26-Mar-09: Unmasking the hatred behind the hatred

We have re-published several of Khaled Abu Toameh's analytic pieces here in the past. His is an invaluable and rare voice - that of a proud Muslim and Palestinian Arab, a talented, intelligent and insightful man, who eschews the language of extremism and of prejudice. These days he writes for the Jerusalem Post, but his journalistic career began in the service of the Arafat regime.

He observed the reality around him there - and walked. From hearing him in person, we understand he is among those rare individuals who understand the reality, the threat posed by the corruption, the self-serving prejudice and the myopia of generations of truly awful leadership among his people.

Earlier this month, he traveled in the United States and wrote about it on the Hudson New York website. Forces at work among America's emerging elite and especially among its university under-graduates and faculty-members serve as deeply disturbing signs of a hate-driven malaise. Khaled Abu Toameh's short essay deserves the widest distribution.

On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians' Real Agenda
Khaled Abu Toameh
March 24, 2009

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse. On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority. On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. There was another campus where someone told me that I was a ‘liar” because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.

And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my “even-handed analysis” of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.

The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years.

The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don’t know -and don’t want to know - that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.

What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.

Many of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials I talk to in the context of my work as a journalist sound much more pragmatic than most of the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” folks on the campuses.

Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material. While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence. As such, we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.

22-Mar-09: In Haifa, the terrorists were out of luck tonight

A reminder, yet another, of what it means to be living in a neighbourhood where terrorism and savagery erupt whenever civil society looks the other way.

In Haifa tonight (Saturday), Israel Police explosives experts neutralized multiple bombs concealed in a vehicle parked just outside the very busy Lev Hamifratz shopping mall. The mall was evacuated and police activity caused heavy traffic delays in the area. Dozens of kilograms of explosives were found - enough to cause extensive damage and loss of life if they had not been detected and safely detonated. One report says the explosives were packed into 14 black bags inside a rucksack.

Haaretz says the attack began around 8pm Saturday night with a small explosion near a Subaru parked in a lot adjacent to the shopping center. Police were called and they found several explosive devices hidden in the vehicle. At this hour (Sunday morning, 1:00 am) there is a court gag order on further details of the case.

A notification from an Israeli Arab organization styling itself "Galilee Freedom Brigade" (alternatively 'Galilee Freedom Battalions' according to YNet) has claimed responsibility for the attack. It's not clear whether such a group exists. A similar name was used a year ago when Palestinian Arabs sought to grab some of the 'glory' from the massacre of high school students in Jerusalem Merkaz Harav seminary.

The Lev Hamifratz (literally "heart of the bay") shopping mall is a transport hub, located adjacent to a major train station with lines running north to Nahariya and south to Tel Aviv, and next to the Mifratz Central Bus Station, between Haifa's Krayot northern suburbs and Haifa itself. The building has 3 floors of stores, a food court, an underground parking garage, and an above ground parking garage.

Saturday nights are the busiest of the week, as they are for malls throughout Israel. Which makes them the ideal strategic target for jihadist barbarians with access to explosives.

Coping with the dangers posed by this sort of routine terrorism depends on there being adequate awareness of the facts. Sadly, the absence of dead and maimed Israelis almost certainly means this latest near-atrocity will go largely unreported outside Israel.

19-Mar-09: Kauft Nicht Bei Juden

The author of the letter below (reproduced here with his permission), a member of the faculty at one of Israel's first-rate universities, says what needs to be heard, in a straightforward and powerful way.

Open Letter to Boycotting British Scientists
Emeritus Professor Kenneth Preiss
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
17 March 2009

When the German government of the 1930's forbad the teaching of "Jewish science" such as relativity, they were operating rationally within their perverted frame of logic. In a rationality accepted by most of the public, including scientists, Jews had been deemed to be a pestilent menace. For the sake of humanity they needed to be eliminated from every aspect of society, and the urgency of this mission took precedence over the search for scientific truth.

This policy was based on a lie, and we know now that in its treatment of the Jews, Germany lobotomized itself. Germany has to this day not returned to the standing it had then in the scientific world. It does not escape attention that a country that in the 1920's was at the pinnacle of scientific achievement, by the 1940's had plunged to the lowest depths of vile, cruel and immoral wickedness. If this happened in Germany, it can happen elsewhere.

This is what comes to mind when I hear of the proposal to boycott the presentation of Israeli scientists at the venerable Science Museum near my fondly remembered alma mater of Imperial College. Israelis are tired of justifying themselves to the world. Israelis, both as individuals and as a society, do much for the less fortunate of the world and they do so because this is their character, not for approval of others.

Despite the ongoing quest by the Arabs to destroy Israel, this includes infrastructural, medical, trade, scientific and cultural assistance to many, including the Palestinians – a group that has brought upon themselves much suffering but manages to convince a willing world that its problems are due to others. This is not the place to amplify upon this matter that has been written about abundantly elsewhere. In today's world many people prefer to remain ignorant of that reality. It is enough to wander around any Israeli hospital, enquire where the staff and patients come from, and see the equality of treatment each gets, irrespective of whether they are Jews or Arabs.

Free and honest debate would show that Israel treats the Palestinians better than any other nation would, including the British. The Palestinians have much to thank Israel for, even though mendacity about this subject seems to fill the airwaves, the Internet and newspapers. As for the mini-war in Gaza I cannot recall a conflict in which the party attacked and defending itself adhered so assiduously to the laws of war while the aggressor so blatantly disregarded those laws. In the Orwellian reports of that war the roles have been reversed.

The text below shows the process we observed in the 1930's and where it led, and the parallel process observed today.

In 1929 a very serious global financial crisis started.
In 2008 a very serious global financial crisis started.

Over the next decade a medium sized power (Germany) armed in contravention of international agreements, threatened its neighbors, and used latent and overt hate of the Jews locally and world-wide to strengthen its standing.
A medium sized power (Iran) is arming in contravention of international agreements, threatens its neighbors, and uses latent and overt hate of the Jews locally and world-wide to strengthen its standing.

The world powers, led by England, tried to convince Germany to cease its threats. Appeasement did not work.
The world powers try to convince Iran to cease its arming and its threats. Appeasement is not working.

At the end of the decade a world war started that lasted 6 years and in which 56,000,000 people, 2.2% of a world population of 2,500,000,000, died.
Does history repeat itself? If so, 150,000,000 people, 2.2% of the world's current population of 6,700,000,000 , will die.

In the decade leading to World War 2 there were those who said that war was inevitable, but no one anticipated, nor could even imagine, the enormous scale and cruel depravity inherent in that catastrophe.
There are those who say that war is now inevitable, but even they do not anticipate, nor can they imagine, the enormous scale and cruel depravity that would be inherent in that catastrophe.

We understand in retrospect the process that led to the tragedy called World War 2. Had that prior process not existed, the trigger that included Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain, Churchill and Poland would never have materialized. We do not know whether we are now in a process that could lead to over 100 million cruel deaths, and if we are we certainly do not know what will trigger that war.

In light of the proposed boycott of Israeli scientists it is worth remembering that it was difficult for German scientists to oppose the boycott of Jewish scientists in the face of German public opinion. Had they done so the chain of events that led to World War 2 may have been diverted. If indeed we are now in a process where eventually an unpredictable event will trigger the tragedy of World War, you the boycotting British scientists, probably unsuspectingly, will have been part of that process.

You have stepped onto the slippery slope.

14-Mar-09: While everyone's looking the other way: missiles keep being fired into Israel

Two rockets, and perhaps more than 2, landed on Israeli soil this evening. Ynet calculates that this brings the number of rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets, mainly in Israel's south, since the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza to about 100. (In a separate calculation, the New York Times on Wednesday said the total then was 160, including mortars.)

One of tonight's rockets landed near a kibbutz. Another struck an open area south of the city of Ashkelon.

Yesterday, Friday, three additional Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian Arab terrorists with Israeli-civilian-only targets in mind, shooting from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, landed in areas known to Israelis as the Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol regional councils.

Yesterday's edition of the Christian Science Monitor puts the current situation in a rare perspective (see "Israeli town copes with return of near daily rockets"). Rare, that is, in the sense that mostly the mainstream media are ignoring the effects of the steady barrages directed from Gaza by Palestinian Arab terror groups against Israeli civilian communities.

And when they don't ignore it, it's in order to make disingenuous comparisons between the lopsided death toll on the Israeli side, and the number of deaths of Gazan Arabs resulting from Israeli military intervention this past December and January. Jimmy Carter's disgraceful, error-laden January opinion piece in the Washington Post is a good example.

This ongoing war in which rockets, mortars and other forms of lethal flying explosives are hurled into our towns and homes requires hard-eyed examination of the realities on the ground. The Hamas terrorist regime in control of Gaza does what it does because it receives constant encouragement and support from outside, allowing it to turn Gaza into one of the world's most miserable locales. The jihadists who stand at its head have been successful at almost nothing other than sacrificing the children and lives of the populace under their control in the name of religiously-inspired, endless war against Israel. More foreign aid has been delivered per capita to the Palestinian Arabs than to any other population in history. The outcome has been pathetic, tragic.

A meeting of select Western governments in London on Friday has evidently decided to prevent the Hamas regime from getting access to additional weaponry. Members of NATO (the US, Canada, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Norway) say they will "share more intelligence information, exert more diplomatic pressure and intercept more weapons shipments coming over land and by sea to Gaza". We'll see.

The Hamas terrorists have reacted exactly as terrorists do. They say ("Hamas vows to continue smuggling weapons") the plan will fail, and they will continue to smuggle arms by whatever means into their territory. To the credit of the jihadist savages, they have never minced words. They say what they mean. Unfortunately too many of the people and governments hearing them either confuse their own wishful thinking for serious analysis. Or, like the mullah-directed regime in Iran, they sympathize and actively collaborate.

13-Mar-09: On lying down with dogs

The New York Times is reporting today that the Obama administration is "puzzled" that Britain is "re-establishing contact with the political wing of the militant group Hizbullah".

"The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said the British government had informed the “previous administration” of its diplomatic overture, suggesting that the Obama administration felt somewhat blindsided by the initiative. The United States, the official said, wanted Britain to explain “the difference between the political, social and military wings of Hezbollah because we don’t see the difference between the integrated leadership that they see.”

The trouble with having an inconsistent policy in relation to terror organizations - like Hamas and Fatah - that get involved in conventional politics is that you end up confusing your citizens and your allies and, no less, yourself.

The issues that arise are unpleasant to the point of being deeply offensive. In the case of Hezbollah, for instance, the American official:

objected to the glorification in the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut of Imad Mugnieh, a Hezbollah commander who was killed in a car bombing in February 2008 that the movement blamed on Israel. "For years Hezbollah denied having any knowledge of Imad Mugnieh, for years Hezbollah pretended that Imad Mugnieh and that whole era of Hezbollah was not really Hezbollah, it was something else," the official said. "And now all over south Beirut are all these posters extolling the virtues of Imad Mugnieh," said the official of the man who made America's most wanted list for his role in anti-US and anti-Israeli attacks in the 1980s and 1990s. When a journalist suggested he did not sound happy with the British decision, he replied: "No."

The threat posed by the terrorists to civilized societies all over the globe demands that people in power get this right. Getting it consistently wrong, as for instance the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has done in its six year-long "intensive investigation" of Iran is not a more politically-motivated error. It's an existential disaster in the making.

Ongoing glorification of barbarism, and of the savages (like the man who murdered our child and his numerous accomplices) and jihadists who perpetrate it, are part and parcel of the process of pretending that groups like Hamas and Fatah have conventional, civilized legitimacy. We allow this to continue to happen at our mortal peril. The British government owes an explanation for its moral blindness to more than just its own citizens, but at least to them.

12-Mar-09: Neighbourhood watch

A small reminder of what it means to be living side by side with a culture - that of the Palestinan Arabs in the era of Hamas and Fatah - that constantly encourages and nurtures acts of personal terrorism.

Alert police tonight (Wednesday) here in Jerusalem spotted a terrorist en route to carry out a stabbing. Haaretz says the would-be martyr is a young woman and that, as happens frequently, she confessed her plan on being arrested. She was spotted in Jerusalem's Old City near the entrance to the Temple Mount, with an essential item of religious worship on her body: a kitchen knife like those used in so many previous killings of Israelis. Two police officers patrolling the area spotted her, recovered the knife and took her into custody.

Three days ago, on Monday, Israeli police arrested two young Arab men carrying a commando knife in the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood of Jerusalem. They too admitted their plan to carry out a stabbing attack on Israelis.

Terrorism like these acts rarely gets reported outside Israel.

9-Mar-09: "I was born into a Bedouin tribe..."

The myth of Israel's discriminatory "apartheid" policies is being aggressively peddled throughout the world by its enemies. Most of those who buy this popular canard are entirely ignorant of the truth about Israeli society. They have never heard about the equal opportunities and rights enjoyed by Israelis of myriad races, religions and creeds. Additionally, most of those who embrace this myth are clueless about the repressive and dictatorial governments ruling in every one of Israel's neighbors. Worse, these critics of Israel make no effort to remedy their ignorance.

Israeli Jews who attempt to inject some truth into the "apartheid" debate are dismissed as biased. Hence, the following defense of Israel's civil rights is invaluable. It is written by a very brave Arab Israeli. Unafraid of breaking ranks with most of his brethren, he publicly sings Israel's praises.

Lost in the blur of slogans
Ishmael Khaldi
Wednesday, March 4, 2009

For those who haven't heard, the first week in March has been designated as Israel Apartheid Week by activists who are either ill intentioned or misinformed. On American campuses, organizing committees are planning happenings to once again castigate Israel as the lone responsible party for all that maligns the Middle East.

Last year, at UC Berkeley, I had the opportunity to "dialogue" with some of the organizers of these events. My perspective is unique, both as the vice-consul for Israel in San Francisco, and as a Bedouin and the highest-ranking Muslim representing the Israel in the United States. I was born into a Bedouin tribe in Northern Israel, one of 11 children, and began life as shepherd living in our family tent. I went on to serve in the Israeli border police, and later earned a master's degree in political science from Tel Aviv University before joining the Israel Foreign Ministry.

I am a proud Israeli - along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deals honestly. By any yardstick you choose - educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay's rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation - Israel's minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East.

So, I would like to share the following with organizers of Israel Apartheid week, for those of them who are open to dialogue and not blinded by a hateful ideology:

1) You are part of the problem, not part of the solution: If you are really idealistic and committed to a better world, stop with the false rhetoric. We need moderate people to come together in good faith to help find the path to relieve the human suffering on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Vilification and false labeling is a blind alley that is unjust and takes us nowhere.

2) You deny Israel the fundamental right of every society to defend itself: You condemn Israel for building a security barrier to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and for striking at buildings from which missiles are launched at its cities - but you never offer an alternative. Aren't you practicing yourself a deep form of racism by denying an entire
society the right to defend itself?

3) Your criticism is willfully hypocritical: Do Israel's Arab citizens suffer from disadvantage? You better believe it. Do African Americans 10 minutes from the Berkeley campus suffer from disadvantage - you better believe it, too. So should we launch a Berkeley Apartheid Week, or should we seek real ways to better our societies and make opportunity more available?

4)You are betraying the moderate Muslims and Jews who are working to achieve peace: Your radicalism is undermining the forces for peace in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. We are working hard to move toward a peace agreement that recognizes the legitimate rights of both Israel and the Palestinian people, and you are tearing down by falsely vilifying one side.

To the organizers of Israel Apartheid Week I would like to say: If Israel were an apartheid state, I would not have been appointed here, nor would I have chosen to take upon myself this duty. There are many Arabs, both within Israel and in the Palestinian territories who have taken great courage to walk the path of peace. You should stand with us, rather than against us.

This article appeared last week in the San Francisco Chronicle.

5-Mar-09: Bull

It's difficult to convey to people living far from here just how appalling, sickening, infuriating it is when hate-driven terrorism happens again and again and again and again. The lessons are so clear to those of us living under its influence - and evidently so baffling to many of those who do not.

This afternoon (Thursday), the calm routine of our home town of Jerusalem was brutally assailed again. And again it was done by an ordinary-looking Palestinian Arab operating a bulldozer and driven by a grotesque, jihadist version of Islam.

A man called Marei Radaydeh, a construction worker in his mid-20s who lived with his wife and young child in Beit Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem just a few minutes from our home, was killed by alert police and passers-by around 1 o'clock today.

The killing saved many lives because it happened while this man called Marei, a Koran on the seat next to him according to Haaretz which quoted Israel Police, was furiously engaged in ramming his yellow construction vehicle into the people traveling inside cars and buses on the city's main freeway, just a short walk from its main shopping center.

This man called Marei brought his bulldozer (he was its registered owner - certainly not a poor man or a desperate man, just a hatred-filled man) all the way across Jerusalem, along the Menachem Begin freeway.

He used the bulldozer's front blade to flip over a first vehicle, continuing along the road at high speed while dragging the car and its occupants (who fortunately escaped serious injury). Then he turned his attentions to a bus which, unknown to him, was without passengers. He would have continued, but several armed Israelis from different directions used their weapons to send the man to his virgins.

This was the fourth bulldozer attack by Palestinian Arabs against ordinary Israelis in less than 12 months.

• In July 2008, a Palestinian Arab went on a rampage on Jaffa Road, using his bulldozer;s front blade to crush several people, killing three and injuring dozens more. He was shot dead at the scene.
• Two weeks later, a Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem carried out a similar attack, wounding at least 24 people. He was shot dead at the scene.
• In September 2008, another Palestinian Arab from Jerusalem plowed his car into a crowd of young soldiers on their way to a ceremony at the Western Wall. He was shot dead at the scene.

Reminding us of why they are terrorists, the Hamas regime that rules Gaza issued a statement this afternoon praising the savage and his actions. This was a "natural response" to Israeli actions, the Hamas spokesthug said, providing a useful insight into how a society ruled by a religious clique formulates its morality. Can heart-tugging pictures of the noble martyr's widow, child, grandmother and dog be far behind? (Sadly no. See below.)

And reminding us why the "moderates" of the Mahmoud Abbas regime are anything but moderate, their information minister said today the terror attack in Jerusalem was a mere "traffic accident". Though it sounds like a Saturday Night Live routine, the Fatah flack next demanded an investigation into why the driver had been shot. It's highly likely the UN Security Council will very shortly accommodate him.

The late, distinguished Israeli diplomat Abba Eban understood the black humour of being surrounded by fanatical enemies for whom reality was whatever they demanded it to be, and whatever the media would be willing to swallow. If an Arab state introduced a resolution at the UN declaring the earth was flat, said Eban, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions along with a declaration that Israel had flattened it.

Eban might have smiled to see global news networks like AFP, describing today's attempted mass murder as an act of "terror" - with the quotation marks reminding readers that it's really only the Israelis who think that's what it was.




Leave it to the mainstream media to scratch around for a sympathetic side to these stories of ordinary, hate-filled terrorism. You can't make this stuff up. Keep in mind this photo is now being syndicated to news media throughout the world, and is likely to become the image that untold numbers of news consumers will associate with the cold-blooded attack on a Jerusalem road today.

1-Mar-09: More

Having just viewed BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen interview Tony Blair on BBC World news in Gaza, and finding ourselves seething over the sadly familiar tone of "look what those rapacious Israelis have done to the poor Gazans yet again", we find it necessary to remind our readers of this morning's news, and yesterday's and last week's etc etc.

Yet another Gazan-Palestinian Qassam rocket launched from Hamas-controlled territory exploded in Israel this morning, this time on the Ashkelon beach.

Yesterday (Saturday) ten additional Gazan-Palestinian Hamas missiles were fired into Israel from the barbarian regime's armed camp. These brought the total number of explosive projectiles hurled at Israeli civilians from Gaza since the start of the absurdly-named "truce" to more than 60.