4-Dec-10: Should this man be accorded the respect due to an objective, professional journalist?

Is Abdel al-Bari Atwan the kind of person who should be given
public platforms in highly prominent settings?  

As newspaper editors go, slick Abdel al-Bari Atwan gets more than the average amount of prominence.

Given the nature of his bluntly-expressed political views, he gets a surprising amount of respect from mainstream media channels including NPR, Sky News, CNN and the BBC (who call him Abdel-Bari Atwan) who host him frequently and which, for reasons which leave us wondering, present him as an objective observer on events in this part of the world.

Knowing what's on the public record (see an earlier blog article of ours: "16-Mar-08: The unindicted co-conspirators"), this might be surprising. He's far from objective as a cursory look at his output shows.

Mr. Atwan edits a London-based Arabic-language newspaper called Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The paper takes a robustly nationalistic Arab line and has several notable scoops to its name. In August 1996, it was the first to publish a fatwa, or declaration of war, "Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places". The author was Osama bin Laden.

In October 2003, after Atwan wrote that the hatred directed towards the United States by the Arab world is the fault of the United States itself, a US-based, Yemenite journalist and liberal columnist called Munir Al-Mawari who writes for another London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, made some interesting observations:

"The Abd Al-Bari Atwan [appearing] on CNN is completely different from the Abd Al-Bari Atwan on the Al-Jazeera network or in his Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily. On CNN, Atwan speaks solemnly and with total composure, presenting rational and balanced views. This is in complete contrast with his fuming appearances on Al-Jazeera and in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, in which he whips up the emotions of multitudes of viewers and readers."

We have been pondering those two faces of Atwan since learning that he is going to be honored by being invited to lecture publicly at the London School of Economics this coming Monday. (Source: "Terror supporting' Arabic-daily editor to speak at LSE")

The honor extended to this rather edgy journalist has aroused some controvery. Indeed, on his own personal website (the one where he describes himself as a "highly respected author" - and he would certainly know), Atwan claims at least some the uglier quotations attributed to him are false:

"I did not say any of the things listed on the Wikipedia site... They are false allegations, part of a smear campaign against me".

So in the interests of an open public record, and in the hope that someone attending the Atwan lecture in London might get the great man to go on the record and actually repudiate them, here are some Atwan statements that can be found in various online locations.

On one hand:

"I do not endorse or in any way support al-Qa'ida's agenda… I utterly condemn the attacks on innocent citizens in the West". [Source: The Secret History of Al-Qa'ida, Abdel Bari Atwan, Abacus (2006), ISBN 978-0-34-912035-5, p1]

On the other:

"The events of 11 September will be remembered as the end of the US empire. This is because all empires collapse when they pursue the arrogance of power."
Source: BBC

Sadam Hussein (who murdered countless numbers of Arabs and Iraqi Kurds) should be honored for preserving "the unity of Iraq, its Arab and Islamic identity and the coexistence of its different communities". Source: Africa News, December 31, 2006

In the case of war, Iran will retaliate against its Arab neighbors, American bases in the Gulf and "Allah willing, it will attack Israel, as well... If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."
Source: Wikipedia, referring to an interview in Arabic on Lebanese ANB television station, June 27, 2007 (also referred to in this Jerusalem Post article). The actual video clip (in Arabic with English subtitles) can be seen here. (Keep in mind that Atwan explicitly denies he said what is recorded in this video. He calls them "false allegations, part of a smear campaign".)

Atwan said the March 2008 point-blank, cold-blooded shooting-massacre by a Palestinian Arab gunman of eight unarmed high school students, most of them aged 15 or 16, at Jerusalem's Merkaz HaRav yeshiva "was justified." Their school is to blame, Atwan claims, by "hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists". Atwan says the celebrations in Gaza that followed the massacre symbolized "the courage of the Palestinian nation." Source: The Jerusalem Post

Depending on where you stand, justifying a terrorist massacre is not the worst of crimes. On the other hand, given what is at stake when it comes to defeating the practitioners of terror and their supporters, is Abdel al-Bari Atwan the kind of person who should be given public platforms in highly prominent settings?

Or is Abdel al-Bari Atwan simply the innocent victim of some atrocious misquoting?

18-Mar-08: The more Jewish the better in the haters' eyes

The Palestinian-Arab terrorists have long understood the emotive power of attacking visibly Jewish Jews. The more Jewish-looking, the more Jewish the nature of the target, the stronger the statement the haters are able to make.

There are strong parallels to this in our parents' and grandparents' generation as the pictures on the right and below remind us, and as the history of Arab complicity in the Nazi holocaust of the Jews demonstrates.

This morning, two weeks after a massacre of unarmed schoolchildren in a Jewish religious seminary in Jerusalem, a rabbi who teaches at one of the numerous yeshivot in the holy city of Jerusalem (why are Iranian and Iraqi cities routinely called holy in the mainstream media, but Jerusalem - holy to three religions - never?) was stabbed in broad daylight by a Palestinian-Arab terrorist who thrust a knife into his neck. The rabbi was rushed to Hadassah's Ein Kerem medical center where he is getting emergency treatment at this moment.

It's worth mentioning that in this practical, no-nonsense country, the practical, no-nonsense police are on heightened alert throughout Israel ahead of the festival Purim which starts at the end of this week. The thinking here - based on years of bitter experience with a callous and hate-driven enemy - is that the Palestinian-Arab dark forces are planning a terror attack to coincide with the holiday.

Very much their style to focus on Jewish holidays, Jewish institutions and Jewish symbolism as targets for their barbarism.

16-Mar-08: The unindicted co-conspirators

The frustration and sadness most Israelis feel in the face of acts of cold-blooded murder like the massacre of schoolboys (see "Terrorism. Their world. Our world.") at a religious seminary in Jerusalem is great.

Seeing how certain other people react makes those feelings even deeper.

Here's a striking example. The editor of an influential British Arab newspaper said yesterday that the celebrations in Gaza that followed the Merkaz Harav murders symbolized the "courage of the Palestinian nation." He is Abd al-Bari Atwan, the editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi (pictured at right). If, like us, you frequently tune in to BBC World or CNN or SKY News, you'll likely recognize him; he frequently appears on all of them as a "moderate" analyst on news emanating from the Arab world and the Israel/Arab conflict.

Far from being a moderate or objective observer, this highly prejudiced individual has a long track record of partisan and deeply offensive statements directed against Israelis. The winner of Honest Reporting's 2007 Annual Award for Worst Pundit, he attracted attention in April 2007 for saying: "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."

What does yesterday's Bari Atwan statement say about his own people?

If it's true that the courage of the Palestinians is best symbolized by an armed man, carrying an Israeli identification and with an Israeli pay-check in his pocket, walking into a school library and aiming his sophisticated and powerful weapons deliberately and coldly at children, then that "courage" is not courage at all but mere religiously-inspired hatred and zealotry.

How much "courage", in the conventional sense of the word, did it take? He's hardly the first person to commit an act of suicide - this takes no courage. And he is not the first to couple his courage with his hatred. History is filled with examples of the power of hatred. It is not a function of courage but the opposite. Whatever it was that enabled the murderer to carry out the massacre of unarmed children, courage is the last word you ought to be reaching for. In a civilized world, the brutal shooting of unarmed children in a school library ought to be the last quality a nationalist like Atwan would want to attach to his people. But we've learned that civilized categories of behaviour and of politics don't always apply when people like Atwan take the stage.

When you call this hatred courage, you are inspiring others to do the same thing. And precisely this kind of moral confusion is what stands at the heart of the world's struggle against terror. For while some parts of our civilized societies call for action against the terrorists wherever they are, other parts of our civilized societies are encouraging it and making it a "safe" and understandable choice.

This editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi says he will not condemn the Jerusalem murders. In fact he's quite frank about the fact that he's OK with the killings (see "Mercaz Harav attack was justified"). That's his choice; it's hardly controversial. He joins the United Nations Security Council which could have come out with a firm denunciation of the massacre last week, but somehow did not (see "Libya blocks condemnation of Jerusalem attack").

Condemnation by itself achieves nothing. It has to be accompanied by action. But a deliberate failure to condemn inhuman actions like the massacre of the students in the Merkaz Harav library is a powerful and meaningful statement. It encourages, justifies and legitimizes the action and ensures there will be more in the future.

This is more than a moral failure. It is a criminal act of incitement for which our civilized societies apply legal sanctions.

Unfortunately the moral confusion which accompanies terrorism today will ensure that this British Arab journalist and many others like him will not only not be subject to sanctions but will continue doing damage as invited, objective "moderates", politely given airtime by uncritical, unquestioning program presenters.

For this, it is not possible to forgive the operators of BBC, Sky, CNN, Australia's ABC and other major media channels. Without them, Atwan would be just another in a depressingly long line of spewing partisans on one side of a very bad-tempered argument. But by giving this spokesperson for terror with a global platform and equipping him with the credentials of moderation, they are complicit in an appalling process. It's a process that threatens not only the lives of Israelis and our neighbours but also people in other places which are targeted by the global jihadists.

In other words, everyone.

11-Mar-08: One tiny pinpoint of light in the smothering darkness

The barbaric murders (see "Carnage in the library") of Jewish students in Jerusalem's Merkaz Harav Yeshiva this past Thursday night, and the grief it produced in all parts of our society here, have been weighing heavily on us.

The loss of promising and innocent young lives is awful. There are no words.

But there are words - and we need to find them - to condemn the stunning silence of the vast ranks of Israel's perpetual critics in the UK, Europe and North America. In particular the silence of the academic and media elites of those places in the face of a brazen act of mass murder in the name of jihadism. That screaming silence is an indictment of their hypocrisy and animus.

Now from an unexpected quarter comes the kind of straight-talking self-criticism that is so notable by its absence in the Arab and Islamic world. A welcome development even if it's mainly notable for being so rare.

We're referring to an op-ed under the title "Hamas terrorism and (Hezbollah!)" in Kuwait’s Al-Watan newspaper today. So far, it's been mentioned in very few media reports; we heard it described on Israel radio's midday news today and went searching for it on the web. Google's machine-translation gave us an approximate sense of the writer's intent, subject to the usual confusion that comes with all machine translations. Arabic readers can find the full original text here.

Until MEMRI comes out with its customary first-rate professional translation, we'll borrow the summary that one Middle Eastern English-language site offered:

An “unprecedentedly harsh” opinion piece (Arabic) appears in Kuwait’s Al-Watan newspaper today, condemning the recent massacre at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem, and calling the attackers “terrorist” and the products of an “evil alliance”. Abdallah Al-Hadlaq calls the attack a “barbaric murder” and writes in his article that one can not negotiate “with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets." When 15-year-old students are gunned down while holding their holy books, when blood has to be mopped up off the floors of religious institutions, when eight families have to be told that their children’s schools have “floors covered in blood-soaked holy books” — the attackers are not heroes, and their attack should certainly never be praised as a “heroic operation”.

This is Babylon points out that Al-Hadlaq calls Hamas a terrorist organization - notable in itself. He goes further, referring to the Merkaz Harav massacre as having been carried out by an “evil Alliance” of Hamas and Hezbollah. These are unusual and rarely-heard views in the Arab world.

As welcome as anti-terrorism op-eds are in the Arab world, the fact that they do appear from time to time is proof that the Arab world could, but doesn't, speak out clearly against jihadism minus the usual ifs, ands or buts. It would be nice to think this Kuwaiti column is a sign of change. But it's not likely. Still, you have to admire the writer's courage. Let's hope he doesn't end up paying an unreasonable price.

11-Mar-08: After the carnage, questions for "moderates"

In a confusing and complex world, you can learn a great deal by understanding the process of glorification of individuals in someone else's culture.

Thursday night's massacre of teenage boys in a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem is the sort of watershed event that, when you analyze the reactions it generated, helps you understand the true nature of the forces at work. We don't like the expression "root causes" because of the way it's used polemically by too many people. But if there's a root cause for terrorism, hate-based education needs to be right up there as a contender.

Media observers and some politicians have for too long presented the Abbas/Fatah/PLO part of the Palestinian-Arab world as 'moderate'. How dishonest this is can be seen from the published and highly public reaction of the official daily voice of the Abbas party.

Mahmoud Abbas heads the Palestinian Authority. The PA puts out a daily newspaper called Al Hayat Al Jadida. None of that publication's readers is today in any doubt about the official Fatah/Abbas party line regarding the Jerusalem massacre which took the lives of eight students in a library of spiritual texts.

That's because they - the readers of Al Hayat Al Jadida - read Arabic. And now thanks to the indispensable work of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Media Watch, so can we.

The headline in its front page article reads:

"Killer of eight young men is a shahid [a holy martyr]"

The holy martyr's photograph covers most of the page. We won't re-publish that sort of disgraceful propaganda here. PMW have done a service to the thinking public by reproducing the Al Hayat Al Jadida portrait of the murderer here.

In their analysis, PMW's Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook point out that

"the PA is sending its people a straightforward message of support for the terror murders and the murderer. According to the PA interpretation of Islam, there is no higher status that a human being can achieve today than that of Shahid... In response to earlier PMW reports on the widespread Palestinian honoring of terror, Congress made it illegal for the US to give money to entities that "advocate" terror... Since a society's honoring of terrorists is one of the greatest terror promotions, and as the budget for the PA newspaper comes from the PA's general budget, the incessant honoring of this and all recent terrorists by Abbas's PA as Holy Islamic Shahids should render the Palestinian Authority ineligible to receive any American money under the terms of US law."

Abbas, whose doctorate (a surprisingly little-known aspect of the man's history) was earned in a study questioning whether the Holocaust of Europe's Jews happened, is no moderate. He never was.

Calling a cold-blooded murderer of innocent Jews a hero is no isolated aberration - not isolated in history (see the pre-war nazi poster above) nor in the world of the Palestinian Authority. The opposite is true. Such incitement is a matter of routine, and is done systematically and repeatedly at the highest levels of their society. It is in fact a cornerstone of the hate-based education without which such acts of terror would not be possible.

To substantiate this, following are a small selection (from a vast library of such appalling material) of theological statements about the supreme status of martyrhood by Palestinian religious leaders on official PA (Fatah) television and radio, once again courtesy of PMW:

Sheikh Yusu Abu Sneina, Al Aqsa Mosque:
"Shahada [Islamic Martyrdom] is an honor, only those who Allah desires, attain the privilege."
-Friday Sermon, Palestinian Authority Radio, Dee. 28, 2001

Dr. Isma'il al-Raduan:
"When the Shahid meets his Maker, all his sins are forgiven from the first gush of blood, and he is exempted from the torments of the grave. He sees his place in Paradise. He is shielded from the Great Shock and marries 72 dark eyed [maidens]. He is a heavenly advocate for 70 members of his family. On his head is placed a crown of honor, one stone of which is worth more than all there is in this world."
-Friday Sermon, PATV, Aug 17, 2001, several days after the Hamas Palestinian massacre that took the life of our fifteen year old daughter Malki

Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Razak:
"The believer was created to know his Lord to fulfill Islam... to be a Shahid [Islamic Martyr] or intend to be a Shahid. If the believer does not hope for Shahada he will die as in the Jahiliya [pre-Islam]... We must yearn for Shahada and request it from Allah. If we truthfully request it from Allah, he will grant us its rewards even if we die in bed."
-PA TV Friday Sermon, March 22, 2002

Sheikh Ibrahim Mudyris:
"We are not like you, because we do not desire life. If you threaten to kill President Arafat, we will pray to Allah: 'Grant the President Shahada [Islamic Martyrdom] for you."' Yes, we do not pray - like other preachers pray - for longevity for the rulers; here in Palestine we pray: "Lord, grant the President Shahada for you."
-PA TV Friday Sermon, April 30, 2004

Sheikh Imad Hamato:
"When a man sees one of his brothers being killed for Allah, a person with no head, no legs, his body completely burned. Intestines outside, fingers are gone... The most difficult thing which we fear is what the Shahids [Islamic Martyrs] wish for most of all. They ask Allah: 'Oh God, bring us back [to earth] to be killed by the Apache, so the planes will blow us up, that our heads will be cut off...' We shouldn't forget that Allah, praise him, in blessing the blood of the Shahid, He forgives him from the first gush of blood. And he sees his place in Paradise. He is shielded from the Great Shock and marries 72 Dark-Eyed Maidens (virgins)."
-PATV religious program, Nov. 3, 2006

Now to the questions.

• Did the mainstream media in your area report on this story? Their editors know about this incitement, just as we do. What does it mean when they decline to publicize it?
• The PA newspaper that did this is funded by the PA. The PA, Mahmoud Abbas' power structure, is funded by foreign donors, chief among them the government of the United States. Should the US be reacting in a practical fashion to hate-mongering of this sort? Is a slap on the wrists the response of choice?
• A week ago, the Bush Administration asked Congress to approve an allocation of $150 million to the Palestinian Authority. Are you comfortable seeing foreign aid being passed to the people who turn barbarians into national heroes?
• Will the $150 million create additional such heroes? If yes, who can then be said to have funded the process?
• Does a political party that actually glorifies the perpetrator of a massacre of school-children deserve anyone's support? Are they, on any view, moderates? Google has 4,452 news articles at this moment in which the words 'Abbas' and 'moderate' appear together. Click to see for yourself.
• If the official voice of the official power power that speaks for the Palestinian Arab people declares the murderer of innocent unarmed Jewish children learning the library of a religious seminary to be a martyr and hero, can we really say that only the extremists in their society support terrorism?
• And finally where are the Arab and Moslem voices authentically condemning - not just pretend-condemning but demanding substantive actions to stop the hatred, to end the idealization and glorification of the martyrs?

As we've observed many times here, knowing how to tell the difference between the terrorists and their victims is somehow more difficult for many people than it ought to be. But if we get this wrong, and fail to adequately understand the size of the threat posed by the terrorists and their legions of apologists and explainers in every part of the world, and then act on that understanding, we're liable to end up paying an unbearably high price.

11-Mar-08: Their society's response to the carnage in the seminary

Scenes of utter jubilation in jihadist Gaza Thursday night when word reached them of the massacre of teenaged Jewish students in the library of a Jerusalem religious seminary.

Watching these images, hearing these sounds, makes something terribly clear: the message from Gaza speaks more eloquently than any "root causes" speech ever could. The hatred coursing through the veins of these people makes them capable of actions the rest of the world would treat as unimaginable, vile, bestial.

Only when their own society sees what it has wrought in Gaza can we expect the beginnings of the reversal of this breakneck descent into the netherworld. But the reality is that reversal is absolutely nowhere in sight.

Day after day, hatred is pumped into their children, ensuring another generation of desolation and failure, and another and another.

9-Mar-08: Terrorism. Their world. Our world.

Understanding the effects that terrorism has on society is an essential pre-requisite to deciding how to stop terrorism.

As vitally important as this is, understanding does not come easily.

Many people in almost every society on earth simply don't understand. They neither understand what it does to their own society, nor what it does to the society of the people who perpetrate the acts of terror.

Terrorism is a corrosive and deeply painful phenomenon on both sides. But this does not mean the two sides are the same or similar or even comparable.

Since their faces and ages are almost completely unpublished anywhere in the world, here below are the eight murdered victims of the well-planned, cold-blooded massacre of students in a Yeshiva library that took place on Thursday night. Still others are fighting for their lives today in Jerusalem hospitals.

















Now for a look at what goes on inside a society whose moral tone, whose educational and social values are interwined with a religious love of death and an embrace of hatred:



Palestinian-Arabs dancing in Gaza.



Palestinian-Arabs dancing in southern Lebanon



Celebrating the massacre - Jabaliya, Gaza

As parents of a child murdered in an earlier massacre of children, we're frequently advised to look to "root causes" for an explanation of how the Palestinian Arabs - uniquely in the world, uniquely in history - have created a society whose most basic values are rooted in terrorism, whose very name is a by-word for terrorism.

"Root causes", as we have noticed again and again in the rhetoric of Palestinian terror's apologists, is a synonym for occupation. The shallowness and historical wrongness of that diagnosis is clear to anyone who knows how many villages and acres were "occupied" when Arafat took the reins at the PLO in 1964. (Hint: zero.)

There's only one root cause; it's hatred. It's immensely difficult to teach understanding and tolerance. It's far easier to teach hatred, and giving it a religious underpinning makes it easier still, and more potent.

When the world, and in particular Palestinian Arab society, understands the role that their home-grown hatred has in the evolution of men, women and children ready to blow themselves up just so long as they can take the lives of their Jewish enemy, we will have taken the first and by far most important step towards changing this appalling situation and ending this ongoing war.

7-Mar-08: Carnage in the library

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Things change but really they stay just the same.

Another massacre in the heart of Jerusalem, so reminiscent of the massacre that took the life of our own precious Malki six and a half years ago.

Then too our trust and naiveté left a bustling location, full of children, totally unguarded.

Then too the leader of the PA condemned the attack out of one side of his mouth and gave terrorists the green light out of the other. Abbas is Arafat without the kefiyah and army drabs. Like his mentor he is waging a "fight" against terrorism that is nothing but window dressing. When Israel finally reacted last week to Hamas' daily attacks from Gaza, Abbas jumped up and down screaming "massacre".

Abbas' terrorists have unabashedly assured journalists that they retain their arms and have not disavowed terrorism. Time and again, terrorists that Abbas claims to capture mysteriously "escape" or are sentenced to token prison terms.

Nevertheless Prime Minister Olmert, with Condoleezza Rice almost visibly breathing down his neck, was quick to "reassure" the West that these vicious, sadistic murders will not derail the "peace" talks.

The mirage of a "moderate" Palestinian contingent ensconced in Gaza and the West Bank lives on. It is a mirage embraced not only by our American patrons but ever more widely here in Israel too. During the barrage of Qassams and Grads on Sderot and Ashkelon, Bradley Burston Polyanna-ed in his Haaretz column: "The world of jihad is fraying at many points and, in the worst symptom of any revolution, beginning to show its age."

Burston chirps about an "exhaustive" Gallup poll of the world's Muslims (actually a sample of 50,000) that "claims to represent the views of 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims", 93% of whom are said to be moderates who condemn the 9/11 attacks.

Even disregarding the questionable reliability of such a poll, we all know that a dangerous distinction is consistently made between terrorism against Israel - which they "understand" - and the terrorism everywhere else.

Moreover, 7% of 1.3 billion is an awful lot of radical, blood-thirsty jihadists, particularly when so many of them reside within spitting distance of your own home.

Burston concludes with these empty words: "If recent indications hold, Islamist terrorism as an ideological brushfire is dimming in its ability to galvanize and electrify."

If we needed evidence of his delusion, last night was it. The demise of Islamist terrorism is nowhere on the horizon.

The world watches us grieve and bury our dead children. But it cannot commiserate. It sees footage of the "poor" Gazans rejoicing over our murdered children, handing out candies to passers-by, but it cannot condemn. (See AP's report this morning: "Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip praised the operation in a statement, and thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza to celebrate.")

Almost every major news-network concluded its reports of the terror attack with variations on this unrelated addendum: "...An inevitable response to last week's Israeli military operation in Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians." Never mind that those casualties were Palestinian terrorists clutching sub-machine guns along with the neighbors they chose to endanger by fighting from within their midst.

With that one sentence the Western mainstream media have equated them with innocent Jewish school-children murdered in school, seated at their desks, clutching their books.

---

We remember the young victims of last night's murderous terror attack on the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva:
Segev Pniel Avihail, 15, of Neve Daniel
Neriah Cohen, 15, of Jerusalem
Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar, 16, of Shilo
Yonadav Haim Hirschfeld, 19, of Kohav Hashahar
Yohai Lifshitz, 18, of Jerusalem
Doron Tronoh Maharata, 26, of Ashdod
Avraham David Moses, 16, of Efrat
Ro'i Roth, 18, of Elkana

Our thoughts and prayers are with the wounded and with the families of all those caught in the line of fire of the barbarian gunman and his backers.