6-Sep-06: An Unblinking Look at French - and Western - Values

The deeply-disturbing affair of Mohammad Al-Durah, a child who may or may not have been killed in Gaza six years ago, is at the heart of three court cases, the first of which is to be heard in France later this month.

Dr Richard Landes of Boston University writes about these legal proceedings on his blog The Augean Stables. The multi-faceted Landes is also the force behind the outstanding Second Draft, Al Durah: Birth of an Icon and Pallywood projects - all of them very well-made, provocative streaming-video views of the challenge posed to western society by manipulated and manipulative news and images emanating from the Islamic world. And all of them viewable on the web.

Commencing September 14, 2006, the trials in Paris will review the actions and words of three French citizens who used Internet sites to publish criticism of France2’s coverage of the Muhammad Al Durah affair and of Charles Enderlin, a television journalist. Dr Landes is going to be there, and will blog-report on them. Each trial invokes an 1881 law on press freedom that purports to protect individuals, groups, ethnicities and religions from defamation that strikes at the honor and consideration (reputation) of "the individual or institution in question".

In an analytical preview of the judicial proceedings, Augean Stables makes the case that the trials will throw a sharp light on the disturbing direction of events in Europe and the West since 2000. Among the issues:

1. The radical misreading of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a Palestinian struggle for national independence rather than a part of global Jihad, which has the Europeans siding with the forces of global jihad against themselves.

2. The ways in which this pro-Palestinian rhetoric has introduced an Arab street in Europe and strengthened the forces of Islamism and Jihad around the globe.

3. The roles played by the French and European media in this process, and the exceptional denial that permeates French public life on the issues of Eurabia and global Jihad. 

4. The fundamental significance of anti-Zionism in European perceptions of the Al Durah icon, and how Al Durah as a 21st century blood libel has opened the gates to both Islamic anti-Semitism and more overt European anti-Zionism.

5. The ways that French (and European) politicians have ignored the rise of antisemitism in their midst through repeated denial.

6. The relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism and the dimensions of France's "politics of resentment".

7. The close connections between the French media (especially AFP) and the French foreign policy elite.
8. The ways the French legal system has functioned both in encouraging anti-Jewish violence with its lenient sentencing of anti-Jewish comments and deeds, and is now being used to silence any criticism.

9. Overall, the way the Al Durah affair has played out in France over the last 6 years shows in painful detail the dysfunctions of French culture and politics, and illustrates the ways in which Eurabia operates. We can see clearly that Europe has become vulnerable to aggressive Islamism and Jihadism in the cause and effect of Pallywood's success among European media gatekeepers. The European media are astonishingly credulous when considering video footage that is transparently dishonest.

The Al Durah video has become an icon in the worst and most malignant sense of the word. Yet for all their influence and importance there are parts of it that have been seen only by a handful of people (explained on the Augean Stables blog). Dr Landes suggests that the reaction, if they were more widely available:

...would be astonishment — and indignation at the media. It would be obvious that there is a direct correlation between media manipulation of information and the broad public support for anti-Zionism. But, absent the complete video, the eagerness with which Europeans “learned” about Muhammad al Durah’s “death” at the hands of the Israelis, made the fake so much more acceptable. In like fashion, the shocking news from Kafr Kana has triggered a horrified call to cease fire immediately. The West is being victimized by its enemies’ manipulation of images, for those deceitful icons and faked reports are received uncritically, even when not enthusiastically, by the West’s own media. Given that synergy between Islamist malice and easily-duped news outlets, how can the Western public make intelligent decisions? ...If free and responsible (hence reasonably accurate) media are the eyes and ears of civil society, then we are flying blinded by this kind of information over very dangerous terrain. Much in our troubled world hangs in the balance. The more people know, the more the judges become self-conscious about making their decision, and the more we can hope that France will make a sane decision from the perspective of both the law and the media.

If you haven't viewed the streaming videos, please go and do it now, or tonight.

6-Sep-06: Lebanese Underground

Tom Gross provides an invaluable service by publishing the results of the monitoring of the BBC's Arabic service for this article.

On August 1, retired Egyptian Major General Hussam Suwailem, the main studio guest for the daily "Hadith al-Saa" program on the BBC Arabic World Service (the equivalent of the "Newshour" program on the English-language BBC World Service) said Israel's airstrikes were failing because Hizbullah was "invisible". Hizbullah's underground network where they were hiding, he said, was so extensive that it amounted to an underground city. He said the network had been built by North Korean companies in the six years since Israel left Lebanon. The tunnels, he added, were dug deeper than the penetration ability of the GBU-28 bomb used by Israel; they each linked to three small military cities, and in some places the network goes as far as to reach inside Syria. Inside this network, he continued, communications structures were built with the co-operation of German companies. Suwailem further stated that the central command center of Hizbullah is in the Harmal area (in the Northern Beka valley), in which the al-Manar TV transmitters were also placed.

Six years of preparation. A vast underground city. North Korean and German technology. A cross-border structure reaching all the way into Syria. Sort of suggests they had a fairly serious war in mind - perhaps a war that isn't over yet.

As Tom Gross points out:

Hizbullah fired 4,228 rockets at Israel during the 34 days of fighting, leading to 53 fatalities, 250 severely wounded, and over 2,000 less seriously wounded. There was extensive damage to hundreds of dwellings, several public utilities, and dozens of industrial plants. One million Israelis lived near or in shelters or security rooms, with over 250,000 civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country.

And with all of this, we're treated to the spectacle of prominent politicial scientists speaking at an Islamic-sponsored conference in the US last week and blaming the entire catastrophe on Israeli premeditation and on its "influential Washington lobby". What's the world coming to if you can't form your political opinions on the basis of academic objectivity? Suggested answer: a fairly dangerous place. See CAMERA's research data for some disturbing indicators of how and why. And Benny Morris' powerful analysis "The Ignorance at the Heart of an Innuendo".

6-Sep-06: Reduction in Force 17

Nearly six years ago, on 30th October 2000, a young part-time security guard employed to protect the National Insurance Institute offices in East Jerusalem was gunned down in cold blood at almost point-blank range by Palestinian Arab terrorists. The office he guarded is the conduit for vast sums in monthly pension payments made to East Jerusalem Arabs under Israel's unemployment, single-parent and other social welfare programs.

The young man, Esh-Kodesh Gilmore, was the father of an eighteen-month-old daughter and the son of gentle American-born parents whom we subsequently came to know - when we lost our own daughter to an act of terrorist murder - and whom we are proud to call our friends. Some background about Esh-Kodesh's short life is here.

Three Palestinian Arabs were subsequently caught, charged and convicted of the terrorist murder. They are Talal Ghassan, 37, a senior Force 17 member from Ramallah; Marzouk Abu Naim, 43; and Na'man Nofel. The Jerusalem Post reported that, when arrested, the three were planning to execute additional attacks on the Ramallah bypass road and in and near Jerusalem. Abu Naim was good enough to lead his interrogators to two bombs which the cell had prepared for use.

The three terrorists in turn fingered Mahmoud Damra as the leader of their Ramallah-based terror cell. That cell, according to reports based on Israeli intelligence, was made up of members from all parts of the Palestinian terror constellation including Fatah and Hamas. It murdered seven Israelis in addition to Esh-Kodesh Gilmore, and managed to wound 20 more.

When Yasser Arafat was first holed up in his Ramallah headquarters in 2002 (see this report from The Guardian) during Operation Defensive Shield which was Israel's response to the string of massacres by Palestinians in Israel during Passover 2002, Damra was one of the fifty-plus terrorist fugitives who fled there to hide from the Israelis behind Arafat's skirts. This was an effective strategy, and enabled Damra to remain on the run. He has been on Israel's most-wanted list ever since.

On 31st May 2006, the "moderate" head of Fatah and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, appointed Damra (known also by the nom-de-guerre Abu Awad) to the leadership of Force-17, the so-called presidential guard, a thuggish, well-equipped gang formed to provide the Palestinian Arab despot Arafat with personal protection, and now doing the same for Arafat's successor. Force 17 has also become a key element in the internecine wars between Fatah and Hamas. In the interests of full disclosure, UPI quoted Palestinian sources saying that Damra is no terrorist, that he's committed to "the peace process" and that suggesting he's involved with terror is all just a big misunderstanding.

Denials notwithstanding, it's good to be able to see reports tonight that Mahmoud Damra's life on the run went through a fundamental re-alignment today. He was arrested trying to get through an Israel Defense Forces roadblock outside Nablus. We've mentioned numerous times how media critics of Israeli roadblocks denigrate their importance to the war against terrorists... but time and again, that's where the big and ugly fish get intercepted and taken out of the game. Yediot Aharonot reports tonight that

"...a senior Palestinian official, who is a close associate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, defined Damra's arrest as a "despicable act." The official said that "while Abu Mazen (Abbas) is exerting supreme efforts to solve the Gilad Shalit affair and advance the process, Olmert and Peretz are attempting to move things backwards."

We admit to being somewhat unsure about the process they refer to.

Our satisfaction with the arrest of this barbarian is tempered only by the knowledge that there appears to be a deal underway today for the release of hundreds of Palestinian terror practitioners. It remains to be seen whether the names of cold-blooded murders like Damra are on the list.

UPDATE: Not a happy ending - see "5-Jan-12: What the blood-soaked career of an "adviser on local government matters" reveals about the 'moderate' PA leader's thinking"

5-Sep-06: A Knifing and its Economic Context

When reading reports of economic hardship among Palestinian Arabs (like this major piece entitled "Palestinians Begin to Direct Blame Inward" in yesterday's LA Times), keep in mind the events reported here - and please read through to the end.

Shimon Ran, 63, a factory worker from Jerusalem was stabbed and seriously wounded early this morning in the Atarot Industrial Zone in Jerusalem's northern suburbs, about 10 minutes drive from where we live. The attacker is an Arab, and the police say terror was the motive. (Jerusalem Post report here.)

Despite an intensive search, he has not been apprehended.

Ran sustained moderate injures and is hospitalized in the Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in Jerusalem. Thankfully, there's a report that his condition stabilized after initial treatment.

The stabbing took place outside a cosmetics factory (pictured right) where Ran had parked his car. The terrorist attacked from behind, stabbing Ran in the back with a 20-cm knife. Numerous attacks by Palestinian Arabs on Jewish workers have taken place in the area in the past year. Hundreds of Palestinian Arabs are employed by Jewish-owned businesses in the Artarot area.

Two weeks ago, in an attempt to "improve the lot of Palestinians in the West Bank", the Israeli military said it was easing restrictions imposed in recent months as Israel battled Palestinian militants in Gaza and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. The Boston Globe says: "Before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict re-erupted six years ago, around 80,000 Palestinians worked in Israel." One source points out that Atarot used to be a booming industrial zone until the late 1980's when repeated Arab terror attacks drove out some of the major businesses, including the Mashbir department store's regional warehouse, the Pereg airconditioning and heating plant and a major lumber yard.

The IDF's statement, reported on 20th August, said 26,500 Palestinian workers and traders would be allowed to enter Israel and another 1,500 West Bank residents would be allowed to work in the Atarot industrial park on Jerusalem's north side. Long before Israel won its independence in 1948, Atarot was a center of Zionist settlement and enterprise -- and a constant target of nearby Arab villagers.

Stabbings and killings by Palestinians allowed into Israel as part of humanitarian programs are rarely reported in the mainstream media.

8th Sept UPDATE: The stabber is in custody.

1-Sep-06: When Does "Disproportionate" Lose All Proportion?

Hizbollah has recruited over 2,000 children aged between 10 and 15 to serve in its armed gangs. The Mahdi Scouts youth organization, affiliated with Hizbollah, is training them. (You can see them listed here in a global catalogue of scouting organizations. Someone should notify the editors.)

The influential independent Egyptian magazine Roz Al-Yusuf exposes this in its August 18, 2006 edition. An investigative article by Mirfat Al-Hakim titled "Hizbullah's Children's Militias" says the children are selected by Hizbullah recruiters based on a single criterion: "They must be willing to become martyrs."

The invaluable MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) published this on Thursday. (MEMRI may be the single most important window we non-Arabic speakers have into that world. More power to them.) Here's an excerpt:

"The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization... [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology... The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program... "The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985... According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.
"The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."
"A Nation With Child-Martyrs Will Be Victorious"
According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

More than anything else, this depressing revelation highlights the critical need for a total overhaul of the way education is managed and delivered in the Arab world.

But as threatening and upsetting as this is for us Israelis, if we were Lebanese we would be sickened, revolted - and determined to remove the individuals and institutions responsible for letting this malevolent, cancerous growth appear in the midst of our society. The silence from the Arab world on this and similar subjects is deafening.

On our side of the fence, we view the education of children as one of the highest responsibilities we have. That, along with keeping them safe and well, is a paramount obligation. In fact, almost everything else tends to be dwarfed by it. Perhaps this is what the disproportionality argument between Israel and our neighbours is really about.

1-Sep-06: Pipe-dreams and pipe-nightmares

We're still trying to absorb the import of Mahmoud Abbas referring yesterday to the rain of Qassam rockets onto Israeli communities and homes as being a matter of mere "pipes".

In the mean time, we're indebted to blog visitor Gharqad Tree for his valuable comment:

"I wouldn't claim that casualty figures are irrelevant, (every death from these rockets is terrible and unacceptable) but we should be careful when using them. You end up playing into the hands of the ignorant media, who decide the morality of the respective sides merely by assessing which side has suffered the heaviest losses. The one fact that remains, regardless of mathematics or statistics, is that elements of Palestinian society have no moral problem with using the 'liberated' Gaza Strip as a launching pad for rockets, the sole intention of which is to kill and maim Israeli civilians. That the rockets frequently fail in this aim tells us nothing about the people who launch them, or the fear that they engender in innocent Israelis..."

To reinforce the point, and to make plain the utter contempt we have for Mahmoud Abbas and his absurd characterization of deadly explosives as "pipes", here at right are several images we have collected. They show (to those interested in looking a little beyond the polemics of corrupt and tainted politicians) what pipes like those deployed by terrorists can do to the lives of civilized and peaceable people and communities.

31-Aug-06: Far from media attention, rockets keep crashing into Israel

For months, Qassam rockets have been directed into Israeli towns by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. By and large, these attacks have been ignored by the foreign media, but have continued, almost on a daily basis, to terrorise Israelis living in towns and cities within firing range of Gaza. (Until the Hezbollah War in July, we reported most of the Qassam attacks in our daily blogs of the past months.)

They have caused destruction of homes, schools, factories, businesses. Maimings, injuries and deaths - the 2004 Maariv map at right gives an overview of how bad things were two years ago; the faces signify people killed by Qassams. (We'll replace it with a more accurate, up-to-date image when we can locate or make one.)

This morning (Thursday), five Qassam rockets landed in various parts of the Israeli town of Sderot. Because the Palestinian rockets lack any serious directional guidance system, no one - least of all the thugs firing them - knows where they are going to impact, whom they're going to maim or kill, or what the consequences will be. This is part of what makes them terrorists. Today's attacks led to several people requiring hospitalization, mainly for shock. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

Demonstrating his utter indifference to the moral and human dimensions of this while summoning the full moral authority of his high office, the head of the Palestinian Authority expressed himself in the media today. Mahmoud Abbas called the rockets being fired into Israel "pipes". The problem with these pipes, he said, is that they provide Israel with an excuse to carry out military operations in the Gaza Strip.

"Our people [the Palestinian Arabs] don't deserve these tragedies," he said, inventing an entirely new and twisted meaning for an otherwise straightforward word. "If these pipes provide an excuse, it's time to stop using them."

In the context of Palestinian Arab politics, shallow pronouncements of this sort are what qualify Abbas as a moderate.

UPDATE: Since several readers asked, the death toll from Qassam rocket pot-shots into the communities abutting the Gaza Strip stands at 13. Hundreds more have been injured and hospitalized. Refer to Wikipedia for some out-of-date but nonetheless useful and accurate details. Or search our blog, using the search term "Qassam". We've been reporting these attacks pretty consistently since the start of now-forgotten Hamas "ceasefire" (that was bogus from its inception) of February 2005.

30-Aug-06: Shhh... Arab Leaders Stole Billions From Their People

When one of the Arab world's most influential 'insiders' makes a speech at an international conference of leaders and takes the opportunity to blast Arab kleptocrats, that would be news, right?

Actually, it depends on the circumstances.

Prince El-Hassan bin Talal, brother of the late and long-serving King Hussein of Jordan who died in 1999, spoke in Japan two days ago. He is there as moderator of the World Assembly of Religions for Peace. The four-day conference in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto is an opportunity for leaders from all religions to contribute to an end to sectarian strife and violence in the world.

Prince Hassan made a significant speech, perhaps the most important one of the entire assembly. Reporting on it under the headline "Arab leaders stole billions from their people", here is what Yedioth Aharonot's YNET website quotes him as saying...

Jordanian Prince Hassan Bin Talal levels scathing criticism at Arab leaders during speech delivered in Kyoto conference: 'Arab leaders stole billions of dollars from the Arab people in order to spend them on weapons to fight Israel, which they can never defeat.'
Prince warns against Iranian nuclear armament project
Roee Nahmias Published: 08.28.06, 22:27
Jordanian Prince Hassan Bin Talal, who was the Jordanian heir apparent until Abdullah was crowned as king, launched a sharp verbal attack against the leaders of Arab countries during a Kyoto conference. "The Arab leaders stole billions of dollars from the Arab people and spent it on weapons to fight Israel, which they will never defeat, instead of using the money for health and education purposes to aid their people," he stated. Speaking at the world conference of the interfaith group "Religions for Peace", Prince Hassan also attacked the Iranian nuclear development program. Hassan spoke against nuclear armament, especially on Iran's part, and said that it needs to be made sure that the nuclear project in Iran does not reach the stage of nuclear weapons. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami was present at the conference. Prince Hassan, like Khatami, arrived together with more than 800 religious leaders to the Kyoto conference. One of the conference's aims this year is to formulate an ethical code that will be implemented in cases of violent conflicts across the globe. Representatives from countries like Israel, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and North Korea are taking part in the event. One of the Israeli delegates in the conference, Rabbi David Rosen, had met with Khatami during the event. He said that "Former President Khatami was extremely polite, he shook my hand and did not mention Israel in his speech at all." Several debates between Israeli rabbis and Palestinian clerics are set to take place in coming days in a bid to establish a mechanism that would enable cooperation between religious leaders. The Palestinian delegation is headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' representative and head of the sharia court, Tayer Tamimi, along with Catholic Patriarch Michel Sabbah.

Why, we wonder, would a speech as clear and uncompromising as this one, from so prominent an Arab leader, be so totally ignored by the press?

Could it be because no media representatives were present at the Kyoto conference? Nope - here's the conference press kit. Or that the text was not available, or spoken too quickly, or in a difficult-to-understand language? Unlikely - here's the full text of His Royal Highness' very eloquent opening speech on his own elaborate and strikingly aesthetic website. Stands to reason his remarks about the Arab kleptocrats could have been obtained without too much grunting and sweating.

So we're left wondering why some clear, unambiguous words about the despotic, self-serving kleptocrats of the Arab world are left unpublished, and therefore unnoticed and unknown. Perhaps those kleptocrats have to be dead before the media sit up and take notice.

30-Aug-06: Crossings

The headlines accompanying UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's visit to Israel yesterday and today are focused on two main themes. First, he's calling for the removal of the Israeli blockade of Lebanon. And he says the breaches of the ceasefire between Hizbollah and Israel are mainly by Israel, and Israel should stop the breaching, pronto. As for the Israeli soldiers kidnapped from Israeli territory by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, these, he says, are an 'irritant'.

We can't speak for all Israelis, but the majority of us think Hizbollah are not about to lay down their weapons, dismantle their missile launchers or empty out their deep and fortified bunkers. In fact there's a fairly widely-held view here that Hizbollah got as far as they thought they could get in the July round and are now quietly getting on with preparations for the next round. But what would we know? It's not clear how much he shares our viewpoint, but there's not much doubt about Mr Annan's contribution to the solution. He says: "Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that the only way to disarm is through force." Echoing his sentiment, the Lebanese government, a tad optimistically perhaps, says: "The army will confiscate every piece of weapon that it finds, and that is what is happening now, in a firm but friendly manner". Yep, firm but friendly - that ought to do it.

But the part that really steams us is where he demands the blockade be lifted.

Israel has imposed restrictions on all air and sea routes to Lebanon. Currently road access is available to and from Syria, and commercial flights to Beirut airport have been allowed only to and from Amman, Jordan, an Arab state with a peace treaty with Israel. Various Lebanese political figures have adopted the usual hysterical exaggerations. "We cannot submit to siege and blackmail and abandon our sovereignty" says Tarrad Hamadeh, Lebanese minister of Labor speaking on Hezbollah television. The Lebanese cabinet on Monday called the siege one of Israel's "terrorist practices."

Away from the hyperbole, Israelis are familiar with the cleft stick of defending against a war waged by real terrorists on one hand, and refraining from creating misery for civilians on the hostile side of the fence, on the other. It's not easy and the terrorists - Hamas in the south and center, Hizbollah in the north - understand this well. Which is why they keep recreating the conditions intended to threaten Israeli lives while maximizing unpleasantness and inconvenience and worse for their own brothers and sisters at every opportunity.

Here's an example. A tunnel was discovered earlier this week near the Karni Crossing. [Have a look at the pictures we have reproduced on the right of this column - and click on the image to see a larger version.] Israeli forces, acting on intelligence tips, found a shaft reaching 13 meters underground, and a 150 meter-long tunnel whose entrance was inside a private residence in Sajjaiyeh, in the suburbs of Gaza City. The tunnel was blown up yesterday. It's not the first such tunnel, and it won't be the last. It was created in order to enable a terror attack on Karni itself - again, not for the first time. Previous attempts are summarized here, here and here and many other places. There have been dozens.

Few of us have been to Karni, and very few people understand why it's so important - or why we're mentioning it in connection with the blockade on Lebanon. Karni Crossing is a cargo terminal on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The crossing was constructed in 1993 to allow Palestinian merchants to export and import goods. It's where 'back-to-back' transfers are arranged, in which merchandise and produce for the Israeli market or for export overseas is removed from a Palestinian truck and placed in an Israeli truck, and vice versa for Gaza-bound goods. There are about 800 such truck transfers every day at Karni.

In the past six years, it's been attacked by Palestinian terror groups a number of times, usually by mortar attacks or infantry assaults. The dead have included victims from both sides of the border. The terrorists have also used Karni to smuggle bombers and explosive belts into Israel. Karni has been frequently shut down for repairs after such attacks, or because of an intelligence tip-off of an upcoming attack.

Karni, along with Erez and Kerem Shalom, two other major Gaza crossings constructed by Israel, is a lifeline for the Gazan population. Merchandise and medical supplies flow in and out of the Gaza Strip through these facilities, which is precisely why they are targeted by the terrorists. The terrorists deliberately aim to weaken the Palestinian economy. Still, they're reopened again and again after each attack because of an Israeli desire to ease the daily lives of those Palestinian civilians not involved in terror.

This all probably sounds straightforward enough to whoever reads this blog. But do a search of "Karni" in today's news sources, and you'll get stories that focus - like Annan has done this week - exclusively on the economic and humanitarian harm suffered by the Arab cvilian population.

They entirely ignore the actions of the terrorists, the counter-terror work of the Israelis and the woeful context in which Palestinian Arab terror groups do anything and everything to kill and destroy, including shooting themselves and their communities in the foot. This makes these media stories partial, inaccurate, misleading and eventually life-threatening to us.

To illustrate, here are the first 3 results of a Google News search on the word "Karni" this morning:

NDTV (India): The US has proposed deploying international observers at the Karni cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza to prevent repeated security closures of Gaza's economic lifeline.

ZeeNews (India): Relief operations in Gaza Strip come to a standstill: New York, Aug 28: With UN agencies facing severe shortage of food, fuel and construction supplies due to the continuing Israeli blockade, relief operations in the Gaza strip have come to a standstill.

WAFA (Palestinian News Agency): HR Organisations Appeal to Israeli Court to Order Opening of Crossings: TEL AVIV, August 29, 2006, (WAFA) - Six human rights organisations submitted an urgent request to the Israeli Supreme Court to order the Minister of Defense to open the crossings into the Gaza Strip for the regular human supplies.

Another example - this headline from a recent United Nations report: "Only a fully functioning Karni Crossing can avert looming humanitarian crisis" Report, UNRWA, 22 March 2006

Really? That's the only thing. How simple life must be when you focus all your attention on what's being done to you, and not on what you are doing or failing to do.

So... in the interest of creating a tiny bit of balance, here's more of what virtually the entire world of news media failed to tell you about this week's festivities.

The Shin Bet supplied the IDF with pinpoint intelligence that led troops to the building in which the tunnel was concealed. IDF soldiers then located and destroyed the tunnel which was found in a building about 1.3 kilometers from the border with Israel. The width and depth of the tunnel, estimated to have been dug weeks ago, were impressive. It was dug in the direction of Karni Crossing where terrorists had planned to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians operating the crossing. The Shin Bet thinks the tunnel may have been intended to enable the terrorists to kidnap soldiers or civilians in the Karni area. Soldiers of Brigade 71 of the Armored Corps, in which Corporal Gilad Shalit served before he was kidnapped two months ago, took part in the operation to locate and destroy the tunnel. 13 armed Palestinian Arab gunmen have been killed in the past two days in the Sajjaiyeh area in clashes with the IDF.

If a humanitarian catastrophe is averted in Gaza, or in Lebanon for that matter, this will have far more to do with successful anti-terrorist measures than with Annan's speeches or with the bogus 'heroism' of the Lebanese, Hamas or Hizbollah 'resistance'.

28-Aug-06: Insects and fish and the boundaries of tolerance

An international gathering of media thinkers and journalists from all over the world will convene in a few days' time on the gorgeous island of Bali. The assembled throng are invited to turn their minds to "ways and means of promoting freedom of expression and greater tolerance". Participants will be inspired to write articles and essays about the challenges facing "a multi-cultural world". A morning session on the first day will discuss whether "a pluralistic society be more open to a pluralism of views. How can we foster freedom of expression where governments and other forces in society try to limit it?"

Great and important themes, these. And weighty questions. Who's opposed to freedom of expression? Certainly not Norway, one of the two host countries. Who wants to see less tolerance in the world, rather than more? Not me, says the government of Indonesia, the other host. Go to the congress' website and you'll see it's attracted participants from all over.

Well, not exactly all over. A prominent journalist, until recently the head of one of the most liberal factions in the Israeli parliament, has an invitation to take part. But it's not going to do him much good. It was issued by the Norwegians. But their co-hosts the Indonesians, evidently concerned with upholding the highest standards of tolerance and freedom of expression, have informed the journalist, Yossi Sarid, he's not welcome on their island. He will not be allowed in to Indonesia. Haaretz, as far as we can tell, is the only newspaper in the world to report on this uplifting example of open-mindedness and multi-culturalism.

Indonesia's conduct in this sordid little tale is bad enough. But Norway's is no better. Haaretz says that the authorities in Oslo suggested

"...Sarid could travel to Indonesia on a Norwegian passport. On Saturday, Sarid rejected the offer in a letter addressed to the Indonesian president and Norwegian prime minister... "I almost fell out of my chair with astonishment," wrote Sarid in reference to the offer. "The more thought I gave to the offer, the angrier I became? I have no other country and I have no other nationality. No self-respecting person in the world, no person who respects his nationality, would accept such a twisted offer." Sarid again urged other participants invited to the conference to decline their invitations in protest of his rejection.

Press articles and cartoons - as we have all seen in the past half-year - have become a sufficient reason for people to beat the living daylights out of one another in the name of honor, respect and tolerance. But though no one is being killed in this story, there's nothing amusing about the Bali affair.

If tolerance and freedom of expression are extended only to people whose viewpoint you share, then you're neither tolerant nor offering freedom. It appears the Norwegians won't or can't explain this to the Indonesians, 88% of whose 242 million citizens are Moslems. It's the largest Moslem state by population in the world, and the world's fourth largest country.

There's an Indonesian expression: Lain ladang lain belalang, lain lubuk lain ikannya. Different fields have different insects, different ponds have different fish.

Someone needs to remind the authorities in Jakarta of Indonesia's long cultural tradition of celebrating diversity. They're in danger of turning it, and themselves, into a bad joke.

28-Aug-06: Palestinian Arab version of "Man Bites Dog" story

Unusually frank words of self-criticism appear in the Palestinian Arab media today. Ghazi Hamad, a spokesperson for the Hamas Palestinian Arab regime and a man with a minor reputation for relative pragmatism, publicly criticizes the chaos and anarchy that marks all aspects of Palestinian life today -- without blaming all of it on Israel.

Hamad even calls on Palestinian Arabs to (gulp) admit some mistakes.

As for English-language translation, the story is published today on the Israeli Yedioth Aharonot and Jerusalem Post websites and, as far as we can tell, nowhere else till now.

Some extracts, with the "no duh!" parts removed:-

"When you walk in the streets of Gaza City, you cannot but close your eyes because of what you see there: unimaginable chaos, careless policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride and families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the street."
Hamad says the Palestinians have turned the Gaza Strip into a lawless and violent place. "After the withdrawal from Gaza, we hoped for a bright future, we thought that this year we will reap the fruits of our sacrifices. But I ask myself today: why did the occupation return to Gaza? Wise men and commentators will say the occupation [by Israel] is responsible. I am not defending the occupation, but I want to stop at our mistakes, which we are accustomed to blame on others. Let's admit we erred".
"Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs... I remember the day when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and closed the gates behind. Then, Palestinians across the political spectrum took to the streets to celebrate what many of us regarded as the Israeli defeat or retreat. We heard a lot about a promising future in the Gaza Strip and about turning the area into a trade and industrial zone."

"We did not succeed in preserving the victory of liberating Gaza. 500 people died in the Gaza Strip since the [Israeli] withdrawal, as opposed to only 3 or 4 Israelis killed by rockets. The reality in Gaza today is one of neglect, sadness, and failure. When someone errs we are scared to criticize him to avoid being accused of being against the resistance."

"When efforts are made to open the Rafah border crossing to ease the humanitarian crisis, there is always someone who fires a rocket on the crossing. When we speak about a truce, there is always someone who fires another rocket.

"The land is full with anarchy, corruption, thuggery, and gang killings. Isn't building the homeland part of the resistance?

"We have all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity. We have lost our sense of direction and we don't know where we're headed."

Kidnapping, he says, has become a "profitable business," charging that kidnappers of innocent foreigners apathetic to the harm their deeds cause to the Palestinian cause.

"Let's admit to our mistakes, let's do some logical soul searching and place the interest of our people before us [!!!] and say honestly: We were right here and we erred there. Only then will we see that the faces of Gaza and the homeland changes."

Sadly no apologies are offered here on behalf of the Arafat regime kleptocrats and the Hamas and Fatah despots to their Palestinian Arab brothers and sisters for having turned three generations of children into dim-witted, uneducated, impoverished terrorist thugs.

It's another aspect of this tragedy that self-criticism of one of the most catastrophically self-destructive regimes in history is so incredibly rare as to warrant being treated as a news event. We're not holding our breath, by the way, to see if the Arab media pick it up and give it some exposure.

Appropriate for us to mention a statement attributed to a wise old woman: 

"You ask when will there be peace between us Israelis and the Arabs? Peace will come when they learn to love their own children more than they hate ours."

That tectonic shift in outlook is still nowhere in sight.

UPDATE: Full text now (28th August) available courtesy of the indispensable MEMRI.

25-Aug-06: In the Dark Corners: Life in a Totalitarian Society

Here's another reality-check moment. Extremist critics of Israel love banging the non-democratic, oppressive, colonialist drum and prefer not to allow reality or facts to intrude. We're not about to argue with them (waste of time, offensive etc.) but we do want to ask why so little is said about the things being done to non-Muslim Arabs in the Arab world. We're especially wondering about the darker corners of the Palestinian Authority, one of the most frightening places in the world to be a holder of non-mainstream opinions.

The article below, appearing in a Chinese Christian magazine, reveals facts that we feel need to be made known wherever discussion of the Israel-Arab conflict takes place. [Reminder: Bethlehem is under the full control of the Palestinian Authority]

Molotov cocktail against Christian activists home in Bethlehem
Samir Qumsieh, owner and director of the only private Christian TV [station] in Palestine, is the victim. For some time now, he has been receiving threats and has been the object of intimidation. Yet his appeals to the authorities have fallen on deaf ears.
Bethlehem (AsiaNews) Death threats are getting nastier for Samir Qumsieh. He is the director and owner of the only private Christian TV station in Palestine. Concerned about his family and his business, he has repeatedly called on the authorities to intervene to the little avail. In 1996 Mr Qumsieh founded Al-Mahed (the Nativity) TV in Bethlehem. He told AsiaNews that he is forced to live with the constant threats against his life and might have to shut down his TV station, which has been well-received by Christian leaders in the Holy Land. In the past, Mr Qumsieh denounced several times the violence inflicted on Christians in the Holy Land. A few days ago he called on Bethlehem governor, Salah Al-Tamari, to investigate a serious incident. After midnight last Thursday unidentified people threw cocktail Molotov into the garden of his house.
"We avoided the worst by a miracle. One of the bottles fell on wet grass causing little damage; the other did not explode, he said. Nevertheless, the incident is but the latest in a long string of similar episodes." Qumsieh said that in the past defamatory and indimidatory leaflets about him were circulated. "But what is worse is that despite my pleas that something be done to find those responsible for these acts, the security forces have done nothing." In his letter to the governor, copies of which were also sent to the chiefs of local security forces and to Christian leaders, the TV station owner complained that the threats against him are a serious and dangerous development that must be taken seriously. Mr Qumsieh also faces an economic threat. Poor revenues might force him to shut down his TV station. And this is already wetting the appetite of Born-Again evangelical Christians and Hamas who seem interested in buying Al-Mahed. Financing is not a new problem though, but in the past Mr Qumsieh had already said that closing up would be the hardest thing to do. "It is something that touches the entire community. If it goes down, there won't be another like it."

With so many things "going down" in the non-Moslem parts of Palestinian Arab society, it's tragic that events like those reported here get so little attention.

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.