Posted 9/30/2003 04:33:00 PM

Subject: The Nablus Alamo

(re-posted here exactly three years after the events in question took place)


The Martyr of Joseph


On Rosh Hashana, 2000, Madhat Yusef became a martyr to the Oslo "peace
process" and the policies of the Israeli government of Ehud Barak. Madhat
was a nineteen year old Druse soldier serving in Israel's border
patrol. He was murdered by PLO bullets, but allowed to bleed to death by
the government of Israel.

Like many in his Druse town of Beit J'an, Madhat served in the same
border patrol in which his father had previously served his country for 25
years. And like American Jews who work on Christmas Day to allow their
countrymen to celebrate their holidays, Madhat was doing guard duty at
Joseph's Shrine in Nablus/Shechem on the Jewish New Year when he was
murdered by PLO stormtroopers sent out by Yassir Arafat.

Jospeh's Tomb is a shrine in the center of Nablus. The town lies
between the Mountain of Blessings from the Bible, Mount Grizim, and the
Mountain of Curses, Mount Aival. In the Bible the Israelites are evenly
divided between the two mountains by Moses so that future Jew will feel
that he is in the center between the two, that the fate of the entire
nation is in the balance and depends on his own individual behavior and
actions. In the middle, between the two mountains, is the shrine where the
bones of Joseph lie, carried to the Promised Land by the Israelites
according to Joseph's last will and testament, all as documented in the
Bible itself.

In this glen, Ehud Barak tipped the balance on Rosh Hashana 2000,
toward cowardice and national suicide.

According to the Oslo Accords (the formal written ones, not the de
facto ones where Israel makes endless appeasements for peace and the PLO
wages war) it is agreed that Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, like Rachael's Tomb
near Bethlehem, should remain in Israeli control and under Israeli
sovereignty. The PLO pledges freedom of access and respect for Jewish
religious shrines. In reality, Joseph's Tomb has become a sort of Jewish
Alamo. It is the scene of daily violence by the PLO. Jews take their
lives in the hands to go there.

A handful of courageous yeshiva students stay there, guarded by some
soldiers and border patrolmen. The students have refused to listen to
Israel's Lobotomized Left, urging that they abandon Joseph's Tomb in order
to avoid "provoking" the poor Palestinians with their presence. The
students live under permanent siege, and PLO "police" routinely attack
people trying to enter or leave the shrine. Things are not much better at
Rachael's shrine. It is all an indicator of what Jews can expect to
happen at the Western Wall if Israel's Left ever has its way and the Old
City of Jerusalem is handed over to the PLO.

For years the PLO has sought to ruin Jewish holidays with
violence. Two years ago Arafat decided to send the Jews a Succos holiday
greeting in the form of a pogrom, launched after Israel had decided to
allow Jews to visit an old Maccabee Tunnel near but not under the Temple
Mount. Arafat fabricated a story of how the Jews were endangering the
Al-Aqsa Mosque and polluting it with their proximity, and ordered his
stormtroopers to open fire. Purim has for years been the open season for
Arab atrocities, including bombings. And this year (2000) Arafat decided
to order pogroms on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

It was all a part of the "Al-Aqsa intifada" as it was officially
named by Arafat. For years we have been saying in this corner that the
entire Oslo "peace process" will produce, instead of peace, nothing but the
metastasis of violence from the "territories" into pre-1967 Israel, where
Israeli Arabs will be radicalized, nazified, and will turn to
terrorism. The Rosh Hashana pogrom proved how correct this prognosis is.

The official excuse for the pogrom was that Likud leader Arik Sharon
had gone for a walk on the Temple Mount, where the two Temples of the
Biblical era once stood. Jews are only allowed to visit the Mount as
tourists. They are not allowed to pray there and even silent lip-movement
by a Jew can get him arrested. There was not a serious danger that Sharon
was about to pray there, as it is doubtful he knows how.

The control over the Temple Mount had been turned over to the PLO at
the start of Oslo. Before that it had been administered by Jordan ever
since Moshe Dayan abandoned any attempt to exercise Israeli sovereignty
over the most sacred ground in the world for Judaism. The pathetic
government of Yitzhak Shamir had ordered that all Israeli flags be removed
from the vicinity of the Mount to avoid offending Moslem
hypersensitivities. The Mount is de facto under PLO sovereignty and flies
the PLO flag. At Camp David, Barak had offered formally to recognize PLO
sovereignty over the Temple Mount, along with turning over nearly the
entire West Bank to the PLO Reichlet. But Barak had balked at granting an
unlimited "right of return" into Israel for Palestinian "refugees", which
the PLO was demanding.

As a result, Arafat was looking for an excuse to launch pogroms. He
has been taught in Pavlovian manner over the past decade that the best way
to get concessions from Israel is through violence. On Friday, Erev Rosh
Hashana, the PLO-paid and PLO-appointed preachers of the Al-Aqsa Mosque
ordered Arabs to attack Jews randomly, to "protect" the Mosque that no one
was threatening.

Some violence had begun when Arabs attacked Jews on the Thursday
before Rosh Hashana weekend and sent 25 Israeli policemen to the
hospital. Then on Erev Rosh Hashana, the pogrom was officially launched
at Arafat's command and quickly spread into Israeli Arab towns, lasting
throughout the holiday weekend. Throughout the Galilee and also south of
Haifa, Israeli Arabs blocked roads, attacked Jewish picnickers and
motorists, assaulted police. In Nazareth, the town of the Christian
Prince of Peace, Arabs screamed "Kill the Jews" and attacked any Jew they
could find. Violence broke out in the Negev Bedouin town of Rahat, a
hotbed of anti-Semitism. There were violent riots in Jaffa, in effect the
downtown of Tel Aviv. Jews in more remote settlements or rural positions
were told to stay home and not venture out onto the roads. It was as if
1947 had returned, where the entire Jewish population was under siege.

Molotov cocktails were tossed at Rachael's Tomb. The Jews praying at
the Western Wall were twice evacuated due to assaults by the
pogromchiks. At the Neve Dekelim settlement, those praying in the
synagogue had to grab weapons and sit at the windows when the synagogue was
attacked. Seventy policemen in Jerusalem were sent to the hospital.

Near Kalkiliya an interesting event occurred. There, "joint patrols"
between the PLO and Israel are supposed to be carried out under an Oslo
agreement. On the eve of Rosh Hashana, a jeep full of PLO "police" was
patrolling alongside a jeep of Israeli border patrolmen. Suddenly the PLO
Gestapo fired point blank into the Israeli jeep and murdered Yossi Tabje in
cold blood. Tabje was a 27 year old Jew from Ethiopia. His mother had
died in Ethiopia when he was three years old, after which he came to
Israel with his brothers under Operation Moses. He had served in the army
as a paratrooper and had been awarded the Presidential medal for
heroism. He was due to be married shortly. He was a brother in blood of
the Druse border patrolman Madhat Yusef, on duty in Joseph's Tomb.

(It will be interesting to see if the assimilationist-liberal
organizations in the US, like the Reform RAC or like the ADL, will have
anything to say about this hate crime and racist murder of a black man by
the PLO.)

But perhaps the worst violence was at Netsarim, a small isolated
settlement south of Gaza City. Under the Oslo Accords, the PLO agreed to
respect Netsarim and protect it from violence. In reality Netsarim has
become the Stalingrad of Oslo. It is the subject of yet another
"controlled carnage" agreement, of the sort Israeli politicians so
love. (Similar agreements long operated in Lebanon.) Under this
"agreement" the PLO organizes daily violence and siege of the Jewish men,
women and children in Netsarim, and just as long as things do not get "too
far out of hand", Israel sits back and allows the violence to occur.

The problem is that every so often the PLO-led violence at Netsarim
DOES get "out of hand". An Israeli soldier was murdered outside the
settlement last week (2000). Over the holiday weekend, the PLO ordered
that Netsarim be stormed. PLO "police" were openly leading the pogrom and
firing at the Israeli troops with the machine guns they received from
Israel. The Jews returned fire for a change. In the crossfire, some of
the pogromchiks were pacified to death.

Now as it turned out, a French film crew was on the spot and captured
footage of a 12 year old Palestinian boy being shot to death outside
Netsarim, while his father was wounded. The world media had a new poster
child and the PLO had a new martyr myth.

What exactly happened there? Muhammed Adira and his father were
minding their own business while standing in the midst of a mob of
pogromchiks attacking Israelis with machine guns and Molotov
cocktails. The father of the 12 year old boy insists they were merely out
shopping for a (stolen?) car, and surely everyone knows that Arabs
routinely go shopping for cars next to Netsarim in the midst of
pogroms. Anyway, the Israeli Commander of the Gaza Battalion insists the
boy was hit by bullets fired by the PLO's stormtroopers (later confirmed by
a German camera crew and others). No doubt CNN and Haaretz will neglect
to mention this irrelevant detail. In any case, the boy may have died
because the ambulance trying to evacuate him was fired upon and its driver
killed. The PLO has a long track record of firing at ambulances. No one
seriously thinks Israeli troops have ever shot at an ambulance.

Meanwhile the Lobotomized Left was showing how it could stick to its
blinders even in the midst of anti-Jewish pogroms. The police, led by
leftist officers and commanded by Professor of McCarthyism Shlomo Ben-Ami
(himself later crucified by the Orr Commission --- SP), said the pogroms
were all the fault of Arik Sharon. As usual the Jewish victims of Arab
violence are to blame. Most of the rest of the Left chimed in amen. The
US State Department agrees that Sharon is completely to blame. Haaretz
ran editorials and Op-Eds blaming the whole pogrom on Arik Sharon's stroll.
I have little doubt that if it were printing in the 1940s, Haaretz would
run daily banner pieces about the sufferings of SS officers killed by
savage partisans and the tribulations of their poor children.

Peace Now ran an obscene ad saying that not only was Sharon
responsible for the pogroms over Rosh Hashana, but also of course for the
Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon (in which Arabs killed
Arabs). The Haaretz "reporter" Amira Hess, self-styled "expert" on Arabs
although she speaks no Arabic, who recently called in the San Francisco
area for the eradication of Israel, wrote a "news report" claiming that
Arafat had not ordered the pogrom and it was all because "things got out of
his control". Barak's government adopted the same line. Such things
always remind me of those people who insist Hitler never ordered any
atrocities against Jews, wished them no harm and it was all the work of his
underlings who were out of his control.

But let us return to Madhat Yusef defending Joseph's Tomb from the
Philistines. Whose name in Arabic means Joseph. Under siege in the
Israeli Alamo in Nablus. The PLO stormtroopers at the direct orders of
Arafat firing into the shrine. Yusef is badly wounded by a PLO
bullet. The medics do what they can for him. They radio out for
help. There is a large Israeli military base atop the Mount of Blessings
nearby, on Mount Grizim.

But Ehud Barak has issued orders. Israeli troops are to do nothing to
"provoke" the Palestinian savages. They are to cower and hide, much like
they are ordered to do at the Lebanese border. They are to do everything to
avoid situations wherein they might be required to use their
weapons. They are to wait for our PLO "peace partners" to restore order.

Yusef's comrades desperately dial out for help. The base nearby has
tanks and APCs that could be used, if necessary, to disburse the
pogromchiks and open the road to the Alamo, allowing Yusef to be evacuated
and rescued. But the army has its orders from Barak, the head of the
post-Jewish and post-survivalist "peace government". It sits back. It does
nothing. The same Israeli military that rescued the 250 hostages being
held in Entebbe suddenly cannot rescue a single Druse soldier bleeding to
death in Nablus.

Mathat Yusef is lying on the floor. He lies there for hours while the
Israeli army sits back waiting for the same PLO "police", who are firing
into the shrine, to restore order. Like Will Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy
Crockett, in his Alamo Yusef simply bled to death.


Remember his Alamo!

Posted 9/30/2003 04:32:00 PM

1. "Yesh Gvul" (means "There is a Limit/Border") is an Israeli
treasonous leftist organization, whose raison d'etre is the organizing of
mutiny and insubordination in the military, urging soldiers to refuse to
serve and follow orders. It is hailed as a great movement of patriotism
and heroism by the very same leftists who foam at the mouth if some
settlers try to erect a "settlement" on some empty piece of state-owned
land some place in Samaria without the government's permission. THOSE
settlers are criminals, violating the law in an anti-democratic manner, and
should be tossed in the klink.

Anyway, Yesh Gvul, joined by several members of Israel's Literary
Left (Sami Michael, Amos Keinan, Natan Zach), have filed a petition with
the Attorney General to open an investigation into the assassination of
Hamas Mega-Terrorhoid Salah Shahada in July 2002. As you recall, Israel
leveled the Gaza building in which the nazi was cowering, and along with
him there died in the raid his own children plus some innocent civilians,
several of them children. As a result, Isdrael has since been using toy
mini-bombs to off the terrorists lest the boom upset the world's media,
minibombs that fail to do the job.

Naturally, the Israeli Left did not adopt the position that people
who do not like Palestinian children getting killed should insist that
Islamofascist terrorists not hide amongst them, or that Palestinians stop
engaging in mass murder of Jews so that Israel will not have to hunt them
down. Instead, the Israeli Leftists have been whining that this
assassination represented some sort of human rights atrocity by
Israel. Unlike the US whacking the two sons of Saddam. The Leftists would
rather that Israel take no military actions at all against the terrorists
and simply sit back and allow them to mass murder Israeli children riding
buses. Gosh, you think maybe the PLO, which sits back and protects the
rights of all terrorists to take cover among civilians, might be the REAL
culprit responsible for the deaths of any Palestinian civilians? That is
an imponderable, screams the Left. The Left's "logic" is very simple. The
only way they wish for Israel to fight terrorism is through complete
capitulation to the demands of the terrorists.

The Yesh Gvul traitors and their literary fellow travelers are
threatening Israel that if the Attorney General does NOT investigate the
"crime", they will petition international bodies like the World Court in
the Hague and demand that THEY indict Israel. (Alas, Belgium seems to have
abandoned its amusement activity of putting the world's politicians on
trial in its courts.) The Israeli Attorney General is himself a leftist,
and, while he is not quite ready to accede to the demands of the Yesh Gvul
traitors, he did volunteer that he himself opposed the assassination of
Shahada. Which is just what we all need to know - the personal political
biases of the Attorney General himself whose job is to enforce the law and
not set Israeli defense policy.

Speaking of calls for investigations, how about if we all call on the
Attorney General to investigate who exactly is funneling all that cash into
the coffers of the Yesh Gvul Treason Organization!

2. The Histadrut organized crime family is back in action. The trade
union federation yesterday paralyzed the airport and shut down other
services to extort more wampum.

In recent months Israeli corporations have been unable to do
international business. International business persons are unwilling to
come to Israel to negotiate contracts, not because they fear the terrorists
that Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin have imported onto the streets of Zion,
but because they are a-feared of getting marooned in Israel due to the
Histadrut shutting down the airport. The Export Institute estimated Israel
loses 30-50 million dollars a day due to the trade union terrorism.

3. The Israeli Minister of Defense declares that the actions of the 27
air force officers who have declared mutiny and insubordination because
they oppose Israel's "occupation" are encouraging the terror
organizations. Marwan Barghouti, the PLO Uber-terrorist now on trial in
Israel for mass murder, demands the court refuse to continue with his trial
and instead follow the example being set by the air force officers for peace.

But I think he is missing the point. Of course they are encouraging
the terror organizations. But that is because the entire Israeli Left is
part of an Axis of Evil that unites Jewish leftism with Islamist fascism.

4. Haaretz is abandoning any remaining pretense that it is a
newspaper, as opposed to being merely the Hebrew mouthpiece for the PLO and
its Far Leftist Post-Zionist apologists. On Rosh Hashana the paper
included a fat "supplement" devoted to the "costs of the settlements", and
trying to show that everything in Israel that is underfunded is suffering
because of the settlements. Never mind that half the "costs of the
settlements" added in the Haaretz estimated, like the construction of the
security wall that leaves the settlements exposed on the other side, or the
social security payments to families of settlers that would be paid no
matter where they lived, are patently absurd. And never mind that it is at
least as legitimate to argue that everything underfunded in Israel has lost
funds because the government is channeling megabucks into the Histadrut's
mismanaged pension funds or into the kibbutzim for debt bailout.

If only it were true that the settlements were the beneficiaries
of huge fiscal largesse!

5. Terrorist who killed baby released from prison two months ago

[Note by Tom Gross]

This is a follow-up to my dispatch of Saturday "Terrorist shoots dead
7-month old girl during Rosh Hashanah meal."

1. It has now been revealed that the terrorist who carried out the
attack, Islamic Jihad member Mahmoud Hamedan, was released from an Israeli
prison two months ago. It will be recalled that Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon, under relentless pressure from the Bush administration,
the UN, European leaders, and international media such as the BBC,
released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in early summer even though the
release of Palestinian prisoners was NOT a stipulation of the "Road
Map."

2. In addition to the US and UK newspaper headlines sent out in my
dispatch of Saturday, please note the following (courtesy of
HonestReporting):

- The BBC's headline, "Three Dead in West Bank Attack," presents a
gross moral equivalence between the terrorist and victims - all of whom are
grouped together, without specifying that one of the "three dead"
murdered the other two and the terrorist was shot in an act of self-defense
as he continued to open fire on other Israeli civilians celebrating the
Jewish new year. The BBC headline fails to identify either the
(Palestinian) attacker or the (Jewish) victims. Nor does BBC mention that one
victim was a baby. Does the BBC purposely draft its headlines in keeping
with an agenda to whitewash acts of terror against Jews?

3. Reuters included this background information to rationalize the
terrorist act:

"Palestinians regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
as major obstacles to peace and have regularly attacked them."

Reuters' description suggests that Palestinian terrorists perpetrate
the willful murder of civilians out of a quest for peace.

TG adds: the biggest obstacle to peace is by definition this kind of
murderous attack, not that a 7 month old baby celebrates the Jewish new
year with her parents.

4. The dead baby girl, Shaked Avraham, was buried yesterday evening.
Two other Israelis were seriously wounded in the attack. The other
murdered Israeli, Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, was laid to rest at midnight in
Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv. Shaked means "Almond" in Hebrew.

5. The attacker carried an M-16 with telescopic sight. This shows the
premeditated nature of the murders. One third of the funds supplied to
the Palestinian Authority (which it uses to buy such weapons) are
donated by the European Union. (See my further dispatch on the European Union
and Palestinian terror later this week.)

Posted 9/29/2003 11:58:00 AM

Subject: Treason Chic


The Israeli Left: Love Thine Enemy, Hate Thy Brother
By Ariel Natan Pasko
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 26, 2003

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10022
There they go again. The air has just cleared, people have just calmed down
after the last wave of terrorist bombings, and Israel's lemmings are
driving toward the precipice again. After recently going to meet Yasser
Arafat at his Ramallah compound to show solidarity with him and act as
"human shields" to protect him from any Israeli action; the Israeli
far-Left has begun what they call the opening of a "street campaign" in the
coming months. A group called Peace Now (why not peace last Thursday?) and
a few thousand protestors gathered on a Saturday night at "ground-zero --"
Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv -- to call for Israel to uproot the Jewish
settlements in Yesha, Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza and an
end to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The Peace Now demonstrators also denounced the Sharon government's policy
of "Targeted Killings," assassinating leaders from Hamas and the other
terrorist groups, saying the policy creates an endless cycle of violence.
All blood is red, and I guess Israel's lemmings can't tell the difference
between the blood of innocent Israelis cut-down in the "act" of living
their lives, and the blood of sociopathic murderers, whom Israel targets in
self-defense before they can kill innocent Israelis again

Returning to the darkest day's of the Left's slander campaign -- initiated
by Yitzhak Rabin himself -- against the pro-Land of Israel forces, former
Labor Party Member of Knesset Yael Dayan revived the theme of "settlements
vs. the poor." She emphasized the economic cost of the settlements, saying
that the government was still pumping huge amounts of money into them,
while other Israelis were going hungry. She pointed out that each year
5,000 children in the country slipped below the poverty line. What has she
done to help them? Other than to try to impoverish other Israelis and their
children of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza by forcing them out of their homes and
into the street?

Why didn't she suggest cutting government monies spent on the museums,
theaters, concert halls, dance companies, sports contests, and other
secular-western cultural activities that the elites of the Left, labor's
worker committees, and kibbutzes benefit from in disproportionate numbers,
receiving tickets at government-subsidized prices? Has she ever suggested
that the Kibbutz Movement -- about 110,000 people -- repay the Israeli
government the tens of billions of shekels the government has laid out over
the years to cover the Kibbutz Movement's debts? Why did the Israeli
taxpayer have to help the economically inefficient darling of the Left?
Most of that debt was incurred, to keep up the Kibbutz Movement's standard
of living -- which is above that of the average Israeli -- while failing
economically. Where's the Left's outrage about that, while other Israelis
were going hungry?

The left-wing Haaretz newspaper just released a "special report" about the
amount of money, some 45 billion shekels, Israeli governments from the Left
& Right have spent on "settlements" since 1967. But whereas most of the
money spent on the Kibbutzes was simply for "creature comforts," money
spent on Jewish communities in Yesha was for basic infrastucture; much of
it would have had to be spent anyway, developing areas for Jews to live in,
even within the "Green Line" pre-1967 Israel. But don't worry, you can
count on the Israeli Left to obfuscate that also and try to "prove" how
expensive "settlements" have been.

Has anyone seriously contemplated the costs of moving "settlers" -- i.e.
the almost 250,000 Jewish citizens in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza -- back
within the pre-1967 Auschwitz borders? Forget the housing costs, a sizable
figure itself. What about the other infrastructure costs, including
education, the costs of economic dislocation, and health care? Who says
that it will save the government money to move Jews back into the 1967
borders? Has anyone seen a serious study with real analytic data to back up
the Left's utopian claims?

It's not much different than the Left's original claim that "peace" was
just around the corner, if we all accept the Oslo dream. Israel just needed
to revive Arafat from political death, bring him and his terror crew into
the country, reward him with a base of operations, and the Messiah would be
soon be coming. We've all seen how well the Left's claims worked out there.

It just never quite worked out the way they imagined, and it won't this
time either. The Left in Israel is hell-bent on squashing the settlement
enterprise and ending Jewish control over it's historic heartland in Yesha,
whether it brings "peace" or not, whether it saves the government money or
drives it further into the red. So it doesn't matter if facts aren't on
their side, anything to divert the attention of the masses away from their
failed "peace" policies and against the Jews of Judea and Samaria passes
muster with them.

Their demagogic behavior reminds me of October 2002, during the height of
the Left's previous hysteria campaign against settlements, when far-left
Meretz MK Yossi Sarid said, "All of the settlements were created by
law-breaking and violence, and I hope the spread of this cancer will end
quickly. The outposts are worse than suicide bomb belts." Similar to MK
Sarid's remarks, then Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg (Labor) called the
people at the Gilad Farm in Samaria, "Jewish Hamas." Just because they were
protesting the expulsion of people from their homes on legally owned Jewish
land, that for political (that is to say, leftist) purposes, the Sharon
government found convenient to expropriate, they're called "Jewish Hamas"?
They are "Worse than suicide bomb belts"?

MK Avraham Burg (Labor), no longer Knesset speaker, is up to it again. He
recently turned to Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with the intention
of filing criminal charges against the "Forum of Rabbis for the Jewish
People & the Land of Israel," numbering some 500 religious leaders. The
rabbinic organization has released a statement that the Israeli government
does not enjoy popular support for its policies vis-a-vis the Quartet's
Road Map plan nor particularly for any steps towards the establishment of
an independent Palestinian state. The Road Map negates Torah law explained
the rabbis, and as such, anyone contributing to advancing the Road Map
agenda is guilty of violating the Torah commandment of "You must not stand
idly by your brother's blood," because of all the terrorism that has taken
almost 1,200 lives during the "peace process."

Rubinstein stated that the written proclamation does not constitute a
violation of Israeli law. He then added that following the release of the
proclamation by the rabbinic organization; he met with some of the more
"influential" rabbis, warning that they must tread carefully since their
words may spark civil disobedience or violence. But Burg prefers to
continue to try and suffocate any opposition to the Left's "peace dreams."

In a similar vein, ultra-leftist Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On just asked the
Attorney General to look into a recent Jerusalem Post editorial she says
had "words of incitement to murder" in it. The Jerusalem Post editorial
said, "The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as
many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as
possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage
stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no
alternative."
Where is Freedom of the Speech? Where is Freedom of the Press? When was it
ever "incitement to murder" to call for the death of the enemy in wartime?
Only in Israel, only on the Bolshevik Left.
Labor Party leader MK Shimon Peres has been celebrating his 80th birthday
recently. Peres told an international peace symposium held as part of his
80th birthday celebrations, "I believe it was right to give [Yasser Arafat]
the Nobel Peace Prize because he did three things that no other Palestinian
leader did," Peres told a round-table discussion which featured three other
Nobel laureates. "He declared publicly that he recognized the State of
Israel; no other Palestinian leader dared do that so publicly. Second, he
said he would abandon terrorism, and third he agreed that peace would be
based on the borders of 1967 and not 1948." At the peace symposium, Peres
said that Arafat made a mistake by failing to dismantle terrorist groups
opposed to peace with the Jewish state. "He spoke against [them], but did
not act against them," Peres said.

There, you have Peres' total whitewash of Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority: ignoring Arafat's involvement in illegal arms smuggling, such as
the Karine A arms boat affair; Arafat's funding -- as head of Fatah --
Marwan Barghouti's Fatah-Tanzim and Al-Aksa Brigades terrorist activities;
and Arafat's general incitement to violence, regularly calling for "Jihad,
Jihad, Jihad," i.e., killing Jews. According to Peres, Yasser "spoke
against [them], but did not act against them." Lies, lies, lies....

During the Left's slander campaign against "settlers" last
October/November, just before the Labor Party created an excuse to walk out
of Sharon's National Unity Government and call for new elections -- which
Sharon and Likud later won -- MK Yossi Sarid said the settlers had started
a revolt that the government had to destroy. "If the settlers' revolt is
not crushed, it will be the end of democracy," he said.

Similarly, then Agricultural Minister Shalom Simchon (Labor) said that the
actions of the "right wing," in reference to the protests against expelling
people from Gilad Farms, "endanger the existence of the State of Israel."
Really? Over 850 people killed and thousands injured from terrorist attacks
in the last three-years alone, don't endanger the existence of the State of
Israel? Arafat's War, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, Syria, Iran, they
don't endanger the existence of the State of Israel? Only a bunch of
idealistic kids on a barren hilltop somewhere in the middle of the historic
Jewish homeland endangers the existence of the State of Israel?

A telltale sign of how sick the Left in Israel has gotten, can be seen in
this more recent example, some participants at the Saturday night rally
reported that a number of people in the crowd booed when the Israeli
national anthem, "Hatikvah," was played at the close of the demonstration.
So much for their intellectual consistency, honesty, and concern about the
Israeli Right and Jewish settlers "destroying" the State of Israel. The
leftists clearly couldn't care less.


2. A few months back I did a piece on the Hebrew University granting an
honorary PhD to wacko Deconstructionist pseudo-philosopher and Marxoid
Jacques Derrida. Well, read on:

Found this quoted in Harper's. Absolutely hilarious. I would say that Derrida
gets my vote for the "Most Pretentious Man in the World", except for the fact
that his is a sort of uber-pretentiousness, a pretentiousness that is
beyond all
bounds and recognition. It would be like giving an award for "V.S. Naipaul-
like prose" to V.S. Naipaul.
>From "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and
Jacques Derrida."
"Borridori: September 11 [Le 11 Septembre] gave us the impression of being a
major event, one of the most important historical events we will witness in
our lifetime, especially for those of us who never lived through a world war.
Do you agree?
Derrida: Le 11 Septembre, as you say, or, since we have agreed to speak two
languages, "September 11." We will have to return later to this question of
language. As well as to this act of naming: a date and nothing more. When you
say "September 11" you are already citing, are you not? Something fait date, I
would say in French idiom, something marks a date, a date in history. "To mark
a date in history" presupposes, in any case, an ineffaceable event in the
shared archive of a universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal
calendar, for these are - and I want to insist on this at the outset - only
suppositions and presuppositions. For the index pointing toward this date, the
bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks
something else. The telegram of this metonymy - a name, a number - points out
the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that
we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking
about."

3. Professor of Terror: http://indymedia.org.il/imc/webcast/68025.html

4. The Bride: http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=2859

Posted 9/26/2003 03:03:00 PM

cannot be a bad new year! Use some extra honey on that apple!


2. The latest project of Israel's Treasonous Left is organizating mutiny
in the Israeli Air Force. 27 pilots have signed a petition declaring
they will not follow orders if ordered to strike at Palestinian
terrorists. They claim they are unwilling to operate where civilians are.
They are unwilling to undertake "targeted assassinations". They prefer
that Israeli children by mass murdered on buses than their having to dirty
their morally pure hands.

The only problem is that the terrorists are where civilians are.

Mutiny such as this is subject to 15 years in prison although the
government and the leftist Attorney General are unlikely to prosecute. If
every Israeli soldier only followed orders when those orders happened to
appeal to his political prejudices, the country would be fully diarmed,
then destroyed and the
Jews placed in cattle cars, evidently what the Left seeks.

Lest anyone think the 27 are simply squeamish about Palestinian
"civilians", they placed an ad in today's papers, no doubt financed by the
New Israel Fund, which has never passed over the opportunity to finance
Israeli treason. It declares that the pilots are really engaging in
mutiny because they oppose the "Conquest". The "Conquest" is the code
word used by the mindless Left for Israeli presence of any sense in the
West Bank and Gaza and it represents a "conquest" about as much as does
the French presence in Alsace or teh American presence in Florida. In
general, when an Israeli uses the term
"conquest" one should immediately assume that the person is a moron and
that absolutely nothing the person has to say about anything at all is
worth listening to.

But the Force Force Traitors and mutineers are instantly the icons of
the Caring Left, including Haaretz, and are being hailed by the
Jews-for-a-Second-Holocaust, as well as by the
Islamist fundamentalists to whom they are allied and the
Eurotrash.

3. Israel is hard at work on yet another of those famous capitulations to
the Lebanese terrorists, in this case where Israel will release oodles of
jailed terrorists in order to get the Hizbollah to release the bodies of
three soldiers they kidnapped AFTER the Barak WIthdrawal from Lebanon and
have evidently murdered, as well as one civilian. For the past 3 years
Israel never retaliated againmst any Hizbollah violations or attacks,
including the kidnapping in question, claiming it would put the three POWs
in jeopardy. Now it appears they were murdered anyway, yet Hizbollah
villages have STILL not had their parking congestion problems solved by
the Israeli army. The civilian in question is one whose story is unclear.
The Hizbollah claimed he was a spy, but apparently he was not, and one
rumor here has it he was in Lebanon on a foreign passport for something
criminal.

Now the Israeli politicians are marketing the upcoming deal, which by
the way is likely to IGNORE the plight of missing POW Ron Arad altogether
- putting hundreds of terrorhoids back on the streets who will no doubt
then take up quilting. It is marketing it by claiming that Jewish
tradition demands working to get captives released by paying ransom.

Of course it would be nice if Israel's politicians ever actually
checked out Jewish sources and traditions before trying to conscript them
for political folly. In fact, Jewish sources are quite explicit that NO
ransom may be paid for release of hostages if it is excessive, lest it
lead to future extortion, and in any case no ransom could be paid if it
involved releasing murderers who will murder again once released.




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May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Posted 9/24/2003 06:42:00 PM

Monday, September 22, 2003



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outing Arafat

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 22, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern



By Joseph Farah



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003 WorldNetDaily.com

A caller to my radio program suggested there might be a better way to
dispose of Yasser Arafat than killing him.

She reminded me of something I had long known about the
terrorist-killer-scum but have never put to use in print before.

She asked: "Wouldn't it be better to discredit Arafat than kill him?"

The question was at once terribly naive but strikingly brilliant.

There's the question of how one can discredit a monster who takes pride in
his bloodlust, whose propensity for corruption and fraud and theft from
his own people is legendary. I've attempted, over the years, to explain to
Americans that Arafat is not only a killer of innocent Israeli citizens
but more than 100 U.S. citizens as well including diplomats assassinated
in cold blood.

If that isn't enough to discredit Arafat, it's hard to imagine what could.

But then the old light bulb went on.

Arafat has maintained support from his "people" by playing tough all these
years. What if they found out he was actually an old softie?

What do I mean? I mean Arafat is a homosexual. There are also persistent
rumors that he is a pedophile. I mean, in his private life, he is
everything the Islamic culture detests a closet pervert.

Now, I don't pretend to believe with certainty that this column will be
widely translated into Arabic and distributed throughout the Palestinian
Authority. I also don't pretend to think that I know something about
Arafat unknown to the oil sheikhs who support him financially. I don't
pretend to believe the governments in Europe who treat him like a head of
state are unaware of his predilections.

After all, one former European intelligence chief recorded his own
observations of Arafat's sexual antics in a book, published 16 years ago.

I'm referring to "Red Horizons" by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former
head of Romanian intelligence. He relates a conversation with Constantin
Munteaunu, a general assigned to teach Arafat and the Palestinian
Liberation Organization operations in deception and influence designed to
fool the West into granting the organization recognition.

"I just called the microphone monitoring center to ask about the
'Fedayee,'" Arafat's code name, explained Munteaunu. "After the meeting
with the Comrade, he went directly to the guest house and had dinner. At
this very moment, the 'Fedayee' is in his bedroom making love to his
bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He's playing tiger again.
The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom,
and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a
tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena."

Munteaunu continued: "I've never before seen so much cleverness, blood and
filth all together in one man."

Munteaunu, wrote Pacepa, spent months pulling together secret reports from
Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian intelligence agencies as well as Romanian
files.

"I used to think I knew just about everything there was to know about
Rahman al-Qudwa," Arafat's real name, "about the construction engineer who
made a fortune in Kuwait, about the passionate collector of racing cars,
about Abu Amman," Arafat's nom de guerre, "and about my friend Yasser,
with all his hysterics," explained Munteaunu, handing Pacepa his final
report on the PLO leader. "But I've got to admit that I didn't really know
anything about him."

Wrote Pacepa: "The report was indeed an incredible account of fanaticism,
of devotion to his cause, of tangled oriental political maneuvers, of
lies, of embezzled PLO funds deposited in Swiss banks, and of homosexual
relationships, beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and
ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a
compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even
just shaken his hand."

Do you think that might do the trick?

Would anyone like to translate this for distribution in the West Bank and
Gaza?




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph Farah's nationally syndicated column originates at WorldNetDaily,
where he serves as editor and chief executive officer. If you would like
to see the column in your local newspaper, contact your local editor. Tell
your paper the column is available through Creators Syndicate.

Posted 9/23/2003 02:19:00 PM

Arafat's Stolen Riches
By Sam F. Ghattas
StarNewsOnline.com | September 23, 2003


An audit of the Palestinian Authority revealed that President Yasser
Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account he
controlled, an International Monetary Fund official said Saturday.

Most of the cash, which came from revenues in the budget, went into some
69 commercial activities located in Palestinian areas and abroad, said
Karim Nashashibi, IMF resident representative in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hanan Ashwari, a Palestinian lawmaker and onetime Arafat spokeswoman,
acknowledged there had been incidents of misuse of funds in the past but
that the release of the information was an attempt to discredit the
Palestinian leader.

"There is nothing innocent about the timing," she said. "This is a
campaign against the president and the (Palestinian) Authority."

Nashashibi did not elaborate on the types of businesses the Palestinian
Authority was involved in, but Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad
has said its interests range from cement to telecommunications holdings in
Algeria and Jordan.

Nashashibi disclosed the Arafat account and figures to reporters at a news
conference on the economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza. He said
the information provided by the Palestinians were an example of the
openness and transparency in Palestinian finances under Fayad.

However, Nashashibi did not rule out the possibility that a portion of the
funds were misused. He said he believes an accounting of the rest of the
money will be conducted "at some point, but we're taking it all a step at
a time."

"What we're trying to do is have a level of disclosure and transparency so
that future or present misuse does not happen ... At least there is a
followup, there is disclosure," Nashashibi said

Nashashibi did not say which public monies were involved.

There have been charges of corruption and mismanagement and money-skimming
in the Palestinian Authority, including some complaints from ordinary
Palestinians, which officials have denied.

In a special annual issue of Forbes Magazine earlier this year, Arafat was
reported to control $300 million.

U.S. and European governments have complained for years that the
Palestinian financial structure is not transparent and does not allow
donors to follow their money to projects for the benefit of the people.

Official Palestinian figures show that investment in the Palestinian
private sector amounts to about $300 million. The money was funneled in
the past through a fund operated by Arafat's financial adviser, Khaled
Salam.

Nashashibi said that authority was involved in commercial activities, both
at home and abroad, worth an estimated $700 million in today's market
prices, "which probably in '99 were $900 million."

Nashashibi said Fayad, the Palestinian finance minister who was the
resident representative of the IMF in the Palestinian territories in 2000,
told Arafat at that time that the account must be disclosed.

Finance ministers from the wealthy industrialized nations who met here
Saturday and spoke with Fayad also praised his efforts "to improve
transparency in the budget and the operations of the Palestinian
Authority," according to a statement issued afterwards.

As part of restructuring the way the Palestinian Authority deals with
money, Fayad last year announced the creation of the Palestinian
Investment Fund and said that all Palestinian Authority funds would pass
through the new holding company.

Nashashibi said he thinks the authority wants to "get out of all these
commercial activities."

The Palestinian economy has contracted by 30 percent because of the
Palestinian-Israeli violence over the last three years and IMF officials
said it needs an injection of about $1.2 billion in assistance.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian finance minister won a promise of additional
assistance Saturday with the finance ministers of major industrialized
nations as a World Bank official urged donors to help the troubled
Palestinian economy, according to a statement issued by the group.

No figure of assistance was given, but an IMF official said Saturday the
Palestinians would need "in the neighborhood" of $1.2 billion.

Posted 9/23/2003 01:37:00 PM

---------- Forwarded message ----------

COMMENTARY
The KGB's Man

By ION MIHAI PACEPA

The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an
"obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more
than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the
Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of
Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in
laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo
planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet
bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for
Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among
the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed
in Swiss bank accounts.
* * *
"I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I
first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s. He
gestured toward the little red flags pinned on a wall map of the world that
labeled Israel as "Palestine." "There they all are!" he told me, proudly.
The dubious honor of inventing hijacking actually goes to the KGB, which
first hijacked a U.S. passenger plane in 1960 to Communist Cuba. Arafat's
innovation was the suicide bomber, a terror concept that would come to full
flower on 9/11.

In 1972, the Kremlin put Arafat and his terror networks high on all Soviet
bloc intelligence services' priority list, including mine. Bucharest's role
was to ingratiate him with the White House. We were the bloc experts at
this. We'd already had great success in making Washington -- as well as most
of the fashionable left-leaning American academics of the day -- believe
that Nicolae Ceausescu was, like Josip Broz Tito, an "independent" Communist
with a "moderate" streak.

KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee
gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality,
but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national
leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move
the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary
Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote
Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.

Right after that meeting, I was given the KGB's "personal file" on Arafat.
He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign
intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school
east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO
leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in
Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born
in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.

The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page
tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a 48-page
monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat
had headed al-Fatah since 1957. The KGB distributed it throughout the Arab
world and in West Germany, which in those days played host to many
Palestinian students. The KGB was adept at magazine publication and
distribution; it had many similar periodicals in various languages for its
front organizations in Western Europe, like the World Peace Council and the
World Federation of Trade Unions.

Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal
Communists in our international front organizations. High-minded idealism
held no mass-appeal in the Arab world, so the KGB remolded Arafat as a rabid
anti-Zionist. They also selected a "personal hero" for him -- the Grand
Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man who visited Auschwitz in the late 1930s
and reproached the Germans for not having killed even more Jews. In 1985
Arafat paid homage to the mufti, saying he was "proud no end" to be walking
in his footsteps.

Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the
1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli war, Moscow got him appointed to chairman of the
PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet puppet, proposed the
appointment. In 1969 the KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American
"imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist
International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB
and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. It appealed to him so much, Arafat later
claimed to have invented the imperial-Zionist battle cry. But in fact,
"imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and long a favorite tool of Russian
intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism
plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism.

The KGB file on Arafat also said that in the Arab world only people who were
truly good at deception could achieve high status. We Romanians were
directed to help Arafat improve "his extraordinary talent for deceiving."
The KGB chief of foreign intelligence, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky,
ordered us to provide cover for Arafat's terror operations, while at the
same time building up his international image. "Arafat is a brilliant stage
manager," his letter concluded, "and we should put him to good use." In
March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on
how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that
you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and
over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was
euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a
Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch.

In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he charmed
President Carter. Arafat, he urged, would transform his brutal PLO into a
law-abiding government-in-exile if only the U.S. would establish official
relations. The meeting was a great success for us. Carter hailed Ceausescu,
dictator of the most repressive police state in Eastern Europe, as a "great
national and international leader" who had "taken on a role of leadership in
the entire international community." Triumphant, Ceausescu brought home a
joint communiqué in which the American president stated that his friendly
relations with Ceausescu served "the cause of the world."
* * *
Three months later I was granted political asylum by the U.S. Ceausescu
failed to get his Nobel Peace Prize. But in 1994 Arafat got his -- all
because he continued to play the role we had given him to perfection. He had
transformed his terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile (the Palestinian
Authority), always pretending to call a halt to Palestinian terrorism while
letting it continue unabated. Two years after signing the Oslo Accords, the
number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists had risen by 73%.

On Oct. 23, 1998, President Clinton concluded his public remarks to Arafat
by thanking him for "decades and decades and decades of tireless
representation of the longing of the Palestinian people to be free,
self-sufficient, and at home." The current administration sees through
Arafat's charade but will not publicly support his expulsion. Meanwhile, the
aging terrorist has consolidated his control over the Palestinian Authority
and marshaled his young followers for more suicide attacks.

Mr. Pacepa was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have
defected from the former Soviet bloc. The author of "Red Horizons" (Regnery,
1987), he is finishing a book on the origins of current anti-Americanism.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106419296113226300,00.html106419296113226300,00.html>

Updated September 22, 2003

Posted 9/12/2003 06:19:00 PM

Don't expel Arafat ...

Joseph Farah
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 12, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com


There's a debate raging in Jerusalem and in Washington about whether it is appropriate to exile Yasser Arafat - to expel him from the Palestinian Authority.

I say don't expel him ... shoot him.

Yasser Arafat is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent Israeli citizens, the lynching deaths of untold Arabs and the killing of more than 100 U.S. citizens, including two U.S. diplomats assassinated in cold blood.

Exile is far too good for him.

Some people get squeamish about calling for violence against "foreign leaders." Arafat is no more a legitimate foreign leader than Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein were. If we got a chance to knock off one or both of those tyrants, can anyone honestly say we shouldn't have done it?

Some people say we can't eliminate Arafat because to do so would only make him a martyr to his people. Would we hesitate for a moment to kill Osama bin Laden for the same reason? No way. Therefore, that argument holds no water.

Some people insist there is nobody better to work with in the Palestinian Authority than Arafat. Maybe that's true. I doubt it. But one thing is certain: Nobody in the Palestinian Authority has more innocent blood on his hands than Arafat.

Arafat is the father of modern terrorism.

If we're serious about fighting a war against terrorism - particularly the brand of Islamo-fascism he represents - there's no better place to start than by offing Arafat.

It's justice. It's the right thing to do.

If you want to give him a fair trial first, that's fine with me. But he needs to pay for his crimes with his life. His crimes are well-documented, but here's a brief refresher course:

In May 2002, Israel discovered documents linking Yasser Arafat directly to terrorist acts and sponsorship of suicide bombings. He should have been executed right then and there. But, under pressure from the United States, the Israelis let him off the hook - to kill even more innocents.

But he should have been dead long before that.

A long-buried Central Intelligence Agency report, found last year in the National Archives by a historian chronicling President Nixon's career, shows the agency, former Secretary of State William Rogers and many other officials were aware of Yasser Arafat's involvement in the 1973 murders of two U.S. diplomats by Arab terrorists. The files were discovered by Russ Braley, author of "Bad News: The Foreign Policy of The New York Times" and a Nixon researcher who has plumbed the National Archives "Nixon Project" - created when Congress took control of the late president's papers - for bits of information about the administration not released to the general public and press.

Braley found several boxes of documents related to the 1973 kidnap-murders in Khartoum, Sudan, of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and Charges d'Affaires George Curtis Moore, along with Belgian diplomat Guy Eid by Arab terrorists. Though the files had been, according to Braley, thoroughly purged of information regarding intercepts of Arafat giving the explicit order for the machine-gun murders of the diplomats, one surviving CIA report, found in NSA box 666 and enclosed in a message from Rogers to some 40 U.S. embassies, shows Arafat's complicity in the terrorist crimes.

In 2001, WorldNetDaily broke the story of the former National Security Agency operative, James J. Welsh, a witness to the communication intercept. Welsh was the NSA's Palestinian analyst at the time.

But Arafat should have been dead long before 1973. It was in the 1960s he became the father of modern terrorism - pioneering airline hijackings, suicide attacks and other methods now employed by groups like al-Qaida.

Please don't exile him, because he will come back. He always does. If he lives, others die. It's time to take out Arafat - permanently.

Posted 9/12/2003 11:35:00 AM

1. Well, Sharon's government voted to expel the Man with the Pubic Hair
on his Face from the Land of Israel. Sort of. No one expects Israel
actually to act against His Ugliness any time soon. The Americans are
already having conniptions, Mubarak of Egypt says murdering Jewish
children is not terrorism at all so what is Israel beefing over.

Well, let me put in MY two cents.

I am completely against expelling Arafat.

I am for killing Arafat.

The reason is very simple. Israel was founded as the Jewish response
to the Holocaust. Leaving alive a creature who has murdered hundreds of
Jewish children makes a mockery of the Holocaust and makes a mockery of
Israel's raison d'etre. It must be Israel's policy that in the post-Shoah
era, no one can randomly murder Jewish children and live. Period.

And if the State Department disapproves, tough.

If Arafat were expelled, he would simply continue to order hits on
Israeli
children from Damascus or some other place where Israel could not touch
him. He should be killed now and fed to the sharks. No shrine. No
martyr.

I repost here an earlier piece I did in which I elaborated this
theme:

The Case for Killing Arafat (in the days when Arafat was
in his headquarters in Ramallah under siege in Operation Defensive Wall)
September 29, 2002
by Steven Plaut


The entire world seems engrossed with the fate of Yasir Arafat, as he sits
perched in the ruined headquarters of his Palestinian Authority, looking
down at his pursuers like a terrorist Rapunzel.

And as the world contemplates the denouement of this drama, it seems that
there is international consensus that Arafat - unlike Bin Laden or Saddam
Hussein - must not be harmed physically.

Even within Israel, it is almost impossible to find a single politician or
commentator who suggests that Arafat should be killed. The working
presumption of all is that the world will be outraged if Israel harms a
whisker on Arafats cartoon-like face. Some politicians in Israel are
proposing simply expelling Arafat. Others suggest he be allowed to run off
to some Arab summit or other and then be prevented from returning. Nearly
all of them are in intense anxiety lest an Israeli bulldozer or IDF
soldier accidentally cause harm to befall the imprisoned arch-terrorist.

All of which would be laughable if it were not so sad.

The fact of the matter is that Arafat should have been killed long ago.
Israel actually had opportunities to kill him, such as in the 1982 siege
of Beirut, but decided to let Arafat go free at the time. Hundreds of
Israeli lives have been lost due to that decision. September 13, 2001
might also have been an opportune timing.

It is argued that the Palestinians will be outraged and go on a murder
spree if Arafat is killed. But with Arafat alive, when he was directing
the mechanism of an emerging Palestinian State, the Palestinians went on a
barbaric killing spree. Was there any shortage of Nazi-like atrocities
perpetrated by Palestinians while Israel was treating Arafat with red
carpets and honor guards, as a statesman, and appeasing him with
unbelievable concessions?

And it is argued that the world will denounce Israel if it kills Arafat,
and would demonize the Jews. But the world was denouncing Israel and
demonizing the Jews as "Nazis" even when Israel was exercising
"self-restraint" and self-abasement to degrees without precedent in human
history. And when Ehud Barak offered Arafat absolutely everything at Camp
David that the latter was publicly demanding, despite Arafat's having
violated every single Oslo obligation to which he had ever committed, the
entire world denounced Israeli "obstinacy" and "occupation". The world's
reaction was to demonize Israel as being the "obstacle" to "peace".
Western Europe and the developing world morphed into huge anti-Jewish
Nuremberg Rallies. So what does Israel have to lose from killing Arafat?

But there is a far more important reason why Arafat should be killed.

Israel was created because in its absence Jews were mass murdered
throughout history by savages, with impunity. Israel was created in
response to the events of World War II. Israel was restored to
independence so that never again could someone commit mass murders of
hundreds of Jewish civilians and be left alive. Israel was created to be a
mechanism to kill any future mass murderers, any future Nazis. Israel's
basic existence must be to deny impunity to mass murderers of Jews.

Arafat's stormtroopers have murdered hundreds of Jews, just since
he signed the 1993 Oslo "Peace" Accord on the White House Lawn. To allow
Arafat to walk is the same as conceding that Israel is willing to abandon
its raison d'etre, that "Never Again" is just an empty slogan.

To leave Arafat alive is to advertise to all that Jews are there for
anyone with a grievance (real or imagined) to kill, that it is open season
on them. It makes a mockery out of any program to deter terrorism. It
denies the fundamental moral justification for Israel's rebirth.

2. The Hero http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2733

3. Am I the only one who thinks it deliciously amusing that the most
anti-Jewish politician in Scandinavia, the Swedish Foreign Minister, was
murdered by an activist and militant who must have been so desperate to
protest his victimization, in an act of symbolic protest against
his occupation, where Sweden must ask itself what it does wrong to trigger
such violence, where the violent act must attest to the justness of the
cause of the knife-man, and where there can be no peace without justice?

Posted 9/11/2003 10:25:00 AM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Israel Resource News Agency
Subject: From David Bedein: The US state department hired a PLO lobby
group to evaluate the PA textbooks.

September 2003

One year ago, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and the US Consulate General in
Jerusalem commissioned IPCRI, the leading Palestinian Authority advocacy
organization in Jerusalem, to provide the public with an assessment of the new
Palestinian Authority text books produced by the Palestinian Authority with
regard to tolerance, peace and coexistence. IPRCI reports that their
assessment
of the new Palestinian Authority school tect books was funded through a
special
grant by the US Congress.

The claim of the US government-commissioned IPCRI report, which can be
found at
www.ipcri.org, is that the new PA text books "do not incite against Israel or
against peace".

In May, 2003, the results of the IPCRI study of the PA school books were
submitted to the US Congress, the US Consulate, the Palestinian Authority
Minister of Education, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European
Union, and the UN.

As a result of the IPCRI study, US AID, the EU and the UN resumed their aid to
Palestinian Authority educational system.

As the Ambassador of Ireland to Israel told me, "If the US government has
determined that there is an improvement in the PA school books, then we can
resume funding of those books"

However, the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), whose research
can located at www.edume.org, also provided all of the above with translations
of the new Palestinian Authority text books back in May, and arrived at
totally
different conclusions, concluding that "the cumulative effect of the material
in these textbooks continues to have a detrimental influence on the child with
regard to his view of life, coexistence and peace".

On August 20th, 2003, CMIP submitted the following critical evaluation of the
IPCRI report to the US consular press aide in Jerusalem.

CMIP questions the veracity, methodology and integrity of the US-funded IPRCI
report on the new Palestinian Authority textbooks.


------------------

HERE IS THE REPORT:

CMIP, the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, Issues a Monograph which
Questions the Integrity of the US-funded study of Palestinian Authority
Texbooks
Dr. Arnon Groiss
Director of Research, CMIP
PART 1: CMIP?s View in Short (in lieu of an Executive Summary)


During the last three years CMIP has examined the new textbooks published by
the Palestinian National Authority for use in its schools. Three reports have
been issued so far, covering 107 textbooks, including two teachers guides for
grades 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, as well as one book each for grades 5 and 11 and an
atlas authorized for use in the PA schools. These reports are available on
CMIP?s website: http//www.edume.org. As an expert in this field CMIP has been
asked by various factors (by private individuals and members of Congress) to
comment on a report issued recently on the same subject by the
Israel-Palestine
Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) titled: ?Analysis and
Evaluation of
the New Palestinian Curriculum: Reviewing Palestinian Textbooks and Tolerance
Education Program?.



Having studied this report, CMIP has come to the following summarized
conclusions:



1. Unlike the CMIP reports, the IPCRI report adopts an indirect approach,
avoiding the use of quotations, maps and illustrations that would strengthen
the accuracy of its findings and enrich them with original source material,
and
thus help the reader to better understand the issues at stake.

2. Not all the relevant material has been brought into the IPCRI report.
Some material has been left out, although it could have shed more light on
sensitive issues. For example, there is one episode - that of Hassan Bin
Thabet
who was advised by the Prophet Muhammad to learn the Jews? language - told
twice in different books. In one of them an anti-Jewish remark is inserted in
the text (History of the Arabs and Muslims, Grade 6 (2000) p. 133). In the
other book that remark is omitted (History, Grade 8 (2002) p. 92). The IPCRI
report (p. 33) ignores the former and, thus, is unable to note a specific
improvement in the Palestinian curriculum. Some of the other pieces of missing
material are dealt with below.

3. There are cases where the source material is misrepresented. For
example, the report states (p. 39) that the Palestinian Declaration of
Independence, quoted in one of the books (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1
(2002) pp. 72-73), recognizes the State of Israel. No such recognition is
to be
found in it (and it could not have been found, since the said declaration
dates
back to 1988, before the Oslo Agreement of 1993). Some other cases of
misrepresentation are referred to below.

4. The report relies too much on external interpretation of the source
material by officials at the PA Ministry of Education. In one case the report
quotes (p. 49) a PA Position Paper stating that a paragraph referring to ?the
good present relationship with Europe? has been inserted to end the section
about the Crusaders in the history book for grade 6. The book is listed among
the report?s sources, but no attempt is made to check the validity of such a
claim. CMIP has two versions of this book. One was published in 2000 and the
other - identical with the former - in 2001. Neither of them contains such a
paragraph. Moreover, in neither of them is there any section about the
Crusaders to be found. There might have been a mistake in identifying the
book,
but, in any case, it is reasonable to expect IPCRI to check such official
statements when the source material is already available, and to state the
result of their checking in their report. Some other cases of such reliance are
referred to below.

5. The main fault of the IPCRI report, however, is not so much in its
findings, which repeat to a great extent most of the issues earlier
revealed by
CMIP. It is rather the conclusions that raise questions. There is a
significant
discrepancy between the findings and the conclusions, especially when the
report?s own criteria for analysis are taken into consideration. Let us take,
for example, the PA textbooks? attitude to Israel as a sovereign state:



Within the IPCRI report?s ?Specific Criteria? section several questions are
asked as guidelines for the research, of which two are as follows (p. 22):

· ?Is Israel, as a sovereign state, represented in the textbooks? How is it
referred to??

· ?Are there attempts (overt or covert) to de-legitimize and/or reject the
State of Israel as an internationally recognized political entity??



The findings regarding this issue are in part as follows (not all of them are
presented here, and those that are not presented do not by any means
contradict
those that are):

· ??In several instances, the State of Israel is presented as a usurper, an
occupation force and a foreign occupier of Palestine? Timetables in the
National Education and History of the Middle Ages, Grade 7 textbooks talk
about
the establishment of the State of Israel on Palestinian land?? (pp. 30, 31)

· ??In most presentations, Israel is implicitly referred to in different
terms
such as ?Land inside the Green Line?, ?the Land of 1948?, ?the interior?.? (p.
31)

· ?Israel, as a sovereign state, is not presented in the textbooks, except
with reference to the Oslo Accords and the ensuing treaties and agreements.?
(p. 31)

· ?Several books contain and make reference to maps of historical
Palestine as
a geographical and historical entity... [A description of various types of
maps
follows]? The name ?Israel? does not appear on any map.? (pp. 36-37)



As for the conclusion, in the section entitled ?General Remarks?, it reads as
follows (in full, on page 39 of the report):

· ?The territory of the State of Israel is shown on the maps without
any
label. No reference is made to Palestine, either [CMIP: This is incorrect, as
proven by the numerous maps showing the territory of the State of Israel under
the title ?Palestine?. See, for example, the whole country in one color and
under the Palestinian flag in: Mathematics, Grade 3, Part 1 (2002) p. 86, in
the context of the establishment of the independent Palestinian state]. The
rationale for this approach, as explained by political officials and educators
alike, is that Israel itself has not yet marked its borders and that no final
agreement has been reached with the PLO and the PA as to the final status of
the borders between the two political entities. This, however, does not mean
that maps included in the textbooks should be left without labels that reflect
the historical as well as the present-day political reality. Thus, until a
solution is reached with regards to the disputed borders, maps
should be described in more accurate terms (e.g., such as being
typographical
[sic], demographic or geological maps of Historical Palestine). In addition,
maps should reflect the present-day political realities in terms of labeling
the regions as they are described in internationally adopted documents,
accords, resolutions, and treaties, etc. (e.g., Israel, the Palestinian
Authority, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip)?.



Thus, instead of answering the questions above in accordance with the
findings,
the IPCRI report dwells on one of the findings only, trying to explain it away
and suggesting a remedy. It completely ignores the other findings, which, put
together, present a clear and decisive picture of a systematic effort done in
the PA school textbooks not to recognize Israel as a legitimate sovereign
state
or even mention the phrase ?the State of Israel? or ?Israeli territory?.



This picture becomes bleaker if we add to it the references in the PA books to
Palestine and Palestinian geographical sites. The IPCRI report notes in the
findings:



· ??Generally speaking, ?Palestine? is mostly presented in its
historical context. References to ?Palestine? are mostly made to reflect the
Palestine of pre-1948 War, the pre-Partition plan.? (p. 25)



· ??In several instances, however, we notice a listing of some cities,
holy sites, and geographical location that include ones in Israel proper.? (p.
25)



· ??The ?Homeland? is mostly used to refer to the West Bank and the
Gaza
Strip [examples mentioned]. There are, however, some instances in which the
reference is made (within the framework of the homeland) to sites and
cities in
Israel proper.? (p. 26)



The authors of the IPCRI report, however, do not combine these latter
pieces of
evidence together with the preceding ones in order to draw a clear conclusion.
In fact, they do not refer at all in their General Remarks section to this
enormously important issue of the political definition of Palestine - with its
immediate grave implications on the exact definition of the geographical
extent
of the Israeli occupation and, consequently, of the Palestinian territories
that are to be liberated from Israeli occupation. Instead, the authors of the
report insert among their findings two paragraphs that are intended to explain
them away:



· ??According to a MOE [the PA Ministry of Education] Position Paper
(2002), ?the curriculum traces the development of the Palestinian people
throughout its history; therefore, mentioning the names of certain cities that
are related to particular historical events is natural and bears no political
ramifications.?? (p. 26)



· ?It is unclear whether some of these references were meant to serve a
double purpose or were a function of the fact that a large number of
curriculum
designers, supervisors and reviewers, etc. was involved in the process. One
has
to note in this context that the working teams came to the task holding varied
beliefs and attitudes and having different educational, political and
ideological backgrounds. It is assumed that the final review will clarify the
confusion and impose a measure of consistency in dealing with all knowledge-
related (epistemological) and political issues.? (p. 26)



A clear conclusion that would fully present the current negative attitude of
the PA school textbooks towards Israel as a legitimate sovereign state within
its pre-1967 borders is thus avoided. What we have instead is a remark (p. 26)
suggesting ?a measure of consistency in dealing with all knowledge-related
(epistemological) and political issues? so as not to create confusion with
regard to Palestinian national aspirations and in order to avoid the possible
understanding that the Palestinian educational system is preaching a political
philosophy of a ?greater Palestine? including the territories of the State of
Israel.? In other words, the authors of the IPCRI report present the vivid
reality portrayed by their own findings as a far-fetched interpretation.



Another important conclusion, possibly the main one, is the following (p. 38):



?The overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful despite the harsh and
violent realities on the ground. It does not openly incite against Israel and
the Jews. It does not incite hatred and violence. The curriculum promotes
peace
and tolerance within the Palestinian society but fails to extend these
principles and concepts to include the Israelis.?



One needs to read this paragraph carefully more than once in order to realize
that the peaceful orientation of the PA curriculum is directed inwardly, not
towards Israel. The findings brought within the report substantiate that (p.
28), but the conclusion here has been phrased in a misleading way.



As for incitement, it is not done openly today, except in very few cases - see
the poem in Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part I (2002) p. 76, that calls for
Jihad against the (Jewish) oppressors and slaughterers in Palestine. But much
indirect incitement could be found in images of the ?other? as presented to
Palestinian school children. If Israel is presented as ?a usurper?, ?foreign
occupier of Palestine? (p. 30) with a list of atrocities attached to it
(pp. 30-
31) and if such references comprise the bulk of the image of the ?other? - as
stated by the report itself: ?Most references [to Israel in the PA books]
reflect pain, suffering and bitterness experienced by the Palestinians as a
result of the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict.? (p. 30) - then, any reasonable
person would agree that a fair degree of implicit incitement is found here.
But
the IPCRI report fails to note that.



The same method is employed in the case of the Jews. Here too the IPCRI report
fails to present several important references to the Jews as ?Tartars?
and ?slaughterers? and an insinuation that the modern Jews are ?human wild
beasts? (These references are found in two different poems and a story in:
Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) pp. 56, 77, 137, respectively). The
report does bring other references, no less serious, in this respect, such as
the following one:



??The image of Jews who immigrated to Palestine is reflected in negative light
(invaders, etc.). Their goal was to liquidate Palestinians and expel them from
their land?? (p. 33)



But its conclusion (p. 40) reads:



?Educators, historians and politicians alike have long argued that in the
context of a conflict, there is no escape from presenting the ?other? in
stereotypical references. This, however, should not be interpreted as a
call to
condone such practices. In the spirit of peace and tolerance, the ?other? - in
this case Israel - should be portrayed in proper terms (neutral and/or
positive
light). The authoring teams made every effort to avoid stereotyping and
incitement. This is reflected in the practice of omitting explicitly defiant
excerpts from poems and literary works included in the subject-matter
content.?



They might have not done enough.



6. In a section titled ?Some Thoughts on the Teaching History in the
Palestinian Context?, other conclusions are given which are mostly not for
CMIP
to comment on. Nevertheless, some of them are misleading, not corresponding to
the findings of the report and to other material not mentioned by IPCRI but
covered by the CMIP reports. An example of such a misleading conclusion is the
following (p. 48):



?No attempts are made [in the PA school textbooks] to falsify or create false
evidence, to doctor statistics or to fake images.?



Not one of these three assertions is true. The PA school textbooks falsify the
ethnic identity of the ancient Canaanites and turn them into Arabs, in
order to
create an ethnic continuity between them and the modern Palestinian Arabs, and
in order to portray the Jews as an intruding element in between. The IPCRI
report itself mentions one reference to that, out of several, saying (p. 27)
that a certain book ?describes Jerusalem as ?a Palestinian city built by the
Arab Canaanites?.? The report does not comment on that.



The PA textbooks do ?doctor? statistics. In one case, the number of the
inhabitants of Palestine in 1999 is given, including the Palestinians of the
Diaspora, but not the number of more than five million Jews who live in
Israel.
No one can claim that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are meant by
?Palestine?
in this case, since the number of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel in
its pre-1967 borders is also given there (See National Education, Grade 6
(2000) p. 11). The IPCRI report only says in this context (p. 33) that ?the
Jewish presence in the State of Israel is ignored?? with no further comment.



As for faking images, suffice it to quote here the IPCRI report itself (p. 33):



?Inscriptions in Hebrew are omitted, e.g., on a stamp of Palestine from the
British Mandate period.?



Again, IPCRI does not comment. The stamp, originally with inscriptions in
English, Arabic and Hebrew, is presented to the Palestinian children with the
English and Arabic inscriptions only (National Education, Grade 2, Part 1
(2001) p. 7 and see a photocopy of the original stamp in CMIP report of
November 2001, p. 21). The Hebrew inscription has been deleted, thus erasing
any official evidence for the Jews? legitimate presence in the country.
That is
why the number of the 5.4 million Jews in Israel is not given in the
statistics.
















Observations on IPCRI?s Report on the New Palestinian Curriculum





PART 2: Comments in Full


Introduction


The IPCRI report covers several issues, some of which are theoretical and thus
do not fall within the scope of the following comments. CMIP will not deal
with
the IPCRI assessment of the PA education system or its assessment of how
certain subjects are taught in PA schools in general. CMIP will restrict its
discussion in this paper to how, in its report, IPCRI covers a limited number
of issues referred to in the PA school textbooks and which are directly
related
to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Each issue will be discussed in a
separate
chapter on three levels: the criteria established by IPCRI for the research,
the findings and the conclusions.



CMIP would not have questioned the methodology used by IPCRI in their report,
had it not found some grave deficiencies in the way the work is presented.



(1) A report claiming (p. 55) to have reviewed ?all of the new PA-produced
textbooks? (over one hundred, with at least fifty books containing relevant
material), should have dedicated more than a mere thirteen pages to its
findings, out of the total 56.



(2) The findings are clearly lacking. There are only 85 references to
material found in the PA books, compared to approximately 450 in CMIP?s
reports. Some of the references left out by IPCRI have significant bearing on
the whole picture presented through the PA textbooks? attitude to certain
issues - and they will be shown below, within the various chapters.



(3) A finding is never given as is. No quoting mechanism is used. Rather,
general statements and paraphrased findings are given by the authors of the
report, sometimes accompanied by views and explanations of their own, or of
officials at the PA Ministry of Education. No maps or illustrations are given
in the report. Thus, the reader is dependent on these general statements with
no access to any individual finding. The inconsistent reference system and, at
times, lack of source references in the report further diminish its
reliability.



(4) There are cases of misrepresentation of the source material, to be dealt
with within the chapters.



(5) There is a tendency among the authors of the IPCRI report to create a
wider context for the source material studied by them, which has blurred their
conclusions. Rather than judging the PA books for what they contain, the IPCRI
report adds external elements to the research, such as ?the difficult
situation
on the ground and several unresolved major issues in the conflict? (p. 37), or
various explanations by PA officials (pp. 26, 39, 49) and of their own (pp.
26,
34, 40). They cite a ?professional? justification for such practice (p.
37): ?Analysis and evaluation of any textbook, but especially history and
national education textbooks, need to be situated in the proper historical and
political contexts; otherwise, one risks making inaccurate and biased
conclusions due to a dishonest or uninformed reading. In addition, such
investigations should take into account the existing conditions in the
political arena and on the ground.? Biased conclusions and dishonest reading
are a
result of mixing between pure source material and external, politically
inspired views and explanations.



(6) The report has a serious deficiency characterized by a perplexing
discrepancy between the findings and the conclusions. It seems that the
authors
of the report are trying hard not to be led by their own findings into issuing
too harsh a judgment on the PA curriculum. As a result, many findings are not
commented upon, and many others are treated as discrete episodes each with
their own explanation, as if not to show evidence of a general trend on the
part of the PA educators that would appear negative. It is the ?trees? that
are
seen and discussed, rather than the ?wood?. In addition, some findings are
explained away, or their significance is minimized. These serious flaws in the
IPCRI report will be discussed at length in the following chapters.



(7) There are several unsubstantiated assertions in the report not
related to
any of the chapters. Two of these are dealt with in sections 4 and 6 of
PART 1.




Chapter 1: The Concepts of ?Palestine?, ?Homeland? and ?Jerusalem?


Criteria

There are two questions in this part (p. 21):

?How is the Palestinian national identity presented? In which context??
?How are the concepts of ?Palestine?, ?Homeland? and ?Jerusalem? are
presented and portrayed??

The second question is simple and natural in this context. The first, on the
other hand, is much more interesting, even intriguing. Let us now review the
findings which should answer these questions.



Findings

No findings are given in response to the first question. The entire section
deals only with the three above-mentioned concepts:

"Palestine

The concept of ?Palestine? seems to be used in both historical and modern
contexts, the former being in a general geo-historic sense and the latter in
reference [to] a political entity in the making. Generally
speaking, ?Palestine? is mostly presented in its historical context.
References
to ?Palestine? are mostly made to reflect the Palestine of pre-1948 War, the
pre-Partition Plan.? (p. 25)



CMIP: Correct. ?Palestine? in the PA school textbooks conforms to pre-1948
British Mandate territories. But IPCRI has left out important evidence that
would emphasize this fact politically as well, not just in geographical and
historical contexts and which refers to the present-day situation. For
example,
there is a statement in one of the books (Islamic Education, Grade 2, Part 1
(2001) p. 98) that says: ?The countries of Geographic Syria [?Sham? in Arabic]
are Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.? Israel is not mentioned there. That
very Palestine, another statement says, ?is Arab and Muslim? (National
Education, Grade 2, Part 1 (2001) p. 16, and see the accompanying map showing
Palestine in its Mandatory borders).



?Geographical maps show all historical Palestine. Administrative maps show
the West Bank and Gaza.? (p. 27)



CMIP: Generally correct, but the administrative map of the PA territories
shows
them within the territory of ?Historical Palestine? (see, for example,
National
Education, Grade 3, Part 1 (2002) p. 3).



?The maps in the textbooks represent Mandate Palestine and when the
reference is to the PA territories or the Palestinian homeland, the areas are
contoured. No map, however, bears the name of the State of Palestine and none
portrays the ?Land of Israel? or ?Israel? as part of the emerging Palestinian
State. Israel, as a political entity, does not appear in any map.? (p. 27)



CMIP: The contoured areas are the pre-1967 West Bank and the Gaza Strip, not
the present PA territories, and they do not necessarily appear in reference to
the PA. What is more important is the last sentence in this paragraph, and
also
the fact that, contrary to what is stated by IPCRI, there are maps that do
include the pre-1967 Israeli territory in the context of the Palestinian
state.
See, for example, the map in Mathematics, Grade 3, Part 1 (2002) p. 86 where
the whole country - Israel proper as well as the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip -
appear in one piece and in one color under the Palestinian flag, while the
accompanying inscription reads: ?The independence of the State of Palestine
was
declared in 1988 [by the PLO in Algiers]. How many years have passed since the
declaration of independence?? (And see below Chapter 8: Maps).



?The Homeland

The homeland, in present-day context, is presented as comprising the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. In historical context, the homeland covers the whole of
British Mandate Palestine.? (p. 26)



?The ?Homeland? is mostly used to refer to the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip
[source references]. There are, however, some instances in which the reference
is made (within the framework of the homeland) to sites and cities in Israel
proper [examples given].? (p. 26)



And elsewhere (pp. 25-26):



?Thus, in several instances, the reference is made to Palestine as
the ?Homeland?. In almost all such instances, the concept of the ?homeland?
refers to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As such city names, holy sites,
illustrations, etc. are those that fall within this parameter [source
references].



?In several instances, however, we notice a listing of some cities, holy
sites and geographical locations that include ones in Israel proper, such as
Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, Caesarea, the Negev Desert, Erma [sic. Should be
Jarmaq (Meiron)] Mountain/Safad [source references].?



CMIP: Correct.



?Jerusalem

Jerusalem is portrayed (historically, religiously, culturally, socially,
demographically) in relation to its Arab and Islamic nature. Several
references
are made of the Christian presence in Jerusalem. All illustrations and photos
of Jerusalem reflect those [sic] found in the Eastern part of the city
(mostly,
the old city). It is almost always referred to as the ?Capital of Palestine?.
References reflect the national, political, cultural, economic, religious and
historical importance of the city and its Arab and Islamic characteristics.
However, there is no mention of its religious and historical significance to
Judaism and to Jews, nor that the State of Israel considers Jerusalem its
capital.



?Several of the new textbooks contain a boxed section entitled ?Did You
Know?? This section provides additional information not included in the text
proper. One of these boxes appears in the [Christian] Religious Education
textbook for Grade 2 and describes Jerusalem as ?a Palestinian city built by
the Arab Canaanites and named ?Jebus? or ?Yabus?? after that it was called by
many names? The prevalent name, however, is al-Quds.? (p. 27)


Part of this information is further highlighted:



?In particular:

Jerusalem is presented as the capital of the future state of Palestine.
The photos and illustrations exclude any part of West Jerusalem. The claim
is made only for East Jerusalem that was occupied in the 1967 War.
There is a mention of Jerusalem?s importance to the three monotheistic
religions.
The Arab and Islamic character of East Jerusalem is emphasized. The
locally,
regionally and internationally accepted reference to Al-Quds is limited to
East
Jerusalem.? (p. 27)



CMIP: All the points made by IPCRI in this section are correct. However, IPCRI
tends to overemphasize the exclusion of West Jerusalem from the PA textbooks.
It should be remembered that it is historical Jerusalem, namely, the Old City
first and foremost, that constitutes the focus of religious and nationalist
emotions of all people concerned - Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis,
Palestinians, Arabs and others - not the modern neighborhoods of West (or
East)
Jerusalem. As for the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the
country, see below, in Chapter 3.



It should be noted that the Arabized Canaanites feature in the PA books more
than just once. It does not only appear in the source given by IPCRI -
Christian Education, Grade 2 (2001) p. 11), but is a recurring theme (Our
Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2001) p. 32; National Education, Grade 2,
Part 1 (2001) p. 4; Health and Environment, Grade 7 (2001) p.98; National
Education, Grade 7 (2001) pp. 8, 71; Geography of Palestine, Grade 7 (2001)
p.77). As a result of the Canaanites' posthumous Arabization, an ethnic
continuity between the first known inhabitants of the land and the present
Arab
Palestinians is created, with a view of presenting the Jews in the history of
Palestine as an intruding foreign ethnic element. IPCRI does not deal with
this
phenomenon beyond the mention of the above single example.



Conclusions

The findings in the IPCRI report can be summed up as follows:

References to ?Palestine? are mostly made to reflect the Palestine of pre-
1948 War, the pre-Partition Plan.
The ?Homeland? is mostly used to refer to the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip.
There are, however, some instances in which the reference is made (within the
framework of the homeland) to sites and cities in Israel proper.
The Canaanites are referred to as ?Arabs?.
Jerusalem is portrayed (historically, religiously, culturally, socially,
demographically) in relation to its Arab and Islamic nature? It is almost
always referred to as the ?Capital of Palestine?. References reflect? its Arab
and Islamic characteristics. However, there is no mention of its religious and
historical significance to Judaism and to Jews, nor that the State of Israel
considers Jerusalem its capital.



Added findings based on the CMIP reports:

Reference to pre-1948 Palestine is made in the current political
context as
well, not only in geographical and historical ones, and is made at the expense
of Israel?s existence (and see also below, in Chapters 3 and 8).



The IPCRI report, rather than drawing the inevitable conclusion from the
findings, namely, that there is a questionable perspective on the part of the
PA textbooks regarding the geographical scope of Palestine, seeks to blur it.
They quote, not a passage in a book, but rather a position paper by the PA
Ministry of Education, which tries to explain why sites in Israel proper are
treated as parts of the Palestinian homeland: ?The curriculum traces the
development of the Palestinian people throughout its history; therefore,
mentioning the names of certain cities that are related to particular
historical events is natural and bears no political ramifications.? (p. 26)
This claim by the PA officials is clearly refuted by the added evidence that
the IPCRI report fails to present.



The authors of the IPCRI report appear not to be at ease with what they have
found, and they provide an explanation that would clear the PA Ministry of
Education of dubious intentions: ?It is unclear whether some of these
references were meant to serve a double purpose or were a function of the fact
that a large number of curriculum designers, materials writers, supervisors
and
reviewers, etc. was involved in the process. One has to note in this context
that the working teams came to the task holding varied beliefs and attitudes
and having different educational, political and ideological backgrounds.? They
further add, assuming: ?It is assumed that the final review [of textbooks, by
the PA Ministry of Education, probably] will clarify the confusion and
impose a
measure of consistency in dealing with all knowledge-related (epistemological)
and political issues. This is necessary so as not to create confusion with
regard to Palestinian national aspiration and in order to avoid the
possible understanding that the Palestinian educational system is
preaching a
political philosophy of a ?greater Palestine? including the territories of the
State of Israel.? (p. 26)



Thus, the authors of the IPCRI report transform the evidence in their hands -
which substantiates to a great extent the latter part of the last sentence of
the above paragraph - into something unclear, confused and possibly
misunderstood.



As regards Jerusalem, the only conclusion drawn by IPCRI is that ?the focus on
the Arab character of East Jerusalem? does not mean the denial of the Israeli
and Jewish character of, for example, the Jewish holy places or Jewish history
in the city.? (p. 40) This is a false conclusion that is clearly refuted by
findings in the PA books ignored by IPCRI. They will be presented below,
within
the discussion on the holy places in Chapter 3.



Examples of manipulated conclusions that are supposedly based on the solid,
though lacking, findings of the report, also reappear in the following
chapters.



Chapter 2: Peace, Tolerance and Pluralism


These important issues will be dealt with here in the context of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict only, rather than in other contexts, as IPCRI has done.



Criteria

Within the context of the said conflict, the following criteria are specified
in the IPCRI report (p. 21):



?Do the contents of the textbooks make any reference (discretely or
collectively; overtly or covertly) to the principles of peaceful coexistence
and tolerance between and among the adherents of the three monotheistic
religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)??
?Do textbooks use terminology that could be associated with the
concepts of
political tolerance, peace, coexistence, etc.? If so, in which context??
?Are there instances in which wording is likely to create prejudice,
misapprehension and conflict??
?Are there stories and anecdotes that reflect non-violent conflict
resolution, the love for peace???
?Are there examples (linguistic or other) that lend support to, praise and
encourage the use of violence against others??



With the exception of the first one criterion, it is plain that all these
questions are general in character. There is no specific question that would
guide the researchers to look for texts in the PA schoobooks referring to the
possibility of peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, or to
the current (though lagging) peace process between Israel and the PA. The
authors of the report, however, do treat these issues.


Findings
?Peace, as a universal and religious value, is emphasized in the
Palestinian
textbooks. Political peace in modern terms, however, is not reflected in the
new textbooks? Few references are made to the Oslo accords and to the
Declaration of Principles (DOP) that ushered in the peace process between the
Palestinians and Israelis (National Education, Grade 6, p. 23). The peace
dimension of the Accords and the DOP is not mentioned. No material is included
that explicitly talks about peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.?
(p. 28) (see CMIP?s remark-regarding the mention of this).



CMIP: Correct, but the passage that mentions the Oslo Accords in the National
Education textbook, referred to by the IPCRI report, reads: ?The [Palestinian]
National Council decided [in 1964] to create armed Palestinian battalions
which
were named ?the Palestinian Liberation Army? for the liberation of Palestine
and for the defense of the Palestinian revolution. The battalions of this army
were stationed in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. After the signing of the Oslo
agreement between the PLO and Israel in September 1993, most forces of the
Liberation Army entered Palestine.? (National Education, Grade 6 (2000) p. 23)
Thus, not only is the peace dimension of the Oslo Accords not mentioned, but
the accords themselves are presented as having contributed to the PLO
militarily. IPCRI does mention that later (p. 36), but it should have done so
here, in order to make its own point clearer.



?Inter-religious tolerance is emphasized in the framework of the teachings
of the Koran and Hadith. It is based on Islam?s tolerance towards the
followers
of other monotheistic religions, traditionally referred to as ?Ahl al-Kitab?
(the People of the Book). Theoretically speaking, these calls apply to both
Christians and Jews. However, the textbooks are almost devoid of any
references
to Jews, either in historical or in modern-day context.? (p. 28)

?The general values of all three monotheistic religions that call for
peace
and tolerance are highlighted. No reference is made regarding tolerance
towards
Judaism in the present-day context.? (p. 28)
?There is emphasis on the need for inter-religious tolerance, primarily as
it relates to Christians and Muslims.? (p. 28)



CMIP: Correct.



?Students are guided to visit holy places of the three traditions. No
direct
mention is made to the traditions although the reference is clear (National
Education, Grade 6, p. 65).? (p. 34)



CMIP: The passage referred to here mentions ?the various religions [mukhtalaf
al-diyanat] and not ?the three traditions?.



Conclusions

In light of the preceding findings, one is astounded to read the following
conclusion (p. 38): ?The overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful
despite the harsh and violent realities on the ground. It does not openly
incite against Israel and the Jews. It does not incite hatred and violence.
The
curriculum promotes peace and tolerance?? Only at this point, in the last
sentence of the conclusion, does one realize that its real meaning is somewhat
different: ?The curriculum promotes peace and tolerance within the Palestinian
society but fails to extend these principles and concepts to include the
Israelis.? CMIP is unable to explain this strange way of presentation which
actually has a misleading character.



Another strange presentation by IPCRI is to be seen in the findings
section, in
an attempt to explain why ?no material is included that explicitly talks about
peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis?. It says: ?According to a
Position Paper issued by the MOE [PA Ministry of Education] (2000), ?peace
is a
political issue not an historical one, and consequently, it is dealt with as
such'.? In other words, IPCRI uses a PA Position Paper in order to explain
away
a deficiency in the PA textbooks.



The issue of incitement will be discussed in Chapter 3.
Chapter 3: The Image of the ?Other?: Judaism, Jews, Zionism, Israel


Criteria

This section includes serious questions:

?Is Israel, as a sovereign state, represented in the textbooks? How is it
referred to??
?Are there attempts (overt or covert) to de-legitimize and/or reject the
State of Israel as an internationally recognized political entity??
?How are Jews, Israelis, Zionism, Jewish religion, culture, holidays, etc.
portrayed in the historical, political, social, cultural, and religious
contexts??
Does the curriculum provide the opportunity for the students to recognize
and respect beliefs and practices of others??
?Are the contributions of Jews and Christians recognized in the
Palestinian,
Arab and Islamic narratives??



CMIP: There are at least five important questions that seem to be missing:

How are Jews and Israelis portrayed in the context of the conflict in
particular?
How do the PA books describe the Jews? connection to Palestine?
Are the Jews and Israelis stereotyped, or presented as ordinary human
beings?
Do the PA books deal, for example, with Jewish or Israeli individuals, or
just talk about them as one collective group?
Do the PA books provide the student with adequate scholarly information
about Jewish history?



Findings

Israel?s Image

?Most references reflect pain, suffering and bitterness experienced by the
Palestinians as a result of the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. In several
instances, the State of Israel is presented as a usurper, an occupation force
and a foreign occupier of Palestine. Israel is blamed for the Nakbah
(catastrophe) of the Palestinian people [reference]. Timetables in the
National
Education and History of the Middle Ages, Grade 7 textbooks talk about the
establishment of the State of Israel on Palestinian land [reference].? (pp. 30-
31)
?Some textbooks posit that Israel?s policies, since its establishment,
have
resulted in the misery of the Palestinian people, the expulsion of the
Palestinian population during the 1947-48 War, the destruction of some border-
line villages, the creation of the refugee problem, the exploitation of the
region?s natural resources, the demolition of houses and uprooting trees,
restriction of movement, discrimination against the Palestinian population,
especially in East Jerusalem, undermining Palestinian national, political and
cultural identity, restricting access of worshippers to holy sites, the
negative impact of occupation and military measures and restrictions on the
Palestinian economy, ecological and environmental problems and the
dismemberment of the geographic and demographic unity of the Palestinian
territories [references].? (p. 31)
"Restrictions imposed by the Israeli government on Arab tourist
agencies are
highlighted [references].? (p. 31).
?Israel and the Israelis are accused of stealing the Palestinian national
heritage and culture and of claiming some of its features (songs, food, etc.)
as Jewish [reference].? (p. 33)



CMIP: IPCRI presents only a partial list of the accusations against Israel.
Following are some other ones (certainly not all):

Israel set fire to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (National Education,
Grade 7,
(2001) p. 55). [CMIP: The arson attempt was committed in 1969 by a
mentally-ill
Christian Australian tourist.]
The Judaization of Jerusalem (National Education, Grade 6 (2000) p. 17).
Due to Israeli occupation, Palestinian women are prevented from
participating in the development activity of Palestine (The Palestinian
Society - Demographic Education, Grade 11 (2000) p. 174).
The Israeli occupation and the settlement [activity] have hindered the
growth of educational activity in Palestine (The Palestinian Society -
Demographic Education, Grade 11 (2000) p. 170).
Israelis shoot at Palestinian children (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2
(2002) p. 70).
?Some of the problems of [Palestinian] family violence emanate from the
practice of the [Israeli] occupation and its destructive impact on our
society?
(Civic Education, Grade 8 (2002) p.55).
Israelis torture Palestinian children under investigation (Our Beautiful
Language, Grade 6, Part 1 (2000) pp. 124-125).
Israel attempts to control and Judaize Muslim holy places, such as
Al-Buraq
[the Wailing Wall] in Jerusalem (National Education, Grade 7 (2001) p. 21),
the
Mosque of Abraham [the Machpelah - Cave of the Patriarchs] in Hebron and the
Mosque of Bilal Bin Rabbah [Rachel?s Tomb] in Bethlehem (National Education,
Grade 7 (2000) p. 55), and even tries to change the character of Christian
holy
places (National Education, Grade 7 (2000) p. 56).



In addition, some textbooks present, mostly in poetry, a demonizing picture of
Israel and the Israelis. Examples:

?The Intifadah Hymn [Excerpts]

We are burying the child in no hurry?

The mother and the small child may die?

And the middle-aged man suffers in the cell of the great prison??

(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 6, Part 1 (2000) pp. 130-131)

?Your enemies killed your children, split open your women?s bellies, held
your revered elderly men by the beard and led them to the death pits.?

(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p.16)

[CMIP: This text was not originally written against Israel. But its inclusion
in a

PA textbook is undoubtedly purposeful, especially when no explanation is given

to the student regarding the circumstances under which it was written.]



?O my homeland,

You have accustomed me to see the enemy horses every day

Wading in blood, my blood

You have accustomed me to receive the arrows coming from all directions

And there is not a spot in my face that has not been hit?

(Linguistic Sciences, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p. 14)

?O Lord, do not forget our pains and tears

And do not forget the prisons, the slaughter and the humiliation

And the demolition and terror??

(Linguistic Sciences, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 88)



All these accusations - real and false - add up to a formidable list that may
have a disastrous effect on the minds of young children. As we can now see,
the
PA school textbooks meticulously bring these ?harsh and violent realities on
the ground? - as defined by the IPCRI report (p. 38) - before the students.
This point should be borne in mind whenever the issue of incitement is bought
up.



Is Israel Recognized?

· ?Israel, as a sovereign state, is not presented in the textbooks, except
with reference to the Oslo Accords and the ensuing treaties and agreements.?
(p. 31)

· ?Many cities and sites (inhabited by Arabs) in Israel proper are
mentioned
in reference to ?Historical Palestine?. These references are made in the
context of talking about the geography and topography of historical Palestine
[references].? (p. 31)

· ?In most presentations, Israel is implicitly referred to in different
terms such as ?Land inside the Green Line?, ?the land of 1948?, ?the
interior?.? (p. 31)



CMIP: As already seen in Chapter 1, there are more revealing examples - not
given by IPCRI - of the PA books? non recognition of Israel as a legitimate
sovereign state, such as mentioning Palestine, not Israel, as one of the four
countries that form Geographic Syria (the Levant, or Sham in Arabic, the other
three countries mentioned in the text being Syria, Lebanon and Jordan), and
showing Israel as part of the Palestinian state in one of the maps. The
rationale for this non-recognition is given elsewhere in the IPCRI report:
?The
State of Israel is presented as a usurper, an occupation force and a foreign
occupier of Palestine? Timetables in the National Education and History of the
Middle Ages, Grade 7 textbooks talk about the establishment of the State of
Israel on Palestinian land? (pp. 30-31). In another instance, the
establishment
of the State of Israel in 1948 is described as occupation: ?Palestine faced
British occupation following the First World War in the year 1917 and
Israeli occupation in the year 1948? (National Education, Grade 6 (2000) p.
16).



Judaism

CMIP has avoided IPCRI?s practice of citing references in the PA books to
Judaic patriarchs and prophets, who are revered by Islam, as an indication of
positive reference to Judaism. What is left is the following:



?Judaism is not mentioned as one of the religions of the past and present-
day communities of the region. In the Christian religious education textbooks,
the other monotheistic religions are referred to without identifying them.?
(p.
32)



Thus, the PA books fail to fulfil the criterion set by IPCRI regarding the
need
to provide the student with an opportunity to become acquainted with the
religious beliefs and practices of the other, and to respect them (see above,
in the criteria section of this chapter). IPCRI prefers, however, not to state
this specifically. It just reiterates the point in its
recommendations: ?Students should be provided with texts that contain
scholarly
information about the others (Jews and Christians), their heritage, history,
culture, feasts and religious holidays, prophets and holy men and their
contribution to humanity.? (p. 43).



The Jews in History

?There is very little mention of the Jews, in general. However, when
mentioned, references are usually positive.? (p. 31)



CMIP: This is a false statement. Except for one instance where Caliph
Al-Ma?mun
(9th century) is said to have respected Christian and Jewish scholars (History
of the Arabs and Muslims, Grade 6 (2000) p. 134), all references to the
Jews in
history are either negative or neutral, or insinuate negative attitudes (see
examples below).



?There is clearly an avoidance of dealing with Jewish-Islamic relationship
(especially in the Prophet Muhammad?s relationship with the three Jewish
tribes - Bani Nadir, Bani Qurayzah, Bani Qunuqa [Qaynuqa?] - in and around
Medina) in negative contexts. Only tolerant and positive aspects of the
historical relationship are presented. The textbooks highlight the peaceful
agreement reached between the Muslims and the three Jewish tribes living in
Medina/Yathreb and Khaibar [reference].? (pp. 31-32)



CMIP: It is true that the PA textbooks omit all references to the dispute
between Muhammad and the Jews. They simply leave it for the teachers to do the
job, as is clearly seen in the two following examples:

?Activity

The teacher will discuss with the students the [Prophet?s] raid against the
[Jewish] tribe of the Qaynuqa???

(Islamic Education, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 46)

?Activity

The teacher will discuss with the students the [Prophet?s] raid against the
[Jewish] tribe of Nadir??

(Islamic Education, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 55)



It should be also noted that the treaty between the Jews of Medina and the
Prophet did not include the Jewish inhabitants of the oasis of Khaybar, and
the
source mentioned by IPCRI in this context (Islamic Education, Grade 7, p. 74)
does not provide any reference to that.



?There are no overt references to Jews as ?the evil enemy? or as
being ?treacherous?. These representations were previously made in the ancient
historical context of the dispute between Muslims and Jews at the time of the
Prophet Muhammad.? (pp. 32-33)



CMIP: See our previous comment. As regards the PA general attitude towards the
older textbooks, see below in this chapter.



?There is also positive reference to Jews and Muslims as being members
of ?one Umma? (community)?? (p. 32)
?Another positive reference that shows tolerance towards Jews and
Judaism is
reflected in an agreement they reached to the effect that any dispute between
Muslims and Jews would be resolved by reference to the Torah and the Qur?an.?
(p. 32)



CMIP: These two ?findings? do not actually exist. The text in the source
mentioned by IPCRI (Islamic Education, Grade 7, pp. 75-77) says explicitly
that ?the believers are one nation (ummah) with the exclusion of other people?
(p. 75). In the same text (i.e., the treaty), an article says that if the
contracting parties have a dispute, Muhammad will judge the case (p. 75).
However, on p. 77 of the same book there is an exercise in which the students
are requested to put a V sign next to the following correct phrases and an X
sign against the incorrect ones. Phrase No. 2 in that exercise reads: ?Among
other things that were mentioned in the document was [the following one]: ?The
believers and the Jews are one nation to the exclusion of other people.?
Phrase
No. 5 says: ?If a dispute erupts between Muslims and Jews the judgment will be
according to the Torah and the Qur?an.? Clearly, the student should have
put an
X there in both cases.



?Some of the religious texts cited carry indirect references to Jews,
Christians and non-believers as hypocrites.? (p. 32)



CMIP: No such case has been found by CMIP. The hypocrites were a special group
among the Muslims, neither Jews nor Christians nor unbelievers. They were
called by this name because of their outward conversion to Islam while
remaining hostile to Muhammad.



?There are several instances in which Jews are presented in religious
contexts and in instances that relate to the agreements made between the
Muslims of Medina and the Jewish community there.? (p. 32)



CMIP: One specific such case is the following:

?The Second Unit: The Emergence of Islam

The Unit?s Goals:

6. Comparing the position of Muslims and Jews in keeping agreements and

treaties? (History of the Arabs and Muslims, Grade 6 (2000) p. 24).



CMIP views this phrase as an insinuation that the Jews do not keep agreements
and treaties as Muslims do.



?It is noted that the Prophet Muhammad urged his followers to learn
foreign
languages and asked one of them (Hassan Ibn Thabet) to learn the language of
the Jews (History, Grade 8, pp. 92-3).? (p. 33)



CMIP: There are two references to this story in two different textbooks. In a
former book not referred to by IPCRI the story goes as follows: ?The Messenger
[Muhammad] ordered Zayd Bin Thabet to learn the Jews? language in order to be
safe from their trickery? (History of the Arabs and Muslims, Grade 6 (2000) p.
133). Since the book referred to by IPCRI appeared two years later, it might
have reflected a change in the attitude of the Palestinian educators in this
specific subject. In any case, has IPCRI failed to note this.



?There are several references to Jews relating to the life and death of
Jesus Christ. Jews are also presented in reference to Jesus? teachings on
marriage and divorce in the Jewish and Christian traditions. These instances
reflect that state of affairs that prevailed in the Holy Land at the time of
Jesus Christ, especially as it related to religious and social sects such as
the Saducees and the Pharisees.? (p. 32)



CMIP: The text in Christian Education, Grade 2 (2001) p. 43 talks about the
controversy between Jesus Christ and the Pharisees over the issue of divorce,
and Christ is quoted as having said to the Pharisees that Moses had permitted
divorce because of their [the Pharisees] rough hearts. On page 45 of the same
lesson, however, a question substitutes the Jews for the Pharisees:

?3. Why did Moses permit the Jews to divorce??



Besides this episode, Christian education textbooks tend to present the
Jews in
a negative light. One example out of several ones not brought by IPCRI:



?The Jews were observing the holiness of the Sabbath. They made it a day of
rest and prayer and prevented any work on it. They prevented even good
works on
it. By healing the sick man on the Sabbath, Jesus taught us that doing good
works is an obligation upon us very day?? (Christian Education, Grade 3 (2002)
p. 88)



Jews and Israelis in the Context of the Conflict

?The Jews of modern times are mentioned in the narration of some
historical
incidents that transpired in the first half of the 20th century (e.g., the
British Mandate, Jewish immigration to Palestine in the late 19th century and
the first half of the 20th century, War of 1948, the massacre of Deir Yasin).
The image of Jews who immigrated to Palestine is reflected in negative light
(invaders, etc.). Their goal was to liquidate Palestinians and expel them from
their land [reference]. References are also made to the ?Zionist Terror
Organization? in the context of reviewing the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli War
[reference]? (p. 33).
?Zionism (the Jewish national movement in modern times) is mentioned in
several locations in the textbooks. In a few instances, the references are
negative but there are some instances in which Zionism is mentioned without
any
comments or elaboration? (p. 33).
?The Jewish presence in the State of Israel is ignored as it relates to
the
names of cities, towns and communal settlements? (p. 33).
?Some of the cities, historical sites/archaeological sites, geographical
features in Israel proper are mentioned, in the context of recent history, and
are defined as Palestinian? (p. 33).
?Inscriptions in Hebrew are omitted, e.g., on a stamp of Palestine from
the
British Mandate period [reference]? (p. 33).



CMIP: In this superficial description by IPCRI of the PA textbooks? attitude
towards the Jews in the context of the conflict two important elements are
implied:

The image of the Jews as human beings.
The question of their rights in Palestine.



The image of the Jews as human beings in the context of the conflict is much
worse than the one presented above by IPCRI. They are portrayed as having
greedy ambitions regarding Palestine (National Education, Grade 7 (2001) p.
22), as infiltrators to the land (The Palestinian Society - Demographic
Education, Grade 11 (2000) p. 21), as occupiers (Reading and Texts, Grade 8,
Part 2 (2002) p. 59), as Tartars (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p.
56), oppressors and slaughterers (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p.
77), and are also insinuated as human wild beasts (Reading and Texts, Grade 8,
Part 1 (2002) p. 137). All these references are not included in the IPCRI
report, which thus conceals an important part of the real image of the Jews as
presented to the young Palestinian students, with grave implications on the
issue of incitement (to be dealt with below, in the conclusion section of this
chapter).



As regards the Jews? rights in Palestine, the IPCRI report implies two
important elements within the PA textbooks, but fails to present them outright:



(1) The attitude to Zionism, correctly defined by IPCRI as the Jewish
national movement in modern times. It is insufficient to say, as has IPCRI,
that Zionism is referred to at times negatively and at times in a neutral
manner. What is important here is how it is described. When one encounters
phrases like ?Zionist greedy ambitions [in Palestine]? (National Education,
Grade 7 (2001) p. 21), ?Zionist aggression? (National Education, Grade 7
(2001)
p. 23) or ?The fire of Zionist crime has mowed the Palestinian land? (Reading
and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 27) - and all these expressions are not
referred to in the IPCRI report, it becomes obvious that there is total
rejection on the part of the PA textbooks of any Jewish national rights in the
land. There is also one case where such rights are openly rejected, which the
IPCRI report fails to mention: ?The Balfour Declaration fits the saying: ?The
one who does not own gave to the one who does not deserve?? (National
Education,
Grade 7 (2001) p. 22). The attitude to any other rights the Jews may have in
Palestine, especially religious ones, will be discussed below, in the section
that deals with the holy places.

(2) The attitude of the PA textbooks to the actual presence of the Jews in
the country. Not only are cities established by Jews, including Tel Aviv,
absent from all maps (except those of the atlas) while other cities are
presented as Palestinian, but the 5.4 million Jews living in the land are not
counted among its legitimate inhabitants. Examples:



?The inhabitants of Palestine on 1.2.1999


1. The West Bank 1,973,000 }

2. Gaza 1,113,000 } 36%

3. The Palestinians of the Interior* 1,094,000 13%

4. The Palestinians of the Diaspora 4,419,000 51%

Total: 8,598,000 100%?

(National Education, Grade 6 (2000) p. 11)



* ?Interior? refers to Israel?s pre-1967 territory.



?The World: Countries and Capitals


Country Population Surface Capital

(Thousands) (Thousand sq. meters)

Palestine 4,659* 21** Jerusalem?

(Atlas of Palestine, the Arab Homeland and the World (2002) p. 128)



* This number appears to include the Palestinian Arab population of the

West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel proper. The 5.4 million Jews in

the country are not counted.

** This number refers to the country in its entirety, well beyond the

confines of the West Bank and Gaza.



The systematic effort of the PA textbooks to deny the legitimacy of the Jews?

presence in Palestine is reflected in the stamp episode that is mentioned
above
by IPCRI. One of the textbooks presents a photocopy of a stamp from the period
of the British Mandate. But while the original stamp bears inscriptions in the
three official languages in Mandatory times, namely, English, Arabic and
Hebrew
(and see the photocopy of the original stamp in CMIP?s report of November 2001
p. 21), the photocopy in the textbook bears two inscription only - English and
Arabic. The Hebrew inscription was deleted (National Education, Grade 2,
Part 1
(2001) p. 7). IPCRI fails to understand the significance of this omission,
namely, the desire to erase any official documentation that would prove the
Jews? recognized status in Palestine.



Jewish Holy Places

?Holy sites in Palestine do not include those of Jews except for ones that
are holy to both Muslims and Jews (Al-Buraq Wall/the Wailing Wall, the
Sanctuary of Abraham/Al-Haram al-Ibrahimi as-Shareef, Jacob?s Well and
Joseph?s
Tomb). When mentioned, no reference is made to their significance to the
Jewish
tradition [reference].? (pp. 33-34)



CMIP: In one clear sentence - Jewish holy sites are not mentioned in the PA
books, period.



?Jewish holy sites are presented and referred to in historical and
religious
contexts (as they relate to the life of Jesus Christ).? (p. 34)



CMIP: They are referred to in specific terms but their Jewish character is not
mentioned. Example: ?The Temple [al-Haykal in Arabic]: A word meaning ?the
Great House? which was a place of worship of God, like the church today?
(Christian Education, Grade 2 (2001) p.11).



In short, although several references are made to Palestine?s being holy to
the
(three) monotheistic religions, no Jewish holy place is referred to as such by
the PA school textbooks. Moreover, there are instances in which the Jews are
accused of making attempts to control or Judaize Muslim holy places (which
happen to be Jewish holy places as well, but the PA books do not mention
that):



??the revolt of 1929 which is known as the Al-Buraq Revolt, in protest of
the Jews? attempts at controlling the Al-Buraq Wall?* (National Education,
Grade 7 (2001) p. 21)



* Al-Buraq Wall is also known as the Wailing Wall, one of the Jews? holiest
places.


?The attempt to Judaize some of the Muslim religious places like the
Mosque
of Abraham* and the Mosque of Bilal Bin Rabbah**? (National Education, Grade 7
(2001) p. 55)



* The Mosque of Abraham is also known as the Machpelah Sanctuary or the
Cave of
the Patriarchs and is holy to the Jews as well.

**The Mosque of Bilal Bin Rabbah (one of Prophet Muhammad?s companions) is
better known as Rachel?s Tomb and is holy to the Jews. In fact, in a former PA
book published in 1996 the place was still called: ?The Tomb of Rachel, mother
of our lord Joseph and wife of Jacob? (Palestinian National Education, Grade 6
(1996) p. 89). We thus have a rare opportunity here to witness a new myth in
the making, or, rather, the development of an ongoing effort of challenging
Jewish religious rights in the country.



The two above findings, as well as a few similar other ones, do not appear in
IPCRI?s report which consequently fails to recognize the said effort as
part of
an overall denial of any Jewish legitimate rights or presence in the country.



Conclusions

Any impartial judgment of the preceding material would arrive at the following
main conclusions, in response to the questions asked in the Criteria section:



The Palestinian school students are kept in almost total ignorance of
Jewish
history, culture and religion.
The Jews are deprived of any rights in Palestine, be they national or
religious. Even their mere presence there is not recognized.
Israel is not treated as a legitimate sovereign state (and see Chapter 8:
Maps, for further evidence).
The PA books present a stereotyped and negative image of the Jews, and
demonize Israel.



IPCRI?s conclusions in this context are sporadically scattered over 6 pages
and
could be rearranged in clusters, in accordance with their points of argument,
as follows:



Admission that some of the material included in the PA books
is ?inappropriate?:

?One cannot fail to notice a number of cases in which Judaism and the Jews
are inadequately and inappropriately represented in relation to their presence
in the region.? (p. 49)



CMIP: This is a very mildly worded conclusion, if we take the preceding
evidence into account. Other than this statement, there is no explicit
criticism of the PA books in the IPCRI report in this context. Implicit
criticism is sometimes found in other conclusions. For example, the two
following items imply that the PA textbooks include stereotypical
references to
Israel and the Jews, but the report does not state that explicitly.



An attempt to explain the existence of stereotypical references in the PA
books:

?Educators, historians and politicians alike have long argued that in the
context of a conflict, there is no escape from presenting the ?other? in
stereotypical references. This, however, should not be interpreted as a
call to
condone such practices. In the spirit of peace and tolerance, the ?other? - in
this case Israel - should be portrayed in proper terms (neutral and/or
positive
light).? (p. 41)



The PA educators make positive efforts in this respect:

?The MOE [PA Ministry of Education] is doing its best to do away with many
stereotypical references to Jews and Israelis.? (p. 37)
?The authoring teams made every effort to avoid stereotyping...? (p. 41)



CMIP: The PA?s new curriculum certainly avoids a number of the anti-Israeli
and
anti-Jewish references that appeared in the older textbooks. But many
descriptions of the Jews and all those of Israel are still stereotypical, with
grave implications on the issue of incitement (see below). The ambiguous role
played by the PA regarding the older textbooks will be discussed below.



What is left does not pose a challenge to Israel according to IPCRI:

?The historical timelines in several textbooks show a continuous Arab
presence in the region. This does not necessarily mean a challenge to Israel?s
biblical and modern claims of presence in the region. For an honest, complete
and accurate representation of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious culture of
the region, non-Arab and non-Muslim presence and history should be included.?
(p. 38)
?In the National Education and the Civic Education textbooks, one
notices a
focus on Arab and Palestinian ethnic, religious, geographic and religious
[sic]
identity. This does not mean the denial of the Jewish and Israeli narrative of
the same ethnic and geographic dimension. However, the materials do not openly
reflect readiness to consider the Jewish and Israeli narratives.? (p. 40)
?The Palestinian narrative, one has to acknowledge, has short-term as well
as long-term bearings on the political questions and the political agenda of
the different parties of the region. These are legitimate aims and are not to
be construed as denying others, particularly Israelis, the right to a secure
and peaceful existence.? (p. 37)
?One also notices an emphasis on the duty of students to love their land,
family, towns, state, the Arab world and the Islamic world. These
pronouncements, on the one hand, are not incompatible or in conflict with
calls
for recognizing, respecting and understanding others. On the other hand, they
do not constitute a clear call for doing so.? (p. 40)



CMIP: No one argues with the fact that the Palestinians are fully entitled to
asserting their national positions and aspirations in their school textbooks.
This in itself does not constitute automatic denial of the ?other?, even in
times of conflict. What is disturbing in the PA textbooks is the mostly
implicit, but very well traceable, denial of both the Jews? rights and actual
presence in Palestine, and of Israel?s status as a legitimate sovereign state.
The IPCRI conclusions do not tackle with this problem and, consequently, fail
to present a faithful picture of the PA books? position in this issue.



Moreover, the IPCRI report claims, contrary to the evidence, that Israel is
indeed recognized as a legitimate sovereign state within the PA textbooks, by
quoting the Palestinian Declaration of Independence:

?The Declaration of Independence [of the State of Palestine, issued by the
PLO in Algiers in November 1988,] is used to reflect the policies of the
future
state. It reiterates some of the principles found in the draft
Constitution. In
addition, it highlights the recognition by the Palestinian people (represented
by the PLO) of the State of Israel and all the UN resolutions that relate to
the Arab-Israeli conflict.? (p. 39)



CMIP: No source is cited in this case, but the Declaration of Independence is
quoted in Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) pp. 72-73. There is no
trace there to any recognition of the State of Israel by the PLO. It should be
remembered that the Declaration was issued in 1988, before the Oslo Accords
between Israel and the PLO were signed (in 1993), which entailed mutual
recognition. In other words, official Palestinian recognition of the State of
Israel does exist in the Oslo Accords, but these are not quoted by the PA
books.



There is no incitement against Israel according to IPCRI:

?The authoring teams made every effort to avoid stereotyping and
incitement.
This is reflected in the practice of omitting explicitly defiant verses or
excerpts from poems and literary works included in the subject-matter
context.?
(p. 41)



CMIP has found one instance in which one verse talking of the Palestinian
refugees? return to their land with flags stained with blood fluttering over
swords and bayonets has been omitted. But the poem still talks of coming back
with resounding storms and a sacred lightening, with soaring vultures and
eagles, which leaves the impression of war and conquest intact (Our Beautiful
Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2001) p. 40).



?The overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful despite the
harsh and
violent realities on the ground. It does not openly incite against Israel and
the Jews.? (p. 38)



CMIP: Open incitement against the Jews exists in very few cases. One, for
example, is the call for Jihad against the (Jewish) ?oppressors?
and ?slaughterers? in a poem dating back to 1948 or 1947 (Reading and Texts,
Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p. 77). But if direct incitement is rare, indirect
incitement is abundant. One has to just cast a glance at the long list of
negative, and, at times, demonizing attributes attached to Israel and the Jews
in order to understand the extent of the hostile attitude fostered in the
minds
of Palestinian school children by their curriculum against anything
Israeli. If
we combine this fact with what the PA books have to say on Jihad, martyrdom
and
the liberation of Palestine (see below in Chapters 4 and 6), then a clear
example of incitement appears before our eyes. IPCRI?s ones, so it seems,
remain closed.



The PA books, at any rate, have an ?interim? character that would change, once
full peace is concluded, according to IPCRI:

?The textbooks undoubtedly bear the marks of unresolved controversies both
among Palestinians and with the neighbors of the emerging Palestinian state.
This observation was pointed out in other reviews and may reflect that fact
that several major issues remain unresolved. The textbooks, moreover, and
especially the history books, could be viewed as having an ?interim?
nature. As
such, they reflect current political and social realities. Once the existing
conditions are altered, or modified, the textbooks will certainly reflect the
changes.? (pp. 37-38)



It is CMIP?s strong belief that, in order to reach a real and everlasting
peace
between Palestinians and Israelis, this ?interim? character of the PA books
should first change for the better, and not vice versa.



Finally, the following conclusion represents IPCRI?s overall judgment
regarding
the PA textbooks in this particular respect:

?The Palestinian MOE should be applauded for its willingness to embark on
replacing the existing curriculum in spite of the difficult situation on the
ground and several unresolved major issues in the conflict.? (p. 37)



CMIP: Before anyone applauds the Palestinian Ministry of Education for
replacing the older books with new ones less hateful, it should be known that
it is the same Ministry which was responsible for the reintroduction of these
older books to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1994, after a period of
more
than 25 years in which a milder version had been taught there. When Israeli
administration took over in 1967, all school books were gathered and studied,
and all the hateful material was taken out in a process of re-editing. Thus,
phrases such as ?the evil enemy? or ?treacherous? in relation to the Jews
(examples given in the IPCRI report p. 32) were not present in the books
between the years 1967-1994. Only when the PA took over in 1994-95, did it
gather all the re-edited books and replace them with the original ones.




Chapter 4: Jihad, Freedom and Martyrdom


Criteria

The only question in this section is as follows:

?Are references to Jihad and shahadah or istishad [istish?had] (martyrdom)
made? In what contexts are these two concepts used (e.g., militant, peaceful
and constructive, etc.)??



CMIP: This question is reasonable, though nothing is said there on ?freedom?,
which appears in the title of the chapter. Also, one may wonder how IPCRI
would
define a peaceful and constructive martyrdom. Another question that comes to
mind in this context and should have been put here is the following one: To
what extent do the PA books exalt Jihad and martyrdom? Can one find
indications
in the books that they urge the students to follow the historical examples of
Jihad fighters and martyrs?



Findings

The relevant findings related to militant Jihad - as opposed to peaceful
Jihad -
are as follows:



?Glorifying militant positions as in the case of Jihad against the
Crusaders
[source].? (p. 34)
?War of Ramadan (October 1973).? (p. 34)



CMIP: These findings are very meager indeed, because militant Jihad is
found in
the PA books in abundance. Following are some prominent examples of the spirit
of Jihad as taught in the PA books (though not in all of them the term itself
appears):



?Jihad comes first after worship.? (Our Beautiful Language, Grade 6,
Part 1
(2000) p. 20)
?God has ordered the believers to stand firm while meeting the enemies in
the field of Jihad.? (Islamic Education, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 25)
?You probably know what a great reward God has prepared for the Muslims
who
fight the infidels.? (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 15)
?O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and
sacrifice
are necessary.? (Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p. 77)
?Clarify the Muslims? duty towards their brethren who are threatened by
occupation and aggression on the part of the enemies.? (Islamic Education,
Grade 7, Part 2 (2002) p. 37)



As for martyrdom, the IPCRI report presents this finding:

?In some references, the concept of ?martyrdom? is mentioned, primarily as
it relates to historical events (pre- and during the 1947-48 War). The
majority
of references to martyrs relate to those who lost their lives in defense of
historical Palestine (against the British Mandate and during the 1947-48 War)
[examples]. Limited references are made to recent martyrs of the Palestinian
Resistance/PLO (e.g., Abu Jihad [reference).? PP. 34-35)



CMIP: The concept of martyrdom is not mentioned in ?some references?. It is
instilled in the minds of Palestinian school children on many occasions.
Examples:



?Lord of the Martyrs*

The goals: Our dear students, may peace be upon you and God?s mercy and
blessings. We expect you, after studying this unit, to realize the following
goals:

?Glorification of the concept of martyrdom and martyrs.? (Our Beautiful
Language, Grade 6, Part 1 (2000) p. 46)



* ?Lord of the Martyrs? is the title given to Hamzah Bin Abd al-Muttalib,
Muhammad?s uncle, one of the first martyrs in Islam.



?The Martyr

I shall carry my soul in my palm

And toss it into the abyss of destruction

By your life! I see my death

But I hasten my steps towards it

I see my death without my stolen right

And without my country as a desired one

Hearing [weapons?] clash is pleasant to my ear

And the flow of blood gladdens my soul

And a body thrown upon the ground

Skirmished over by the desert predators

Whose blood covered the land with crimson

And burdened the east wind with perfume

He fell asleep in order to dream the dream of eternity [i.e., Paradise]

And enjoy in it the loveliest visions

By your life! This is the death of men

And the one who asks for a noble death - here it is

I shall throw my heart at the enemy?s face

My heart is iron and my fire is blaze?

(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2001) p. 97)



?Let us express [in writing]:
An event of martyrdom of a hero in the land of Palestine, using the
following phrases: they have fulfilled what they had promised to God; they
have
stood the test; he is defending his religion and homeland; a bullet hit him in
?; he fell as a martyr; he watered the land with his pure blood.
The emotions of a mother whose son fell as a martyr on the soil of
Palestine.?


(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 6, Part 1 (2000) p. 58)



?Your enemies seek life and you seek death. They seek spoils to feed their
empty stomachs and you seek a garden the width of which is both Heaven and
earth [i.e., Paradise]. Do not be sad to encounter them, for [the taste of]
death is not bitter in the believers? mouth. ?These drops of blood that flow
from your bodies will be transformed into red fiery shooting stars that will
come down upon the heads of your enemies.?

(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 16)




?O my homeland

I shall not cry at this wedding*

For our Arabism forbids that we mourn the martyrs?

(Linguistic Sciences, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 105)



* Martyrdom is sometimes described as a wedding party.



Conclusions

Nothing is written in the IPCRI report in conclusion of this subject.



CMIP views the above quoted references as sufficient evidence proving that
Jihad and martyrdom feature in the PA textbooks as an integral part of the
curriculum. The concepts of Jihad and martyrdom are exalted, with an implied
notion encouraging the students to play their own role in this respect.





Chapter 5: Refugees and the Right of Return



Criteria

?What references are made to the right of return of Palestinian refugees?
What arguments are made in this regard?? (p. 22)



CMIP: IPCRI should also have asked how the return of the refugees is supposed
to take place according to the PA textbooks.



Findings

?The right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, as
stipulated in the UN resolutions, is emphasized in several texts. It is
also an
important part of the Palestinian national anthem, the words of which carry
the
meaning of sacrifice for the homeland and the determination to reclaim it
[reference]? (p. 35)



CMIP: Incorrect. The right of return in the PA textbooks is emphasized in the
PA books, but not as stipulated by the UN resolutions which insist on a
peaceful return, under mutual agreement, of those refugees who wish that and
are ready to live in peace with their (Israeli) neighbors. The PA books, on
the
other hand, reiterate the traditional Arab position that sought to have the
refugees return to a liberated Palestine in a war. Example:



?We shall return with the resounding storms

With the sacred lightening and the star

With the winged hope and the songs

With the soaring vulture and the eagle

Yes! The thousands victims shall return

Victims of oppression shall open every door?

(Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1 (2001) p. 40)



The UN resolutions also stipulate that those refugees, who will prefer not to
return, will be entitled to compensation. The PA textbooks do not accept that.
All refugees must return. Examples:



?All the Palestinians wait for the return of every Palestinian to his city or
village from which he was made to emigrate.?

(Islamic Education, Grade 6, Part 1(2000) p. 69)



?The right of return is a red line that cannot be crossed.?

(Linguistic Sciences, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 68)



As regards the national hymn (not anthem) that is mentioned within the said
finding, it has no connection to the refugee problem. It will be discussed
later on, in the framework of Chapter 6: Defending and Liberating Palestine as
the ?Homeland?.



?Several references are made to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian
refugees to return to their land. Some references are expressed in the form of
poems or literary works (some implicit and some embedded in metaphorical
terms). In one instance an ancient Canaanite myth about the phoenix is
introduced and students are asked to relate it to the Palestinian refugees in
the Diaspora [reference]; others are made directly in the context of talking
about camps in which they live and about the Declaration of Independence
and UN
resolutions. It is worth noting in this context that some verses that are
militant in nature were omitted from the selections used in the textbook.? (p.
35)



CMIP: The militant verse about blood, swords and bayonets omitted from the
poem
cited above, does not change the poem?s militant character, as is clearly
seen.
It just transforms the threat from an explicit to an implicit one. The Phoenix
myth is Greek, not Canaanite, and it tells of a legendary bird that lives
for a
thousand years, burns at the end of this period, and then rises from the
ashes.
It has no connection to refugees. But the Palestinian educators are free, of
course, to readapt ancient myths to current needs.



Beyond that, and not discussed by IPCRI, there is the issue of responsibility.
The PA books blame Israel exclusively for the emergence of the refugee
problem.
See, for example, National Education, Grade 7 (2001) p. 21; National
Education,
Grade 6 (2000) p. 16; Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p. 78.


Conclusions

The PA books, beyond making Israel exclusively responsible for the refugee
problem, show a staunch devotion to the ultimate solution of total return,
with
an implied notion of violence. IPCRI fails to note that in its report, and the
problem in its entirety is not referred to at all by IPCRI in the conclusion
section.





Chapter 6: Defending and Liberating Palestine as the ?Homeland?



Criteria

?Are there any references in the textbooks to the concept of liberation,
armed struggle, resistance, etc. In what context are these references made
(historical, modern, nonviolent, militant, etc.)?? (p. 22)



CMIP: This is a very important question. The PA textbooks? attitude to the
issue of the armed struggle against Israeli occupation is a crucial matter.
But
more important is the (missing) question regarding the exact geographical
scope
of the occupation, or, in other words, what are the specific territories that
are to be liberated.



Findings (Only those relevant to the present conflict)

?Frequent references are found that relate to resisting the Israeli
occupation and the national and religious duty to liberate the occupied
territories [examples]. The liberation of the land occupied during the 1967
War
figures prominently in some textbooks in symbolic forms (in poetry).? (p. 35)



CMIP: Correct.



?There is, however, one instance in which we find a call for Arabs and
Palestinians, in particular, to work for the goal of ?rescuing? Palestine.
Since the excerpt is taken from the Encyclopedia of Palestine, first published
in 1964 (Mustafa Al-Dabagh/ Our Country Palestine), the call is understood as
that of liberating historical Palestine [reference].? (p. 35)



CMIP: This is not the only open call for the liberation of Palestine in its
entirety. There is at least another instance in which a poem that dates
back to
1947 or 1948 is included in one of the textbooks, and calls for Jihad against
the (Jewish) oppressors and slaughterers in Palestine (Reading and Texts,
Grade
8, Part 1 (2002) p. 77). Other examples are less explicit. They do not talk
about destroying Israel or even fighting it for the liberation of the
territory
within its pre-1967 border. But they refer to that territory as one under
occupation. See, for example, National Education, Grade 6 (2000) p. 16;
Reading
and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 118; Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1
(2002) p. 57; a map titled ?Palestine in the shadow of occupation in: Atlas of
Palestine, the Arab Homeland and the World (2002) p. 6, and also Linguistic
Sciences, Grade 8, Part 2 (2002) p. 82 (insinuated). The liberation in this
case is thus implied, not stated.



?Some texts note that it is incumbent on the occupied to resist the
occupier. However, there are no open calls for the destruction of Israel
similar to those that permeated the pre-1967 narratives.? (p. 36)



CMIP: See the previous comment, and also the following finding which talks
about the Palestinian resistance before 1967.



?The history textbooks talk about Palestinian struggle against occupation
and highlight the revolts, general strikes and the uprising against the
British. They also underscore the birth of the modern-day Palestinian
resistance following the UN Partition resolution of November 29, 1947.? (p.
36)



CMIP: The link between modern-day Palestinian resistance, and that of earlier
periods, which was directed against Britain and the Jews, and later against
Israel, is made by the PA textbooks more than once. In one example, the text
presents two Palestinian martyrs, one from the pre-1948 period (Sheikh Izz al-
Din al-Qassam) and another from modern times (Khalil al-Wazir). It should be
remembered that the PLO was officially committed to the destruction of Israel
until the early 1990s, and all current references in the PA books to PLO
activities and personalities of those periods actually condone that official
policy (see, for example, a text looking favorably on the attacks by
Palestinians against Israel from south Lebanon - Reading and Texts, Grade 8,
Part 1 (2002) p. 45). The same applies to those members of the Palestinian
armed organizations who were involved in terrorist actions against Israelis
and
later jailed:



?Several references are also made to ?prisoners of war? jailed by the
Israelis (for political and/or military reasons) from the period extending
from
1967-2001. These include those who are detained ?administratively? without
trials. Prison literature figures frequently in the textbooks [references].
The
narratives talk about and glorify the sacrifices made by the prisoners in
their
struggle to liberate their land from Israeli occupation. Texts are also
accompanied by visual art depicting the prisoners? longing for freedom and
their desire to be united with their families.? (p. 36)



The question, of course, is whether the PA textbooks favor such actions today.
The poem that was mistakenly connected by IPCRI to the refugee problem
actually
belongs here. It reads:

?Fida?i, Fida?i, Fida?i,* O my land, the ancestors? land

Fida?i, Fida?i, Fida?i, O my people, the people of eternity

I shall live as a Fida?i and continue as a Fida?i

And shall die as a Fida?i until it [the land] returns

Fida?i, Fida?i, Fida?i, O my land, the ancestors? land

Fida?i, Fida?i, Fida?i, O my people, the people of eternity

To the teacher: The teacher will repeat with the pupils the national hymn
several times.?

(National Education, Grade 1, Part 2 (2001) pp. 57-58)



* Fida?i - A warrior who is ready to sacrifice himself for a cause. In recent
decades, this title has been reserved mainly for members of the Palestinian
armed organizations.



There is a thin line separating this armed struggle from terrorism. The
Palestinians are aware of this question and forcefully deny the accusation:



?The occupier [i.e., Israel] spreads everywhere the lie that the Palestinian
struggle is terror. In the Declaration of the Establishment of the
[Palestinian] State there is something that reveals the falseness of this
allegation.?

(Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2002) p. 76)



IPCRI does not find this worthy of discussion.



Conclusions

The above presented evidence clearly shows that the PA books support the
Palestinian armed struggle against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip, with implied notions that the liberation of Palestine does not end
there. Although open calls for the destruction of Israel are not included in
the PA textbooks (with the exceptions mentioned above), acts by Palestinians
with that aim in former periods are looked on favorably, while any accusation
of terrorism is rejected outright.



The IPCRI report does not include any conclusions related to this chapter.







Chapter 7: The Oslo Accords and the Declaration of Principles



Criteria

?Are the international and bilateral agreements signed between the Israeli
government and the PLO mentioned? If so, how, and in what context?? (p. 22)


Findings
?Several references are made to the Oslo Accords. Some are presented in
relation to the establishment of the PA, e.g., the entry of the PLA [Palestine
Liberation Army] into the PA territories after the signing of the Oslo Accords
and the DOP in 1993 [reference]. Other references relate to the demographic
and
economic realities post-Oslo such as the decline in the population of
Palestinians in the Diaspora and the patterns of social, educational and
economic development in PA areas after the signing of the Accords.? (p. 36)
?Few references are made to the Oslo Accords and to the Declaration of
Principles (DOP) that ushered in the peace process between the Palestinians
and
the Israelis [reference]. The ?peace? dimension of the Accords and the DOP is
not mentioned.? (p. 28)



CMIP: IPCRI talks about this issue in a matter-of-fact manner. But it is
significantly important to realize that the only reference to the Oslo Accords
in the PA books so far (other than the DOP) does not mention the peace
process,
but refers to the military benefits the PLO has gained from those Accords.
Conclusions
No conclusions regarding this issue are included in the IPCRI report. What is
left for CMIP to comment on in this context is that this phenomenon in which
the PA textbooks refrain from presenting to the students the contents of the
Oslo Accords, which constitute the basis for the current peace process, is one
of the most revealing indications of the real attitude towards genuine peace
with Israel on the part of the PA textbooks.







Chapter 8: Maps



Criteria

?How are regional and historical maps drafted?? (p. 23)
?How do visual texts portray the region?s political boundaries?? (p. 23)
?Are illustrations, maps and graphs up-to-date and accurate?? (p. 23)



Findings

Since the original findings in the IPCRI report are intertwined with one
another, CMIP has found it useful to separate and rearrange them in a logical
order:

?Several books contain and make reference to maps of historical
Palestine as
a geographical and historical entity. Some of the maps show Palestine as part
of the Arab world (regional maps), whereas others show it in isolation.? (p.
36)
?Maps are used for different purposes: to situate Palestine with reference
to the Arab and Islamic worlds, in relation to the lines of latitude and
longitude, for identifying the four directions, locating the different cities
in historical Palestine (under Ottoman rule, British Mandate), Medieval
history
(during Islamic rule, the Crusades and Salah Iddin, etc.), Bilad As-
Sham/Fertile Crescent as well as ancient history (the time of the Canaanites).
Some maps highlight the location of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip.? (p. 36)



CMIP: All maps show the country as a whole, that is, Mandatory or ?historical?
Palestine, as named in the IPCRI report.



?In all cases, the maps are not labeled in any way.? (p. 36)



CMIP: If IPCRI means by that, that maps of "historical" Palestine do not carry
the phrase "the State of?", that is correct, and see the following findings.
But in many cases the country as a whole is labeled ?Palestine?. The question
here, of course, is whether this should be regarded as a systematic effort on
the part of the PA textbooks to avoid the mentioning of Israel in maps. The
impression that this is indeed the case becomes stronger when we realize that
cities established by Jews in modern times, such as Tel Aviv, do not appear on
any map either, except in an atlas that has been approved for use in the PA
schools. But this atlas also systematically refrains from mentioning Israel?s
name on the map (except in one case in reference to the ?Jewish State? in maps
describing the events of 1947-48: Atlas of Palestine, the Arab Homeland and
the
World (2002) p. 5).

?No map? bears the name of the State of Palestine.? (p. 27)
?The name of Israel does not appear on any map.? (p. 37)
?Israel, as a political entity, does not appear in any map.? (p. 27)



CMIP: Correct.



?The maps in the Textbooks represent Mandate Palestine and when the
reference is to the PA territories or the Palestinian homeland, the areas are
contoured.? (p. 27)



CMIP: The areas contoured are not the PA territories, but the West Bank and
the
Gaza Strip, and there is no connection between this phenomenon and the
text. In
any case, the contoured areas are always shown within ?historical? Palestine
and not as separate regions.



?In some maps the boundaries of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are
contoured.
(This is the case when reference is made to the demographic distribution of
Palestinians and to the administrative breakdown of the Palestinian State in
terms of governorates.)? (p. 37)



CMIP: Yes, but not always. There are other cases in which the West Bank and
the
Gaza Strip are contoured.



?Geographical maps show all historical Palestine. Administrative maps show
the West Bank and Gaza.? (p. 27)



CMIP: Not necessarily. There is one administrative map showing the districts
of ?historical? Palestine, and see also the following finding.



?Some of the ?administrative maps? also show names of cities that were
predominantly inhabited by Arabs prior to the establishment of the State of
Israel. These cities include Acre/Akko, Nazareth/An-Nasirah, Safad/Safad,
Haifa/Haifa, Jaffa/Jaffa, Lod/AL-Lud, and Ramle/Ar-Ramleh. The same was found
for a lesson on ?tourism? in which the accompanying map includes the names of
Haifa, Nazareth and Acre (along with photos showing the Church of the
Annunciation and the Al-Jazzar Mosque, respectively).? (p. 37)



CMIP: Correct.



?None [of the maps] portrays the ?Land of Israel? or ?Israel? as part
of the
emerging Palestinian State.? (p. 27)



CMIP: Incorrect. The ?Land of Israel? is the Jewish traditional name of the
whole country, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As for the State of
Israel, there is at least one map that shows its territory united with the
West
Bank and the Gaza Strip in one color, and under the Palestinian flag, in the
context of the establishment of the State of Palestine. See: Mathematics,
Grade
3, Part 1 (2002) p. 86. One can also find in the atlas political maps in which
Palestine as a whole appears side by side with neighboring states. See, for
example, the map titled ?The Arab Gulf: Political? in Atlas of Palestine, the
Arab Homeland and the World (2002) p. 48)



Conclusions

For the sake of convenience, we have divided IPCRI?s conclusion in this
subject
into three parts:



?The territory of the State of Israel is shown on the maps without any
label. No reference is made to Palestine, either.? (p. 39)



CMIP: Israel is never referred to on any map. That is correct. Palestine, on
the other hand, is referred to many times, though not as a ?state?, and its
name encompasses the whole country, including Israel. IPCRI thus clings to
technicalities in its interpretation of the evidence, forgetting that school
children cannot grasp such delicate matters. All they see on the map
is ?Palestine? constantly covering the whole of Israel?s territory. This way,
the contoured West Bank and the Gaza Strip within Palestine can be easily
regarded as ?liberated areas?, while the future of the other parts is, at
best,
in question.



IPCRI further explains this anomalous situation by repeating the PA?s
justification:



?The rationale for this approach, as explained by political officials and
educators alike, is that Israel itself has not yet marked its borders and that
no final agreement has been reached with the PLO and the PA as to the final
status of the borders between the two political entities.? (p. 39)



This is, of course, an unacceptable explanation, unless in the eyes of the PA
the border question covers the whole of Israel's territory. IPCRI itself notes:



?This, however, does not mean that maps included in the textbooks
should be
left without labels that reflect the historical as well as the present-day
political reality. Thus, until a solution is reached with regard to the
disputed borders, maps should be described in more accurate terms (e.g., such
as being typographical [sic], demographic or geological maps of Historical
Palestine). In addition, maps should reflect the present-day political
realities in terms of labeling the regions as they are described in
internationally adopted documents, accords, resolutions, and treaties, etc.
(e.g., Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip).? (p.
39)



It appears that IPCRI wishes to achieve three goals in its conclusion:

To minimize the faults in the PA textbooks by concealing their real
meaning
behind technicalities.
To clear the PA of responsibility by reiterating their justifications.
To absolve IPCRI of condonation, by urging the PA to improve the books.



But the issue at stake is much more serious. The absence of Israel?s name from
all maps and the appearance of Palestine?s on many of them instead,
integrates,
together with other phenomena in which Israel is not treated as a legitimate
sovereign state (see Chapter 3 above), into one whole reality where Israel?s
existence is denied. It is an implied message, that is true, but it is very
live and real.




General Conclusions


CMIP has found the IPCRI report to be lacking on three specific levels:



Technical Treatment of the Findings

· IPCRI has not made a systematic effort to gather all the available
material. Many findings, including decisively important ones, are left out.

· The researchers appear to have relied on second-hand information,
including CMIP?s reports, with no real verification.

· External views and explanations were introduced by the researchers into
the report, side by side with the source material.

· The source material is paraphrased or summarized, with no reliable system
of reference.



Use of the Findings in the Report

· The IPCRI researchers do not combine pieces of evidence to form a whole
picture. Each piece is treated separately.

· Important findings are sometimes presented with no comment.

· Some of the presented findings are false.

· Findings are sometimes presented in a misleading manner.

· There is a tendency on the part of the researchers to ?explain? findings
that seem unpleasant to them - either by themselves or by PA officials, to
minimize the importance of such findings, or blur their meaning.

· On the other hand, they tend to highlight other findings.




Assessment

· The assessment tends to be more lenient than the evidence upon which
it is
supposed to be based. It often ignores important findings or distorts them.

· There are instances in which false conclusions are given, in complete
contradiction to the findings.

· In some other cases, unsubstantiated statements and conclusions are made.

· Important issues are sometimes ignored and no conclusion is given in
their
case.

· At least in one case, a conclusion is phrased in a misleading way.

· There are cases in which the researchers do not ask all the right
questions necessary for the research of a certain point.

· The IPCRI researchers tend to ignore implied messages in the findings.



In conclusion, as a research project on the textbooks produced by the
Palestinian Authority, the IPCRI report is clearly lacking. It might have
great
value in other fields, such as in helping the PA Ministry of Education to
readapt its school curricula so that it would become more compatible with the
message of peace. CMIP will be glad to contribute to such a noble effort as
much as it can.



In the meantime, the cumulative effect of the material in these textbooks
continues to have a detrimental influence on the child with regard to his view
of life, coexistence and peace.




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