israel's existence) and (his government was) "said by many" (to be corrupt.)

It's astonishing the contortions that Hockstader went through to provide a sanitized portrait of an unrepentant terrorist. (A cursory look at the NY Times puff piece revealed that the Times didn't even mention the killing Noel and Curtis; so I guess there's one point in favor of Hockstader.)

My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Freed (obm) would tell us that Kurt Waldheim was a "deodorized Nazi." This was still about a decade before the full extent of Waldheim's wartime activities became known. We didn't know what to make of it. It turned that she was right, though I am uncertain how she knew.

Yasser Arafat was a deodorized terrorist. He was cleaned up by politicians, diplomats and journalists (like Hockstader) who took care to excuse the violence because of the nobility of the cause. Evidence suggesting that Arafat was nothing more than a thug who received lots of foreign aid under false pretenses was routinely ignored by these enablers.

We have to make sure that Arafat is remembered for his evil. Let's not let him be deodorized any longer. This is one dead guy about whom we should speak ill.

Posted by SoccerDad at November 11, 2004 04:36 AM | TrackBack

Yasser Arafat Retrospective

Yasser Arafat Retrospective

From Â?A Good Career MoveÂ? by Daniel Pipes, Jerusalem Post, September 7, 1999: Â?On countless occasions, Yasir Arafat has regaled listeners about his Jerusalem birth and childhood. He fondly recalls his birthplace in a stone house abutting the Western Wall, then how he lived with his Uncle Sa'ud in Jerusalem. Like Said, Arafat presents himself as a victim of Zionism - someone who lost his wordly belongings and his place in the world due to Israel's coming into existence. But in fact, as two intrepid French biographers, Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El-Tahri revealed a few years, ago (in their 1997 book, Les sept vies de Yasser Arafat), "Mr. Palestine was born on the shores of the Nile." The French researchers tell an amusing story of discovery. They went to the University of Cairo and innocently asked for the registration of one Muhammad 'Abd ar-Ra'uf 'Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husayni at the School of Civil Engineering in 1956. This, Arafat's birth name, means nothing to the Egyptian clerk, who "sits down behind a rickety wooden table, almost completely hidden by the pile of dusty files bound in black leather" and "blows off a layer of grime in a most professional way," then hands over the records. In a blue ink faded by time, the researchers find that their man, living at 24A Baron Empain Street, Heliopolis, "was born on August 4, 1929, in Cairo." With this information in hand, they dash over to the State Registry and find Arafat's actual birth certificate, which confirms the date and place.

From Â?Is There an Alternative to Arafat's Leadership?Â?, by Barry Rubin, Jerusalem Issue Brief, December 23, 2003: Arafat is not a nationalist. If he was, he could have had a state in 1968, in 1979, at several points in the 1980s, and certainly in the year 2000. But he is not interested in the well-being of the Palestinian people, he's interested in the Palestinian cause. In many ways, one of the keys to understanding Arafat is that he is basically an old-fashioned Islamist, influenced by his early connections with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He believes that victory is inevitable and that God will bring him victory. He believes it would be a sin to compromise, and that he has no right to give up anything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It is better to leave the battle to future generations than to make any political settlement that limits their ability to fight for total victory. Arafat is also a romantic revolutionary, the Middle Eastern counterpart of Che Guevara who glories in struggle and battling against the odds. He has no desire to become a statesman. He prefers to keep the revolution going. In each phase of his life - in Jordan (1967-1971), Lebanon (1971-1982), Tunis (1982-1994), and the West Bank and Gaza (1994 to the present) - Arafat has ended up destroying his own position because of the belief that violence always benefits his cause, the conviction that he doesn't have to implement his agreements, and the use of extremist front groups to commit violence for which he can disclaim responsibility. The bottom line is: Arafat will not make a deal. Therefore, either an alternative to Arafat is found or we will have to out-wait him, in order to achieve peace.

From Â?Promises But Never PeaceÂ? by Michael Kelly, April 3, 2002, The Washington Post: On July 1, 1994, Yasser Arafat entered Gaza to establish the Palestinian Autonomous Region -- betwixt-and-between creature of the Oslo peace process that was supposed to become, under the guiding light of the Oslo peace process, the physical base of another ambivalent notion, the Palestinian National Authority. I went as a reporter to Gaza a few hours before Arafat arrived, and I stayed there for about five weeks, observing the early days of life and governance under the Palestinian Authority. Arafat's entry into Gaza was an object lesson: a purposely uncaring display of brute power. He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat's bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader's way. This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces -- many, many of these -- and villas by the sea for Arafat's cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: "President" Arafat sitting in a room -- surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press -- and complaining.

From Â?The Arafat I KnewÂ?, by Ion Mihai Pacepa, January 12, 2002, OpinionJournal.com: After a couple of hours we learned they had seized the participants at a diplomatic reception organized by the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum and were asking for Sirhan's release. On March 2, 1973, after President Nixon refused the terrorists' demand, the PLO commandos executed three of their hostages: American Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr., his deputy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian charge d'affaires Guy Eid. In May 1973, during a private dinner with Ceausescu, Arafat excitedly bragged about his Khartoum operation. "Be careful," Ion Gheorghe Maurer, a Western-educated lawyer who had just retired as Romanian prime minister, told him. "No matter how high up you are, you can still be convicted for killing and stealing."
"Who, me? I never had anything to do with that operation," Arafat said, winking mischievously.

From Â?Arafat's WarÂ? by Fouad Ajami, March 30, 2002, OpinionJournal.com: "If I go to Beirut I will be king, if I stay among my people I shall be emperor," the megalomaniacal Mr. Arafat proclaimed as the crowd hung on his utterances. He shows no mercy for his own, he offers them an old, failed history, a harvest of sorrow, but in a peculiar demonstration of the limits of reason in human history, his people rally to him. "With our blood and our souls, we redeem you, oh Arafat," the crowd chants, granting him an exemption from any calculus of gains and ruin. He was offered statehood some 18 months ago. He walked away from it and unleashed a phantom of incalculable power: the Right of Return, a claim not on the West Bank and Gaza, but on Jaffa and Haifa and Galilee, a way, insinuating and understood by his people and by Arabs beyond, of contesting Israel's very existence and statehood.

From Â?ArafatÂ?s Grand StrategyÂ? by Ephraim Karsh, August 4, 2004, Front Page Magazine: It is the tragedy of the Palestinians that the two leaders who determined their national development during the twentieth centuryÂ?Haj Amin Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, who led them from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, and Yasir Arafat, who has dominated Palestinian politics since the mid-1960sÂ?were megalomaniac extremists obsessed with violence and blinded by anti-Jewish hatred. Had the mufti led his people to peace and reconciliation with their Jewish neighbors, as he promised the British officials who appointed him to his high rank, the Palestinians would have had their independent state in a substantial part of Mandatory Palestine by 1948. They thus would have been spared the traumatic experience of dispersion and exile. Had Arafat been genuinely interested in peace, a Palestinian state could have been established in the early 1980s as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, or by May 1999, as a part of the Oslo process.
But then, for all his rhetoric about Palestinian independence, Arafat has never been as interested in the attainment of statehood as in the violence attending its pursuit. As far back as 1978, he told his close friend and collaborator, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state, and that a Palestinian state would be a failure from the first day. The past decade has seen this bleak prognosis turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, driving Israelis and Palestinians in their bloodiest and most destructive confrontation in half a century.

From Â?Arafat's Condolences to Dolphinarium Bomber's FamilyÂ? Special Dispatch Series, July 8, 2001, Middle East Media Research Institute: To the brothers, the family of Al-Hotary and the Noble People of Qalqilya, With hearts that believe in Allah's will and predetermination, we have received the news about the martyrdom of the martyrÂ?. Al-Hotary, the son of Palestine, whose noble soul ascended toÂ? in order to rest in Allah's Kingdom, together with the Prophets, the men of virtue, and the martyrs. The heroic martyrdom operation Â? who turned his body into bombs Â? the model of manhood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homelandÂ? that the martyr beÂ? in Allah's mercy and willÂ? Allah's grace and satisfactionÂ? will inspire all members of his familyÂ? The best of condolences. To Allah we belong and to him we return back [Koran]
Yasser Arafat, the President of the State of Palestine
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO
Chairman of the Palestinian National Authority

From Â?Ship of TruthÂ? by Charles Krauthammer, January 11, 2002, The Washington Post: What does it take for the world to acknowledge the obvious truth that Yasser Arafat has no intention of making real peace? How much incontrovertible evidence is required before one admits that the Oslo "peace" was a fraud and a deception? Are 50 tons of smuggled weaponry insufficient to demonstrate that the truce the United States is seeking to establish would be nothing more than a breathing space for Arafat and the terrorists he supports to rearm, regroup and prepare for the next, more explosive phase of the war he began on Sept. 28, 2000?
The weapons were on the ship Israel intercepted en route from Iran to Gaza. The ship's captain has been a member of Arafat's Fatah for 25 years. He is an officer in the Palestinian navy. His ship was purchased by the Palestinian Authority. His instructions came from Arafat's arms paymaster. Arafat is shocked -- shocked! -- by these revelations. Comically, he has ordered an investigation. This will rival Hitler's investigation of the Reichstag fire. Palestine is a nasty police state where, if you make a sideways crack about Arafat in the men's room of the local cafe, you find yourself arrested within hours by one of Arafat's eight separate security forces. To believe that a $100 million arms shipment could have been made on anything less than Arafat's orders is to know nothing about the Palestinian revolution.

From Â?Investing In Yasser ArafatÂ?, by Michael Kelly, December 2, 1998, The Washington Post: There was a wonderful moment in the annals of diplomacy this week. Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, had come to town to attend an international conference convened by the White House to raise a new pile of money to give to President Arafat. And the conference had gone splendidly. Everyone had behaved perfectly fine; no one had so much as mentioned the inconvenient London Sunday Times story the day before, which said that the Palestinian Authority had swiped $20 million in British aid intended to build housing for the poor of Gaza, using the money instead to build luxury flats for Arafat's military and bureaucratic elite. After a day of pleasantries, representatives of 43 nations had pledged $3 billion in new aid to the Palestinian Authority, including an extra $400 million from the U.S. president. Arafat saw that it was good. "I am satisfied with the reality of this conference," he pronounced.

From Â?Beyond ArafatÂ?, by Jim Hoagland, November 7, 2004, The Washington Post: You owe me. Pay up. Or else.
That was the underlying message in Yasser Arafat's many speeches to the United Nations, interviews with Western and Arab journalists and official meetings with international civil servants at the height of his career as a money-grubbing revolutionary. That essential message was usually cloaked in verbal camouflage. But at times, the man the Palestinians call Abu Ammar said it aloud, according to several foreign officials who described their experiences in detail in return for anonymity. "He asked me if I had brought the money in cash when I came to discuss several million dollars of technical aid promised to the Palestinian Authority," one international banker said. "He said he needed the money, right now, for his own needs. I said it did not work that way for us." It is bad enough that a shakedown artist came to be the recognized leader of a people abused by history and subjugated over the centuries by Arab, Turkish, British and Israeli occupiers. That in the grief and fury of dispossession the Palestinians internalized the Arafatist "pay up" view of world politics is even more tragic and self-defeating.

Posted by SoccerDad at November 11, 2004 02:22 AM | TrackBack

Yasser Arafat, CTD
That's "Circling the Drain."
Andrew has already linked to Daniel Pipes's "Arafat's Bedroom Farce." In a nutshell:

The mise-en-scène is as preposterous as what came before, only much funnier. First, there is the wife, Suha, a Greek Orthodox convert to Islam who nonetheless continued to observe Christian holidays and now bellows out "Allahu Akbar" as she spends a reputed $100,000 a month living the good life in Paris. Then there are the long-suffering minions, hoping to get their day in the sun, free at last of their irascible, unpredictable, domineering leader. Finally, there are the hapless French politicians, stung by their own stupidity in sending a military plane to Jordan to retrieve Arafat to Paris, then treating him like royalty (including a courtesy visit by President Jacques Chirac), only to find themselves parties to his death-bed antics.

(via Backspin) And the Baltimore Sun features another look at the pampered revolutionaries:

Some Arafat aides reacted to his wife's tirade with an outburst of their own, threatening to leave Paris if they were so unwanted, but that plan seemed to dissolve as soon as they realized that that would be fine with her.

They were reduced to milling around the plush lobby of the Intercontinental Le Grand Hotel on Rue Scribe, near the Garnier Opera House, as they conferred in corners and talked on cellular phones, breaking occasionally to complain to reporters about Suha Arafat's behavior - careful to criticize the performance and not the performer.

They occasionally lapsed into wondering aloud whether they ought to go home after all. They drank $14 cups of coffee, chain-smoked and sank into red, velvety chairs and couches.

But they insisted that this first big test of their leadership in what might soon be a post-Arafat world was not a failure.

On a more serious note Pipes, yesterday, wrote "Arafat's Last Threat to Israel?" It follows the basic argument of Jackson Diehl (and others): Once Arafat is dead, President Bush will start pressuring Israel again. Unlike Diehl, Pipes is not at all amused about this prospect.

The combination of Mr. Bush's stunning new mandate and Mr. Arafat's near-death condition will lead, I predict, to a quick revival of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy after months of relative doldrums and to massive dangers to Israel.

The doldrums will cease because the Bush administration views Mr. Arafat as the main impediment to achieving its vision - articulated above by the president - of achieving a "Palestine" living in harmony side-by-side with Israel. As Mr. Arafat exits the political stage, taking with him his stench of terrorism, corruption, extremism, and tyranny, Washington will jump to make its vision a reality, perhaps as soon as this Thursday, when the British prime minister ("I have long argued that the need to revitalize the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today") comes to town.

This observer expects that the president's efforts will not just fail but - like so much prior Arab-Israeli diplomacy - have a counterproductive effect.

Though I supported President Bush, in part because I felt he would be better towards Israel than Senator Kerry, I expected at some point that the President would make demands on Israel that I do not agree with. But I also think that the situation is not as grim as Dr. Pipes does. For one thing, even Dr. Pipes has written that what's important is not what President Bush says about the Middle East, rather what he does.

Unlike President Clinton, I don't expect that President Bush will give the Palestinians much leeway. If he demands withdrawals from Israel, he will demand compliance from the Palestinians and he will take Israeli complaints seriously. It may not be what I want for Israel, but the Palestinians will have to get their house in order if they want the magic American "evenhandedness" (ie pressure on Israel).

Despite his fears Pipes writes at the end:

In conclusion, Israel has been spared from unremitting American pressure during the past three years only because Mr. Arafat continued to deploy the terrorism weapon, thereby alienating the American president and aborting his diplomacy. Thanks to growing anarchy in the Palestinian Arab territories, Israel will probably remain "lucky" for some time to come.

One last point. Pipes also writes about succession here:

Situation on the ground: There will be no successor to Mr. Arafat - he made sure of that through his endless manipulations, tricks, and schemes. Instead, this is the moment of the gunmen. Whether they fight for criminal gangs, warlords, security services, or ideological groups like Hamas, militiamen grasping for land and treasure will dominate the Palestinian scene for months or years ahead. The sort of persons familiar from past diplomacy or from TV commentaries - Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmed Qurei, et al. - lack gunmen, and so will have limited relevance going forward.

The Palestinian territories have already descended into a hellish anarchy and circumstances will probably worsen as the strongmen struggle for power. Eventually, two of them will emerge with the ability to negotiate with the Israelis and Americans.

Note, two of them. The geographic division of the West Bank and Gaza, of only minor import until now, looms large upon Mr. Arafat's passing. As Jonathan Schanzer has suggested, whoever rules in the one unit is unlikely to gain traction in the other, making the notion of a "Palestine" that much more difficult to promote.

Two Palestines, anyone?

Since Arafat ran the PA more as a crime family than as a revolutionary movement, it is the fellows with the most firepower who will succeed him.

To my mind the most likely strongman to take over is Mohammed Dahlan. He has parlayed his control of Gaza into a fortune. He has protected Hamas and thus has good relations with them. And no doubt he has plenty of loyal gunmen at his side. He had fallen out with Arafat, but that just might be a function of his popularity being seen as a threat to the Ra'is. Finally he's a bit of a media darling. I don't expect the chaos in Gaza, but that Dahlan will systematically take over Gaza with his private army.

A month ago there was an attempt on the life Yasser's cousin, Moussa:

General Arafat, a cousin of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, is one of the most controversial figures in the Gaza Strip. His appointment last July as overall commander of the National Security Forces triggered a wave of unprecedented protests, with many Palestinians accusing him of being corrupt and brutal.

During the protests, Fatah militiamen and supporters of former PA security minister Mohammed Dahlan attacked and torched offices belonging to General Arafat's men in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sources in the Gaza Strip pointed out that this was not the first attempt on General Arafat's life. Already back in 1996, masked gunmen fired several shots at his home after holding him responsible for torturing detainees. Since then Arafat has reportedly survived several assassination attempts.

Even when the Ra'is was alive (and maybe not well) Dahlan had the guts to defy him. (OK, it was his people, but they felt safe attacking Moussa.) Presumably, he was also behind the assassination attempt.

Though Dahlan has cultivated a sophisticated image with a number of journalists his hands are not clean. He was implicated in the attack on the school bus near Kfar Darom that killed Gavriel Biton and Mirian Amitai as well as severely wounding the children from the Cohen family. He also is a good friend of Yihye Ayash's (the Engineer) deputy Mohammed Dief and probably was largely responsible for Dief's being able to evade justice for so long.

Israel won't exactly be getting George Washington with Dahlan. The best Israel can hope for from him is stability. We'll see.

If there's a leader to emerge in Judea and Samaria, (assuming two parallel leaders as Pipes does) my money would be on Jibril Rajoub. Again he's a former security chief with dirty money, bloody hands (a nice shampoo collection), some popular support and lots of guns.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad

My Problem with Zogby
Biur Chametz (actually blogger Zman Biur) kindly forwarded me John Zogby's mea culpa for blowing this election. Clearly Biur read my earlier post - since partially retracted - accusing Zogby of being a Democratic partisan. That is one of the issues Zogby addresses:

For those of you so kind to point out that my brother is on the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee, you need to understand that he was an active Democrat when my polling showed George Pataki defeating Mario Cuomo in 1994, when I had Bob Dole doing much better than other polls suggested against Bill Clinton in 1996, and when I polled for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 1998. It seems I spent lots of my time back then denying I was a Republican.

I find that reasonably convincing. He addressed another perception too:

And to those who note my Arab heritage and again my relationship with my brother, please read the Democratic National Committee position on the Middle East. It offered me no comfort.

Here I'm less convinced. Why? Because in the past he's done polls in the Arab world seemingly for the sole purpose of giving Shibley Telhami data, so Telhami can claim that the biggest problem facing the United States in the Middle East is its support of Israel. As Joseph Farah points out about these polls:

As pointed out by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, using Freedom House's annual survey of freedom in the world as a guide, only Kuwait among the nations surveyed is ranked even "partly free." Egypt, Lebanon, which is occupied by an Arab neighbor, and the Emirates are all ranked "not free." Saudi Arabia scores even lower in political rights and civil rights.

This context raises three questions unaddressed by Telhami and Zogby:


Are public opinion poll respondents free to express themselves in these countries?

To what extent does the leadership of these countries shape the public opinion through control of the media, the schools and other cultural institutions?

What difference does public opinion make in an authoritarian or totalitarian country?
Often people ask me if Arab public opinion – both in the Arab world and among Arabs living in the West – is as solidly anti-Israel as it appears in international media portrayals. The question is one that cannot be answered with any degree of assurance as Arab leaders do not submit themselves to the will of the people.

Clearly in police states like those named above, the public is not free to express opinions that might run counter to the official government line. Therefore, any such survey of public opinion will not be scientifically accurate or valid.

Secondly, these regimes devote a significant amount of resources to propaganda. And, despite the Internet, satellite television and short-wave radio, unofficial, alternative information sources are at a premium.

Lastly, since meaningful free elections are largely unknown in the Arab world, public opinion is worth about as much as this Zogby poll, which is to say nothing.

Zogby (and Telhami) know all this but they go through the motions of taking a poll to prove their point. They know what the answers will be before they start. They just want to give their own views "scientific" credibility. What they're doing with these polls is dishonest.

And even if I find Zogby's protestation of impartiality convincing, that doesn't necessarily clear him of bad faith. RealClearPolitics noted:

6) Zogby
Failed to Project Winner: 27.3% | Average Error = 3.6

As we all know, Zogby had been on record for months saying that Kerry was going to win this race. Despite his final tracking poll that put Bush ahead by one point nationally, Zogby's polling at the state level reflected his belief that Kerry was going to be the beneficiary of huge turnout - especially among the youth vote. The result is that Zogby missed three of the eleven states he polled in (FL, IA, and NM), had a relatively high error rate across the board (3.8%), and his numbers generally skewed in favor of John Kerry.

Adding insult to injury, Zogby's bizarre election day antics calling for "surprises" in Colorado and Virginia and a decisive 311 electoral vote victory for Kerry suggest he was relying on (not to mention taken in by) the badly skewed early exit poll data.

Let's be honest: Zogby's conduct this year bordered on outrageous. No other independent pollster was out making public predictions of a John Kerry or George W. Bush victory months before hand. And no other pollster decided to wait until 5:30pm Eastern time on election day to post their final numbers.

Yesterday however, RealClearPolitics quotes from Zogby's apology and seems to have softened its stand a little.

So the question is, what purpose is served (other than perhaps self aggrandizement) by polling on election day and releasing "final" numbers at 5:30pm Eastern when the polls in many states on the East Coast start closing shortly thereafter? I'm not sure Zogby has fully explained that one.

NOTE:I found RealClearPolitics ranking of the battleground pollsters rather interesting. Numbers 2 and 3 were Rasmussen and Survey USA. Survey USA as RCP notes:

Some people have questioned methodology and reliability of SurveyUSA's polls.

(Survey USA had a poll in the early fall showing Maryland tied.) Indeed, The Washington Post reported in "In Such a Tight Race, Pollster Sees a Profit" that both firms are criticized for their automatic polling. Rasmussen is criticized because he just polls for profit. *Gasp* (Why that makes him less reliable than someone polling for a political party is not explained by the article.) And Zogby, who was a lot less reliable than Rasmussen and Survey USA this year got to host his own Live Online chat session at the Washington Post right before the election. Go figure.

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Doomed to Repeat
Expressing his frustrations with the peace process, Lenny Ben David suggests, not learning from the past, but returning to it in "After the Roadmap" Arafat's return to Gaza was a portent of the failure to come:

When Arafat rode into Gaza from Egypt for the first time in July 1994 — another great "moment" in modern history — Israeli intelligence officers noted how low the car was riding and how high up in the seat Arafat was sitting. Crammed into the Mercedes with (and under) Arafat were contraband weapons and terrorist operatives who were banned from entering the Palestinian territories. Israeli security sources also believe Arafat smuggled weaponry in his private jet after the Gaza airport opened with much media hoopla.

(Another similar view of this event was provided by the late Michael Kelly in "Promises but Never Peace."
Ben-David summarizes his conclusion in a neat paragraph.

Yasser Arafat has spoiled, poisoned, corrupted, and undermined every peace proposal presented over the last decade. Every envoy tasked with advancing the Palestinian-Israeli peace process in recent years — George Mitchell, Anthony Zinni, and most recently John Wolf — have all returned home empty-handed. No wonder the late King Hussein of Jordan said of Arafat, "He never came to a bridge he didn't double-cross."

What to do? Ben-David suggests some sort of an arrangement with Gaza, Judea and Samaria reverting in some way to their previous owners, Egypt and Jordan.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

How Saddam was caught
The New York Times carried a fascinating article about how the army tracked Saddam. Apparently back in June, the army stopped looking for the most notorious people in Iraq and started tracing clans. The article "How Army Sleuths Stalked the Adviser Who Led to Hussein" by Eric Schmitt informs us:

But interviews with several officers here over the past two days revealed new details about the informant and the detective work done by military intelligence analysts here to identify a complex web of relationships linked to Mr. Hussein.

"The tribal clans here are all based on interpersonal relationships, so what you have to do is build yourself a map of those relationships," said Lt. Col. Todd Megill, the chief intelligence officer for the Fourth Division.

The fruit of this analytical effort, first described Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, is a highly classified, color-coded chart that depicts Mr. Hussein's family and organizational tree. Centered in the chart in a yellow circle like a bull's-eye is Mr. Hussein. Links to other people radiate out, based on familial and functional ties. The names of those killed or captured are written in red.

Recently it's come to light that Israel has been advising the U.S. as how to occupy Iraq and how to run counter-insurgency operations. I'm wondering if the clan tracking came as a result of an Israeli suggestion.

About the Raven
Brian Billick came to Baltimore with a reputation as an offensive genius. Still since he's been here the Ravens have had almost a dozen quarterbacks and not one seems to stick more than a few games. In fact the Ravens' championship year it seemed that the team won mostly on defense and special teams. It looks like that's happening again this year.

This year, though, Jamal Lewis is providing plenty of offense on his own; he's almost at 2000 yards rushing. Very near some very select company. An article I saw on Sportsline makes me wonder if maybe this is a good sign. In "Three contenders running into trouble," writer Pete Prisco argues that three of the top teams in the NFL - the Colts, Chiefs and Eagles are having trouble stopping the run.

As things stand now the Ravens (if they win next week) would face the Titans in the first round of the playoffs. If they could get past Tennessee then they'd probably see either Indy or KC. According to Prisco, in the second round, the Ravens would have an edge due to Jamal Lewis. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I don't follow football closely enough to know if Prisco is onto something or simply blowing smoke like so many other sportswriters. For now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

The Sylvius Trick
In what is considered by some to be the worst Sherlock Holmes mystery, "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone," Holmes confronts the villain, Count Sylvius and recites a number of unsavory episodes that the Count was involved in. Finally we get to:

"Plenty more here, Count. Here is the robbery in the train de-luxe to the Riviera on February 13, 1892. Here is the forged check in the same year on the Credit Lyonnais."
"No, you're wrong there."
"Then I am right on the others! ..."

Holmes adds a fake incident at the end of his litany that elicits a denial. He deduces that he is right about the other charges

Ron Pundak in "Read it before you criticize it" reminds me of Sylvius when he criticizes Prof. Shlomo Avineri's critique of the Geneva Accord (or here. Pundak writes:

Prof. Shlomo Avineri, for example, claimed in Yedioth Ahronoth that "the Jewish people is not mentioned in the document" and raised the possibility that "among the Palestinian signatories are those who think there's no such thing as a Jewish nation." Avineri, one of Israel's leading academicians, is wrong and misleading,.

First of all the second half of the statement is correct that "among the Palestinian signatories are those who think there's no such thing as a Jewish nation," but Pundak is correct that the Geneva Accords do mention the Jewish people. But that might be all the he is correct about.

One of Avineri's complaints is:

Not only the Arab refugees will be entitled to compensation, but also some Arab countries - for the expenses they incurred in "hosting" the refugees
since 1948. The Israelis public has not been told this.

Indeed, Pundak does not dispute this because it is true:

3. Compensation
(a) Refugees shall be entitled to compensation for their refugeehood and for loss of property. This shall not prejudice or be prejudiced by the refugee's permanent place of residence.

(b) The Parties recognize the right of states that have hosted Palestinian refugees to remuneration.

The only refugees that the Accord acknowledges are the Arab refugees from the theater of war, not the greater number Jewish refugees who were kicked out of Arab lands.

Another item that galls me is that in its discussion of religious places is the use of the term "Wailing Wall" but I discussed that earlier.

When I first read the Geneva Accords, I was surprised at the number of items that referred to "Annex X". So I e-mailed the heskem people asking them to tell me what was in "Annex X." I didn't ask it in a confrontational manner or in any way to make them suspect that I was a critic. I still haven't received a response. It makes me think that they don't want to publicize "Annex X" more than they have to. All items that refer to "Annex X" have to do with the international oversight to which Israel (and the PA) will have to submit to resolve differences. But this brings up another problem that Avineri addresses:

A careful reading of the document shows that in the matter of the refugee problem and certain other matters Israel will in effect be placed under the supervision of an "implementation" group and a commission comprising not only the U.N., the U.S., Russia and the European Union, but also the Arab states. In effect, Israel will cease to be a sovereign country regarding substantive matters and will turn into a kind of international mandated territory. It is clear why this is not being told to the public.

Again, Pundak doesn't address this. While it's clear that Avineri made a mistake about the term "Jewish," it's clear that he did read the Accord. And it's also clear that Pundak refuses to address the substantive issues that Avineri brought up.

Read the security section of the Accord and you see all sorts of nice sentiments:

Palestine and Israel each shall ... refrain from joining, assisting, promoting or co-operating with any coalition, organization or alliance of a military or security character, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or other acts of hostility against the other;

I'm sure that will assure Israel's security just like Arafat's letter to PM Rabin assured that he would forswear all terror forever and ever.

The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.

What makes it more likely that the PA will abide by a future agreement when it didn't abide by the previous one?

Finally Avineri (actually this is in the beginning of the article) notes:

The initiators present themselves as independent political and intellectual figures from both sides. Not so. Indeed, the Israeli side includes opposition figures and independent intellectuals; the Palestinian side is headed by the former Palestinian Minister of Information, who said the document has Arafat's blessing. The Palestinian Prime Minister says he personally agrees with the document. The Palestinian initiators do not include any opposition figures - because there is no real opposition in the Palestinian Authority, except for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who, as is known, are not partners to the initiative. This is a document of part of the opposition in Israel and of the Palestinian ruling establishment.

This is exactly right. The PLO's english version of the Geneva Accords is posted on the PLO's official website. The Israeli version is up at Ha'aretz or at the "Heskem" organizations website. Again, it is something the Pundak refuses to address. He lataches onto Avineri's one careless claim and leaves all the substantive claims unchallenged. I would say that Pundak is guilty as charged by Avineri.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The second amendment in Maryland
Shortly before the 2002 election it was reported that the Glendening/Townsend administration Maryland hadn't fulfilled it's federal obligations in doing background checks. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that Townsend's attempt to run an anti-gun campaign fell flat.
Now Instapundit notes that the Democratic party is reconsidering it's position on the second amendment. Did the failure in Maryland last year in any way contribute to this re-thinking?

Humiliating 41
The New York Times had an article about how the capture of Saddam closes a chapter for the Bush family. The war against Saddam started under the first President Bush and has now ended under the aegis of his son. The article contains this little nugget.

For his part, Mr. Hussein used to refer to the 43rd president as "little Bush," and "son of the viper," and his government built a mosaic of the 41st president's face into the floor of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad so that thousands of people would have to walk over it every day, in one of Arab culture's worst insults. American soldiers broke the mosaic to bits in April.

What's interesting is that this article simply notes that that walking on someone's image is "one of Arab culture's worst insults." In so much other reporting the idea that humiliation breeds violence has gained a good deal of currency.

Israelis live in fear of the next suicide attack. Palestinians suffer army raids and the humiliation of Israeli roadblocks. And as this latest intefadeh, or uprising, reaches its third anniversary Sunday, with 2,477 dead on the Palestinian side and 860 on the Israeli side, few hold out hope for a change.

So why didn't the Times simply conclude that W. went to war to avenge the insult to his father who's image was made into the floor of the Rashid hotel?

Bad Dates
One of my favorite scenes in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" takes place at the home of an Egyptian archaeologist, Sallah, played by John Rhys-Davies, who is a friend of Indiana Jones. A bad guy has poisoned a tray of dates that the Sallah has placed for his guest. Before Indiana Jones takes one, a monkey, planted by the villain takes one. Indiana takes one, too, tosses it into the air, opens his mouth and turns his head upwards. Sallah reaches out and grabs the date before it drops into Indiana's mouth. Disappointed, Indiana looks at his friend quizzically. Sallah points to the greedy monkey, now dead, on the floor and says simply, "Bad dates."
John Rhys-Davies is now in another blockbuster series of movies, he's the dwarf Gimli in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. LGF points out that Rhys-Davies takes some lessons from Tolkien's trilogy for our time. In the National Review Rhys-Davies' views are given in greater detail:

As the conversation continued on that warm summer day, his father said, "Look, boy, there is not going to be a world war between Russia and the United States. The next world war will be between Islam and the West." "Dad, you're nuts," Rhys-Davies responded. "The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years!'" (Precocious as it sounds at age 11, he points out that he did indeed know a "bit about history.") After all, it was 1955. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the United States and the Cold War was front-burner foreign policy.

His father responded, "Well, I know but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime."

Although his father has passed on, Rhys-Davies said that "there's not a day that goes by that I don't think of him and think, 'God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that you were right.'"

Another celebrity, a science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card tackles the question of patriotism and dissent in Opinion Journal:

In other words, the Iraq campaign isn't over--and President Bush has explicitly said so all along. So the continuation of combat and casualties isn't a "failure" or a "quagmire," it's a "war." And during a war, patriotic Americans don't blame the deaths on our government. We blame them on the enemy that persists in trying to kill our soldiers.

Am I saying that critics of the war aren't patriotic?
Not at all--I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like--but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Where No Man has Gone Before
I remember reading a David Gerrold book about the Star Trek universe. When he covered the episode "Where no Man has Gone Before," in which the Enterprise finds itself on the edge of galaxy (synopsis below):

As the Enterprise attempts to broach an energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy, crewman Gary Mitchell a close personal friend of Kirk's is transformed into a god-like being who must be killed before he can inflict his power on the universe.

he wrote that he was skeptical that there was a border to the galaxy. (I think he called it a "load of peanut butter.") Guess what? Astronomers just found a border to the Milky Way.

Astronomers at scientific research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), hope the find will help paint a better picture of the Milky Way galaxy, which is home to Earth.


CSIRO scientist Naomi McClure-Griffiths said the gas border, which is 6,500 light years thick, showed the Milky Way had a structure similar to those of most other galaxies, which have gassy spiral arms extending beyond the more central stellar spiral arms.

The Price is Wrong
Baltimore Sun Editor G. Jefferson Price III took advantage of today's column to rail against his two favorite targets: President Bush and Israel.

Also in that newspaper last Sunday, an article by Dexter Filkins described the tactics being used by the U.S. military in its intensified campaign to get at the Iraqi insurgents.

These tactics include surrounding Iraqi communities in barbed-wire fences. They include arresting the relatives of suspected anti-coalition insurgents and destroying buildings they may be using.

If these methods seem familiar, it is because they are the same as those Israel has used against the Palestinians under every government since the founding of the Jewish state. In fact, the Israelis took those tactics from the British, who used them against Jews and Arabs when they were trying to govern what was then known as Palestine. The tactics did not work for the British (in Palestine, or later in Northern Ireland) and they have not worked for the Israelis.

But U.S. military authorities quoted in the Filkins article not only acknowledge the similarity, they say they have taken lessons from the Israeli experience in the West Bank and Gaza and turned to Israel for help.

Filkins quotes an article in Army Times in which Brig. Gen. Michael Vane reported that "we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas."

That's scary.

According to a military official I just heard on CBS, the successful effort to nab Saddam started about ten days ago, about the time Israel's involvement was revealed. Is it possible that Israel's help in counterterrorism helped accomplish in two weeks what the Americans weren't able to do in half a year?
UPDATE: Here's an item on the briefing given by Gen. Raymond Odierno to which I'm referring:

"What we realized early on in the summer was that we believed the people we had to get to were the mid-level individuals, his bodyguards and other individuals who we knew were close to him," Odierno said. "In addition, … we tried to work through family and tribal ties who might have been close to Saddam Hussein.

"As we continued to conduct raids and capture people, we got more and more information on the families that were somewhat close to Saddam Hussein," the general continued. "Over the last 10 days or so, we brought in about five or 10 members of these families, who then were able to give us even more information. And finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Rubinstein Jumps the Gun
Danny Rubenstein of Ha'aretz couldn't wait to tell the world. The Palestinian terror groups were about to declare a truce with Israel and this would be a great victory of Ahmed Qureia, the new Arafat approved flunkie, um, er Prime Minister.

Despite the disagreements, a spokesman for the Islamic opposition, Muhammad al-Hindi, expressed optimism that the talks will be concluded successfully. The Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip said there is a common view that no attacks will be made against civilians.
The expected success of the talks will be interpreted as a victory for Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), who arrived in Cairo last night to attend the concluding session. Qureia managed to steer the different factions into cease-fire negotiations without any criticism from the opposition groups.

Aside from the fact that there's no evidence that a hudna saves Israeli lives. Rubinstein's enthusiasm didn't last too long.

A day after the collapse of talks among Palestinian factions on a complete cease-fire with Israel -- which Hamas opposed -- Rantissi said Palestinian militants were emboldened by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's domestic woes and U.S. problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, if Rubinstein was surprised the IDF wasn't:

Israeli security officials are not surprised by the failure of Egyptian-brokered efforts to secure a cease-fire between the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah, they said Monday, and raised doubts as to whether new attempts by the Palestinian Authority will succeed.

However, they stressed, the attempts are an internal affair, unconnected to Israel. "The entire issue depends on the Palestinian Authority's decision to act once and for all and crack down on the terrorist infrastructure," an official told The Jerusalem Post.

What's disturbing about Rubinstein's effort though is that it ignores the recent history that shows that the hudna was detrimental to Israel's security. Before it really got bad, Israel's MFA noted:

Five Israeli civilians and one foreign national have been killed, and 28 civilians injured, since the declaration of the 'Hudna' temporary terrorism cease fire agreement reached between the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian terrorism groups on June 29, 2003.

Not only that but Evelyn Gordon noted (and it's been noted in Israpundit) before:

Second, Israel has repeatedly made the mistake of agreeing to "give peace a chance" by temporarily suspending its military activity and the terrorist organizations have exploited every such respite to regroup. There is, however, reason to hope that the lesson has finally been learned: Not only did Israel reject the most recent Palestinian cease-fire offer out of hand, but the United States, which pressured Israel into most of the previous truces, fully supported this stand. In fact, even Britain, hitherto a staunch Palestinian supporter, admitted that another truce is a "non-starter" (to quote its new ambassador, Simon McDonald) absent serious anti-terror activity by the PA. If Israel can refrain from falling into the truce trap again, its war on terror is likely to be even more successful.

In fact recently, Avi Dichter, head of GSS recently observed:

"Hamas chiefs spend 90% of their time hiding and 10% of their time planning attacks," Dichter said. "They are interested in a Hudna [temporary cease-fire] so they can come out of underground and strengthen their terror infrastructure."

In other words, the "victory" of Ahmed Quriea that Rubinstein pines for would cost Israeli lives. This is truly perverse.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Alternative to League of Democracies
Occam's Toothbrush and GedakenPundit weigh in on the idea of having a League of Democracies to replace the U.N.

While there is merit to this idea, it is not a new one. I remember The New Republic in late 1984 or early 1985 suggesting that the Democrats adopt a platform in favor of such an organization.

An alternative to founding an LOD, would be to change the voting rules at the U.N. (yeah, right) to giving countries votes in proportion to the percentage of the vote received by the opposition (up to a maximum of 50). How would
this work?

The President of the United States was elected with 50% of the popular vote (roughly) so the oppostion got 50% also. So the U.S. gets 50 votes. Israel's ruling coalition represents roughly 58% of the voters, so Israel
gets 42 votes. etc.

Obviously rules have to be developed for such a voting scheme. (That's right, I'll leave the hard work to someone else!)

Of course dictatorships (subscribing to Morton Kondracke's "Tirana Index". I know that Jay Nordlinger credits Charles Krauthammer, but Krauthammer borrowed from Kondracke - and credited him properly. ) have only token opposition. The more dictatorial the less opposition in "elections." Of course why would China or any of the Arab countries support a scheme that would leave them with little to say in U.N.? That's why this will never
happen.

First Eskimo Joins the IDF
Israel, contrary to the impression conveyed by its many critics and enemies, happens to be an incredible melting pot. From spending all too much time at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs "In Memoriam" section, I know that there have been Israeli soldiers (and civilians) born all over: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Algeria, Australia, France, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Siberia, the United States and more. I suppose there have been Israelis born in Alaska; maybe even members of the IDF, but never before has an Eskimo joined the IDF, unitl now:

Eighteen-year-old Eva Ben Sira is training to become a squad commander in the Negev desert - a far cry from the frozen wastes of her homeland.

Eva was born to a Yupik Eskimo mother and a Cherokee American father before being adopted by an Israeli couple.

Her twin brother, Jimmy, will become the army's second serving Eskimo, when he joins the force next year.

Crossposted on Bsurot Tovot and Soccer Dad.

American Nazis
Do you remember how the media made a big deal over an accusation by Yasser Arafat that Israel was behaving like Nazi Germany by writing numbers on prisoners for questioning purposes?

"You saw what they put on the detainees from Tulkarm refugee camp - those numbers on their arms?" Arafat told Abu Dhabi television, referring to a three-day sweep of the West Bank camp last week, during which troops detained hundreds of Palestinians for questioning over suspected links with terrorist groups.

"Is that not what they say the Nazis did to the Jews? What do they have to say about this matter? Is this not a new Nazi racism?" he said in the interview, recorded in his headquarters in Ramallah.

Extracts were shown on Israeli television.

If I remember correctly the media had quite a field day with this additional proof that Hitler's victims learned his behavior. I don't recall that much attention was given to the Israeli side as presented here in the Jerusalem Post:

A military source said many of the 1,200 detainees in Tulkarm had been given numbers to facilitate the questioning process. He said the numbers were written on their arms in ink that would wash off. It was the same procedure soldiers used on themselves when entering Lebanon in a convoy, the source added.

I believe that Israel gave up the practice after suffering a huge PR hit. Well guess what? American soldiers are doing the same thing in Iraq! The difference is that no one is saying a word.

Photographs of Iraqis detained in the raids in the Hawija area showed the words "black list" and numbers written on the backs of their necks. Military officials said the notations were probably intended as guidance for American interrogators. Before the American invasion, intelligence agencies drew up lists of most wanted Iraqis, including a classified "black list" in which individuals were assigned particular numbers.

The officials said it was possible the notations signified that the Iraqis in the photographs were on that "black list," but it was more likely, they said, that the arresting officials believed that the detainees had a connection to those individuals and that interrogators should pursue that line of questioning.

Reporters are all too willing to find fault with Israel's behavior even when Israel behaves as any other country would. (When the US targetted Ayman Al-Zawahiria in Afghanistan and reportedly killed some of his relatives there was no word of protest. But when Israel targets a Hamas leader and kills bystanders, Israel gets judged.) We see that, in this instance, writing marks on prisoners helps authorities with their interrogations. Yet Israel faced plenty of comparisons with Nazi Germany because of Arafat's false comparison.

UPDATE: Courtesy of Malka Young:
Actions that are not commented upon or even praised by other counties, becomes something sinister when Israel is involved. There's a separation fence in Belfast, and apparently it gets good reviews.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Palestinian War Crimes?
Yesterday Jalal Talabani a member of the Iraqi Governing Council wrote a very interesting op-ed in the Washington Post, "Why Al-Arabiya Was Restricted"

On Nov. 23, I took an important step in protecting the fledgling democracy we are nurturing in Iraq. On behalf of Iraq's Governing Council, I temporarily banned the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya from using satellite uplink facilities to transmit news reports from its Baghdad bureau.

Since then I have heard a hundred variants on this question: "How can you claim to be promoting democracy while stifling a free press?"

The answer is quite simple.

We are not acting against legitimate and objective journalistic activities. We are taking steps to prevent psychological warfare and, more serious, incitement to murder. No country would do less.

Well said. And in fact there's another case recently where "reporters" were punished for crossing the line between journalism and criminal incitement.

Rwandans welcomed the war crimes conviction of two broadcasters and an editor for their roles in the 1994 genocide, saying it showed that those who helped organize the mass slaughter were as responsible for the killing as those who wielded the machetes and the guns.
The three convicted men worked for a radio and newspaper that were used to incite members of Rwanda's Hutu majority to kill their neighbors from the Tutsi minority.

I realize that restricting a free press or punishing people for incitement are problematic. At what point is taking these actions justified and at what point is taking these actions violating the principles of freedom that we hold dear?

What does this have to do with Israel? The Palestinian media has been a bastion of encouraging antisemitism and violence for years now. Are there grounds for bringing their editors and writers up on war crimes charges for their role in fomenting and maintaining the current violence?
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Jacoby too
I noticed earlier (along with some others) that it seemed perversely appropriate that Jimmy Carter referred to the peace process as a "final solution." So does Jeff Jacoby:

That is exactly right. All the cheering in Geneva notwithstanding, the Beilin-Rabbo plan is a blueprint not for peace but for a cataclysmic war. It would force Israel back to what the late Abba Eban called the "Auschwitz" borders of 1949. It would compel the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Jews. It would create a 23d Arab state by jeopardizing the existence of the world's lone Jewish state. It would put Arafat and the Palestinian dictatorship in position to accomplish at last the goal they have never abandoned: the liquidation of Israel.

In Geneva on Monday, Jimmy Carter lavished praise on the agreement, and suggested that if he had been re-elected in 1980, he could have pushed something like it. "Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region," he said, "we could have moved to a final solution."

*Final solution.* If that is Carter's term for what Beilin and Rabbo have put forth, he speaks more truly than he knows.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Israel and the Arab World
Just to let you know that this month's Commentary Magazine has four articles about the Arab world (and how it relates to Israel.) Get there before the month is up and these articles go into the paid archive.
Listening to Arabs
by Joshua Muravchik
What Do Arab Reformers Want?
by Robert Satloff
Baghdad, with Victims
by Steven Vincent
Israel’s Arabs v. Israel
by Efraim Karsh
The Karsh article is pretty good and the Satloff article started off well, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to read more. (The Satloff article probably will have a longer shelf life because his organization the Washington Institute for Near East Policy posts most articles by its members.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Wailing Wall

According to today's New York Times Secretary of State Powell rejected Israeli criticism of his meeting with the creators of the Geneva Accord.

Mr. Powell, speaking in Tunis on Tuesday, rejected the Israeli criticism. "Why should we not listen to others who have ideas, such as the ideas that were presented in Geneva yesterday, and other ideas that have been presented?" he said. "What people are saying is that the current situation has to change."

Maybe people are saying that the situation has to change. But to give tacit American approval to a group that is undermining Israeli democracy and intent on rewarding the Palestinian masters of terror is unconscionable.

The current situation started when Yasser Arafat rejected PM Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David. He followed the rejection up by starting a war against Israel two months later. Any agreement that is based on what was on the table at that time essentially excuses the violence. That is not how to fight terror; it is how to encourage it.

But the deeper problem with the Geneva Accord is not that it entails indefensible concessions on Israel's part; it's that it ignores history. The fight between Israel and the PLO is not about land but about history.

Late in Bill Clinton's presidency he was shocked to discover that Yasser Arafat believed that there never had been a temple. Only the truly uninformed would find this to be surprising. Article 20 of the PLO's covenant reads:

Article 20:
The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

But the covenant or at least the sections denying Israel's right to exist have been cancelled you say. There's no evidence that the PLO has a new set of operating principles. Second of all, this the denial of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel (not just Judea, Samaria and Gaza) is not some political position that can be changed with a superficial vote, but a deeply held belief that is the fundamental premise of Palestinian nationalism. Changing such a belief would require years of re-education, but for the past ten years the PA has used its various offices for the perpetuation of the grievance not for achieving peace.

It is true that the Geneva Accord uses the term Temple Mount to go along with al-Haram al-Sharif but when it comes to describing the Kotel or Western Wall, as a religous site, the accord calls it "the Wailing Wall." The term "Wailing Wall" is probably no more ancient than the twentieth century, so to use the term in this context, is to deny Jewish history. (There is a reference to "Western Wall" but that is referring to the Hashmonean tunnel and it is not the main reference to the wall.)

By giving his approval to this document that only serves to promote the Palestinain grievance against Israel, Secretary Powell is helping to prolong not end the conflict.

Finally it's worth noting that the Palestinian Arab group promoting the Geneva Accord is an official delegation of the PA, as the Accord appears on an offical PA website. That undermines any pretense that the group wasn't approved by Yasser Arafat. So Secretary Powell has elevated Beilin and his cronies to the level of Palestinian officialdom at the expense of the democratically elected government of Israel. This is so Clintonesque, one would hope that President Bush would put his foot down.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Freud on Seuss
With the recent release of the "Cat in the Hat" movie, I got to thinking about this hilarious e-mail I received years ago from a friend. It was called "Freud on Seuss" It is still hilarious and worth reading in its entirety. In the beginning we read:

The Cat in the Hat is a hard-hitting novel of prose and poetry in which the author re-examines the dynamic rhyming schemes and bold imagery of some of his earlier works, most notably Green Eggs and Ham, If I Ran the Zoo, and Why Can't I Shower With Mommy? In this novel, Theodore Geisel, writing under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, pays homage to the great Dr. Sigmund Freud in a nightmarish fantasy of a renegade feline helping two young children understand their own frustrated sexuality.

The story opens with two youngsters, a brother and a sister, abandoned by their mother, staring mournfully through the window of their single-family dwelling. In the foreground, a large tree/phallic symbol dances wildly in the wind, taunting the children and encouraging them to succumb to the sexual yearnings they undoubtedly feel for each other. Even to the most unlearned reader, the blatant references to the incestuous relationship the two share set the tone for Seuss' probing examination of the satisfaction of primitive needs. The Cat proceeds to charm the wary youths into engaging in what he so innocently refers to as "tricks." At this point, the fish, an obvious Christ figure who represents the prevailing Christian morality, attempts to warn the children, and thus, in effect, warns all of humanity of the dangers associated with the unleashing of the primal urges. In response to this, the cat proceeds to balance the aquatic naysayer on the end of his umbrella, essentially saying, "Down with morality; down with God!"

The rest of it follows in this absurd pseudo scholarly vein.

I have no interest in seeing the movie. Mike Meyers as the Cat in the Hat looks like a badly made up Star Trek alien. I suspect that movie is as charmless as the disguise. The fact that the Washington Post's Family Filmgoer warned:

"The Cat in the Hat" contains so much crude humor that the Family Filmgoer can't in good conscience recommend the movie for kids under 8. That doesn't mean littler ones won't enjoy the Cat in the Hat's punning on swear words, his briefly bare derriere, his getting pounded in the crotch by kids who think he's a pi?ata, his near-lewd sexual innuendo, his hairball regurgitation and other grace notes. But parents sitting next to them may cringe, even while laughing at the not-unfunny goings-on.

doesn't give me much hope. If it isn't fit for the little ones. what point does it serve?