25-Aug-06: Tied together but by what? Israeli Jews and Arabs

In 1999, an attractive 21 year-old young woman called Rana Raslan was awarded the Miss Israel title, the first time in the nation's history an Arab woman had been so crowned. "I am totally Israeli, and I do not think about whether I am an Arab or a Jew", she said at the pageant. "They wanted a beauty queen, not a political queen."

The relationship between Israel's Jewish and Arab segments is far more nuanced, more political and more complex than you might guess from reading the foreign tabloids or Miss Raslan's speech. Depending on where you choose to buy your political analysis, you can find Israel's Arab communities compared (unfavourably) with blacks in Apartheid South Africa, and Israel being blamed for everything that's wrong in the Arab world and beyond. Or you can ponder the implications of data like these.

In the Arab countries as a group (averaging out the data for individual countries):

• One in four children do not attend school
• Literacy: 50 percent for women, 70 percent for men
• Life expectancy overall: 63.5 years
• Infant mortality is 550 for every 10,000 births.

On the other hand, in Israel:

• One hundred percent of Arab children in Israel attend school.
• Literacy: 95% - the highest for any Arab community in the Middle East.
• Life expectancy for Arab males 74.7 (2002); lower than for Israeli male Jews (77.9), higher than for American number (74.6 years).
• Infant mortality is 2.7 per 10,000 births (the American figure is 6.8).

We could go into detailed health, welfare, standard of living and other such data. We'd get to about the same conclusion.

A little over a week ago, we wrote here about the impact of the Hezbullah War on relations between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis. At about the same time, an academic study from a peace research centre at Tel Aviv University found that 68 percent of Arab citizens of Israel defined Israel's war in Lebanon as unjustified. Almost 80 percent said they believed Israel's air attacks on Lebanon were unjustified. 56 percent believed Hassan Nasrallah's declarations, and 53 percent said they regarded Israel Defence Force reports as not credible.

Reflecting on this, Prof. Elie Reches who has been among Israel's most thoughtful observers of relations between the Arab and Jewish segments of Israeli society, wrote an important article that appears in yesterday's Haaretz. Reches runs the Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at the Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University. In an article tellingly entitled "One might have expected solidarity", he says "the dilemma of the national identity of Israeli Arabs grew sharper during the war. The stark contrast between their Palestinian and Arab identity and their Israeli citizenship was intensified, and was reflected by the setback in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel."

"At first glance, one might have expected to see expressions of solidarity and a deepening of internal unity between Jews and Arabs, given the sense of shared faith and partnership. But the bereavement did not draw hearts closer. It only deepened the rifts. The statement that missiles do not discriminate between Jewish communities and Arab communities remains an empty slogan... The Jewish public expected the Arab minority to identify with the state and condemn Hezbollah, but such a response never came. Instead, there was an increase in Arab criticism of government policies, which were seen as overly aggressive and warmongering, and as carrying out the imperialist policies of the United States. Israel's losses and inability to defeat Hezbollah enhanced the image of Hassan Nasrallah in the eyes of many Israeli Arabs. The lack of bomb shelters and warning sirens in Arab towns, and the overall sense of having being deserted, contributed to the feelings of frustration. Spokesmen for the Arab sector insisted on their right to criticize government policies without this being interpreted as an expression of dissociation from the state. But the majority of the Jewish public rejected this approach. Given the conduct of the Arab Knesset members, who did not miss an opportunity to express their opinions and stir up a storm of emotions, there was an increase in expressions of repulsion, dissociation and hostility by the Jewish public toward Arabs.

Also in yesterday's Haaretz, the results of a new poll that highlights the very divergent views of the Jewish and Arab communities:

A majority of the Jewish Israeli public believes Israeli Arabs supported Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah during the war in Lebanon... Some 18% of Israeli Arabs polled said they supported Hezbollah during the month-long war in the north. Some 15% of Jewish Israelis polled said all Israeli Arabs supported Nasrallah, while 40% claimed that most Israeli Arabs supported him... When asked whom they supported in the second Lebanon war, 27% of the Israeli Arabs polled said they backed Israel, 18% said they supported Hezbollah and 36% said they did not support either side. When asked to what extent Arab MKs represent the views of the Arab public, 44% of Israeli Arabs polled said the MKs do not represent them at all, 28% said they represent them to some degree, and 20% said they were well-represented by the Arab MKs.

Not a very promising scenario. Most Israeli Jews are left feeling that their Israeli Arab neighbours supported the enemy in overwhelming numbers. And via their elected parliamentary representatives, Israeli Arabs reinforce this view by fiery and aggressive speeches filled with hatred of Israel and its institutions. On the other hand, the Arab voters who put them there seem to say they don't regard those members of parliament as representing them.

Trying to make sense of the view of Israel's Arab minority was never going to be easy, and isn't. The former head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University Yossi Alpher summed this up a week ago this way:

The readiness of a sizable majority of Israeli Arabs, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims, to identify with a Lebanese Shi'ite movement that rejects Israel's right to exist and is indiscriminately bombarding the Israeli north, which is about 50 percent Arab, must give us pause... The only time we heard serious and vocal Israeli Arab objections to Nasrallah was when he advised Arab residents of Haifa to leave their homes temporarily to avoid harm, implicitly admitting that he had little control over where his rockets fell. In fact, despite 17 deaths (as of August 10) and dozens of injured in Arab communities from Haifa to Nazareth and Mrar, few Israeli Arabs left their homes (unlike Jewish residents of the north, most of whom moved south if they could afford to), thereby attesting to their determination not to be displaced again as Palestinians were in 1948. None of this behavior stopped Israeli Arab communities hit by the rockets from complaining that the government had not provided them with adequate early warning facilities and shelters.

It's also worth reminding readers (borrowing some comments made by Prof. Amon Rubenstein) of the way Israeli Arabs enjoy collective group rights that ethnic and linguistic minorities unsuccessfully fight for in other countries. Arabic is a second official language. Arab schools, totally financed by the state, teach in Arabic - including Islamic studies. Islam is a recognized religion. The Sharia courts have jurisdiction in all family law matters; an Israeli stamp celebrated one of Islam's holiest mosques; a room in the Knesset has been designated a mosque; an Islamic theological college is recognized by the state; Islamic holidays are official days of rest for the Arab population. The Israeli Supreme Court has recently decided the rule of equality should govern budgetary allocations.

None of this changes the nature of the Israel-Arab conflict. But the fact that Israel's basic decency in these matters is routinely ignored by our enemies and critics is an endless aggravation.

This might also be an appropriate time to remind readers that the Malki Foundation, which the writers of this blog established nearly five years ago, provides practical help to all parts of Israeli society. Almost a third of the families we help happen to be Arab. Given the democratic and nature of Israel, the only thing remarkable about this is the general lack of understanding outside of Israel that this is how things are in our country.

Now if we could get those Arab members of the Knesset to understand how it works, we might all be ahead of the game.

23-Aug-06: What the BBC never told you about Southern Lebanon

Regular browsers of our blog will have sensed our passionate lack of respect for the professionalism of many of the reporters, editors, photographers and film crews who cross our paths, plying their journalistic trade in this troubled part of the world.

As people who have taken part in more than the average number of media interviews, we are frequently appalled at what we personally encounter. Sometimes it's the pooled ignorance of badly-prepared, ill-informed news people arriving in a war zone with close-to-zero knowledge of the history of the conflict. Sometimes it's their spouting of barely-grasped news analysis that seems to have been picked up over drinks the night before in the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem. (That by the way happens to be where an inordinate number of visiting news-people stay; the lobby and bar with their Palestinian 'fixers' in every corner remind you of war-time Casablanca, the movie.)

And sometimes it's a pseudo-liberal, save-the-oppressed-of-the-earth crusader outlook, the sort that produces the worst kind of agenda-based reporting, that we encounter. In our experience, that's the worst of all outcomes because it's not that they don't know the real facts; just that they choose to ignore them or invent new facts since this is all so much more important than mere reporting.

That's why it's like a breath of cool, fresh air in the hot, dry desert when someone comes along and ignores the line taken by the herd while delivering an intelligent and humanistic view of war. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald has one of those stories in its pages today. Its correspondent Sarah Smiles went to Ain Ibl in southern Lebanon where she spoke with Wissam Andruous. He's a Christian who lives in a Christian village located right next to Bint Jbail. The adulatory crowds of pro-Hizbollah Arabs who feature so prominently in almost every post-ceasefire article this past week leave him completely cold. Here's an extract:

Hezbollah has few fans among bitter ChristiansWISSAM ANDRUOUS'S family home lies in ruins after the war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militia, Hezbollah. Plastic sheeting flaps over a hole where a bomb ripped the side of the house in the Christian village of Ain Ibl in southern Lebanon. Only the mattress springs remain of a charred room where three of his younger brothers used to sleep.

"We are Christians. We did not not belong to any party," said Mr Andruous, 31, a video technician and father of two, whose younger brother, Rany, 21, is studying in Sydney. "What if we rebuild this house and they make war again? How can I live with my children here?" he said.

While Hezbollah has claimed victory - propaganda posters across southern Lebanon declare: "Our Blood Has Won" - it is no triumph for many who have lost their livelihood and property in the violence. Although many Shiite Muslims support Hezbollah, members of other communities caught in the crossfire of this war do not.

"How can it be a victory when most of [southern Lebanon] has been destroyed?" asked Elias Hasrouni, a Maronite Christian, who manages the local electricity company. "There's no work, many people left, many people died, the houses were damaged. Is this a victory?"

Ain Ibl is next to the flattened village of Bint Jbeil, where there was heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

Imad Khoury, 38, the head of the local council, said the town is surrounded by Hezbollah missile batteries.

[Reminder: When the BBC's Orla Guerin and several other foreign reporters walked through the ruins of one south Lebanese town or another, they implied heavily or stated explicitly that there had been no Hizbollah military presence in the zone. This was agenda-driven nonsense. Knowing that armed-to-the-teeth towns like Bint Jbail were the source of many of the four thousand missiles fired into northern Israel this past month is essential to any understanding of what happened here.]

Hezbollah is dispensing up to $US12,000 ($16,000) to people who have lost property in the war, but Mr Hasrouni says he will not accept it. "We don't want to be indebted to Hezbollah," he said.

Residents who fled the town during the war returned to find bloodstains on their couches, or dirty handtowels where Hezbollah fighters had used their toilets, Mr Hasrouni said, adding that although many locals did not support this war, they could not stop it. Three years ago Hezbollah seized his olive groves for military purposes. He could do nothing.

"I do not like Hezbollah," said Mr Hasrouni, who still is afraid to visit his groves. "I am disappointed with this war because Israel didn't really do the job … And I really don't believe anyone could disarm Hezbollah."

When Israel ended a decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah assumed control of the rural area. Its intelligence networks prevailed and people grew fearful of speaking out against the Islamic party.

Mr Andruous, who is not interested in politics, wants to leave Lebanon with his young family. "I visited Australia in 2004," he said, standing in the ruins of his living room. "I like the country and I have a little money. And I cannot live here any more."

Truthful reporting from Lebanon would include many more voices like those of Hasrouni and Andruous. The fact that we're barely aware of them points to how spun, unreliable and misleading the coverage can be.

22-Aug-06: Terror alert in Jerusalem

Radio and television news reports in the past hour (it's now 8.30am) are reporting a high-level terror alert in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. We hear helicopters buzzing northern Jerusalem's skies, police sirens from the highway in the valley below where we live, and reports of roadblocks at the entrances to the city. The main roads that we can see from our windows are all jammed with slow-moving traffic. All of this stems from intelligence reports of a terrorist making his way to where the largest numbers of potential victims can be found. Won't make the news anywhere (unless you know what happens); just part of this ongoing war.

UPDATE: Alert dropped at 9.15 this morning. Still no details.

21-Aug-06: Lies, damn lies and images

One of our favorite columnists, Andrew Bolt of the Herald-Sun in Melbourne, points us to the photo at the top on a Hizbollah website, Moqavemat. (If you can't get to the online page, here's a backup copy.) The caption says it depicts an Israeli naval vessel being struck by a Lebanese terrorists missile off Lebanon in July.

The picture right below it comes from the Defence Industry Daily website and shows the sinking of the decommissioned Australian destroyer-escort HMAS Torrens off Western Australia in 1998.

Some people will think the two pictures look similar. Even identical. Ah, but as Nasrullah would say, that is to miss the point.

There's a serious message here. Hizbollah and other sowers of jihadist terror respect few things, but the power of the image to mould public opinion is something they appreciate enormously. For them, ends justify means. If appropriating an unrelated picture and adding a nonsense caption contributes to an aura of victory, to restored pride, to the naming of babies, then what does it matter if it's counterfeit and based on lies?

These, after all, are people who murder their own daughters and call it 'saving the honour of the family'. They even have a religious category for it: Taqayyah - basically the strategic telling of an untruth. It's difficult to come to even a superficial understanding of Shi'ite Islam - and therefore of Hezbollah - without giving that concept some attention. It explains a great deal about Green Helmet and Hizbullah's war propaganda machine.

Unfortunately, though, it explains very little about the silly, superficial and inaccurate nonsense that AP, Reuters and AFP and other news channels have peddled this past month under Hizbullah influence.

21-Aug-06: A Second Note from the Edge

Earlier today, we posted a note about how things look from here in Ramot after the guns of this summer's very nasty war fell silent - for the moment at least.

Our painful sense of foreboding has just risen several degrees after reading an important essay in this week's Economist. We're extracting it below, but urge you to read it all: "To Israel with hate­ - and guilt: Why Europe, unlike America, finds it so hard to love Israel".

The Council of Europe said that Israel's response to Hizbullah's cross-border attacks was “disproportionate” and accused Israel of “indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets”. Romano Prodi, Italy's prime minister, called Israel's reaction “excessive”. In Norway, Jostein Gaarder, the author of “Sophie's World”, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and murdering children, and said that the Jewish state had forfeited its right to exist. In many capitals, anti-war protesters marched under Hizbullah flags. When Britain's Tony Blair tried to explain things from Israel's point of view­and failed to call for an immediate ceasefire­his political stock took another tumble. Mr Gaarder was prodded into a half-hearted apology. But the truth is that, far from being extreme, these criticisms of Israel convey the mood of millions of Europeans, rooted in what polls suggest is a hardening attitude. A YouGov poll in Britain, taken in the first two weeks of the conflict, found 63% of respondents saying that the Israeli response to Hizbullah's attack was “disproportionate”; a similar German poll had 75% saying so. Such reactions reflect a wider European view of Israel that contrasts sharply with America's. In a Pew Global Attitudes survey earlier this year, far more Europeans sympathised with the Palestinians than with Israel... These findings come on top of a European Union poll in 2003 that had 59% of Europeans considering Israel as a greater menace to world peace than Iran, North Korea and Pakistan... As Israel has drawn closer to America in the past few decades, the left's antipathy towards the behemoth of capitalism has spilled into dislike of Israel. Public opinion in Turkey, the one Muslim country that was once pro-Israel, has turned against it in parallel with its turn against America, especially over the war in Iraq. Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Israel and Europe at Oxford University, argues that “Europeans see Israel as the embodiment of the demons of their own past.” The European Union is supposed to have traded in war, nationalism and conflict for love, peace and federalism. But Israel now reminds Europeans of darker forces and darker days. Could attitudes change? It seems unlikely, not least because Israel is now so stridently critical of the Europeans, especially of their media. In this area, at least, the transatlantic gap is widening.

Got that? The ancient demon of antisemitism now infecting Europe isn't going away soon because, proclaims the Economist, the Jews are blaming it on the media. Once again, the image of us Jews painted as our own worst enemies. Such stubborn people; when will we learn?

But we can't help wondering whether there aren't some other stats that point in an altogether different direction. Like these quoted in a speech one of us made here in Jerusalem to a visiting group of European parliamentarians back in December 2004:

There is... a well-developed sense of history among us Israelis. We turn to history when we want to understand who we are, where we belong, what we can expect from others. I mention this, in closing, because I want to share with you the extreme pain I - we - feel when we read about certain recent developments in European society. Last week, a German survey of German-born Germans found that more than half think there is no difference between Israel's current treatment of the Palestinian Arabs and what the Nazis did to the Jews. 68 percent of Germans believe that Israel is waging a "war of extermination" against the Palestinians. I could give you my theory of how the media in Germany, in Europe and almost everywhere else contributes to ignorance of Israeli reality. I could tell you how journalists create, and at the same time are the result of, an almost total ignorance of what the Holocaust was. But if I did that, I would also have to point out to you that Germany happens to be one of the countries in Europe where they do make serious efforts to understand the Holocaust and the truth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And yet they do not share our sense that Israel has been fighting one long defensive war of survival against an enemy that wants to ethnically cleanse Jews from their historic homeland for a century.
Also last week, the BBC published a survey showing that barely a third of young people in Britain have even heard the name Auschwitz and don't know what it is, where it is or what happened there... A Spanish-born philosopher, George Santayana who died in the year I was born, wrote this: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it..."
As a family, as a society, we are in a perpetual struggle to remember the past, to hold a vision of a better future, and to do everything we can so that the fifteen year old children together with their goodness and their dreams - children on both sides of the sad conflict here in this land - can grow to productive adulthood, free of the curse of hatred and of terror.

The reference to fifteen year-olds is a connection to our daughter.

There's no other way to assess how things appear from here right now: the vision of a life free of hatred and terror looks further away right now than it has for a long time.

21-Aug-06: Standing at the Edge

With the Hezbollah War currently on hold (over would be unduly constructive), we want to share some observations.

Many articles have summarized the events of the past month and prognosticated about next steps. They frequently stake out a position that claims to be binary: either optimistic or pessimistic; and either Israel won or Hizbollah won. We don't understand the need. Things here mostly seem to be in a strikingly unhappy shade of grey.

Optimism is way out of place wherever you stand - and it's clear we stand for Israel. With the Katyushas silent, and Israeli forces either out of action in the field or stood down, far fewer people are dying violent deaths. This, surely, is the furthest extent that optimism can reach at this moment. Is it pessimistic to expect fighting to start again soon? Hizbullah, regaling in what it calls a historic victory, is openly rearming, hardly hiding its plans, preparing for the next round. Parts of Lebanon may be in ruins but Hizbollah's message is triumphal and belligerent in the extreme. Here in Israel, both the political leadership and the military acknowledge that, no matter how well this battle went for Israel (and on that subject there is a very tense but - so far - mostly civil fundamental difference of viewpoints), it's a matter of time, and not much time, before this all erupts again. And no one is saying the next round will be smaller or less destructive.

If the stakes were not so high, it might be possible to sit back bemusedly and ponder some of the vignettes. But they're deeply worrying and they're more than mere vignettes. Here are 5 of them.

The ceasefire and the UN peace-keeping force: a classic case of bait-and-switch. Four players were involved. Israel said it would discontinue its military activity. Hezbollah would agree to be disarmed. Member countries of the UN led by France and equipped with "Chapter 7" powers would place forces in the region to disarm Hizbollah. And Lebanon after six years of failing to exercise its inherent sovereignty over half its territory would move its army south and neutralize Hezbollah. Well, one out of four ain't bad. Israel has removed most of its soldiers already and stood down the rest even though the UN farce, sorry - force, has yet to form itself. And Hizbollah is busy, in broad daylight, re-equipping for more of the same or worse.

Placing matters in their context: It's been a month in which Israel's skies witnessed more than 4,000 missiles fired in the name of radical Islam. Yet from one end of the British working media to the other, reporters, editors and (especially) photographers have worked overtime to present Israel as an insatiable aggressor lusting for dead children. Nothing captures the mood better than Orla Guerin of the BBC. Walking through the south Lebanese village of Bint Jbail, she says: "The international community may well ask how Israel can explain all this in the name of fighting Hezbollah." To which we can only agree. If you feed the public a diet of graphically-rich Lebanese victimhood devoid of the requisite context, as Orla's employer continues to do daily, while pretending that Bint Jbail and the dozens of places like it are less than viper's nests of deeply-entrenched, incredibly over-armed Hizbollah fanatics, your audience will be left with that question on its mind. British security in the same month uncovered a vast conspiracy involving explosives being carried onto aircraft, and evidently headed it off, at least for now. The question that's on our mind: is it beyond the British media to notice the connection between Shi'ite Hizbollah, Shi'ite Iran and Shi'ite terrorists of Pakistani extraction? Or are they noticing it and purposely keeping silent? There are lessons here, staring people in the face.

The underlying cause: It's clear now, for those previously in doubt, that this is not about occupation or land. This might sound like good news. It's not. Despite the violent and angry demonstrations of support for Nasrullah and his Hizbollah in every American, Asian, European and African city with a sizable Arab presence, the fighting this month was not about bringing the Palestinian Arabs closer to what they claim to want: a homeland. It was about more basic matters with wider implications for everyone, which would be clearer to people if only they would listen to the voices booming out of the Islamic world. It was about a Jewish state being wiped off the face of the earth, according to the Iranian government without whom Nasrullah would be no more than a corner preacher. It needs to be clearer now than before: the conflict that gave rise to this war and the multiple wars before it (in truth, all part of one ongoing war) were never about the fact that the Palestinian Arabs don't have a homeland but about about the fact that the Jews do.

The central role of hatred and racism: The Arab media have been host this month to prominent and widely seen caricatures of America's foreign minister as a primate; to an elaborate museum display of Holocaust-denial images in Teheran; and to a flood of Jew-hatred in written form, in imagery and in graffiti daubed onto the outside of synagogues and Jewish property. Even more disturbing, explicit anti-Jew sentiment is losing of its pungency as we look on. It's more than just symbolic when one of the icons of American popular culture, Mike Wallace of the venerable "Sixty Minutes" program, interviews the man who is arguably the most virulent anti-semite in the world, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and comes away using these expressions: an "impressive fellow," "attractive," "smart as hell," "savvy" and "rational." We're as open-minded as a rational person needs to be about figures of speech but applying kid-gloves to the man who is developing a nuclear arsenal to "wipe Israel off the map" is insanity.

Imagery and its manipulation: More than we realize, what we believe and think we know about events far from home is the product of words and pictures delivered by trusted intermediaries. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the web are central and indispensable to the forming of views for almost every last one of us. The coining of a new word - fauxtography - signals the permanent end of that trusted relationship. Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC will all stand tall, hands on heart, and say that despite the onslaught of partisan critics (Israel's friends), they passed the test, they delivered objective journalism, they remain the honest brokers of conflicting reports that they always were, and the indications to the contrary are small bumps, minor exceptions to be ignored. This, in the case of the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, is self-serving rubbish. The well-documented and calculated posing of dead children for emotional effect; the inflation of casualty numbers on the Arab side by Arabs; the wilful erasing of the graphic and photographic evidence of the clear, present, immediate and concrete existential threat facing half the Israeli population - all of these make the media and its prime movers complicit in a process threatening to the world in a way that is unprecedented.

There's more. But right now we just need to stop and breathe a while while we look over the edge.

20-Aug-06: "Pained and Devastated by... Terrorist Actions"

This ad (click to see larger version) appears in the Los Angeles Times on 17th August 2006. Its message is neither complicated nor (if you're going to be fair-minded about it) controversial. The Hollywood insiders who signed up are people who evidently believe what most people say: that terrorism is a shocking, horrifying thing and that unless it's stopped, innocent people will die.

In alphabetical order by surname, the list comprises: Avi Arad, Jon Avnet, Gary Barber, Lawrence Bender, Roger Birnbaum, Phil Blazer, Eric Braeden, Colin Callender, Gloria Carlin, Kristin Chenowith, Lionel Chetwynd, Michael Chiklis, Arthur Cohn, Bryan Cranston, Clint Culpepper, Boaz Davidson, Matt DelPiano, Danny De Vito, Danny Dimbort, Dick Donnor, Lauren Shuler Donner, Stephen Dorff, Michael Douglas, Tom Dressen, Larry Elder, Ari Emanuel, Randall Emmett, Ben Feingold, Rick Finkelstein, Vivica A. Fox, William Friedkin, Bob Gale, Larry Gelbart, Jack Gilardi, Mark Gochman, Howard Gordon, Meyer Gottlieb, Patricia Heaton, Dennis Hopper, William Hurt, Don Johnson, Nicole Kidman, Anne Kopelson, Arnold Kopelson, Scott Lambert, Sherry Lansing, Avi Lerner, Jon Liebman, Doug Liman, David Lonner, Branko Lustig, Bruce Ramer, Bernie Mac, Joshua Malina, Michael Mann, David Matalon, Ron Meyer, Arnon Milchan, Rupert Murdoch, Emmanual Nunez, Amy Pascal, Millie Perkins, Cyntheia Pett-Dante, Kelly Preston, Frank Price, Sam Raimi, Summer Redstone, Ivan Reitman, Haim Saban, Pat Sajak, Deran Sarafian, Steve Scheffer, Sam Schwartz , Sir Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Gary Sinise, Sylvestor Stallone, Joel Surnow, Daniel Adam Sussman, Sandy Wernick, Serena Williams, Bruce Willis, Irwin Winkler, James Woods, Laura Ziskin (Thanks to Urban Grounds for most of the hyperlinks.)

Here's the text:

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

Since it appeared, various blogs and newspapers have commented on the show-business names that are not here, while others congratulate those who are. 

That's not really our concern. We'll just remind ourselves that sometimes there's a very concrete downside to such public declarations. The film maker Theo Van Gogh, working from a script by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a Somali refugee and liberal parliamentarian who recently abandoned her adopted country) who for years had been fighting for women's rights in the Netherlands, created the 10-minute movie Submission, dealing with violence against women in Islamic societies. For having taken on jihadist Islam as a target, Van Gogh was murdered in 2004 by a Dutch Moslem.

That's one way to silence the voices that condemn terror.

20-Aug-06: Small Dots of Light in the Darkness

Voices that speak from within the world of extreme Islam delivering a message of hatred and triumphalism are hardly news, and if they are what you're seeking, this blog is not the place to find them. There are endless such voices and an unlimited number of forums to give them a public audience. Islamic hatred of Jews, of Christians, of non-Islam, is a plague, and not only on the web.

But when a voice is heard that speaks from deep inside that frightening, non-democratic world, and a Shi'ite Lebanese voice no less - a voice that questions some of the basics of that message of Islamic hatred and racism - it deserves some help so that it reaches a larger audience. (Thanks to Tom Gross.)

One such voice, an exceedingly rare one, is found in a scathing essay titled "To be a Shi'ite now", written by Mona Fayad, a psychology professor at a Lebanese university, in which she attacks her fellow Shi'ites for blindly following Hezbollah along a path she calls "no different from suicide." It's embarrassing (to the Lebanese) to have to point out that Dr Fayad is using suicide as something negative.

Published earlier this month in the An-Nahar daily newspaper , Fayad complains bitterly that to be a Shi'ite now "is to block your mind". It is to let Iran's supreme leader and ideologue-of-death Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "command you, drive you, decide for you what he wants from the weapons of Hezbollah, and force on you a victory that is no different from suicide."

Interviewed in the aftermath of her Arabic article by the Boston Globe, Fayad says: "People thank me, encourage me, and ask me if I am scared. But I am not scared because I live in a country where a bomb can fall on my head at any time, so I want to express my opinion... People have been lying to themselves, afraid of Hezbollah because it is loaded with weapons but it is time to stand up and ask why."

"We've been forced to shut up for decades because we are at war but we have to speak in critical periods so that the leaders know who are with them and who are not," Fayad said. "The future of Lebanon is at stake."

She's no friend of Israel, and neither is An-Nahar. But besieged (needless to say) by criticism from all parts of Shi'ite society, it's important for people outside the region to listen carefully when she says: "If I get to the point where I can't write what I believe in, life has no meaning." Google points to some other Lebanese who are bothered by these concerns.

The fundamentally anti-democratic and ideologically-extreme aspects of life in Arab societies are chronically swept under the carpet, most noticably by writers and so-called analysts from the west. Writing from robustly open, noisy Israeli society, the contrast with our side of the border could not be clearer. What's also very clear to us is that when non-Arabic-speaking mainstream media sources - the BBCs, the CNNs, the Times of London and of New York - purport to convey what Arab society thinks, they pretend that they are in a position to know. Most of the time they're not.

18-Aug-06: The Real Scope of Damage to Lebanon

From 13th August 2006 edition of the Los Angeles Times:

Lebanon's Renewal Is Dashed in Weeks
Rebuilding could top $2.5 billion, officials say, as recent repairs from past war are wiped out | Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
...The government review shows that Israel has largely avoided some types of targets: major power plants, water treatment facilities, telephone systems, central government buildings and most factories. The bombing has focused on Shiite areas of southern Lebanon and the Beirut suburbs. Although roads and bridges have been hit all over the capital, most of the damage in Beirut has been limited to a single square mile of the southern suburbs: The neighborhoods of Bir Abed and Hrat Hreik. An almost daily barrage of missiles, bombs and gunship artillery has systematically removed Hezbollah's headquarters, its schools, clinics, sports centers and homes, along with the homes of thousands of civilians who live nearby...

18-Aug-06: A Lebanese View of Hizbollah's "Victory"

Under the headline "La victoire fictive du Hezbollah au Liban", the francophone Lebanese site Libanoscopie summarizes Hizbollah's 'victory' with some conclusions that must be fairly uncommon in the Arab world. (Thanks to Google Translate for providing us with a rough French-to-English translation to get started with.)

Hizbollah's Fictitious Victory in Lebanon
At the end of 34 days of combat, Hezbollah's secretary general announces victory... Syria applauds, Iran is jubilant. The victory of the Umma over the Zionist enterprise. But how to measure victory? Libanoscopie put this question to an expert in political strategy:
Declaring victory in war calls for three conditions to be satisfied. Military force prevents the losing party from being in a position to continue fighting. Military invasion gives the victor possession of the enemy's territory. And the victor achieves the objectives which it declared for that war. In the case of Hezbollah, none of these conditions has been satisfied.

• The Israeli army, though it has suffered some reverses, is far from having suffered significant losses. The capacity of its air, naval and land forces remain practically intact.
• Far from achieving the invasion of the enemy's territory, it is the Israeli army which invaded [Hizbollah's] territory and now occupies parts of South Lebanon.
• As for Hizbollah's declared objectives - recovering the Shabaa farms area and the release of the Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli prisons, the first is not even close, and Israel now holds 15 more prisoners from Hizbollah's ranks.

Despite its efforts to conceal the facts from the local and Arab media and to prevent the disclosure of the true data, it is clear from semi-official sources - often needing to preserve their anonymity for fear of reprisal - that Hezbollah has undergone the total destruction of its logistic and economic infrastructure. The number of its militia and leaders killed in this war is around 1,500.
To advertise this as an achievement is an attempt to convert defeat into victory - consistent with the culture from which the Party of Gd [Hizbollah] emanates.

Libanoscopie may be the only Arab news source prepared to imply the question that needs to be on the mind of every Lebanese: How many more 'victories' like this can Lebanon possibly endure?

16-Aug-06: The Times of India: Terrorism Connected to Hatred, Intolerance

Like Israel, India finds itself in the cross-hairs of terrorists, the depths of whose hatred and barbarity defy comprehension.

Last month in Mumbai, India's most important commercial centre, 207 people were murdered in a series of co-ordinated terror bombings on commuter trains during a period of eleven minutes in the morning rush hour. (For those with a strong constitution, there's a powerful collection of images here.) Thousands more were injured. And hundreds of millions of Indians were left wondering - along with the citizens of Bali, Madrid, London and Tel-Aviv - what could possibly motivate such boundless, unfathomable contempt for human life.

A few days later, a journalist for the Times of India, visited Israel and interviewed Arnold Roth. The interview was published in the 25th July 2006 paper edition of the Times of India, and is now available on-line (click here). We have extracted the text.

LIVING WITH TERROR IN ISRAEL
‘Terrorism is connected to hatred and intolerance’
Nina Martyris | TNN

On August 9, 2001, when 15-year-old Malki Roth was at a Jerusalem pizzeria for lunch, a young Palestinian walked in with a guitar strapped to his back. Minutes later, the bomb concealed within the instrument exploded, killing 15 people, including Malki, her friend and the Palestinian man. It was a suicide bombing that made headlines the world over. Malki’s distraught parents Arnold and Firmet subsequently started the Malki Foundation, an organisation that funds Israeli parents who have severely handicapped children, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Druze or Jewish. In this interview with TOI, Arnold Roth talks about terror and politics in Israel. Excerpts:

Q: How are you dealing with the loss of your child?
A: Our child’s life was stolen from us and from her by people of hatred. From where I stand, I can testify that coping is a daily process that goes on for years. It’s not like an illness where you get cured­it’s a permanent pain and a deep change in almost all your relationships. Mindless hatred made the act of terror possible, and awareness of this hatred stays in your mind and causes you think differently about almost everything.

Q: After the tragedy, were you terrified of the outside world? Did you consider counselling?
A: Malki was the middle child of our seven children - ­she called herself the meat in the sandwich. After her murder, we made permanent changes in our daughters’ routine - ­they are not allowed to travel by public transport or go to public places without our permission. They hate the restrictions but they understand. My wife and I spend a lot of time taxi-ing our children around.
However, we also know that there are no guarantees. No one can say where or how the terrorists will strike next. Everyone knows that terrorists are not limited by any sense of fairness or self-restraint. If there is any way for them to hurt us, they will try.
Counselling was offered to all of us by the social security authority. For some of us it proved to be tremendously helpful (for instance, for my wife and me); others did not even take up the offer. Sometimes people (like our chuldren) in their 20's are too proud or perhaps lack self-awareness to know that they can be helped. In those cases, the support of others like themselves [in peer support groups] can be remarkably constructive.

Q: What has the government done to protect its citizens?
A: Since the earliest days, it has been obligatory for almost every building in Israel to have a bomb shelter or a public shelter in a nearby public space. After the 1991 Iraq missile attacks, every new building must have an internal room with thicker walls to serve as a shelter. There are also ‘security holes’ in buildings and public spaces - ­a vacuum embedded in concrete where explosive material can be safely dropped without hurting people.
We have security guards everywhere: outside supermarkets, schools, buses. My daughter’s murder was one of the last to happen before that big change. If the murderer had attempted his strike just a few weeks later, he would been unsuccessful, since his guitar case would surely have been searched.

Q: Although full of anger, you say you do not feel hatred towards those who killed Malki.
A: I’m not at all unusual. Our culture, our education, the very institutions of Israeli life are all based on our respect for diversity and the idea that that democracy can absorb a wide range of diverging viewpoints. Thus, we know there are people who have fundamentally different viewpoints from us and who don’t tolerate our presence. Does this mean we have to hate them? We have nothing against them except their actions. There is a firm belief in this country that Arab society suffers from exploitation at the hands of its own civil and religious leadership. Most Israelis, including me, are therefore both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. We’re optimistic that with the introduction of democratic and enlightened education, Arab society will eventually develop a respect for the rights of the other and that this will include respect for Israelis and Jews. We’re pessimistic because there is simply no sign that this is even beginning to happen. This is not something to hate. It’s something to pity and to protect oneself against.

Q: Don’t you think the Palestinians have a genuine grievance? Isn’t their right to a country a basic human right?
A: There’s a lot of support in Israel for a Palestinian state and has been for years. I used to march in the streets, as a university student in Australia, demonstrating for the right of self-determination of the Palestinians. Back then, we hoped they would develop a strong leadership that would bring them towards their own state, their own national achievements. I’m personally disappointed at the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership in creating something of value for their people. But even more than my personal disappointment with their leadership­ -- and especially with Arafat­ -- I am disappointed at the lack of disappointment on the part of the Palestinians. They are so busy being angry and resentful at what is, in their view, being done to them by us and by others that they have failed to see what they have done to themselves.
Terror from the Arab world has been happening to us long before Israeli policies could be blamed­ -- even before there was an Israel. I frequently see analysts and critics of Israel referring to what they like to call ‘underlying causes’. The favourite such cause is ‘the occupation’. I like to point out that when the PLO was created, and even when Arafat took over its leadership, the total number of ‘occupied’ Arab towns, cities and houses was zero. (This was in 1964-’65.)
As terrorism acquires more victims, it will become clearer that it is tightly connected to hatred and intolerance. For these phenomena, there will never be a political solution. Indeed, there might not be any solution at all other than to do everything in our power to keep the practitioners of terror far away from us. And if that fails, then good societies must destroy them without mercy before they destroy everything good in our lives.
For more information on the foundation, visit www.kerenmalki.org

16-Aug-06: For Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, a moment of truth

An exchange of emails with friends in Australia this morning got us thinking about how the state of relations between Israel's Jews and Israel's Arabs was impacted by the Hezbollah War. It surprised us to know that, from a distance, there's a perception of a "we're all in the same basket" state of mind.

Our Australian friends believed Israel's Arabs had been united with us Israeli Jews by a shared perception of the threat to all of us from the lunatic to the north. Nasrullah's missiles, after all, did not distinguish between victims, and many Israeli Arab families are now freshly bereaved as a result.

It would have been encouraging if this happened, but in truth the public perception here is the opposite, with a lot of angry resentment that is likely to fester for a long while.

There were stand-up shouting matches in the Knesset, with Arab MKs exercising their democratic right to be heard screaming abuse at the IDF and the Israeli leadership. Several MK's and prominent leaders from the Israeli Arab sector took the opportunity to run to the international media (the BBC had its welcoming arms open especially wide for stories like this) with appalling stories of how Israel is deliberately discriminating against the Arab sector, and is placing its armaments near Arab villages in the Galilee in order to draw Hizbollah fire. Inveterate Israel-bashing Israeli Arabs like Ahmed Tibi, Ibrahim Sarsur and especially Azmi Bishara have been on fast-forward for the past four weeks, doing a great deal of damage to good relations between the social segments of Israeli society. Even when Lower Nazareth - the Arab section of town - was bombed by Nasrullah, just about the only media comments to be heard were Arab Israeli voices like this one expressing their understanding of the "resistance" in Lebanon and their hostility to Israel.

If we had to point to a single quote the captures the mood of the past month, it would be like this one from the BBC:

While opinion polls show that the Israeli public overwhelming supports continued military action in Lebanon, many of the Jewish state's approximately one million-strong Israeli Arab community blame Israel for the violence. "We're caught in the middle," says Ms Sheikh. "We are on the wrong side of the battle... Even while suffering a disproportionately high number of casualties in Hezbollah rocket attacks, Dr Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Knesset member and leader of the Balad political party, says that most Israeli Arabs empathise with the Lebanese. "The division between us and the Lebanese is artificial," he says. "They are Arabs, they look like us, laugh like us, and eat the same food." Some Israelis are angered by what they see as Israeli Arab sympathy with their enemy... "

The handful of prominent Arab Israeli journalists have also been singularly out of step with overwhelming Jewish public sentiment. A good example of this is Faiz Abbas, latterly of Yediot - see this report. The Druze sector on the other hand did their customary job of being loyal and patriotic, making a positive contribution above and beyond their numbers.

The picture is not uniformly bleak, of course. Riad Ali who works at Israel Television's Channel One has written a series of opinion pieces for Haaretz in the past four weeks that deserve wide circulation. Here's what he wrote a week ago, in the depths of the suffering on both sides occasioned by the fires of war:

In the name of Allah
By Riad Ali
It tears one's heart and stills one's breath to see the images coming from Lebanon. The same goes for the images in Israel, and this is not added for the sake of balance.
But sorrow and grief over the war's victims shouldn't blur its prime objectives, both in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. When the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza adopted suicide bombing as their strategy in fighting Israel, I concluded that their war against the occupation is over, and an indiscriminate war on Jews has begun. I was convinced then, as I am now, that at that moment, the Palestinians lost the war, at least in the moral sense.
In one of my reports from Gaza, I talked to a Palestinian boy by the name of Haled. He was 10 years old at the time. He said he wanted to be a teacher. When we switched to the topic of the intifada, Haled said that he had another dream - to be a shahid. I asked him how could he be a teacher and a shahid at the same time. Ten-year-old Haled had no answer. He was only a child. It was then I realized that the Palestinian people have lost their inner compass. A whole generation of children was born and reared in their midst, and all their hopes and aspirations are to die a holy death.
A Palestinian moral-ethical debate on the status of the suicide bomber never took place. The saboteur was and remained a shahid, with all of the positive attributes that the word carries in Islamic terminology. Palestinians who still opposed the bombings did so on tactical grounds; that is to say, if it had furthered their cause, they would have seen no wrong in it.
A similar process happened with Hezbollah. If before 2000 the organization could have had the benefit of the doubt and claim it is fighting Israeli occupation of Lebanon, today it is clear to see that its war is against Jews wherever they may be. You have to be deaf in order not to hear the voice of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as it emerges from Nasrallah's throat, and naive in order to believe that the purpose of the arsenal Nasrallah has accumulated is the release of prisoners and the liberation of the Shaba Farms.
This is the time to address the Arab citizens of Israel, and tell them that the time has come for them to decide where they stand. And they should do so for their own sake, and not for the sake of the Jews. For the sake of the values they want to instill in their children. For the sake of retaining their intellectual dignity. It is clear to all that a Hamas-led Palestinian government and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon will not bring democratic societies with a flourishing political and social pluralism. It is clear that in regimes such as those, the rule of law, human rights, the freedom of religion and worship, women's rights, the freedom of creation, the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression and thought - all will be alien, ridiculed concepts, to say the least.
Ideological Islam has long been master of the Palestinian society's agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. But what worries me is that the same Islamic agenda that rules there rules also here in Israel, and crosses all parties and movements including those who consider themselves to be secular. The spirit of battle has overtaken the believers, and all who consider themselves as part of the Islamic nation also have to take part in its war. If not with guns, then with funds, and if not with funds, then through words, and if not through words, then in heart, as the Muslim preachers tell the masses.
I am not at war with the Jews, nor with the people of Israel. I have an argument with the Jews, and I have an argument with the State of Israel. On one point I do not argue, and that is the right of the Jewish people to their own independent state. To the best of my understanding, this war, as with the intifada, has to be judged from this perspective.
Arab citizens of the state who truly believe in the principle of two states for two peoples and those who believe in a democratic liberal society must ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West in the guise of a war against the occupation and heathens is representative of their ambitions. We must separate the pain and sorrow for the innocent victims from the purpose of the war, as seen by those who lead it - in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and in any place where people seek to liberate land in the name of Allah.

In today's Haaretz, Riad Ali develops the idea further. Here's a brief extract:

The time has come to admit that the mother of all ills in the Arab world is the absence of a secular alternative that has the power to offer people a different way of thinking. An option that is an alternative to the one offered by political Islam. It is not the Israeli occupation that needs to be ended, but rather the fanatic religious occupation of the Arab-Muslim intellect, which is blocking the masses from the pleasure of thinking. This is an occupation that makes astonishingly effective use of the term "Israel" as a wonder nostrum to neutralize the capacity for critical vision among the many who have frozen the clock of history at the picture of Kfar Kana, and pointed without thinking in the direction of Israel. The cancerous tumor from which the Islamic world is suffering must be initially sought in the bunkers of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and not in the maw of the cannon on the Israeli tank. And no - I'm still not saying that Israel is as pure as the driven snow. In one of his brilliant comments, Ra'am-Ta'al MK Ahmed Tibi said that Israel is a country that is "democratic for its Jews and Jewish for it Arabs." You know what? My life's dream is to see one Arab country that is at least "democratic for its Muslims, and Muslim toward its minorities." Amen.

Read the entire piece and share it with your friends.

Now if there were another, say, thousand voices like Riad Ali's emanating from the Arab world, constructive dialogue and co-existence might be a lot more reality, a lot less slogan.

On the whole, this past month has done far, far more harm than good to the sense of shared destiny among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Almost everyone agrees it's better to have the cannons and missiles silenced. But there's strikingly little optimism here right across the political spectrum that the quiet will last long.

15-Aug-06: The Outbreak of Quiet

It's been 36 hours and thankfully the ceasefire between Hizbollah and the state of Israel is holding so far. While it does, here are some more dry statistics to offset the striking disinclination of the media to give coverage outside Israel to what Israel has endured since the outbreak of fighting on its northern border on July 12.

Hezbollah missiles and their consequences: The damage and destruction have been tremendous.

• Missiles fired into Israeli territory by Hizbollah: 3,790
• Missiles that landed in Israeli cities, towns, settlements and houses: 901
• Israel civilians killed by Hizbollah missiles: 42
• Israeli civilians injured by Hizbollah missiles and requiring hospitalization for their injuries: 4,262. Of these, 33 are classed as seriously injured. 68 as moderately injured. 1,388 lightly injured.
• Israeli civilians treated for shock and anxiety: 2,773
• Israeli servicemen and -women killed in the fighting: 114. (All the names and many of the portraits are on the Yediot website.)
• Missile attacks on Kiryat Shmona and surrounding communities close to Lebanon: 1,012 missile landings. 372 inside Kiryat Shmona itself, 354 within its municipal boundaries. 25 residents of Kiryat Shmona were injured; 81 suffered from shock. 2,003 houses and apartments and 151 vehicles are damaged. In addition, dozens of schools, factories, businesses, synagogues, kindergartens and other public facilities were hit and damaged.

It's still not clear whether the school year will open as scheduled on September 1. Some 10,000 northern residents have been housed on an emergency basis in boarding schools. Until they are able to return to their homes, preparations for the school year will be uncertain.

IDF activity: In military terms, this has been an intense period.

• Israel Air Force sorties over Lebanon: 15,500. Made up of 10,000 combat sorties, 2,000 battle helicopter sorties, 1,000 helicopter sorties, 1,300 reconnaissance flights, 1,200 transport sorties
• Targets struck by these sorties: 7,000
• Israel Navy vessels spent more than 8,000 hours sailing off the Lebanese coast
• Israel Navy vessels fired 2,500 rounds at Lebanese targets.
• IDF air and naval activity was targeted at missile launch sites, launchers, weapons stores, roads, Hezbollah infrastructures and radars, fuel depots and the coastal road.

Blockade: While conducting a naval blockade of Lebanon, the IDF has permitted more than 200 ships to reach Lebanon to evacuate civilians and deliver relief supplies. The IDF says the blockade is going to continue until a way is found to prevent the smuggling of war materials into Lebanon.

And now? While Israel is focused on rebuilding, restarting, recovering, and burying its dead, voices from Syria and Lebanon keep reminding us that this has been about a decades-long desire to throw us into the sea, a process which - to judge from the triumphant tones - has merely been interrupted. We'll come back to this theme later.

15-Aug-06: We'll Be Back Soon

While August is holiday time for many people, it's when we're pre-occupied with family matters. Sorry for the slow postings. We plan to be back in the next 24 hours.

13-Aug-06: People who love death... and what this means for the rest of us

From today's Daily Telegraph in Sydney:

Bottle and baby used as bomb
By Fiona Hudson | August 14, 2006 12:00 |
A HUSBAND and wife [we've added their pictures at right] arrested in the British terror raids allegedly planned to take their six-month-old baby on a mid-air suicide mission. Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb. The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies' milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights. 

The pair are among up to 23 suspects being questioned over a plot to bring down nine airliners over five US cities, killing thousands of people in the air and on the ground. The questioning of the group comes as British Government sources yesterday revealed many of those suspects posed as relief workers to travel to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. 

It has also been revealed that security services are secretly monitoring "dozens" of fresh plots involving hundreds of suspects which could be unleashed at any time. One government source said at least 30 priority cases were under urgent investigation. " All those 30 are seen as serious, determined attacks that will happen unless we stop them," the source said. Police spent yesterday combing through the Alis' east London housing commission flat for clues. Cossor took her baby with her to the police station during last week's raids but her son is now being cared for by grandparents. 

Cossor's grandfather, Nazir Ahmed, 84, said Abdula had travelled to Pakistan about four weeks ago. "We didn't understand what the hurry was and why he needed to go," Mr Ahmed said. A neighbour at the flats where the married couple lived said he would be stunned if claims were true. "I simply cannot believe he could have been involved in a plot like this. He is religious and seemed to love his family," the neighbour said. "I would never have dreamed he could have been involved in anything like this." 

A family friend of Cossor said she had known the arrested mother 12 years and believed her to be innocent. "I think it is a case of mistaken identity. The last thing she'd be interested in is terrorism. They are just simple day-to-day people going about their own business," she said. Police in England have reportedly recovered bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling centre close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects. 

It has emerged MI5 agents launched covert intrusions on the homes of some suspects several weeks ago in "sneak and peek" operations to plant listening devices and gather evidence ahead of the arrests last week. Links between suspects in the jet bomb plot and those behind the London 7/7 attacks have also come to light. There are reports as many as five of those arrested attended the same terror training camp in Pakistan as two of the July 7 London suicide bombers. And US intelligence sources said they believed at least two of the suspects had trained in Karachi and met al-Qaeda operatives in the lead up to the 7/7 attacks.

Keeping firmly in mind that this report is based entirely on unfounded allegations, that no evidence has been led in court at this stage, and that no convictions have yet been requested by the prosecution let alone obtained, we offer some observations:

• Once upon a time, long long ago, it would have been beyond belief, simply incomprehensible, that a family would sacrifice their lives and the life of their baby. Now it's very much not incomprehensible. Furthermore, the mere insertion of the element of religion - and specifically Islam - together with the mass murders that would have gone along with the suicides makes the story credible and also compelling.
• The media, especially the British media, are once more (obviously 7/7 was a previous such occasion) doing contortions, trying to understand how native-born Brits, albeit Brits whose parents immigrated from the sub-continent, could possibly turn into merchants of death and self-destruction. We anticipate the process of vexation will go on for some time. Meanwhile the answer is staring them in the face.
• Already the dreaded search for "root causes" is underway. Those of us who watch Sky, BBC and CNN have already heard the plaintive cries of "How do we make them feel less estranged and more a part of our fine British society?" Based on past experience, this search will lead away from illumination rather than towards it.
• Comparisons have been made to the festering anger of America's black population. But Britain's Moslems, to the very last one of them, are in the United Kingdom because they wanted to be there; because they moved heaven and earth to get there; and they stayed there because they wanted to stay there. The option of leaving was always available, and perfectly feasible. Describing them as oppressed, disenfranchised, unconnected is misleading, dishonest and completely avoiding the issue.
• But even if it were possible to describe some of Britain's Moslems this way, even if some or many of them face bleak job prospects and poor education, the indications are that this group are mainly middle class and relatively well-educated. Nor is there any sign of their having fallen under the spell of the brand-name fringe-insane imams like Omar Bakri or Abu Hamza. And yet.
• Terrorism is routinely carried out, everywhere, by people who don't seem to fit the part. This remains difficult for some people to digest. If the terrorists had signs branded onto their foreheads, the global civil aviation industry would be able to cope a lot better than in practice it now is. And the kindergartens and supermarkets and buses and cafes of Israel would not need round-the-clock armed guards. Terrorists look like the rest of us.
• The emergence of a dominant death cult in Islamic society is no longer a subject for controversy. It's a reality, and the denials are an embarrassment to those who make them. With our personal experience of terrorist murder, we have a permanent interest in outrageous statements from outrageous personalities who insist on denying. For instance, the Palestinian apologist Dr Hanan Ashrawi who is on record making wildly irresponsible statements on the subject. Like this one in which she asserts that claims like the one we are making are the epitome of racism. "They're telling us we have no feelings for our children. We're not human beings, we're not parents, we're not mothers and fathers," says Ashrawi. "Sometimes I don't want to sink to the level of responding, of proving I'm human. I mean, even animals have feelings for their children."
• Dr Ashrawi is right. Animals do have feelings for their children and the people who produce the television films and documents (MEMRI freely provides access to an entire library of them, complete with English sub-titles and translation for those unfamiliar with Arabic) praising child martyrdom do not. Or to say that more carefully: the proponents of jihad have feelings for their children, for their own lives, for life itself, that most of mankind is incapable of understanding. They are baffling, appalling, terrifying. Such people, and there are millions of them, have stepped outside the family of man, and did it willingly and triumphantly.
• None of this means that Islam is at fault. Nor is the problem with Moslems. Yes, Moslem society in all its forms and wherever it is found, has an enormous problem on its hands, even if only the smallest of minorities of its ranks recognizes this and if denial is the standard posture. The problem is with the rest of us who have yet to identify appropriate ways of protecting our societies and our lives against an attack that defies analysis: an attack led by mothers armed with bottles of baby formula.

The disclosure by Scotland Yard of the "activists" plot, including the arrest of Abdula Ahmed Ali and his wife Cossor, is not a victory. It's not even a defeat. It's an alarm bell, shrieking out a warning that we're running out of time.

[UPDATE 25-Aug-06: There's more on the deranged parents from hell here.]

13-Aug-06: Iran and the pursuit of balance

Reuters today throws this helpful light on how Shi'ite Iran, the chief financier and equipper of Hezbullah and thus a central player in the process that has devastated Lebanon and northern Israel, views the upcoming ceasefire and what we can expect from it:

Iran says disarming Lebanese Hizbullah 'illogical'
Iran welcomed on Sunday a planned ceasefire to halt the month-long war between Lebanon's Hizbullah and Israel but described the UN Security Council's call for disarming the Iranian-backed group as "illogical". "We are happy for the ceasefire in Lebanon. But the resolution is not balanced," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference. "It does not condemn the Zionist regime (Israel) and its crimes in Lebanon." Asked about the call for disarming Hizbullah, Asefi said: "This is a totally unreasonable demand. It is illogical." Opposition to Israel was one of the founding principles of the Islamic Republic. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

Speaking to a Jordanian newsagency, the Iranian foreign ministry was a little more expansive:

Iran: Israelis are losers in Lebanon

After one-month of war against Lebanon's resistance, Israelis are the absolute losers and Hizbullah is the absolute winner of the war, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman said Sunday. Hamida-Reza Asefi pointed to the Israeli media admittance that the regime has been defeated in the war, adding the "Quds (Jerusalem) occupiers" failed even though they were enjoying all sorts of military, economic, intelligence and diplomatic backings. "The war turned into a complete fiasco for the regime," Asefi added, according to IRIB. Asefi criticized the United Nations for its weak performance in issuing resolution against Israel, adding that the delay undermined the UN credibility and discredited it before the world public opinion. Asefi affirmed that the Islamic Republic of Iran is very pleased with any ceasefire and ending the massacre of the Lebanese people. "The resolution 1701 fails to point to the aggressor party and so opens the way for the Zionist regime," Asefi warned. Asefi underlined however that the Lebanese government and nation must decide about the resolution. Asefi called the Zionist regime source of tension, crisis and war in the Middle East, adding legitimate resistance and defense will continue as far as occupation lingers. "Lebanon and legitimate resistance of Hizbullah broke the Middle East equation in favor of the dignity of the world of Islam," Asefi said.So we should all feel a lot better now, particularly the "peace" protestors marching yesterday with Hezbollah banners and Nasrullah portraits held aloft in San Francisco, Washington, Ankara, Damascus, Toronto, Edinburgh and other places. The peaceful peace protestors in the picture above are in Ankara, Turkey.

Turkey is to supply one of the military contingents to the UN the critical piece of whose mission will be to disarm Hizbollah.

12-Aug-06: The peace toll

The toll from yesterday's missile attacks on Israel:

• 68 missile landings
• Injured by shrapnel: 8 people
• Treated for shock: 17 people
• The damage toll since 12th July: Missiles striking Israel: 3,650; Missiles landing in an urban area of Israel: 835

Missile strikes in the area of:

• Kiryat Shmona: 930
• Nahariya: 730
• Maalot: 584
• Safed: 448
• Tiberias: 181

And of course many deaths and many injuries.

The civilian toll so far today (Sunday):

• Heavy missile barrages all morning in the general direction of Israel's northern communities, with several landings in the Haifa suburbs. (UPDATE: Yediot says there have been 153 missile landings so far today, Sunday.) (5.45pm UPDATE: The tally of missiles has risen to more than 210 for the day. The havoc and hatred that every one of them delivers is incalculable.) (8.15pm UPDATE: 250 missile so far; 6 hits on Haifa at 7pm, and some sixteen separate rounds fired at Haifa throughout the day)
• One person, a man of about 70, killed following a direct missile hit on a house in Shlomi (the town itself is pictured above)
• Nine injured - most of them treated in Safed and Nahariya public hospitals, both of which have been struck several times themselves by Hizbollah's missiles.
• Street demonstrations in the United States and Europe yesterday, supporting the people who launch these missiles at Israel, are extensively photographed in Sunday's media. What puzzles us most about these images and reports is that AP and Reuters consistently refer to the people holding Hizbollah posters and pictures of the fanatical Shi'ite leader Nasrallah in these often-violent demonstrations, as 'peace' protesters.

We check routinely, and have yet to see a single caption referring to Israeli efforts at stopping Nasrullah's monumentally large missile arsenal as being related to peace. But the fact is, for anyone close enough to the action to not be misled by distorted reportage, that when Nasrullah's arsenal is destroyed, there will be peace. We Israelis expect little more than the peace of the graveyard until that time.

11-Aug-06: Good and evil

In the midst of tragedy, violence, hatred, turbulence, death, a laconic report that most likely will never reach the mainstream media outside of Israel and Italy, and even if it does will pass without causing more than the barest ripple, has just caught our eye.

Here's the background. We wrote here last night that in the wave of extreme violence delivered to Israel's northern and southern borders, a stabbing took place in Jerusalem, part of the evolving third front courtesy of the terrorists in our midst. The victim, anonymous (in the news sense) for several hours while the family were presumably notified, turned out to be an Italian tourist. The news report said he was walking with friends in East Jerusalem near the walls of the Old City. He was 25, and the assailant escaped. He died after being stabbed. End of story.

But for the people directly involved, this is of course not the end of the story. It's only the beginning.

We now know much more, and for us, as Malki's parents, there is a connection which is hard for us to not notice or to be moved by.

Yediot reports that the victim of last night's stabbing has a name and had a life. He is Angelo Frammartino. He's 24 year, a peace activist from Monta Rotondo in Italy, who arrived in Israel at the start of August with an Italian organization, ARCI, "working to advance human rights in the world". He was due to leave for home in Italy today. His parents are away on vacation and his sister who was home alone when the terrible news came from Jerusalem says she doesn't know how they will cope.

Newspapers know to do things with lines like "he was a peace activist". We see peace activists snarling and screaming and holding signs like "kill the Israeli occupiers" all the time. Peace is a curse word in this part of the world; almost always a sword, almost never a shield. We've learned from bitter experience to avoid the people who introduce themselves as peace activists. We've met many of them, and peace is the last thing on their minds.

It's not much different with people who describe themselves as advancing human rights. The rest of us presumably push human rights backwards. But in this case, Angelo the peace activist had a specific involvement. He was here to organize summer camps for Palestinian children. Those are the human rights that make sense even when (perhaps especially when) the cannons are blazing and there is death in the air. Summer camps for children.

Our daughter Malki, whose murder five years ago we are in the midst of remembering (the civil anniversary was on Wednesday, the Hebrew calendar date is this coming Monday) spent the last week of her violently-abbreviated life as a volunteer counsellor at a summer camp for children with developmental delays and special needs. The camp takes place each summer in the north of Israel, and involves many hundreds of participants from all parts of the country. It's organized by Etgarim, an association with some lovely people running it. Malki and her friend Rachel traveled up north without being sure they would be accepted as volunteers. They were, in the end, and Malki came back from there smiling from ear to ear. She loved everything about it. She was murdered a few days afterwards, and we heard most of the stories we know about that camp from the other counsellors and the organizers.

Angelo, whose name like Malki's is connected with angels, came here to work with children, to help put smiles on their faces.

This does not interest the terrorists. This is why they are terrorists. The humanity of the victims is of zero importance to them. You see it in the way Hizbollah fires hundreds of deadly missiles a day into Israel - couldn't care less where they land, just as long as someone dies.

You see it in the way terrorist bombers walk into restaurants or onto buses. No interest in whether there are good people there, or bad people. The humanity of their victims is not on the agenda.

They deny their victims' humanity in the absolute, ultimate way a person can. By killing them without having any idea who they are. Without the slightest interest in their past or present, without any hesitation, with a total absence of humanity. The innocent victims of the terrorists are not caught up in the cross-fire. They are the objective.

Angelo, who wanted to make happy summer camps for Palestinian children, who understood the meaning of good deeds, is as dead as our child who wanted to make happy summer camps for children with special needs. The terrorists who are praised by demented religious leaders (Nasrallah is a religious leader) as martyrs, as members of a resistance, as peace activists, rejoice in these deaths.

This is why terrorists have no place in human society. Not because we hate them; we do not. But because no civilized human society can tolerate their existence without committing suicide.