Vol.
IV:11 (No. 47)
November
2004 – Heshvan-Kislev 5765
MIASMA
Webster: MIASMA -- from the Greek for
"defilement" "pollution"
a] a vaporous exhalation, formerly
believed to cause disease
b] a heavy vaporous emanation or atmosphere
c] an influence or
atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt
They neither know nor
understand. They go about in darkness.
-- Psalm 82:5
A
miasma obscures reality and distorts perception about Israel and the Middle
East. The elements in its vapors are malice, falsehood, hypocrisy, and
ignorance. Some stoke its noxious fumes for their own ends. Some wander through
a fog of misinformation, unaware that they are being led astray by propaganda
and false reporting. This miasma can indeed "cause disease", with
symptoms of ethical corruption and dangerously deluded policies.
"Sometimes
the first obligation of intelligent men is to restate the obvious."
-- George Orwell
1] A miasma
can shroud simple facts and promote fallacies when false and misleading terms
are repeated until they are widely accepted and carelessly repeated. Among such
terms are "Palestinians", "Palestinian Territory", and
"Israeli Occupation" -- none of which exists. [See especially Issues 2, 6, 8, 9]. Another
example of a wrong word creating a wrong impression is the media addiction to
"militant" or "activist" as a euphemism for "terrorist".
Words that do not fit realities obscure accurate perception and so hinder
sensible understanding.
2] Facts that are not at all obscure may be
deliberately ignored. The miasma is then
in the mind of the non-beholder. This is
a refusal to perceive the obvious, often linked to an inability to learn from experience,
that underlies impractical theories, plans and policies.
For example:
Arab leaders and spokesmen openly state that they will never permit
Israel to continue to exist, on any terms or under any conditions; that they
entered into the Oslo Accords as a way to facilitate the destruction of Israel;
that a Palestinian State will have no other function than as a base from which
to destroy Israel. [See Issue 5]
These declarations of intent do not inhibit
personages who influence or execute policy Middle East policy from producing
and trying to impose one flawed plan after another, all based on the principle
that Israel must make more concessions, endanger its people with more
"good will gestures" and abandon more of its redeemed homeland. Then
perhaps the Arabs will reciprocate with the word peace. (The word will suffice.
Deeds are not required.)
This relentless bumbling is worse than useless; it
is pernicious. So too is the notion that concessions will win counterpoint
concessions and appeasement will actually appease. All past experience shows that concessions
and appeasement are taken as proof of weakness. This inspires foes to escalate
hostility to win more concessions and appeasement. It also inspires friends and
pseudo-friends to put heavier pressure on Israel to show even more weakness,
and therefore supposedly advance their own flawed plans.
3] Miasma can also take the form of amnesia that
blots out past convictions, commitments, and promises when it is inconvenient
to remember them. [See Issue 7]
Once, the United States was determined never to
recognize or deal with the PLO. Then it did recognize it, and then deal with
it, and finally adopt it as a dependent.
Once, the United States, and even Great Britain and
France, pledged never to force an imposed solution on Israel, or try to herd it
back within the pre-1967 cease-fire lines. [See Issue 23] Now the Quartet
Roadmap is designed to force just such an imposed solution and thereby make a
vassal of a gravely damaged Israel. [See Issues 23, 28, 29]
Once, presidents of the United States understood
the folly of planting a PLO state in the
heart of the Land of Israel. Such a notion was rejected by Ronald Reagan.
George H.W. Bush gave a commitment in writing that the United States would not
deal with the PLO, or expect Israel to deal with it, or favor a Palestinian
State. A decade later, his son George w.
Bush discovered "a long-standing vision of U.S. policy" to create
just such a state, and appointed himself its godfather. [See Issue 19]
A required condition is that the prospective
citizens adopt democracy. But democracy means only that citizens vote for their
government. When the bulk of them demand the destruction of Israel, they will
vote for the leaders they think most likely to accomplish it.
The "vision" thus conjured up is called
"Two States for Two Peoples -- Palestine and Israel Living Side by Side in
Peace". In 1922, the British
Mandatory Government chipped off 76 percent of Palestine to invent the Arab
Kingdom of [Trans-]Jordan, that now has a peace treaty with Israel. It is not
explained why U.S. national interests require further vivisection on the Land
of Israel for the sake of Three States -- two of them Arab, with 83 percent of
the land. [See Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine]
The pursuit of this policy is not dictated by any
domestic political need. More than three-quarters of U.S. citizens oppose it,
and their perception is clearer than those of recent feckless and reckless
governments in Israel.
From
"Arafat's Last Threat to Israel?" Daniel Pipes, New York Sun, 9
November 2004:
"I think it's very important for our friends,
the Israelis, to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. And
it's very important for the Palestinian people to have a peaceful, hopeful
future.' So spoke President Bush just two days after his re-election, just
exactly as news reports were leaking of Yasser Arafat's demise. 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. I say this for two reasons, one having to do with his
own understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the other having to do with the
situation on the ground in the Palestinian territories.
Mr. Bush's understanding: The president's major
statement of June 2002 remains the guideline to his goals vis-א-vis this conflict. In it, he
outlined his vision for a 'provisional' Palestinian state and called on Israel
to end what he called its "settlement activity in the occupied territories". As these two steps make up the heart of the
Palestinian Arab program, the president was effectively inviting the
Palestinian Arabs to behave themselves for an interval, long enough to collect
these rewards, and then go back on the warpath. [. . . . ]
[A]s Eli Lake has reported in The New York Sun, his approach translates into likely pressure on Israel. 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. [. . . .]
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.
But this grace period will come to an end once
clever and powerful Palestinian Arab leaders realize that by holding off the
violence for a decent interval, they can rely on Israel's only major ally
pressuring the Jewish state into making unprecedented concessions. I doubt this
will happen on Mr. Bush's watch, but if it does, I foresee potentially the most
severe crisis ever in U.S.-Israel relations.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In Europe collectively, and in small but noisy
coteries elsewhere, the Palestinian cause is an obsession. It has a virtually
monopoly over hearts untouched by the genuine oppression and suffering of
Tibetans, Kurds, Cambodians, Biafrans and others. It inspires an urgency never
sparked by massive anguish and death in Africa. It is pursued with zeal while
the human catastrophe in the Sudan stirs but lackadaisical procrastination. For
the Palestinian cause to inspire such unique fervor it must have some special
irresistible appeal that all others lack. That appeal is easily perceived:
From
"Incitement to Genocide, Act Two", Steven Plaut, FrontPageMagazine, 16
November 2004:
The pro-Palestinian movement is nothing more than
the 21st century's reincarnation of medieval anti-Semitism, complete with
medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. People who claim to feel empathy for
Palestinians are typically motivated by hatred of Jews. The reason the
pro-Palestinian movement wants the Palestinians to have a state is because it
understands that such a state will operate as an instrument to attack Israel,
murder Jews, and seek the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Once one understands this fundamental fact of life
about the Middle East and about world political motivations, everything else
makes sense. The mind-numbing stupidity of the world media mourning Arafat in
great cries of anguish, the fawning toadying of political leaders, the maudlin
outpouring of love for the cause of the fallen terrorist nazi, are all
understandable. There is nothing at all confusing about it. These people are
not broadcasting their undying love of Palestinians, but rather their undying
hatred of Jews. [. . . .]
Creation of a Palestinian state will not result in
any relaxation of tensions, regardless of its borders. Its creation will result
in the greatest terrorist bloodbath in the history of the conflict, with
countless rockets and missiles raining down upon Israeli civilians from the
State of Palestine with thousands of Jews murdered by infiltrating terrorists,
who are cheered on by the European intelligentsia; where Palestinian use of
Weapons of Mass Destruction is a real possibility; where Palestine will serve
as the launching base for Arab armies from neighboring countries entering
Palestine much like German troops entering the Rhineland in 1936.
And when the final showdown comes, then all those
compassionate supporters of Palestinians, those whose hearts always cried so
passionately for Palestinian suffering, all those protesters of Israeli
violations of Palestinian human rights, all the ISM demonstrators vandalizing
Israel's security wall, all those who could not control their tears at the
funeral of the arch-terrorist mass murderer, all those media bimbos who
saluted the noble cause Arafat promoted,
will have nary a word to say about the final Armageddon unleashed against the
Jews.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
It is said that a camera does not
lie. But a caption on a photograph can lie. For news media always prone to a miasmic
view of Israeli brutality and Arab-Palestinian subjugation and oppression, it
is easy to concoct false impressions that linger on even after the falsehood
has been uncovered.
1] In September 2000, news media
worldwide featured a picture snapped in Jerusalem, that shows a young man lying
on the ground, injured and bleeding, and an Israeli policeman standing over him
holding a billy-club. The world was told that the young man was a Palestinian-Arab being beaten by an Israeli
policeman. In fact, the young man was an
American Jewish student who had been beaten by a gang of Arabs and rescued by
the policeman.
2] In November 2004, news media
worldwide featured a picture snapped at an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] security
checkpoint. It shows a Palestinian-Arab playing a violin. The world was told
that the Israeli soldiers had forced him to play his instrument, in order to
humiliate him. This set off a wave of accusations of Jewish brutality. A writer
for the Israeli tabloid Ma'ariv hysterically compared it to the
Holocaust. In fact, the soldiers had only asked him to open his violin case --
as would be asked of Israelis entering any public place, or of passengers
boarding airliners in the United States. They did not request much less demand
that he play the violin. That impromptu recital was entirely the musician's own
idea.
3] In September 2000, France-2
Television distributed as a gift to the world's news media a set of pictures
taken in the Gaza Strip, while PLO gunmen, hiding within a crowd of stone-throwers,
were firing on an Israeli military guardpost, and the IDF soldiers were firing
back at the gunmen. One picture shows an man crouching behind a small concrete
barrier, with his son huddled behind him. A picture taken shortly afterwards
shows the boy lying sprawled and limp. The world was told that the Israeli
soldiers had brutally murdered Mohammed al-Dura, age 12.
The pictures and story were
flashed around and around the world. An IDF spokesman too hastily, and it
turned out incorrectly, said the boy might have been accidentally caught in
crossfire from the guard-post. Subsequent assiduous analyses of the
photographs, positions, distances and lines of trajectory proved that the
Israeli soldiers could not have possibly have shot the boy. The world that
scorned the notion that the IDF did not deliberately target him shunted aside
the proof that the IDF had no part in the boy's fate.
Thus was created the myth of the
Boy Martyr, that has done incalculable harm to Israel, as an impetus to
terrorism, an excuse for contempt, and a stain on its honor.
Mohammad al-Dura became an icon both in the Arab
world and in Europe. The PLO repeatedly runs a TV commercial in which a child
actor portrays the martyr and urges other children to sacrifice themselves and follow
him to Paradise. (The PLO authorities also sent his parents the standard $2,000
martyrdom fee. Reportedly, the check bounced.)
Cities in Europe named streets after him. The
government of Belgium announced that he would be honored on a postage stamp.
One European summed it up: "At last, we can forget that picture of the
Jewish boy . . . ", meaning the much-reproduced photograph of a small
Jewish boy surrendering to Nazi Storm Troopers. The deliberate and calculated
Arab terrorist murders of Israeli children and babies are either ignored or
excused as understandable.
Investigation of the story of Mohammed al-Dura
have gone past the question Who Killed Him? to the question of Was He Really
Killed? On this question, the miasma exhaled by news media and governments
together is pierced by WorldNetDaily 21 November 2004:
The 'martyrdom death of 12-year-old Palestinian Mohammed
al-Dura at the hands of Israeli soldiers – which received widespread
international news coverage and spurred on the current intifada, inspiring
countless "suicide bombers" to attack Israel – was actually a
"staged" piece of street theater, according to an in-depth report in
the current issue of WND's monthly magazine, Whistleblower. [. . . .]
Now, a just-completed, long-term journalistic
investigation conducted in France concludes that the Mohammed al-Dura affair
was actually a piece of Palestinian theater – similar to the dramatic
Palestinian funeral processions last April after the Israeli incursion into the
Jenin refugee camp. During that
public spectacle, a martyred "corpse" twice fell off the stretcher,
only to hop back up and retake his place in the procession.
[. . . .] Gerard Huber, a psychoanalyst and permanent
Paris correspondent of the Israel-based Metula News Agency, reports on the
investigation conducted by a team of journalists, including Huber and Stephane
Juffa, Metula's editor-in-chief.
What really happened at Netzarim junction?' asks Huber.
One thing is certain: Given the position of the protagonists during the
firefight it is impossible that the child was hit by Israeli bullets. Mohammed
al-Dura was not killed by Israelis. And the bigger question remains: Was
Mohammed really killed?"
Whistleblower cites
stunning reports of Palestinians playing to the camera, including Israeli
commentator Amnon Lord's account of the larger
scene at Netzarim Junction when al-Dura was supposedly shot to death. He
describes 'incongruous battle scenes complete with wounded combatants and screeching ambulances played out in front of
an audience of laughing onlookers, while makeshift movie directors do retakes
of botched scenes'.
Palestinian journalist Sami El Soudi echoes Lord's
observation, who discloses that '[. . . .] Most of the cameramen there were
Palestinians. … They willingly took part in the masquerade, filming fictional scenes, believing they were
doing it out of patriotism. When a scene was well done the onlookers laughed
and applauded'.
"It is incredible," says Huber, "how many
people were calmly filming the battle of Netzarim on September 30th, 2000. Not
only professionals – some of them standing no more than ten meters away
from the al-Dura incident – but amateurs as well. [. . . .] In another
rush we are startled to hear a Palestinian shouting: It's a flop! We have to do
the whole thing over again!"
Even more disconcerting, says the Whistleblower
report, is the fact that France 2, the news organization that broke the story
of Mohammed al-Dura's supposed 'martyrdom' at the hands of Israeli soldiers,
adamantly refuses to release all the raw footage taken by its Palestinian
cameraman. For instance, journalist
Charles Enderlin, who narrated the original story of the shooting, claims his employer, France 2,
holds onto images of the child’s death throes – which he says he
took out of his report for ethical reasons – because they were just too
terrible to view. To this day, says Huber, it remains unproven whether Mohammed
al-Dura is dead or alive. [. . . . ]"
Comment: A hospital in Gaza reports that
the body of a boy was received there on the day in question. A photograph of
that boy does not match the one of Mohammad al-Dura, and he was brought to the
hospital several hours earlier than the alleged shooting of shooting of
Mohammad al-Dura.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In August 2001,
the United Nations convened a conference against racism and allowed it to morph
into a Hate-the-Jews Jamboree. In November 2004, it convened a panel to discuss
Anti-Semitism, including participants who are themselves experienced
practitioners of Judeophobia. Among the conclusions, now to be official UN
dogma.
1]
"Superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika
is not anti-Semitism."
2] "It is
necessary to conserve the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism,
whilst defending the right to be anti-Zionist without being branded an
anti-Semite."
3] "The
leaders of Jewish communities should also act to distinguish defense of the
State of Israel from the fight against anti-Semitism."
4] "Jews
bring on attacks against them because it is supposed that they support
Israel."
5] "The
Jews should cease to regard the Holocaust as 'their own tragedy'."
The conference is covered and its conclusions defined in
"Your Tax Dollars at Work", Anne Bayefsky, Wall Street
Journal, 18
November 2004:
Subtitle of the article sums it
up: "The U.N. Discovers the Cause of Anti-Semitism: Jews"
The author comments: "Simply put, Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. Or, if it
weren't for Israel's annoying insistence
on defending itself, on the same terms as would be applied to any other state
faced with five decades of wars and terrorism aimed at its obliteration, Jews
would be better off."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Ion Pacepa, Director of
Intelligence in then-Communist Romania, once wrote that after meeting Yasser
Arafat "I wanted to go take a shower . . . . Never did I see so much
cleverness and blood and filth in one man."
An exceptionally thick and polluted miasma enveloped
worldwide reactions to the demise of that blood-soaked mass-murdering terrorist
and tyrant.
1] When President George W. Bush, at a public press
conference was informed (prematurely) of Arafat's death he made the
excruciatingly inappropriate response "God bless his soul".
At the funeral service in Cairo,
the United States was officially represented by Assistant Secretary of State
William Burns. In 1973, Arafat personally ordered and supervised the abduction
and murder of three Western diplomats in the Sudan: U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel,
U.S. Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore, and Belgian Guy Eid. The Department
of State front the start had proof of Arafat's guilt, but always tried to suppress
it. It seems that the Department of State does not even find it unseemly for
one of its high officials to join the mourners of the terrorist who murdered
its own diplomats.
2] Members of Israel's Yahad
Party, a subsidiary of EU-stooge Yossi Beilin, voted 17 to 14 to send
condolences to the Palestinian Nation.
3] The Vatican described Arafat
as a "charismatic leader". It can be supposesd that the Vatican uses
the word "charismatic" in its original religious meaning: Inspired by
a heaven to perform a mission of salvation. It also implored on his behalf:
"May God in His mercy receive the soul of the Illustrious Deceased".
4] Kofi Annan, Secretary-General
of the United Nations, declared himself "deeply moved" by the loss and
ordered flags lowered to half-mast. Totally reversing the truth, he declared
that the deceased had "lead his people to accept the principle of peaceful
co-existence" with Israel, when in fact he never deviated from promising
his people the destruction of Israel.
5] Monsieur
Jacques Chirac, President of France, called him "a man of courage and
conviction" and averred that "I have come to bow before president
Yasser Arafat and pay him a final homage."
6] News media personages compared
him George Washington and Moses (sic) and counted as his finest accomplishment
"his successful use of terrorism".
7] British Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw went to Ramallah and laid a floral wreath on Arafat's grave.
"They must
have worked long and hard to make themselves what they are, for such stupidity
does not come naturally." -- Samuel Johnson
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The United States has thus far
given more than $3,500,000,000 to the terrorist regime of the Palestine
Authority. This is not subject to review
when Palestine-Arabs joyously celebrate the murder of Americans, or when their
leaders heap invective and threats on America.
The Administration now bestows a
special extra gift of $23,000,000. This generosity more or less coincides with
the PLO legal document bestowing on Suha Arafat an annual Widow's Pension of
$22,000,000. Since funds are frangible, the U.S. taxpayer will be subsidizing
her lavish life style in Paris for one year and a few weeks over.
END