27-May-15: The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever

The headline from Aljazeera's coverage of
the October 2014 donor conference in Cairo posed a question
to which we now have the answer [Image Source]

Money, who has it and who does not, along with the corruption that accompanies it, and the frequent silliness of those providing it, play a key role in the terrorism that has long been at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict.

Exactly half a year ago, we wrote ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"] that Hamas had emerged as the world's second wealthiest terror organization; its annual income is on the order of a billion US dollars. 

Along with the wealth controlled by the organization itself, its kleptocratic, blood-stained leadership [details here: "27-Jul-14: Gaza's death toll keeps rising but for Hamas insiders it's all worth it"] has made out like thieves - in particular Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashaal who despite their lowly origins are generally reckoned today to be personal billionaires. As we said last November, invoking one of the world's wealthiest despots, Arafat would have admired their cynical brazenness.

An  International Donor Conference convened in Cairo on October 12, 2014 to tap into the willingness of Gaza's (and Hamas') friends to fund a full recovery. As the BBC reported back then ["Gaza reconstruction facing obstacles despite aid"], the fund-raiser was an incredible success. The organizers had hoped to raise $4 billion, but ended with pledges to Gaza of an incredible $5.4 billion, 

a powerful signal that help was at hand... [A]bout half has been earmarked for the direct repair of war-damage - the reconstruction of buildings, roads, electricity supply lines and sewerage systems. It is not immediately clear how the rest of the money will be spent - but Gaza has no shortage of needs.

Whether clear or not, the Donor Conference website took a shot, so to speak, at clarifying the goals of the money-raising effort which were

to strengthen the basis of the ceasefire and improving political solution prospects for the conflict through (i) Strengthening the Palestinian government's ability to assume its responsibility in the rehabilitation of Gaza Strip. (ii) Enhancing the existing UN mechanism for import and export of goods and materials to and from Gaza. (iii) Providing the financial support required for reconstructing Gaza Strip.

Worthy ambitions. And you have to take your hat off in recognition of the donors' selfless generosity. Some of them may be astronomically wealthy but let's give credit where it's due: they really wanted to help. Their fraternal ties to the Arabs of the Gaza Strip provided a powerful incentive to do the right thing. As we noted, major pledges of funding came from Qatar ($1bn). Saudi Arabia ($500m), Turkey ($200m), United Arab Emirates ($200m), the European Union ($568m), the United States ($212m) and the United Kingdom ($32m).

Now it's six months later, and here's what we know. It comes from IRIN, an agency that used to be part of the United Nations, and is now an independent provider of 

unique, authoritative and independent reporting from the frontlines of crises to inspire and mobilise a more effective humanitarian response.

In a report datelined May 22, 2015, it updates us on what happened to all that Gaza-bound generosity.

As of late April, donors had given only 27.5 percent of the promised $3.5 billion, or $967 million... Gulf Arab states and Turkey have spectacularly failed to fulfill their pledges to Gaza...  Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait between them have handed over just over $50 million of the $900 million they pledged, according to a new World Bank report... IRIN asked Saudi Arabian, Qatari and Kuwaiti representatives for comment, but had not received responses by the time of publication... The release of the World Bank’s numbers comes a month after UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that not a single one of the more than 5,000 completely destroyed homes in Gaza had been rebuilt...  [IRIN, May 22, 2015]

Qatar is spending tens of billions of dollars on getting ready to host the 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup. Of the $1 billion it pledged to its Gazan brothers, it has delivered 10 percent. The Saudi Arabians have produced just one-tenth of the $500 million they promised. Turkey pledged $200 million and has sent $520,000. Kuwait, not to be outdone, also pledged $200 million - and has not sent a penny.

Such vast failure; such trivial media coverage [Image Source]

The unimaginably rich United Arab Emirates said it was giving $200 million; the World Bank says it has no data for how much arrived. But the United States which pledged $277 million has handed over 84% of that. The European Union promised $348 million, and 40% has shown up so far which, compared with the Arabs, is not too shabby.

(Essentially the same thing happened when the previous Gaza donor conference took place in 2009. See "10-Aug-14: Only a fraction of the Gaza reconstruction cash arrived last time, says Hamas insider".)

This might be a good time to remind ourselves of who does, and who does not, fund the world's strangest refugee organization, UNRWA: see "20-Nov-13: It's Wednesday. Time for yet another UNRWA funding crisis". Clue: if you're looking for Arab participation in the sharing of the financial burden, bring a magnifying glass. It's an open scandal, and an education for anyone wanting to comprehend the rank hypocrisy that has been part of the Arab world's "support" for the Palestinian Arab side in the conflict for the past several generations.

Which brings us to this evening and the fact that all of Israel came to a very nervous standstill this evening (Tuesday) around 9:00 pm when incoming-rocket sirens suddenly wailed all over our tiny country's south, indicating a rocket attack from Gaza.

Impoverished or not, money that enables the building of rockets, tunnels and luxury homes for the arch-terrorists who control the place is, was and probably always will be available in generous servings because, at the end of the day, they are what Hamas stands for.

Not for the first time, it's evident [as this post of ours makes plain: "6-Jul-14: For Hamas, Fatah and the PA, those rockets are about money, power, foreign aid and (naturally) corruption"] that the death and mayhem that results from Islamist hatred and jihad has cash at its heart.

And what of the rights, the interests, the well-being of the Gazans? We estimate they rank about as high up the ladder of Arab concern as the safety and security of  the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Libyans and the countries they lived in until mind-numbingly vicious Arab-on-Arab savagery descended upon them.

21-Dec-13: Twenty-five years later, what have we actually learned about Lockerbie?

At today's Scottish memorial ceremony in Dryfesdale cemetery
to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Lockerbie
[Image Source]

Twenty-five years ago, on December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 en route from London to New York City exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew on board were killed, as were 11 people on the ground. Memorial ceremonies are being held today in the UK and the United States.

A Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was charged, tried and convicted in 2001 of being involved in the plot to cause an explosion and kill a large number of innocent travelers. The trial court heard that he placed a suitcase containing the bomb on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt; it was then transferred onto a flight into Heathrow London airport, and then placed on the ill-fated Pan Am 103 where it was detonated half an hour after the flight took off for New York. Megrahi was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and reputed to be in the service of Libya's state intelligence agency. 

Convicted by unanimous decision of the three-judge court, he was sentenced to life imprisonment but freed from prison in August 2009 under a Scottish law permitting the early release on compassionate grounds of prisoners with less than three months to live. He received a hero's welcome courtesy of the Ghadaffi regime that still controlled Libya at the time, and died three years later in 2012, insisting throughout that he was innocent of all charges.

David Horovitz of Times of Israel reviews the history of conspiracy theories that have been part of the Lockerbie story virtually from the day of the attack in an article published this past Thursday ["Palestinian group carried out Lockerbie bombing"] and quotes a highly-placed but anonymous Israeli source

a former senior member of the Israeli security establishment [who] said he was certain the bombing was carried out by Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command... Israel was “listening in” during the months prior to the December 21, 1988 bombing on preparations for what “we thought was a plan to target an Israeli plane” and that it was “clear that Jibril prepared the operation.” [Times of Israel]

Horovitz clarifies that his source seems to accept that Libya commissioned the attack and that

Several Israeli prime ministers and former heads of the Mossad intelligence service have told this reporter over the years that it is their belief that the Libyans instigated the bombing.

Jibril, born in 1938, is alive and, according to reports, living in Syria today.

There has long been ample evidence [Wikipedia offers some here] of Ghadaffi's Libya being deeply involved in terrorist outrages including the conviction in absentia by a French court of six Libyans, some of them known operatives in their country's intelligence services, for their role in the September 1989 bomb attack on French UTA Flight 772, a year after the Lockerbie disaster. A BBC report, "UTA 772: The forgotten flight", published on August 19, 2003, reminds us that the evidence in that 1989 attack showed how the evidence pointed back to Libya and to the use of materials very similar to those that brought down Pan Am 103.

Libya never admitted formal responsibility for either of the two aircraft bombings and the deaths they caused. What it did do was accept "responsibility for the actions of its officials" and in October 2008 paid $1.5 billion into a compensation fund for the victims. A New York Times report from 2003 ["Libya Admits Culpability in Crash of Pan Am Plane"] notes that Libya's confession came in the form of a letter expressed

in general language that lacked any expression of remorse for the 270 lives lost when the plane exploded... one of the most notorious acts of terrorism in modern times. [NYT]

French terror victims sought to get a legal verdict against Ghadaffi himself, personally, in the special court in Paris that had found the six absent Libyans guilty. But they failed on the outrageous grounds that as a head of state he enjoyed immunity from prosecution.

The reports of today's memorial ceremonies contain the customary uplifting language often deployed by public officials when confronted with terrorism's victims. Today's BBC report ["Lockerbie bombing: Investigation vow on anniversary"] is typical of the genre:

The UK, US and Libyan governments have vowed to work together to reveal "the full facts" of the Lockerbie bombing which claimed 270 lives. The administrations also expressed their deep condolences to the families of the victims. The announcement came in a joint statement as memorial events were held on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. They said they wanted "all those responsible for this most brutal act of terrorism brought to justice".

Speaking for the UK, prime minister David Cameron referred today in poetic tones to those directly affected by the Lockerbie bombing:

"Over the last quarter of a century much attention has been focused on the perpetrators of the atrocity. Today our thoughts turn to its victims and to those whose lives have been touched and changed by what happened at Lockerbie that night. To families, friends, neighbours, loved ones, and all those caught up in the painful process of recovery, let us say to them: our admiration for you is unconditional. For the fortitude and resilience you have shown. For your determination never to give up. You have shown that terrorist acts cannot crush the human spirit. That is why terrorism will never prevail." [AFP]

In a ceremony today on the other side of the ocean, former FBI Director Robert Mueller said:

"You created light out of darkness, and out of that light has come a lasting legacy... We mark your strength... May the thought of your loved ones bring a smile to your lips." [CNN]

The intentions behind such lofty, nicely-formed statements are probably good and pure. But to our ears, they have the character of the mantras delivered on auto-pilot at public commemorations wherever terror victims are assembled. We who have witnessed convicted (frequently self-confessed and proud) terrorists walk free or evade capture and the high-handed way in which politicians have acted with minimal regard for the victims and for basic principles of justice, know that it is not by their speeches that public figures are to be judged. Only their actions matter.

We know many of the Lockerbie families have similar feelings:

“We relatives need the truth about who murdered our families,” veteran Lockerbie campaigner, Jim Swire, whose eldest daughter died the attack, wrote in the Scotsman newspaper this week. “While that truth is hidden, the true perpetrators are protected."  [Christian Science Monitor, December 20, 2013]

We have written here several times in recent months about how the political figures of the US State Department have conducted themselves concerning terrorists at moments when it really matters. The US has applied unrelenting pressure on Israel since the summer to release 104 convicts (52 have already walked free) as an inducement to the Palestinian Authority to do something or other. See "15-Dec-13: Confirmed by Kerry: More unrepentant killers to walk free in two weeks"] for a review of the events leading up to the latest such exercise in grotesquerie scheduled for December 29, 2013.

On that date, barring any totally-unexpected changes of plan, 26 more convicted and imprisoned killers, the third such group since August, is going to be put on buses by their Israeli jailers and sent off to the PA and Hamas where they will be received in gala celebrations honoring the heroism that brought them to, for instance, hack elderly and unarmed Holocaust survivors to death. 

As sickening as this sounds, State - presided over by Secretary John Kerry - remains officially incapable of taking a position on whether those killers - the convicted murderers of elderly pensioners, of US citizens, of women, of children, of fellow Arabs - who are about to walk free are (a) freedom fighters, (b) political prisoners or (c) terrorists? Skeptics and doubters are invited to click here to see why we say these things.

What is it about terrorism that makes some politicians in some Western countries speak simultaneously out of both sides of their mouths?

3-Aug-13: Prison breaks and terror threats

Indonesian police secure entrance to burning prison
compound in Medan, July 11, 2013 [Image Source: CNN]

Following on from what we posted here Friday ["2-Aug-13: That war against "terrorism"? How well are we doing, exactly?"], Interpol issued an alert today advising its 190 members to step up vigilance in the wake of a wave of prison breaks involving hundreds of terrorists and other criminals in 9 countries which "may be linked". These took place (among other locations) in

• Libya: More than 1,100 prisoners escaped from a facility on the outskirts of Benghazi on July 27 [NYTimes report] following a wave of political assassinations and attacks on political offices across the country
• Iraq: An overnight jail-break on July 22 in which 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda terrorists, escaped from Abu Ghraib [NPR report]
• Iraq: Also July 22, Taji prison, north of Baghdad, was attacked by forces of The Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella group for al-Qaeda in Iraq [Al Jazeera report] with numerous deaths and many prisoners freed
• Pakistan: A high quality military-style operation on July 31 in which, says NPR, Taliban forces numbering around 100 (or the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a Pakistani affiliate of al-Qaeda, according to RT) armed with explosives and automatic weapons attacked the central prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan freeing (depending on who is to be believed) between 175 and 300 prisoners, among them 35 "high-profile militants". Al Jazeera correspondent Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Islamabad, said that the infiltrators "were using loudspeakers and calling the individual names of inmates to come out of the badly damaged prison." Ahead of the prison break, officials received a letter threatening such action, but according to the head of the local prison department Khalid Abbas, "they didn't expect it so soon."
• Indonesia: BBC says 100 prisoners escaped (while CNN says "hundreds") on July 12 from Tanjung Gusta prison in Medan, Sumatra. Nine of them are reported to be terrorists.

Reuters says the Interpol warning refers to the anniversaries of several violent attacks over the past years during the coming month, including in Mumbai and Nairobi. Though they don't mention it, August 9 is the twelfth anniversary of Hamas' showcase attack on the Sbarro restaurant in central Jerusalem.

8-Dec-11: Syria: Terrible situation. Can't get worse... can it?

Syria's president in the company of another
regional despot, now no longer in office. [Note: this
photo is taken from the self-adulatory website
of Assad himself - here]

The website of The Atlantic carries an analysis entitled "U.S. Closely Monitoring Syria's Chemical Weapons Stockpile" by Rachel Oswald.

Sub-titled "Some officials fear Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could use the weapons against protesters. What happens if he does?", the article opens by arguing that what's happening in Syria is causing dyspepsia in Washington:

The United States is quietly but closely monitoring the status of Syria's large chemical-weapons stockpile amid fears that the regime of autocratic ruler Bashar al-Assad could use the warfare agents to quell continued political protests or divert the materials to extremist groups that operate in the region... The United States is believed to have prepared contingency plans for dealing with Syria's toxic arsenal should it appear that the regime is about to use the weapons or pass them to affiliated extremist organizations such as Hezbollah. Syria is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It has also never publicly declared to the international community its chemical arsenal, which is understood to comprise hundreds of tons of nerve and blister agents, its doctrine for using such weapons or their exact capabilities. Still, Syria's status as a chemical-weapons possessor is widely accepted as fact."

But then something odd:

"The Middle Eastern state is not known to have ever used those materials, which date back to the 1970s... Most analysts believe that Damascus developed them as a deterrent to outside attack, namely from Israel, and not for use against the Syrian people"

which is of course comforting to The Atlantic's readers. Less so to us.

But how true is it?

In February 1982, the Syrian army, under the orders of Hafez al-Assad, the father of today's Syrian president, conducted a huge attack on the people of Hama, a Syrian city, to suppress a revolt by its Sunni Muslims. The Syrian Human Rights Committee quotes reports that Assad's forces used "containers of cyanide gas to kill all inhabitants of buildings, where rebels were suspected of residing". And the Wikipedia article on the Hama massacre quotes Amnesty International saying that

"the Syrian military bombed the old city center from the air to facilitate the entry of infantry and tanks through the narrow streets; buildings were demolished by tanks during the first four days of fighting. Large parts of the old city were destroyed. There are also unsubstantiated reports of use of hydrogen cyanide by the government forces..."

Unsubstantiated reports? They're a key component of the Syrian story down through the decades owing to the Syrian government's repressive policies. 

In 1963, with the Baath Party coup, all independent papers were banned. In 1970, when Hafez al-Assad gained power, he extended the government's control of the press to complete dominance in all areas... Syrian attitude toward foreign media ranges from disgruntled toleration to hostile. Toleration is accorded so long as the press/media tend not to publish/broadcast any negative stories concerning anything related to Syria. However, as negative stories are often produced, papers are banned, broadcast signals are jammed, and individual journalists are harassed. [Source: PressReference.com]

This is why we never see CNN or France24 reporters speaking to us live from Damascus or any other Syrian location. 

The Atlantic's report leaves readers in no doubt as to the general capacity of the Syrian regime, under Assad the Second, to do massive harm to its own citizens and those of its neighbors. The government

"has earned a reputation for brutality toward its own people. More than 4,000 Syrians have been killed in the political uprising that began this past spring, according to the United Nations. The rising body count has U.S. officials and analysts worried that if the Syrian leadership feels besieged and without other options, it could revise its calculus on the use of chemical weapons against Syrian army defectors and protesters... Syria's chemical-weapons program is considerably larger than Libya's... Syria's chemical-weapons program is understood to be comprised of four production facilities, at al-Safira, Hama, Homs, and Latakia, along with two munitions storage sites at Khan Abu Shamat and Furqlus. Additionally, there is a chemical-weapons research laboratory near Damascus... The Assad regime is thought to possess between 100 and 200 Scud missiles carrying warheads loaded with sarin nerve agent. The government is also believed to have several hundred tons of sarin agent and mustard gas stockpiled that could be used in air-dropped bombs and artillery shells."

8-Nov-11: Get ready for a long Arab winter

Cairo's central square - 25th January 2011. You have to be brave or
polyannish to not see the rolling tide of Islamism that has steam-rollered
the so-called Arab Spring

Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal this past week, tells some home truths about the role that Islamism is playing in the over-optimistically-named Arab Spring. It's entitled "Why Islamists Are Winning: When secular politics fail, Islamism is the last big idea standing". Some extracts:

• Europe's foremost authority on political Islam, in an essay published days after Hosni Mubarak was forced from power in February[wrote] "Look at those involved in the uprisings, and it is clear that we are dealing with a post-Islamist generation"...
• "I am not in the least bit worried about the Muslim Brotherhoods in Jordan or Egypt hijacking the future," confided New York Times columnist Tom Friedman...
• Added his colleague Nicholas Kristof in a dispatch from Cairo: "I agree that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be a good ruler of Egypt, but that point of view also seems to be shared by most Egyptians."
• What reassurance. Nine months on, the Islamist Nahda party has swept to victory in Tunisia, the one Arab state in which secularist values were said to be irreversibly fixed. Libya's new interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, came to office promising "the Islamic religion as the core of our new government"; as a first order of business, he promises to revoke the Gadhafi regime's ban on polygamy since "the law is contrary to Shariah and must be stopped." Later this month, Islamist candidates—some of them Muslim Brothers, others even more religiously extreme—will likely sweep Egypt's parliamentary elections.
• It doesn't stop there. Hezbollah has effectively ruled Lebanon since it forced the collapse of a pro-Western government in January. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Islamist prime minister, cruised to a third term in parliamentary elections in June. Hamas, winner in the last vote held by the Palestinian Authority in 2006, would almost certainly win again if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dared put his government to an electoral test.
• [Why is this happening? asks Stephens.] Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis noted in an April interview that "freedom" is fairly novel as a political concept in the Arab world. "In the Muslim tradition, justice is the standard" of good government—and the very thing the ancien regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya so flagrantly traduced. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Erdogan's AK party stands for "Justice and Development," the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's new party is "Freedom and Justice" and, further afield, the leading Islamist party in Indonesia calls itself "Prosperous Justice."
• There is also the comprehensive failure of the Muslim world's secular movements to provide a better form of politics.
• That sour history leaves Islamism as the last big idea standing—and standing at a moment when tens of millions of young Muslims find themselves under-educated, semi- or unemployed, and uniquely receptive to a world view with deep historic roots and heroic ambitions.
• The good news is that after 31 years most Iranians have grown sick of Islam always being the answer, and the collapse of the regime awaits only the next ripe opportunity. The bad news is that a similar time-frame may be in store for the rest of the Muslim world, until it too becomes disenchanted with Islamist promises. Get ready for a long winter.

Stephens' essay is worth reading in full.

1-Mar-11: Finally, some sanity on European funding of Palestinian Arab terror

David Cameron, then leader of the British parliamentary
 opposition, greeted by Abbas of the Palestinian Authority
 and the image of his predecessor

From a major speech by the prime minister of the United Kingdom yesterday:

While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate peacefully: these are basic rights... They are not British or western values – but the values of human beings everywhere.
We need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region – at the billions of Euros of EU funds, at our trade relationship, at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies. And we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world.
Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.

Music to our ears! After decades of covert and overt channeling of torrents of cash into the hands of the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Arabs - finally a British leader who understands what untold harm has followed from this patronizing and thoroughly irresponsible largesse on the part of Whitehall, of the British parliament and - most of all - of the faceless Brussels bureaucracy of the EU.

More than four years ago, we wrote here ["6-Oct-06: Crying Poor: The Terror-Laden Rise and Rise of the Palestinian National Payroll"] about the disgraceful deeds of Christopher Patten who presided over an official European Commission program of sending huge sums of money into the Arafat kleptocracy while denying eloquently out of both sides of his mouth that anything, Heaven forfend, might be wrong with any of this.

How pleasant to read today the words of the UK government's head beating his chest in regret. Too late to bring back to life the thousands of innocent Israelis (our fifteen year old daughter among them) murdered by jihadist thugs and terrorist gangs - payrolled by the ocean of European and British money handed off year after year to the PA and Hamas despite all the evidence of their evil.

Wait.

Did we just have an unfortunate misunderstanding? That speech yesterday by David Cameron - was it actually about Libya and not the Palestinian Arabs?

What a pity.

11-Jan-08: Behind the polite public facade

Military and terrorist attacks against Israel have long been part - and only part - of the hostile environment in which we live. The international diplomatic sphere where the combatants prefer suits and ties over helmets and uniforms is frequently as poisonous and as hostile.

To illustrate: two Katyusha rockets were fired into northern Israel on Tuesday. The IDF, which has a pretty reliable track-record of figuring out where the shots are coming from, says they came from Lebanon. As we noted on Tuesday: "18 months ago, Katyushas were fired by the Lebanese-based, Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists nearly 4,000 times into northern Israeli towns and cities, killing 43 civilians and causing hundreds of thousands of Israelis to evacuate the region for several weeks."

So when Israel says these latest Katyushas came from Lebanon - probably fired by Israel's extremely well-equipped Hizbollah enemies, whose forces are dug in throughout southern Lebanon - this would be regarded by most people as self-evident and non-controversial.

But not necessarily if you're the diplomatic agent of an active player in the terrorism industry. Like for instance the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, one Giadalla Ettalhi.

This person became the president (the presidency rotates monthly among members based on alphabetical order in English) of the UN's Security Council ten days ago when Libya acquired a seat on the 15-member council; it will remain a member for two years. In the sessions over which Libya's man presided, Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Cohen led efforts for the past 48 hours to extract a condemnation of the rocket attack. He called it "a grave violation of UN resolution 1701 and a threat to world peace and security." That's the resolution that ended the 2006 war on our northern border.

But according to the New York Sun, Ettalhi, making the most of his new powers, resisted the adoption of a Security Council statement condemning the attack on Israel.

In the end, "after two days of hand-wringing" (see "Libyan Envoy Sparks Criticism at Security Council") the resolution passed earlier today. In it, the Council "strongly condemned the rocket attack launched against Israel on 8 January from Lebanon." In YNet's reporting of the story, Libya's efforts to curb the statement, claiming that the Security Council should instead denounce Israel's sorties over Lebanon, were rejected, and Ettalhi was forced to read out the statement himself.

Libya's recent return to international gatherings comes despite its involvement in the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. Two of its intelligence agents were convicted of engineering the murders and Libya was ordered to pay $2 million per victim as compensation. Far from the media's attention, the Lockerbie victim families say they have yet to receive what Libya is supposed to pay. The chairman of a group called Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 says Libya "should not be fully recognized as coming into civilized nations" until it pays up. The victims and their families unfortunately have no seat or voice at the Security Council.