February 2002 -- Adar 5762
The Middle East imbroglio is often viewed from
slanted angles, that distort perspectives and perceptions. This fosters notions
and conduct that turn reason and fairness upside down.
"Why, sometimes I believe as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
-- The White Queen, Through The Looking Glass
Six things that ought to be impossible:
1] An unrepentant arch-terrorist,
with a record of mass murders going back for decades, is awarded the Nobel
Prize for Peace.
2] A new and unique doctrine is invented: The defeated aggressor
has the right to dictate the peace terms. This innovation, that has no
basis in international law or historic precedent, is applied exclusively
to one dispute. The Arabs launched and lost a wave of wars to destroy Israel,
and Israel successfully defended itself. Therefore, Israel must surrender
to all Arab demands upon it.
3] Wise and Good Persons are committed heart, mind and editorial
to champion a nation that has never existed. "Palestine" and the "occupation"
thereof are historical fictions, invented in 1967, as a ploy to cast Israel
as a villain, an occupier and an oppressor and therefore worthy of destruction.
[See Issues I-2, 8,9] It has worked like the charm it was meant to be, embraced
by the misinformed, and by those seeking excuses for their own prejudices.
(The principle of moral indignation on behalf of a country and
people occupied, oppressed and persecuted is rarely invoked on behalf of
Tibet or against China.)
4] It is supposedly axiomatic that the only way
to deal with maniacal terrorism is to negotiate a political settlement with
the maniacal terrorists. Leaders that incite to genocide, mobs that fill
the streets shrieking for blood, and idolize those who slaughter, are not
obstacles to peace. Israel, by not surrendering to them, is the obstacle
to peace.
5] The
European Union has damage claims against Israel. As part of its eleemosynary endeavors,
it heavily subsidizes the PLO. Some of its millions of Euros support school
systems where students major in Hating Jews, and children in kindergarten
are trained to be suicide-killers. More millions are unrestricted bequests.
When Israeli Defense Forces destroy installations
used to further terrorist attacks on its peoples, the European Union protests
that some of those installations were built with their funding, and Israel
is responsible for the waste of their money.
6] For select, privileged parties, treaties, agreements, pacts
and United Nations resolutions are a buffet. Arab states and organizations may select
what to accept and demand enforcement on others, what to refuse, what to
observe, what to violate. They may also re-write the texts to suit them.
For example, they persistently quote Security Council Resolution 240 as demanding
that Israel "withdraw from all the territories" won in the Six-Day War. The
Resolution does not say any such thing, but the counterfeit version is gullibly
accepted and repeated, without a simple check of the facts.
On bilateral agreements with Israel, both Egypt and Jordan assert
the right to abrogate their peace treaties at will. On the series of agreements
between Israel and the PLO since Oslo, the record is very simple: the PLO
never chose to fulfill even one commitment.
Israel has no such options. It is required to obey all orders and
fulfill all commitments all on its own, regardless of all violations on the
other side.
* * * * * * *
Recently, the first female suicide bomber exploded herself on a
busy shopping street in downtown Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring
100 more. The British broadcasting network Sky News marked the occasion with
a program on how she thereby advanced the Status of the Palestinian Woman.
MEMRI (Middle East Media Review Institute ) surveyed the celebration
in the Arab press, that enshrined her as epitome of the beauty and purity
of the Palestinian Woman, and called "the Palestinian Joan of Arc."
The head of the Department of Psychiatry at Cairo´s ‘Ein Shams
University actually compared her to Mary: "If
it was the Holy Spirit that placed a child in Mary´s womb, perhaps that same
holy spirit placed the bomb in the heart of [the killer] and enveloped her
pure body with dynamite. From Mary´s womb issued a child who eliminated oppression,
while the body of [the killer] became shrapnel that eliminated despair and
aroused hope.”
The Egyptian Professor of Psychiatry then addressed himself to
Jesus: "Perhaps you were born in the same city;
perhaps even in the same neighborhood and in the same house. Perhaps you
ate from the same date palm and drank from the same pure water flowing through
the veins of the holy city
. . . . It is not surprising that the enemy in both
cases was the same . . . .
Breaking ranks with the United States, the European Union on Saturday
broadly endorsed a French blueprint for Mideast peace calling for Palestinian
elections and the creation of a Palestinian state to be 'immediately' recognized
by Israel and admitted to the United Nations.
Creation of such a state must be the "starting point of a negotiating
process" for a Mideast peace accord, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine
presented told his EU colleagues. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, the
meeting's chairman, said the plan would be developed further in talks among
the 15 EU foreign ministers and at a mid-March European summit in Barcelona.
The Europeans have in the past come out in favor of a Palestinian
state, to the dismay of Israel. Their push for Palestinian elections, a Palestinian
state, Israel's recognition of such an entity on its doorstep and the new
state's quick admittance as a U.N. member was unprecedented.
[. . . .] Pique said the Europeans resent the prevailing view in
Washington and Jerusalem no peace talks can start until a lasting cease-fire
takes hold. That fixation on security matters at the expense of political
initiatives has created an impasse, he said. 'There does not seem to be a
way out of the deadlock,' he told a press conference after the two-day EU
foreign ministers meeting. 'We need to find a way to get out of this endless
spiral of violence.'
"We need to have a new political initiative" to restart Mideast
peace talks, [German Foreign Minister Joschke] Fischer said. German sources
said Berlin would also like to see a Palestinian referendum on a resumption
of peace talks. [Comment: Fischer has in the past put his signature to demands
for the destruction of Israel.] [. . . . ]
At the EU meeting, [French Foreign Minister] Vedrine spelled out
this sequence of events without detailing a timeline: - Palestinian elections
'to support the Palestinian Authority's popular legitimacy in its efforts
to crack down' on extremists. These could be general elections or a vote
for a legislative council that would prepare for presidential elections once
a Palestinian state has been proclaimed. The elections will require Israel
to pull its security forces from Palestinian territories and recognize the
new state that would also immediately be made a U.N. member.
The Palestinian state and Israel would then sign 'a declaration
of non-belligerency' and then sign a peace accord based on United Nations
Security Council resolutions recognizing the right of both Israel and the
Palestinians to live in safe and secure borders.
Comments on this plan by IMRA (Independent
Media Review & Analysis):
The French plan now endorsed by the European Union 'solves' the
problem of the starkly clear absence of any Palestinian intention to honor
security obligations much the same way that some Israeli Oslophiles have
proposed to deal with unacceptable/unworkable Palestinian demands regarding
the right of return and other final status issues: they propose to put off
the problems. The consequence: an armed Palestinian state with its growing
weapons industry intact enjoying full sovereignty and the protection of various
alliances [as well as the one-sided interpretation/application of any declarations
of non-belligerence] as it moves on to the next stage in the program of the
destruction of Israel in stages."
The conventional slanted view is re-adjusted
by Jay Nordlinger, in "Impromtus", NationalReviewOnline, 18 February, 2002:
I'd like to quote from a perfectly typical column by a perfectly
typical columnist. A name and other details are of no importance: This could
be virtually anyone, anywhere: "The violence has reached the point that Israel
now is talking seriously of reoccupying swaths of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip; that would set back not just peacemaking in general but American diplomacy
in particular, and by roughly a decade."
There is what you might call the
Oslo mentality — and the Oslo mentality can mean death, particularly for
Israeli citizens. Think: Why would Israel reoccupy those areas? To frustrate
diplomacy? To anger Washington? Could it possibly be to prevent more Israelis
from being killed, wantonly?
Think further: Why did Israel occupy
the territories in the first place, back in ’67? Because it loves occupation?
Because it wanted to expand — needed a little Lebensraum, huh? (Journalists
love to use Nazi terms when writing of Israel. Anthony Lewis spoke of the
Israeli desire to "exterminate Palestinian nationalism". Gee, wonder how
those words came to him.)
Let’s return for a moment to the
ABCs: Modern Israel has been forced to be a warrior nation, a military
nation. Before ’67, Israel was loved by all the respectable people, admired
as "the Athens of the Middle East". What a sweet little democracy! But then,
as George Will once wrote, Sparta stood up. And it did so out of necessity.
The Jews of Israel would love to be free to pursue letters, music, art, scholarship,
commerce, and all the other things that Jews have traditionally pursued.
But that nasty imperative of survival won’t let them. [. . . .]
For Israelis -- almost all of them
now, except for the foreign minister — the end of policy is not "the peace
process" or diplomacy but: not to die. To survive. For right now, certainly,
survival is enough. And any time Israel’s enemies want peace, they can have
it. All they have to do is permit Israel to live -- which, obviously, is
way, way too much for them.
* * * * * * *
Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman
recently visited Israel, and stated " Israel should not be required to negotiate
with Arafat, just as world leaders should not have negotiated with the Nazis
before World War II." The Czech Republic is expecting to join the EU within
the next few years. Now that body, much miffed at what it calls the "unhelpful"
remark, warned that "Such language is not what we expect from a future member
state" and that membership requires "commitment to EU foreign policy".
For the EU, political and economic
benefits of its anti-Israel policy seem nugatory. It does, however, serve
at least one good purpose for it: Exposing the villainy of the Jews gives
Europe retroactive vindication for its 2000 years of relentless persecution
and slaughter.
The New York Times recently
carried an Op-Ed piece under the byline of Yasser Arafat. Whether or not
one questions the editorial judgment of raising a terrorist to this eminent
dais. one may question the purpose of the Op-Ed piece as a journalistic species.
It is meant to be the expression of an opinion. The Times is naïve indeed to present
an exercise in propaganda as a genuine opinion. The author of the piece was
reportedly Edward Abingdon, former U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem and now
paid PR man for the PLO.
While the Times puff piece was circulating phrases about "our Jewish brothers"
and revulsion at terrorism, the "author" stood before his subjects in Ramallah,
promising "we will make the lives of the infidels
hell" and conducting them in the chant "Millions
of Martyrs Marching to Jerusalem".
The very use of the word "infidel" demolishes all notions that
Israel could win peace by just giving the PLO some more land. According to
Muslim doctrine, any land once conquered by Muslims becomes "Dar al Islam [House
of Islam]". It can never revert to "infidels". By this doctrine all of Israel
is "Dar al Islam" because Arab invaders had snatched it from the Byzantines in the
Seventh Century and ruled it from Damascus.
[Comment:
Senor Pique, quoted above on behalf of the EU, should note that under this
doctrine, Spain is also "Dar-al-Islam".]
* * * * * * *
The contrast between the real and
the topsy-turvy is set forth in "Arafat as Peacemaker," by Natan Sharansky,
Wall
Street Journal, 8 February 2002:
Earlier this week in the New York Times, Yasser Arafat wrote of
the "Palestinian vision of peace". What is the free world to make of Arafat's
'vision,' filled with the promise of peace and reconciliation? Though there
are leaders whose vision helps us see beyond the often-harsh reality we confront
and points us toward a better future, there are also leaders who use the
language of "peace", "justice" and "freedom" only as an ideological façade
behind which they mask their true intentions. [. . . .]
Fortunately, history has taught us that we can judge a leader's
vision before tragedy strikes by answering one simple question: Does the
leader see human beings as merely instruments of power – 'cogs' as Stalin
used to say -- or as individuals whose lives are sacred in and of themselves?
According to this criterion, Arafat's 'vision of peace' is another attempt
to hide evil behind a respectable veneer. The contempt for human life that
Arafat has shown over the last eight years clearly demonstrates that, rather
than being part of the fight for peace and justice, he is firmly entrenched
in the camp of evil and terror.
Arafat has never had much respect for human life. In fact, one
doesn't even have to turn to his past and present support of terror against
Jewish and Arab civilians to prove it. Just look at how he has treated his
own people. In 35 years, he has done nothing to improve the daily lives of
the Palestinians, preferring they remain in the squalor of refugee camps
where they can be used as an ideological weapon against Israel.
In using the Palestinian people as pawns in the struggle against
Israel, Arafat is joined by many Arab leaders. Rather than asking why after
54 years, the Palestinians have not been permitted to return to Israel, the
world must ask why the leaders of Arab nations have made the Palestinians
the only third-generation refugees in the world by refusing to absorb their
Arab brethren into their own countries.
When hundreds of thousands of Jews were thrown out of the Arab
world after Israel's independence, the nascent Jewish State did not exploit
the suffering of these refugees to serve ideological ends, but mobilized
its limited resources to give them hope for a brighter future.
At Oslo, Arafat was given the opportunity to build a Palestinian
Authority that could be used to better the lot of the Palestinian people.
But rather than use his new-found powers to promote peace and bring about
prosperity, Arafat again turned them into a battering ram against the Jewish
State. Money allocated to improve the Palestinian's standard of living was
diverted to support a vast network of terror. Hundreds of millions of dollars
earmarked for economic and social development were instead used to buy weapons
to attack Israel.
Broadcasting stations meant to promote democracy and freedom were
used to foment incitement and justify terror. Schools meant to educate the
next generation of Palestinians for peace with Israel have only inculcated
hatred for Jews and their state. [. . . .]
While he writes in English of his vision of peace, Arafat sends
a very different message in Arabic to his own people. He calls on them to
become shaheeds (martyrs) in the struggle to liberate Jerusalem, and preaches
the virtues of martyrdom to Palestinian children though his state-controlled
media.
The terrorist war he continues to wage against our civilians in
cafes, discos and pizzerias has killed hundreds and devastated the lives
of both Jews and Palestinians. We have spent the last eight years convincing
ourselves that the key to peace was strengthening a dictator like Arafat,
rather then the Palestinian people he continues to repress. The result has
been that instead of paving the way toward an open and transparent Palestinian
society that could serve as a shining example for the entire region, we have
helped create a terrorist regime that endangers both Israelis and Palestinians.
* * * * * * *
When it comes to slander of Israel – as quite distinct from honest
criticism – there is blurring of the line between fabrication and fantasy.
The inventor of a fabrication does not believe it himself. The spinner of
a fantasy does believe it, and acts upon it as though it were truth. Thus
slander as a tactic becomes delusion as a driving force – driving even to
murder.
Some ancient canards are still found usable, and it is widely accepted
in Arab countries that Jews murder to use the victim's blood to bake matzah.
Some need only slight updating: "Jews poison wells" has become "Jews give
poisoned candy to Arab children".
Bulletin of PMW (Palestinian Media)
11 February 2002, quotes these items from a sermon in Gaza, disseminated
by PLO media:
[. . . . ] The Jews tried to kill Muhammad many times, with poison
and with magic, and by throwing stones at him, and by all types of assassinations.
He warned us about the Jews, and about the cunning of the Jews...He told
us about the character of the Jew, in the book of Allah and in the Traditions
of the Prophet, so that we would beware of them at every moment. And we know
how to deal with the Jews.
Say to those who believe not! the Jews! say to those who believe
not, act according to your power, for we too are acting! And wait! For we
too, shall wait.' Wait for your graves! Wait for the final battle! ...
O Jews! We will act to restore our rights! .You are usurpers! Your
arrogance will end one of these days! .
[The Jew's] aim everywhere is to spread mischief through the earth
and destroy crops and cattle. Allah does not love such mischief.' [The Jews]
destroyed everything: the crops, the seeds, and the birds, to the point that
the environment itself is oppressed by the Jew! .
Allah, deal harshly with the Jews and those who aid them. Allah,
destroy them through their own stratagems!. Allah, render us victorious over
the Jews and those who support them!
It is widely believed
in the Arab world today that Israel's Mossad destroyed New York's World Trade
Center, after warning 4,000 Jews who worked in those buildings to stay away
that day. This is part of the phantasmagoria cited in: "A Fair Sheik?", by
Seth Lipsky, Wall Street Journal, 24 October 2001:
[Sheik Muhammad Al-Gamei'a, of Egypt's Al-Azhar University and
then imam of the Islamic Cultural Center in Manhatten] began by complaining, in response to a question,
of the negative impact of the events of September 11 on Muslims in America,
asserting that all commercial activity with 'anyone found to be a Muslim
or an Arab' was 'immediately halted'. Following the incident, he said, Muslims
and Arabs stopped feeling it was safe to leave their homes, to send their
wives to the market or their children to schools. 'Muslims do not feel safe
even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the
hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died'. [. . . .]
The imam reported that he had personally
suffered, when his home was attacked and his daughters harassed. He said
he went out to question those who were attacking his home. 'During my conversations
with this group, it became clear to me that they knew very well that the
Jews were behind these ugly acts, while we, the Arabs, were innocent, and
that someone from among their people was disseminating corruption in the
land. Although the Americans suspect that the Zionists are behind the act,
none has the courage to talk about it in public'. (The Kuwaiti ambassador
told the Times that Imam Gamei'a was never seriously threatened.)
"Why can't Americans talk about
the supposed Zionist plot?' the interviewer inquired. After all, "it's their
country, and the Jews are a minority". 'When I asked them whether they had
the courage to talk about it openly, they said: "We can't," said the imam.
"I asked why, and they said: You know very well that the Zionists control
everything and that they also control political decision-making, the big
media organizations, and the financial and economic institutions. Anyone daring
to say a word is considered an anti-Semite."
At this point he was asked whether
"the Jewish element played a role in igniting the flame of fitna [internal
strife]". He replied: "The Jewish element is as Allah described it when he
said: They disseminate corruption in the land. We know that they have always
broken agreements, unjustly murdered the prophets, and betrayed the faith.
Can they be expected to live up to their contracts with us? These people murdered
the prophets; do you think they will stop spilling our blood? No."
"You see these people [i.e. the
Jews] all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality,
alcoholism, and drugs. [Because of them] there are strip clubs, homosexuals,
and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism
on the world. Now, they are riding on the back of the world powers. These
people always seek out the superpower of the generation and develop coexistence
with it. Before this, they rode on the back of England and on the back of
the French empire. After that, they rode on the back of Germany. But Hitler
annihilated them because they betrayed him and violated their contract with
him."
The imam then spelled out his Jewish-conspiracy
theory about the September 11 attack: "They used Arabs to carry it out. Proof?
All the signs indicate that the Jews have the most to gain from an explosion
like that. They are the only ones capable of planning such acts . . . . Jews
control decision making in the airports and sensitive centers in the White
House and the Pentagon."
Further along, Sheik Gamei'a said:
"I advise every Arab and every Muslim leader not to offer any aid whatsoever
to the oppressing superpower [to help it] attack Muslims, because this is
a betrayal of Allah and his Prophets."
A forged history as an alternative
reality can be an effective political tactic. Some of its uses are covered
by Irwin N. Graulich, in Jewsweek.com
[. . . .] Palestinians have followed in the footsteps of most of
the Arab/Muslim world by mastering the big lie technique. . . . . Only Ted
Koppel and Peter Jennings respect the lies.
But the beauty of this tactic, is that if you repeat a lie often
enough, it becomes totally believable, as Hitler indeed proved . . . . Even
the term Palestinian is part of the lie. To put this concept into modern,
public relations terms, Palestine was a "brand" used by Theodore Herzl to
describe a Jewish homeland. The Palestinians stole the brand for themselves
in order to replace the Jewish homeland concept. [. . . . ]
One of the key rules of marketing is never to dilute a brand by
allowing others to kidnap it The
trademark becomes meaningless, allowing a Palestinian
in 2002 to inherit the qualities and moral character of a Jewish Palestinian of 1948. With the brand distinctions blurred,
similar values can be claimed by the two sides equally . . . .
Virtually every media term used by the 'new' Palestinians is a
fabrication. 'Occupied territories' implies that Israel somehow forced itself
into the West Bank unprovoked. How about the fact that they won it from Jordan
in a war designed to annihilate the Jewish State. 'Aggression' is another
word constantly tossed around. Has Israel ever once attacked the Palestinian
population for no reason, or has every single Israeli response been in self-defense,
for an attack by Arafat's Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas subsidiaries? Who
initiated the attack and who responded is the critical issue here.
[. . . .] But, alas, the lying continues. There is actually a museum
in Cairo devoted to the Egyptian victory over Israel in the 1973 war. The
Arab press blames the Mossad for the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.
Suha Arafat says Israel is using poison gas on Palestinian women and children.
The mainstream Arab press has become synonymous with the most outrageous
fiction.
* * * * * * *
The news media find great "human interest" in terrorists, and especially
suicide terrorists. Their names and backgrounds are announced, their psyches
analyzed, their valedictory tapes are broadcast, their fiesta funerals are
filmed, and their proud mothers are interviewed.
Outside of Israel, the victims are all but ignored. Since the Oslo
Peace, almost a thousand have been murdered, thousands more injured – incurring
long suffering and sometimes lifelong disability. Countless thousands more
were left bereaved and bereft. But to the world they are briefly cited statistics:
x number killed -- x number wounded – anonymous and uninteresting.
To redress this perverse imbalance at least slightly, here are
just a few out of the many:
1] The man murdered by the Palestinian Joan of Arc was Pinhas Toketli, 81 years old. When he was
a young man of 21, it was on that same street that British soldiers beat him
so badly that he was left with life-long impairment of vision. Sixty years
later, he was murdered on that street. He had gone there to buy paints for
an art class to which he belonged.
Among the many wounded including a foreign visitor – a lawyer from
New York who had also survived the bombing of the World Trade Center.
2] In another "first" in terrorism, the killer burst into a private
home. The toll was three dead:
Staff-Sergeant
Moshe Majos Meconnen, 34 years old, the father of two little daughters.
He was a Defense Force veteran, doing his annual reserve service and assigned
to guard duty. When he was 16 years old, he was one of the Ethiopian Jews
who walked for months through the African desert to reach the airlift to
their Promised Land.
Miri Oshana,
45 years old, and her congenitally disabled daughter Yael, 11 years old.
3] For another vaunted "first" in terrorism, a shooting attack
outside a Defense Forces barracks in Beersheba. Two soldiers were killed:
Keren Rotstein,
a girl 20 years old, one of a pair of identical twin sisters who were both
commissioned officers.
Aya Malocho,
a girl 18 years old.
In
this Arab military triumph, they were shot in the back while buying snacks
at a refreshment stand.
4] Terrorists headed for a bomb attack in Jerusalem were intercepted
on the road by two policemen. The terrorist then detonated, killing one policeman
and injuring the other.
The slain policeman was Ahmed Mazarib, 32 years old, the father
of three young daughters. His cousin, also a policeman, was killed in a terrorist
attack several years ago.
The injured policeman is Ahmed Rahal.
The Mazarib and Rahal families
are Israeli Bedouin Arabs.
* * * * * * *
Some things are just topsy-turvy by
their inherent absurdity:
Ahmed Tibi is an Arab citizen of Israel who manages to be simultaneously
an elected member of Israel's Knesset and a political
advisor to Arafat. When Arafat in Ramallah was leading the chant of "Millions
of Martyrs Marching to Jerusalem", Tibi was standing
by his side beaming. He later averred, however, that he did not chant.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is willing to call al Qaeda a terrorist organization. But if you murder only Jews, you are not a terrorist--at
least in the eyes of those who edit Minnesota's largest
newspaper. We wish we were making this up, but it's right there in yesterday's
column by Star Tribune ombudsman Lou Gelfand.
He quotes assistant managing editor Roger Buoen: "In the case of
the term 'terrorist,' other words – 'gunman,' 'separatist' and 'rebel,' for
example -- may be more precise and less likely to be viewed as judgmental. Because of that we often prefer these more
specific words. We also take extra care to avoid the term terrorist in articles
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated
nature of that dispute.
"However, in some circumstances in which nongovernmental groups
carry out attacks on civilians, the term is permitted. For example, Al-Qaida
is frequently referred to by the Star Tribune and other news organizations
as a 'terrorist network,' in part because its members have been convicted
of terrorist acts and because it has been identified by the United States
and other countries as a terrorist organization."
Gelfand says, incredibly, that the paper's policy is 'evenhanded'--
though it is plainly a double standard at the expense of the Jewish state.
Associated Press, 8 February 2002:
The Los Angeles school district has halted distribution of a book
about the Koran because its foreword calls Jews illiterates who reject knowledge.
Nearly 300 copies of the book, 'The Meaning of the Holy Quran,' donated by
the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation, were removed on Tuesday for further review.
"We're going to talk to the foundation members and determine exactly
why the commentary's there and whether there is research to support it,"
said Jim Konantz, a district official.
[Comment:
If the research is produced, A Time To Speak will try to cite it in some
future issue.]
The Karine A and B and C and . . .
A Arafat denies any association with or knowledge of . . .
B Arafat says Mossad [Israel's intelligence service] engineered
the weapons ship episode . . .
C Arafat tells Secretary of State Colin Powell that it was a PLO
ship but he had nothing o do with it and he will not do it again. This version
was written for him by the EU's Man for the Middle East Miguel Morentinos
. . .
When Secretary Powell called for an explanation from Arafat, The Wall Street Journal invited readers to submit some plausible ones. The first suggestion
was: "My camel ate the lading sheet". This -- and all the other entries as
well – were better than the effort of Senor Moretinos.
END