THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE
"Israelis don't deserve to live." – Sister of PLO bomb-murderer.
The blood-letting by Arabs against Jews is a habit of long-standing, even
within the Land of Israel. Now a new tactic is catching special attention,
as it was meant to do: The murderers kill themselves along with their victims.
This innovation, instituted only after the PLO was given control of territory
and population, is entirely unnecessary. The same crimes can be perpetrated
without this extra element. There have been many acts of terror against targets
in Israel and around the world that cause massive death and injury and destruction
without harm to the terrorist.
The innovation does, however, serve two purposes. Thus far, it has served
them well.
1] It whips up an impressionable population to a homicidal frenzy. Today,
the majority of the population in the areas ruled by the PLO approve suicide-bombing
as a tactic, and the goal the total destruction of Israel and seizure of
its land.
2] It stirs sympathy for the bomb-murderers in the naïve assumption that
they are driven by hopelessness and despair. In fact, as will be shown, they
are driven by hopes of glory and honor and eternal bliss in paradise. They
are calculatedly taught to believe this by those who exploit the folly for
their own profit.
A father at a demonstration in a European city carries a little daughter
dressed up in bomber costume with toy bombs. A mother in Gaza dresses her
10-year-old son in bomber costume with mask and toy bombs, and the child
solemnly declares his intent at the age of 14 or 15 to "explode myself".
This is not hopelessness and despair, but bizarre hope and ambition.
Many who find this incomprehensible argue for "root causes": oppression, occupation,
deprivation, poverty, humiliation. Even if these conditions did prevail --
and some of them do not -- this kind of excuse-making does not address the
question of why peoples all over the world suffer all these and worse without
becoming homicidal maniacs.
* * * * * * *
"Western civilization has no concepts such as self-sacrifice and honor, which
is why Americans fail to understand that the suicide-bomber experiences the
height of ecstasy and happiness"
-- Dr. Professor Adel-Sadeq, Head, Department
of Psychiatry
Al-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
After a recent Arab terror-bombing of Israelis, a spokesman for the U.S.
State Department admonished the PLO that such doings do not "advance their
aspirations". Quite the contrary, the aspiration is to kill Israelis, and
their successes mount almost daily.
The locale of the State Department is known in Washington, D.C. as "Foggy
Bottom", and that has become all too apt a symbol for its persistently murky
perceptions. A current egregious example is its annual report on worldwide
terrorism, exposed in "
State's Terror Untruths" by Daniel
Pipes,
New York Post,
May 28, 2002:
Each spring, the State Department issues 'Patterns of Global Terrorism,'
its major report on the problem it defines as 'premeditated, politically
motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.'
It's always been a highly politicized document, reflecting the Washington
debate and diplomatic imperatives, but this year it has veered into unreliability
and even falsehood. It's a dangerous document likely to harm the war on terrorism.
Its problems include:
Methodology
: The State Department uses methods which create the misleading impression
that the Middle East is marginal to terrorism. It does this by counting damage
to property the same as damage to people: So of the 346 terrorist incidents
logged in 2001, 178 (slightly over half) involved attacks on a multinational
oil pipeline in Colombia, suggesting that South America is the overwhelming
source of terrorism.
But as the
Middle East Quarterly's
Martin Kramer puts it, 'Obviously, Latin America is not the world's terrorism
epicenter, and it is not why you have to take off your shoes at airport departure
gates.'
It also logs incidents by location, not perpetrator. Thus, Sept. 11 counts
as North American terrorism, not Middle Eastern. By this reckoning, a mere
29 incidents took place in the Middle East, compared to 33 in Africa, 68
in Asia, and a whopping 194 in Latin America (remember that pipeline). Of
3,547 deaths last year, a mere 60 lost their lives in the Middle East, compared
to 90 in Africa, 180 in Asia, and 3,235 in North America.
Denial: The
overwhelmingly most important sources of terrorism are militant Islam and
Palestinian nationalism. (It's noteworthy that in addition to the 3,235 people
killed on 9/11, all but one of the other eight Americans who lost their lives
in terrorist incidents in the course of 2001 - one each in the Philippines
and Saudi Arabia, five in Israel - were murdered by adherents of militant
Islam.)
But the report's only allusions to militant Islam are to deny its importance:
'The war on terrorism is not a war against Islam.' 'Adverse mention in this
report of individual members of any political, social, ethnic, religious,
or national group is not meant to imply that all members of that group are
terrorists.' And it includes this quote from a Muslim figure: 'Our tolerant
Islamic religion highly prizes the sanctity of human life.' End of discussion.
[. . . . ]
Whitewashing Palestinian violence: Ever intent on enhancing Yasser Arafat's
reputation, State hides his responsibility for terrorism. President Bush
may have has accused Arafat of "enhancing terrorism" but State's bureaucrats
suppress every piece of the voluminous evidence pointing to this connection.
Worse, State pretends the vast majority of Palestinian terrorist incidents
simply did not happen. It defines 'significant international terrorist incidents'
as ones involving major property damage, abduction or kidnapping, loss of
life or serious injury, or the foiled attempt at any of these, and in 2001
it found 123 incidents worldwide that meet this criteria. Of those, a mere
11 concerned violence against Israelis. But when the Independent Media Review
and Analysis applied State's criteria to anti-Israel violence, its scrupulous
research found 97 attacks on Israel that fit this definition.
The U.S. government asserts that Palestinian atrocities against Israel made up just 9 percent of the world's serious terrorist incidents in 2001, but in fact they constituted 46 percent of them.
In all, this document reflects a mentality in Washington of reluctance to confront unpleasant realities. The danger is clear: He who fools himself about his enemy in time of war is likely to lose that war.
The obfuscation from Foggy Bottom is analyzed on Capitol Hill in "Congress
Urged To Issue Separate Terror Report", from MENL (Middle East News Line):
Congress has been urged to issue its own study in the wake of criticism of
the State Department's latest report on international terrorism.
A House Armed Services subcommittee was told on Thursday that the State Department
report was the most politicized document since a CIA missile estimate in
1995. The Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism subcommittee was told that
the State Department report ignored many acts of terrorism in its refusal
to cite terrorist sponsorship by the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia.
"I would suggest that not since the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate on
missile threats to the United States, a blatantly politicized document, has
the Congress been served such a distorted and, frankly, fraudulent document
as that the State Department has just rendered describing Palestinian compliance
with its obligations and other terrorist threats," Frank Gaffney, president
of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said.
Gaffney, regarded as a Republican close to the Bush administration, said the State Department refused to acknowledge Israeli-supplied evidence that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was involved in financing suicide bombings and buying rockets to attack Israeli cities. Gaffney cited the Israeli capture of the Karine-A freighter in January, condemned by President George Bush and later acknowledged by Arafat himself.
The State Department recently delegated to CIA Director George Tenet the
task of helping Arafat restore his "security services", that have never been
used for security but only for terrorism and suppression of dissent.
The State Department's patronage of Saudi Arabia is supplemented by the Saudi royal house, that engages high-priced U.S. advertising and public relations companies for a campaign to make the American public aware of its beneficence. Among items perhaps not included in this ad campaign are the orations of Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, a prominent government cleric, television host and royal functionary.
A tape-recording of one of his recent addresses was supplied by the Saudi
Information Service and cited by
National Review Online
, 26 April 2002:
"[. . . . ] People should know that Jews are backed by the Christians, and
the battle that we are going through is not with Jews only [. . . .] I am
against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment; I am against
America even if the stone liquefies My hatred of America, if part of it was
contained in the universe, it would collapse. She is the root of all evils,
and wickedness on earth. Who else implanted the tyrants in our land, who
else nurtured oppression? Oh Muslim Ummah don't take the Jews and Christians
as allies.
"[. . . . ] Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion
on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. . . . . God gave them
to you. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why
don't you pillage them?"
* * * * * * *
"We believe our sons go to heaven when they are martyred . . . .
When [Jewish] sons die they go to
hell"
-- Naima al-Obeid, mother of a late terrorist
Recent targets for PLO terror include the cities of Rishon LeTzion [First
to Zion] and Petah Tikvah [Gate of Hope], both founded early in the Jewish
resettlement of Israel and well before the later influx of Arabs west of
the Jordan River. Ruti Peled, age 56, was buying an ice cream cone for her
granddaughter Sinai Keinon, age 15 months, when they were murdered by a terror-bomber.
The broadcasting network CNN, not usually interested in Israeli casualties,
on this occasion proposed to broadcast an interview with Hen Keinan, the
young woman who lost her mother and her baby together. It was conducted in
the hospital where she and her husband Lior Keinon were being treated for
their own injuries.
As reported by the Israeli newspaper
Yedioth Aharonot
, 3 June 2001
(translated frm the Hebrew by Israel News Today):
The parents of the infant Sinai Keinan, who was murdered last week in the
terror attack in Petah Tikva, were interviewed last week on CNN, and tearfully
told the story of their loss. When they later viewed the program, they said
they were alarmed to see that instead of their story, only the mother of
the terrorist who carried out the terror attack appeared on the program.
Last Friday Hen Keinan and her husband Lior were asked to be interviewed
on the CNN program called "International Hour". This is a program that is
broadcast in many countries all over the world. They were asked to talk about
their feelings following the murder of their 14 month old infant daughter,
Sinai, and Hen's mother, Ruti Peled, 56, who was also killed in the terror
attack.
Hen, who speaks English well, and her husband Lior, already prepared at the
hospital, very carefully, the message they wished to convey to the world,
and "especially to the Europeans who give legitimacy to terror."Before the
taped interview began, Hen was asked to speak, in a live broadcast, to an
American broadcast of the network, and among other things, she said: "We
love you. Help us as much as you can".
Afterwards the two went for a special interview. The journalist who interviewed
them, asked Hen, among other things: "How do you feel"? And she responded
with a question: "Do you have a mother? Do you have children"? "Close your
eyes for a minute and imagine that they were murdered in front of your eyes.
Only then will you know in what hell I live". Her husband, Lior, showed the
journalist the broken parts of Sinai's baby carriage, and all the members
of the broadcast team shed tears.
"That same evening', related Hen painfully, 'We sat down to watch the special
interview with us, and instead, to our amazement, we got only the interview
with the mother of the terrorist who carried out the terror attack in which
my daughter and mother were murdered."
The terrorist's mother related during the interview, among other things,
that before he left on his mission, she gave him her blessings.
"Only the day after were portions of my interview broadcast, in another program,
with my statements having been edited," related Hen last night on the Israeli
TV show, Documedia. She said that the special interview with her was not
even broadcast. She expressed anger about the "unfair and unprofessional"
treatment by CNN. [. . . . ]
The mother of another terrorist also had her chance to take pride in the
accomplishment of a son who murdered five teen-aged yeshiva students while
they were playing basketball. This interview was published in Saudi Arabia
– a kingdom that gives each bereaved Terror-Parent a grant of $25,000.
As reported by Smadar Peri,
Israel Resource Review
, 5 June 2002:
Um-Nidal, the mother of Mohammed Farahat, 17, who perpetrated the suicide
attack in Atzmona in which five yeshiva students were murdered, encouraged
her son to perpetrate the terror attacks, was party to planning the attack
and had her picture taken with her son as a memento before she said goodbye
to him one last time.
"I'm proud of my four sons who were all raised to carry out terror attacks
against the Israelis,' said Um-Nidal, a resident of Gaza, who is named for
her eldest son Nidal, 31, who is on Israel's wanted list. Her second son,
Ahmed, also went to perpetrate a terror attack, but was caught, tried and
sentenced to 11 years in an Israeli prison. Her third son, Muamin, is seen
regularly with the leader of the Hamas movement, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
The Saudi daily, A-Shark al-Awsat, which yesterday published the chilling
testimony of the Palestinian mother who encouraged her son to perpetrate
a suicide attack, stressed that this is the first time in the history of
terror attacks in the Arab world that the parents of a suicide bomber are
involved in planning that terror attack in all its details, and are photographed
together with the shahid as a memento, before his death.
The mother recounted, "My young son Mohammed joined Izzadin Kassam, the Hamas
movement's military branch, when he was seven. He was very close to the organization's
leader, Imad Akel, who lived in our home, and was assassinated by the Israelis
seven years ago. From a young age Mohammed was a party to planning the terror
attacks, and I encouraged him to commit suicide."
When Mohammed left to perpetrate that terror attack in Atzmona, his mother
took a video camera and a regular camera, and had her picture taken with
him as a memento. "It was clear to me that these pictures would be a memento,
and I was proud of him and his bravery. I knew the timetable of the planned
terror attack, and as the time drew near, I sat at the entrance to the house
and waited for the news of his death. When I heard the number of casualties
the Israelis suffered I knew I should be proud. His friends reported his
death to me and I was very happy."
* * * * * * *
To most of the world news media, the victims of terrorist attacks are rarely
more than anonymous statistics of killed and wounded. The dead are quickly
buried, the wounded as quickly forgotten.
The medical aftermath is explained in this report by Mandi Steele,
WorldNetDaily
, 30 May 2002:
"Suicide bomber kills 3," the headline reports. It's become an all-too-familiar
story in urban settings in Israel, as terrorists wage a war of attrition against
beleaguered civilians surrounded by a sea of hostility.
But the rising death toll from such atrocities is only half the story, says
a radiologist from Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois. The other,
untold part is the horrors the survivors of such gruesome attacks must endure
– sometimes for the rest of their lives.
X-rays taken from victims of suicide bombings reveal pieces of metallic fragments
embedded in their skin, muscles, organs and bones, says Dr. Michael Messing,
who visited the victims of suicide bombings while at the Hadassah Hospital
in Jerusalem. Suicide bombers pack their bombs with nails and other objects
so even survivors of suicide bombings will suffer from the bomb's effects.
"They're trying to maximize the number of people they kill and injure," said
Messing of the terrorists. These bombs, which Messing says are sometimes
funded by Palestinian authorities including Yasser Arafat, are packed with
spikes, nails, screws, nuts, bullets, mortar, ball bearings and even rat
poison.
"What were originally created for constructive purposes have been transformed
by Arab terrorists into cruel, deadly, destructive projectiles," said Messing.
"The nails fly like bullets, head first, penetrating skin, flesh and bone.
The unprecedented wave of suicide bombings has presented a whole new set
of medical challenges."
Rabbi Immanuel Yosef Legomsky is a neurotherapist at Jerusalem's Menucha
v'Simcha Neurofeedback Clinic. He said treating Israeli victims of Palestinian
terror "is the major mental and physical health problem here today. [The
Palestinians'] goal is to do as much damage as possible and destroy functional
life where they fail to actually kill. Their result is that often those who
live and their relatives suffer much more than those who die," he said.
Reports of people being injured in suicide bombings are not rare. Since September
2000, 498 Israelis have been killed and 4,021 injured in acts of Palestinian
violence. In suicide bombings alone, 208 Israelis have died. On Monday, there
were several reports on the suicide bomber who killed an 18-month-old baby
girl and her grandmother and left 27 people injured. The reports, however,
rarely go into the medical details to explain just what is meant by "injured"."
Sara Levinsky Rigler follows up on the aftermath for some victims [names
changed to protect their privacy] in The Aish HaTorah bulletin "
Israel Update"
(No. 41),:
Leah and Yitzhak Klein, both in their mid-twenties, had just finished their
pre-Shabbat shopping at Jerusalem's farmers' market. Their tote bags were
laden with vegetables to prepare for chicken soup and potato kugel. Like
many low-income young couples, pensioners, and Russian immigrants, the Kleins
chose to shop on late Friday afternoons because the prices hit rock bottom
a couple hours before the market closed for Shabbat.
[. . . . ] suddenly Leah heard a thunderous blast, what she would later describe
as 'a noise from another world.' Two meters in front of them, an Arab female
terrorist had blown herself up.
Leah, her face and hands burning, flew through the air. When she landed,
she turned her head frantically to find her husband amidst the smoke and
dust which filled the air. Yitzhak, whose hands and neck had been burned,
had landed on the opposite side of the street. He ran and grabbed Leah and
started to pull her toward Bikur Holim hospital, several blocks away. A taxi
pulled up next to them, told them to jump in, and sped them to the hospital.
There they were admitted and pronounced 'lightly injured'.
[. . . . ] Yitzhak . . . was discharged after two days. Leah spent ten days
in the hospital, her face grotesquely swollen. When her grandmother, a Holocaust
survivor, came to visit Leah, she could not recognize her own granddaughter.
She approached Leah's bed and asked, 'Excuse me, Miss, where is room number
7?' Leah cried, 'Look, Bubbie, it's me!' Her grandmother sobbed, 'That I
should survive Auschwitz and come to live in a Jewish state, only to have
to see my granddaughter attacked by Jew-haters, right here, right in Jerusalem!'
[. . . . ] The ritual in [the author's house in Jerusalem] is mirrored in
homes throughout Israel: First we hear from the radio of a terrorist attack.
(If the attack is in Jerusalem, we first hear the sirens.) Someone calls
out, '
Pegua' (terrorist
attack) and everyone in the family grabs a Book of Psalms and takes up positions
in the living room. Together we fervently recite four psalms for the complete
recovery of the seriously wounded victims, those who, between one radio report
and the next, could move from the list of seriously wounded to the list of
dead. Then we sit by the radio and listen as the reports come in: How many
dead, how many seriously wounded, how many moderately wounded, and how many
lightly wounded.
[. . . . ] But what does 'lightly injured' mean? According to Professor Shmuel
Shapira, Deputy Director General of Hadassah University Hospitals, 'lightly
injured' is slang rather than a scientific definition. It generally means
that there is no danger to life or to any organ of the patient's body. [.
. . . ] Professor Shapira points out that the term is a misnomer because
the effects on the patient's life can be far from light.
The physical wounds may require weeks of hospitalization, repeated surgeries,
months of rehabilitation, and frequent visits to the outpatient clinic for
a year or longer. The psychological trauma may be even more devastating,
leading in the worst cases to chronic unemployment, divorce, and sometimes
suicide. 'His family life may be ruined altogether,' observes Professor Shapira,
'and he may be mentally handicapped for life.'
The symptoms of acute stress disorder experienced by terror victims include:
trouble concentrating, recurrent and obtrusive thoughts (which may adversely
affect professional productivity), nightmares, re-experiencing of the traumatic
event, insomnia, headaches, loss of appetite, numbing, social problems, dizziness,
stomach aches, heart palpitations, depression, survivor guilt, and hyper-vigilance.
[. . . .] Since September, 2000, the beginning of what many in Israel call
The Oslo War, the two branches of Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem's largest
medical facility, have treated 1,700 terror victims. Most of these were 'lightly
injured,' including those suffering shock who were sent home after a few
hours.
Yeshara Gold, Founder and International Director of Kids for Kids, www.kidsforkids.net
an organization dedicated to the recovery of young victims of terrorism, believes
that the problem of Post Traumatic Stress is far more widespread than the
numbers of those actually injured in terrorist attacks. Kids for Kids services
what they call the kids who fall between the stretchers." These include the
child who lives next door to the child who was killed, the teenager who daily
rides on the bus line which was targeted by a terrorist attack, the kid who
witnessed a suicide bombing, the classmates of terror victims, etc.
For example, a young man named Koby was killed a year ago in a terrorist
attack, had a sister who is the single mother of a seven-year-old boy Motti.
He used to visit his sister and Motty every morning before school and every
evening. After Koby was killed . . . . Motty
suffered an acute case of trauma, including nightmares, acting out
in school, and constant fears. Fortunately, Kids for Kids was able to help
him with a recovery support team trained in play therapy, therapeutic art
work, and trauma counseling. [. .
. . ]
"I believe the whole country is suffering some level of Post Traumatic Stress,"
asserts [trauma specialist Dr. Batya] Ludman. "In addition to those injured
or present at a terrorist attack, there is a whole subset of people who 'should
have been there,' such as the person who planned to have lunch at S'barro's
but got held up in traffic, or the person who works in that shopping center
but by some quirk wasn't there when the bomb exploded, or the person who was
in that shoe store a couple hours before the attack. These people feel they
had a narrow escape, and they may suffer many of the symptoms of acute trauma."
[. . . . ] This is, after all, the
goal of terrorism: to make the entire population feel terrorized, vulnerable,
unsafe in their restaurants, basketball courts, Bat Mitzvah halls, malls,
bus stops, and, in the case of small communities, even in their own homes.
. . . . We are on what Dr. Ludman calls, "a terror roller-coaster. We live
our lives between terror attacks. [. . . . ] We are all normal people responding
normally to an abnormal situation," Dr. Ludman emphasizes.
[. . . . ] In addition to whatever we as a nation do militarily or politically,
spiritual activism is a vital response to our collective trauma. Visit a hospital,
support victims of terror, learn Torah. While we may be vulnerable, we are
not helpless.
* * * * * * *
"He who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind."
– Ethics of the Fathers
In 1991, during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, the United
States officially pledged to Israel:
"In accordance with the United States traditional policy, we do not support
the creation of an independent Palestinian state. [. . . .] Moreover, it
is not the United States' aim to bring the PLO into the process or to make
Israel enter a dialogue or negotiations with the PLO."
A decade later, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the creation of
just such a state has "long been a vision of U.S. policy". This would be
a state invented where none every existed, for a nationality invented no
earlier than 1967, carved out of the remnant of The Jewish National Home.
In the interval between that pledge of 1991 and the abandonment of the pledge
in 2001, came the Oslo Accords that set up a PLO authority with control over
land and population. The record of that regime is one of broken agreements,
violated promises, corruption, suppression, violence and terrorism; a record
deemed worthy of the reward of a state of its own.
The record is explained, in effect excused, by: "denial of national rights"
"occupation" "oppression" and the condition of being, in recent words of
the U.S. President, "poor, isolated and humiliated". The questions
of national rights of Arabs west of the Jordan River, and whether they have
claim to any land occupied by Israel have been covered in previous issues
of A Time to Speak. [See especially, Numbers 2, 6, 8 and 9].
In any case, more than 95 percent of the Arabs in the contested area between
Israel and Jordan now live under the rule of the PLO and not the administration
of Israel. Those who grew up during the administration of Israel so far being
forced into uprising by oppression, learned that they could carry out their
uprisings without fear that Israel would brutally crush them as any Arab
government would do. They could also assume that it would not damage their
credit anywhere else in the world.
"Poor, isolated and humiliated"
POOR?
The United States and the European Union and Israel have given vast sums
to the PLO over the past eight years, that have provided the means to: (a)
build a number of terrorist bodies, equip and train them, (b) subsidize schools
and broadcasting stations and other media to instill hated of Jews and and
incite bloodlust against them, and (c) provide luxury and affluence for those
in power.
These funds have rarely been used to build an economic infrastructure for
the benefit of the subjects. However, when terror-bombers blow up themselves
along with Israelis on buses or in restaurants, ice-cream stands, their families
do receive large monetary grants from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, so these murders
may be a form of economic enterprise.
From
Al-Watan,
Kuwaiti Daily, 7 June 2002, translated by MEMRI:
Yesterday, Al-Watan received documents from private sources in the Cairo
branch of an Arab bank showing that Yasser Arafat had deposited in his name
$5.1 million into a personal account. According to sources, this is theft
of Arab aid funds allocated to the Palestinians through an arrangement between
Arafat and his Cairo office head Ramzi Khouri.
The sources added that according to the documents, these funds were deposited
in the personal accounts of President Arafat to cover some of the president's
personal expenses, including the costs of his wife Suha and their daughter
who live in Paris and Switzerland."
[. . . .] The sources added that some weeks ago Muhammad Rashid had bought,
on Arafat's instructions, 14% of the shares of the Jordanian Cement Company
for the PSCS(1) with funds received by Arafat from the Arab Gulf states,
'to increase the profits of Arafat's investments abroad,' in light of the
increase in cement prices following increased demand due to the reconstruction
of what the Israeli forces destroyed in their recent incursion into the West
Bank cities.
The sources added that the funds that reached the Palestinian Authority from
Kuwait and the other Gulf states [meant] for the Committee for the Reconstruction
of Hebron Homes [. . . .] but did not reach the people entitled to them.
Rather, they were distributed to the PA leaders close to Arafat and to several
top officials of the Fatah movement, headed by Arafat.
[. . . . ] The sources added that most of the food aid sent to the PA was
sold . . . without being distributed to the poor and needy, and the latter
began to shout 'at the top of their lungs' that a popular committee must
be established for aid distribution, since they had lost all faith in the
PA and its apparatuses. [. . . . ]
The Arabs under PLO rule today are the darlings of much of the enlightened
world. The elite of society and the media and the arts, especially in the
European Union, can find no cause nearer to their hearts. Not the Tibetans
nor the Kurds nor the peoples of the southern Sudan or any others can compete
for space in those hearts, because their plights are not useful as justification
for innate Judeophobia.
And in those countries it is Jews who are attacked on the streets, not Arabs.
It is synagogues that are torched, not mosques. It is Israel that is slandered
and reviled, while the PLO is petted and subsidized.
There has often been concern for the "humiliation" suffered by the Arab states
because their repeated attempts to destroy Israel have all failed.
Now there is concern that the PLO's Arab subjects must pass through Israeli
security checks when they travel. This is not designed to "humiliate", but
because of the many times when the travelers have been terrorists on their
way to their targets, including females who disguise explosives as a pregnancy,
and when vehicles – including ambulances – have been found smuggling weapons
and explosives.
These are not habits of Americans who have to go through long and grueling
security checks at their own airports.
These are not habits of Israelis, who have to go through a security check
to enter a post office or a bank or a store or a town hall or a medical building,
or stroll on a pedestrian mall closed off with barricades.
* * * * * * *
Great Britain has been
host to Leila Khalid on several occasions. In 1970 she was held in prison
for after her second attempt to hijack a civilian airliner, but quickly released.
She is now an executive of the terrorist PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine). In 2001 she was welcomed back to London to inform the House
of Commons that a Zionist is a equivalent to a Nazi. In May 2002 she came
again, to tell an academic gathering that those who commit mass murder of
Israelis are not terrorists but freedom fighters.
Great Britain is not always so undiscriminating in its hospitality. Four Israeli police spokesmen were scheduled to visit for a professional consultation with British police spokesmen. Then, the British government learned that one of them is stationed in Judea-Samaria – a region of the Land of Israel that its own late Palestine Mandate government mandated should be judenrein – it demanded that he be removed from the group. In response, Israel Minister of Police Uzi Landau cancelled the trip.