Posted 11/30/2003 03:52:00 PM

1. Increasingly Selective Democracy
by Steven Plaut
November 30, 2003

Consider the following statements. At the end of the list, you will be
asked to explain what exactly are the differences among them:

1. Mohammed was a pig.

2. Butcher the Jews.

3. In fire and blood we will redeem Palestine.

4. Zionists are Nazis.

5. Bibi Netanyahu is a Nazi.

6. Rocks are not enough; bullets must be used by Arabs to liberate
themselves.

7. The children of Jewish settlers are Hitler Jugend.

8. When I see religious Jews, I really understand the Nazis.

9. The Germans had the right idea of how to deal with the Jews.

10. Israeli soldiers are Nazi stormtroopers.

11. Religious Jews are collectively guilty of murder.

12. Judaism is a gutter religion.

13. Zionists are Judeo-Nazis.

14. We need many suicide bombers and "engineers".

15. We will have a jihad until Israel ceases to exist.

16. Rabin was a mass-murderer of Arabs and no one should honor him.

17. It is right and proper that settlers be gunned down.

18. We will never stop killing until Israel ceases to exist.

19. Zionism is a form of racism and colonialism that must be ended with
force.

20. Israel behaved like Nazi Germany in Jenin.

21. Israel should expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

Okay. So, what is the difference? Well the answer is simple. Quotations #1
and #21 above are criminal speech in Israel, for which one will do real
hard jail time. All the other statements above are protected speech, legal
expressions of legitimate political opinion in Israel. Not only may you
say all of these other things in Israel, for some of them, you are likely
to be granted tenure at a major university.

Statements #2 and #3 are the universal chants at each and every gathering
of Palestinians, and, increasingly, also of Israeli Arabs. Number 3 was
chanted at Haifa University by Arabs. For #8, the "artist" Yigal Tumarkin
was almost granted a Yad Vashem honor. Professors at Hebrew University
have stated #4, #5, #7, #10, #11 and #13. Arab Knesset Members from the
Communist party have stated #6, #15, #16 and #17. And PLO officials have
said almost all of the above, except of course #1 and #21. As for #12,
Chicken Lou Farrakhan's famous chirp, this did not cause Israeli officials
to deny him entrance to Israel.

In the case of all the above, except for #1 and #21, it is the official
position of the Israeli political establishment and of the Israeli courts
that the statement is simply protected free speech, perhaps crude, vulgar
and objectionable, but protected speech nonetheless.

A few years ago Tatiana Suskin made leaflets with the offensive image of
Mohammed as a pig. She may have been a fanatic, a naif, and perhaps even a
bit dangerous. She used poor taste and was vulgar and crude. Yet her
poster of the prophet Mohammed as a pig would be protected (if tasteless)
speech in any true democracy in the world.

But not in Israel. In Israel, it is a crime for which one does real jail
time in hard-core prison, for a period of two years; more than many drug
smugglers and rapists get.

Then the political establishment, under the Likud this time, launched a
jihad against Arutz-7, the only independent voice of non-leftist political
dissent in Israeli broadcasting. First, the station was shut down, then
the court announced it would seek to toss the owners into prison for long
terms. And now, the government wants to prosecute the Arutz-7 web site
owners because a columnist wrote an opinion containing point #21.

Zahava Gal-On, the Chief McCarthyist for the Meretz Party, petitioned the
Attorney General to prosecute the web site operators, because the
columnist called for expulsion of Palestinians. Of course, Gal-On's own
party calls for the mass expulsion of Jews from the West Bank and Gaza,
yet they have not been indicted for "racism".

Suskin's case and the jihad against Arutz-7 have been proof of how
selective democracy has become in Israel. Ever since the Yitzhak Rabin
assassination, the Israeli Left has promoted a unique political
philosophy, holding that free speech protection should apply only to
leftists, and that expression by non-leftists is criminal incitement and
sedition. This was the official position of the Attorney General and the
courts under the misrule of Israel's increasingly-fanatic Labor Party and
its Marxist Meretz partners.

The Israeli establishment argued that Suskin's actions offend the Moslems.
Well, Moslem anti-Semitic speech and actions offend the Jews, or at least
all Jews who are not self-hating lemmings. What is worse, porking Mohammed
or applauding the Engineer and the mass murderers of Jews? Israeli freedom
and democracy are now in serious danger. And from a government led by the
party of that great believer in democracy and constitutionalism, Menachem
Begin.

Is the following next?

News Flash - Jan. 15, 2004

Israeli Police Arrest Salman Rushdie

In a surprise development, it has just been learned that Israeli police,
tipped off by the Mossad, have arrested controversial author Salman
Rushdie. The exiled Iranian writer had been on a private visit to Israel.

Rushdie was apprehended while visiting the Middle East Studies department
at the Hebrew University. He had originally been scheduled to address the
literature department there, but the professors of literature all
announced that they had decided to boycott Rushdie's talk, since Rushdie
was offensive to Moslem sensitivities and politically incorrect.

Upon commencement of his talk at the University, Israeli police suddenly
broke into the lecture hall and dragged a handcuffed Rushdie away. He is
being held in isolation in an unspecified Israeli prison while his fate is
being decided. Rushdie's arrest came as part of Israel's new campaign to
imprison those whose expression and speech is offensive to Moslems. It
will be recalled that a fanatical woman named Tatiana Suskin was recently
sentenced to two years in Israeli prison for distributing posters in
Hebron that show the Prophet Mohammed as a pig. Unnamed sources have been
quoted as saying that Rushdie and Suskin will be sharing the same cell.

The Knesset immediately went into emergency session to debate the Rushdie
Affair. The government's recommendation is that Rushdie be handed over to
Iran as a goodwill gesture. Iran has an outstanding warrant for the arrest
of the author, and it is believed he would be immediately executed if
extradited to Iran.

The Hadash Communist Party has initiated a Knesset resolution that would
create an exemption to Israel's criminal code, which generally bans
capital punishment, and would allow Rushdie to be executed within Israel
itself, or at least turned over to the Palestinian Authority for
execution. The Likud and Labor Party are expected to vote in favor of the
Hadash proposal, while other parties are still undecided. Newly appointed
Likud spokesperson Shimon Peres insisted that both arrests were part of
the breaking out of good relations in the New Middle East.

Congratulations to Israel have been coming in from all over the world. The
heads of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress in
the United States have issued statements supporting the arrest. "After
all," explained ADL chief Abraham Foxman, "Rushdie's Satanic Verses is at
least as objectionable as Suskin's pig poster. Israel is to be
congratulated for its defense of freedom of expression."

Reactions in the Moslem world have been mixed. While congratulating Israel
for the arrests of Suskin and Rushdie, the Prime Minister of Malaysia
added that this still did not excuse the international Jewish conspiracy
to control the world. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, backed by
singer Cat Stevens, is quoted as saying that while both Rushdie and Suskin
deserve the death penalty for offensive statements, Judaism is still a
gutter religion. Jesse Jackson expressed satisfaction that Rushdie and
"that Hymie-girl Suskin" got what they had coming to them for making
offensive statements.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat expressed satisfaction that
the Oslo peace process was at last producing some progress and forward
momentum.
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3019

2. Thought for the day:
POLITICIANS & DIAPERS
NEED TO BE CHANGED
FOR THE SAME REASONS

3. Stickers Produce Unique Battle in Egypt
By MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- First came the fish bumper stickers, imported from
the United States and pasted on cars by members of Egypt's Coptic minority
as a symbol of their Christianity. Before long, some Muslims responded
with their own bumper stickers: fish-hungry sharks.

It's not exactly war at sea, but the competing symbols that have cropped
up on Cairo streets are a tiny reminder of the tensions between Egypt's
Copts and majority Muslims. Some Christians are annoyed at the Muslim
response.

"All I wanted to say is that I am a Christian, kind of expressing my
Coptic identity," said 25-year-old Miriam Greiss, who has a fish sticker
on her car. "I think choosing a shark doesn't make sense, as if someone is
saying, `I am a violent, bloody creature, look at me.'"

Emad, a Muslim, laughed when asked about the competing symbols but was
unapologetic about the two shark stickers on his car.

"The Christians had the fish so we responded with the shark. If they want
to portray themselves as weak fishes, OK. We are the strongest," said
Emad, who would give only his first name.

Sociologist and rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a Muslim who has
studied discrimination against Copts, called the sticker symbols
"superstitions" but said that in Egypt's climate of religious
fundamentalism, people with bad intentions could use them to ignite
tensions between Muslims and Christians.

"There are people who want to make use of the decay we live in," he said.

Relations are generally calm between Copts, an estimated 10 percent of
Egypt's more than 70 million people, and the Muslims who make up virtually
all the rest. But tensions do occasionally erupt into violence, and Copts
complain of job discrimination and being shut out of a share of political
power.

The complaints, though, are spoken softly. Copts - who trace their history
to St. Mark's bringing Christianity to Egypt soon after the death of
Christ - didn't survive Roman persecution and Arab conquest by being
overly assertive.

Copts often wear gold cross pendants or have tiny crosses tattooed on the
inside of their wrists, but the stickers seem a more public step. Karl
Innemee, a specialist in Coptic studies at the American University in
Cairo, said the arrival of the fish could reflect a new desire by Egyptian
Christians "to express themselves openly."

Still, the Coptic businessman who began importing the fish stickers two
years ago refused to give his name when contacted by The Associated Press
at the Maria Group - the company name on the stickers. He said discussing
religion could be asking for trouble.

The fish stickers are sold in churches or Christian bookstores for about 8
cents. The Maria Group owner said sales of the fish, which come plain or
with the word "Jesus" inside, have picked up in recent months - soon after
the shark stickers first appeared in August.

No one seems to know where the shark idea came from.The stickers are sold
in Islamic bookshops and also come plain or fancy - some with the Arabic
phrase "No god but Allah" printed in the shark's body.

While the fish stickers came from America, the symbol has roots in Egypt.
In their earliest days, Copts used the fish - perhaps the emblem is from
the biblical story of the loaves and fishes - as a way to identify
themselves to each other without letting their Roman rulers know.

Medhat Mahrous, a Coptic scholar, noted that the Coptic church still uses
the fish symbol today on altar curtains and religious objects.

The fish vs. sharks on Cairo streets are reminiscent of how proponents of
the theory of evolution responded to fish stickers in the United States
with depictions of fish with tiny legs, sometimes with the word "evolve"
or the name "Darwin" printed inside the fish.

Back in Cairo, the latest Muslim sticker depicts a shark chasing a fish.

4. The priorities of Muslim-Americans
Posted: November 25, 2003

WorldNetDaily
By Joseph Farah

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35811
2003 WorldNetDaily.com
American Muslims need to get their priorities straight.

Synagogues and consulates are being attacked in Turkey. U.S. troops are
fighting an Iraqifada. And Palestinian Arabs continue to blow themselves
up in suicide-homicide attacks on Israeli citizens.

It's clear there is a worldwide terror jihad being waged by a small
minority of the planet's 1.1 billion Muslims against the West, Jews,
Christians and anyone who cooperates with them.

And where are American Muslims ?_ or, at least the groups and leaders who
claim to represent them ?_ focusing their attention?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is whining about radio talk-show
host Dr. Laura Schlessinger's suggestion that it is inappropriate for a
mother to send her daughter to a mosque with her Catholic school class.

CAIR is whimpering about an innocent newspaper comic strip that
subliminally attacks Islam because it includes an outhouse with a crescent
moon on it.

CAIR continues to target remarks by the U.S. general charged with
capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in which he
suggested his God was bigger than the god of a terrorist leader in
Somalia.

If all of this weren't so tragic and sad, it would be humorous.

To Dr. Laura's credit, the radio counselor says she will not apologize or
back down from her comments, despite accusations by CAIR of making an
"anti-Muslim tirade."

"It's absurd that anyone would even imagine that I was expressing disdain
for everyone who is a Muslim or who is an Arab," she said on her show
Thursday. "That's even stupid. If anybody has listened to me for any
period of time, that's absurd."

Johnny Hart, the illustrious syndicated cartoonist, expressed exasperation
when confronted with CAIR's accusations about his comic strip.

"My goodness. That's incredible," he said. "That's unbelievable!"

The cartoonist explained it as a silly bathroom joke.

Then there is the matter Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, portrayed as an
"intolerant extremist ... who believes that Islam is an idolatrous,
sacrilegious religion against which we are waging a holy war." This
slander is extrapolated from comments Boykin made about Somali warlord
Mohammad Farah Aidid, an ally of bin Laden and a man who ambushed murdered
U.S. peacekeeping troops in cold blood, about whom Boykin said: "I knew my
God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an
idol."

I guess it's time for a reminder of exactly what CAIR really is and what
it represents. CAIR is not what it seems ?_ not what it pretends to be.

It is not a group fighting for equal rights for Muslim-Americans. It is
not a group trying to protect the interests of Muslims in America. It is
not a group promoting human rights for anyone.

It is a group whose real mission is changing the very character of America
?_ remaking it in the image of the Islamo-fascists who fund them from
Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

You will never hear a nice word about America from CAIR. It's a hate
group. It spends all or most of its time and resources denigrating
America, condemning it as a pariah state that exploits and oppresses
Muslims.

According to CAIR, America is a terrible place for Muslims. At the same
time, CAIR boasts Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America. It
makes you wonder: If conditions for Muslims are so bad in America, why is
Islam so popular? Why are Muslims flocking from all parts of the world to
the United States ?_ this hideous concentration camp for Muslims?

I'll tell you why. Many Muslims have come here and continue to come here
to escape the Islamo-fascism of places like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia ?_
places about which CAIR never has a bad word to say.

CAIR was late to the party in condemning al-Qaida for the Sept. 11 terror
attacks. It finally got around to it three months after the fact. Don't
expect to hear any CAIR officials condemn suicide bombings by the
terrorists in Hamas. The founder of this organization is on record in
support of the goals and tactics of Hamas.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, a Muslim convert, indicated in a 1993
interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants the United
States to become a Muslim country.

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the
government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,"
Hooper told the Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to
promote that. I'm going to do it through education."

Founded in 1994, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association of
Palestine, identified as a "front group" for the terrorist group Hamas,
according to Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism
section.

Another ex-FBI counterterrorism chief, Oliver "Buck" Revell, has called
the Islamic Association For Palestine ?_ Hooper's former employer ?_ "a
front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic
militants."

CAIR advisory-board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo
White on Feb. 2, 1995, as one of the "unindicted persons who may be
alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City
monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993.

How seriously can we take the charges of a group that called the
conviction of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers "a travesty of justice"?
How seriously can we take a group that called the conviction of Omar Abdel
Rahman, who conspired to blow up New York City landmarks, a "hate crime"?
How seriously should we take a group about which Steven Pomerantz, former
FBI chief of counter-terrorism, says: "CAIR, its leaders and its
activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups"?

Very seriously.

But just don't assume the group has any credibility.

The real goal of this group was made clear by its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad,
who told a rally of California Muslims in 1998: "Islam isn't in America to
be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be
the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on
earth."

This is the real CAIR. Amazingly, some American people and institutions
have fallen for CAIR's ad hominem attacks on patriotic Americans.

It's time for American Muslims to decide if CAIR really represents their
best interests as Americans or Muslims. It's time for American Muslims to
distance themselves from extremist organizations like CAIR. It's time for
American Muslims to get their priorities straight because America is at
war.
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 11/28/2003 12:03:00 PM

1. Well, the US has announced that it is going to deduct from its aid
package to Israel any money spent on ?settlements?, which in the view of
Foggy Bottom includes constructing Israel?s security fence, designed to
prevent Palestinian Nazis from murdering Jewish children. That is ALSO a
violation of ?Palestinian rights?, namely the right to murder Jews.

Now offsetting funds for things you do not like is an interesting
idea. Have you noticed that the US has not offset from any of the funds it
ladles out to the PLO anything due to the PLO murdering Jews or violating
each and every punctuation mark in the Oslo Accords?

And while we are at it, I have another suggestion. The heads of
two Israeli universities are cited in today?s Haaretz (Hebrew University
and the University of Haifa), where they complain that Jewish donors from
around the world have been threatening the universities that they will
withhold donations as long as these schools continue to hire and promote
and grant tenure to academic traitors, and quite a few have actually done
so. The universities have a long history of hiring incompetent leftists
with laughable academic records as acts of solidarity by other campus
leftists. The more radical of the tenured extremists are openly
anti-Semitic, openly call for Israel to be destroyed, or openly call on
anti-Semites from around the world to boycott Israeli universities. The
university heads explicitly cited Ilan Pappe, from Haifa U., and Tania
Reinhart, from Tel Aviv U., as extremists working with international
boycotters of Israeli schools.

Now first of all, I would like to congratulate all of you who have
sent letters to heads of Israeli universities denouncing the tenured
traitors and threatening to withhold donations as long as the schools make
a mockery out of academic standards when hiring and promoting anti-Israel
leftist extremists. Clearly, you are having an effect. Those who have
not yet written might consider doing so.

But an idea just as promising is to write the Minister of Education
(Limor Livnat) and the Minister of Finance (Bibi Netanyahu) and demand that
the same budget offset idea the Yanks are implementing now for
?settlements? be applied to Israeli universities by the Israeli
government. The national budget allotment to each university or college
(maybe 70% of the university budgets come from the taxpayer) should be
lowered by the same amount that each school spends on the salaries of
leftist anti-Israel extremists and tenured traitors, shekel for
shekel. THAT should get their attention!

2. Krauthammer on Geneva Treason:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer_2003_11_28.php3

3. In the current world jihad against Israel it is usually presumed
that the worst manifestation is anti-Jewish terrorism and military
aggression by the Arab Islamofascists. But in the long run it may turn
out that an even more destructive form of aggression against Israel and the
Jews is the financial aggression of those seeking Israel?s
destruction. This takes the form of pumping megabucks into Israeli
seditious and treasonous organizations of the Far Left and of anti-Israel
Arab extremists groups. Oversees people and funds wishing the Jews ill
have discovered that it may be easier to destroy Israel from within by
intervening in Israeli politics anti-democratically. They pump funds into
the political groups advocating those things that will result in Israel?s
destruction and finance their media assault against Israelis to the tune of
many millions of dollars. Israeli groups often having no more than one or
two members are guaranteed generous funding for full-page ads. Such
groups exist mainly as Potemkin structures, which do not exist at all
beyond the large ads they place in the press.

The more radical and extremist the group, the more assured it can be
of massive funding from overseas. The picayune Gush Shalom, run by
Israel?s Lord Haw-Haw Uri Avnery, the father of Israeli anti-Zionism,
places daily ads in the press touting his ?agenda?, costing tens of
thousands of dollars each week. Where does he get the cash? Other
groups spend far more on the ads and billboards.

Any anti-Israel political movement is guaranteed piles of
wampum. Yossi Beilin?s ?Geneva Misunderstandings? have been so generously
funded that the promoters apparently do not know how to spend the money
fast enough, and Ami Ayalon?s ?initiative? is just slightly behind. (Colin
Powell is endorsing the Beilin Misunderstandings this week and several
Congressmen for a Second Holocaust are introducing a bill the House to
endorse the Beilin initiative.)

The groups promoting mutiny and insurrection in the army have also
been flooded with cash. So have the communist party front groups,
including the various ?women?s? groups promoting treason.

Who is putting up the cash? Naturally, none of the recipients is
disclosing, but we all know the truth. Much is from the EU, much is from
the US government. I suspect much is from the Saudis. We know the New
Israel Fund, which has never met a seditious group it does not wish to fund
(down to and including the defense counsel for mega-terrorists), has been
drenched with cash from the Ford Foundation and other foundations. It was
once a picayune laughingstock of a ?fund? financed with small handouts from
the sorts of people who read Tikkun magazine. But thanks to its role in
bankrolling leftist extremism in Isrtael, the foundations have made it a
major player. Let us note, it is a ?fund? run by overseas non-Israelis,
undemocratically tampering in Israeli politics. People who do not hold
Israeli citizenship nor bear the consequences of Israel pursuing leftist folly.

Israel is the only parliamentary democracy in which overseas people
and institutions are so massively involved in trying to distort and tamper
with the electorate. Israel elections have long ceased being clean
exercises in democracy and instead have become events in which overseas
leftist kibitzers try to buy their clients in Israel seats in the parliament.

If Israel is to survive, it must pass a law criminalizing such
financial aggression against the Israeli electoral process by overseas
non-Israelis.


4. ISM Chutzpa

By Judy Lash Balint

International Solidarity Movement member Radhika Sainath is getting ready
to leave Israel in a few days. But before she goes sheâ??s decided to slap
Israel with a $4,000 lawsuit.

The tactics of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and its
supporters get more bizarre and brazen every day.

On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27, Sainath filed suit in Tel Aviv
against the State of Israel for alleged unlawful imprisonment, negligence
and breach of obligations. The $4,000 is for â??mental trauma and agonyâ??
she claims to have suffered at the hands of Israeli authorities during her
30 hour detention.

The legal action arises out of the arrest of Radhika and eight of her
buddies when they joined a group of Palestinian Arabs protesting the
construction of Israelâ??s anti-terrorist wall last November near the Arab
settlement of Jayyous.

Sainath had only recently arrived in the country on a tourist visa when she
was arrested. Since then, sheâ??s been in and out of Israel four times as
each three month tourist visa expires.

Sainath says she suffered no particular harassment at Ben Gurion airport on
any of her re-entries after her arrest (try entering the US on a foreign
passport after youâ??ve spent time in a US jail).

Sainath, an Orange County, California resident and former union organizer,
keeps coming back here to get into trouble. On September 5 at Faroun,
Sainath and her comrades tried to shake down the gate in the anti-terror
fence. Last May she was arrested in Tulkarm for interfering with Israeli
Army pursuit of terrorists in the town.

In a May 11, 2003 Palestine Solidarity report of that incident, Sainath
makes wild unsubstantiated accusations against Israeli soldiers. They
â??used a father and his small children as human shields,â?? she relates.
Sainath was threatened with deportation after that arrest but Israeli
attorney Shammai Leibowitz came to the rescue and successfully prevented
her from having to leave the country.

Leibowitz is also handling Sainathâ??s current suit against the Israeli
government.
He, by the way, was the member of terrorist Marwan Barghouti's defense team
who likened his client to Moses and the Israeli State Prosecution to Pharoah.

In an interview last May, Sainath told me that one of her main goals was to
help people detained by the Israeli Army get through checkpoints. When I
asked how the ISM knew who they were enabling to pass through the
checkpoints, she looked stunned and said she didn't know. "In Tulkarm
people who are wanted by the army aren't going to attempt to walk through a
checkpoint. Anyway, it's not our job to check to see if someone's carrying
explosives or not."

Sainath says her US passport was stolen here last year and she had to go to
the US embassy in Tel Aviv to get it renewed. "I encountered a lot of
difficulties because almost everyone who works there is an
Israeli-American. They're all Israelis with US passports. It didn't seem
like they'd be helpfulâ?¦â?? To someone with her political views, she implied.

Still, she did get her passport and she did gain entry several times into
Israel. And she did spend by her own admission, more than ten months out of
the past year here in Israel trying to prevent Israel from carrying out its
anti-terror mission.

Sheâ??s lucky she got off with 30 hours in an Israeli jail.

Itâ??s bad enough that Israeli authorities kept on letting her back in the
country to take part in activities that endanger all Israelis, letâ??s hope
that the Israeli government doesnâ??t now give her a farewell present of
$4,000 as well.
--------------------------------
© Judy Lash Balint 2003
Judy Lash Balint is an award-winning Jerusalem based writer and author of
Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times (Gefen) www.jerusalemdiaries.com

Posted 11/27/2003 06:09:00 PM

1. You know how the fundamentalist Left in Israel has been whining that
all those evil "settlers" have been chopping down trees belonging to
Palestinians, especially when they ar enear the perimeters of settlements
and so can serve as cover for terrorists? Where the same lefties
emoting over the rights of trees never quite work up any sobs for Jewish
children murdered by terrorists?
Well Suhprize suhprize!

ASHERMAN: ARABS CUT DOWN THEIR OWN TREES AS PROVOCATION
Left-wing activist Arik Asherman admits that he knows of incidents in
which
Arabs cut down their own olive trees in Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) in
order to later blame the Jewish residents and thus benefit from a
"propaganda" victory. So says Aviad Visouly, head of the Haifa/Northern
branch of the Land of Israel Organization, in a letter to the
Samaria/Judea
Police Department.

Visouly, who has been looking into allegations that the most recent case
of
alleged olive-tree cutting was perpetrated by those who would disparage
the
Jewish residents, presented the police with a series of 15 pointed
questions
on the case. One of them pertains to the fact that Fawzi Hassan Hussein,
who filed a police complaint against the destruction of his trees, said he
does not even own the cut-down orchard, but rather another one near
Yitzhar.

Fawzi also told Visouly that the PA's agriculture department pays the
damages for cut-down trees from money arriving from Saudi

2. Eliakim Rubinstein, himself targeted in recent days by the
Fundamentalist Left because he spoke out against a journalist who
illegally tapped phones in order to "get" politicians from the Right, has
now taken another shot at freedom of speech in Israel:

Rubinstein Orders Investigation Against Arutz-7 Website
09:39 Nov 27, '03 / 2 Kislev 5764
(IsraelNN.com) State Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein has ordered
police to launch an investigation against the managers of the
[Hebrew-language] Arutz-7 News website citing a possible transgression of
the law prohibiting incitement as the justification.

Rubinstein explains that a request was made by Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On
claiming an article Expulsion Not Transfer constituted a violation of the
incitement law.

Gal-On's own party supports mass expulsion of Jews from the West Bank and
Gaza.

You may wish to contact:
Special Section Chief Talia Sasoon and/or
Atty Gen Elyakim Rubenstein
29 Saladin St.
PO Box 49029
Jerusalem 91490

Tel: 02-6466794
Fax: 02-6466731

3. Reforms at the "Palestinian Authority:
New Palestinian Minister of Justice:

Incites to Murder Israelis and to
Hate Americans
by Itamar Marcus


Introduction:
Nahidh Muneer Al-Ris, the new Palestinian Minister of Justice, has a long
record of hateful incitement, including incitement to murder Israelis
through suicide terrorism. He distorts Jewish history in order to deny
Israel's right to exist, and de-legitimizes Israel's existence as a state
with expressions like the "occupation" 50 years ago. In addition he has a
history of hateful incitement towards the US and its political and
Christian leaders. Bush and Rumsfeld, he calls "bloodthirsty beasts" and
he repeatedly libels American Evangelical Christians, attributing to them
deep hatred of Muslims. In addition, Al-Ris recently participated in a
ceremony in a summer camp - named for a 17- year-old girl suicide bomber.
PMW will continue to monitor the actions and behavior of the new Justice
Minister, to determine to what degree his behavior as Justice Minister
reflects his hate beliefs.

It is noteworthy that an individual with such outspoken hatred of the US
has been appointed to such a senior PA position. While his hatred of the
US certainly follows the official PA ideology, which even promoted murder
of US soldiers in Iraq through its controlled media, senior PA officials
are usually more discreet. As a rule, Ministers do not express American
hatred publicly, so as not to endanger US political and financial support.
It is thus surprising that the new PM, Ahmad Qarie, chose such an
outspoken terror supporter and America hater for a senior position in his
cabinet. It may be that the PA has learned that in spite of US and Israeli
verbal demands to stop incitement, US and Israeli policy has been to
ignore incitement, in all policy decisions towards the PA.

The following are some of the recent opinions of PA Justice Minister,
Al-Ris, in his own words:

On support of suicide terrorism:
"The Palestinian Arab nation, and its vanguard the ***Shahada-Seekers, are
not terrorists in any way." [***lit: Death for Allah- Seekers, PA term
of honor for suicide terrorists] [Al Hayat Al Jadida June 16, 2003]

On Palestinian support for suicide terror:
"Most [Palestinians] understand that the Shahada-Seekers and the uprising
fighters preserve honor for everyone ... the public is convinced that
uprising fighters are the most just and the farthest from corruption. Only
a minority believes that the fighters should be restrained, for fear of
provoking the rage of Sharon..." [Al Hayat Al Jadida June 16, 2003]

On erasing Jewish history in Israel:
Israelis have no history in the Land - because they are " Khazars, who are
not connected to the land but to the words of the Torah". [Al Hayat Al
Jadida June 16, 2003]

On the illegitimacy of Israel:
"... during the occupation of Palestine 50 years ago..." [Ed: Israel's
creation as a state is stigmatized as if it is an "occupation". [Al Hayat
Al Jadida, Aug, 4 2003]

On US President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld:
[They] are human beings whose ambitions have turned them into
bloodthirsty beasts. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida Nov. 3, 2003]

On the US involvement in Iraq:
"They are fighting a cruel war". [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida Nov. 3, 2003]

On US Christian leadership:
"Pat Robertson is one of the main figures of the most extremist
Evangelistic Zionists." [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Aug, 4 2003]

"Publications in the US about the Second Coming of Jesus gained wide
distribution and they describe a terrifying Armageddon ... total
destruction. As for Jesus and his followers, God will raise them above the
clouds ... While their pagan enemies (who fundamentalist evangelist
Zionist supporters interpret as Moslems) will drown in a lake of fire and
brimstone...These Zionist supporters give a modern interpretation and
interpret it [the fire and brimstone] as atomic bombs to be thrown on
Moslems." [Citing a book in Al Hayat Al Jadida, Aug, 4 2003]

On US political leadership:
"President Harry Truman was considered one of the most Zionist American
Presidents."
"President Jimmy Carter was faithful to the Zionist vision".
"Nixon was an American President who believed in Zionism, and he defined
the Jews working in the White House as pigs... He was the one who said
concerning the Reagan-Gorbachev summit: "Russia and America must cooperate
in order to strike Islamic fundamentalism (!)"
"Bush, the father, was the 6th American Zionist President... and he is one
of Pat Robertson's followers."
"In the chain of Zionist American Presidents the last U.S. President Bill
Clinton is included ... [Clinton] also emphasized that his Pastor
predicted that he would rule America and charged him with [care for] the
Jewish State, because with its blessing he shall win..." [Al Hayat Al
Jadida, Aug, 4 2003]

Participating in an event encouraging children to aspire to Shahada -
heroic Death for Allah:
"Dr. Ahmad Al-Yaziji, Under Secretary in the Ministry Youth and Sport,
participated in the closing ceremony of the **Ayyat Al-Akhras [summer]
camp for children. [The camp was] organized by the Shabibah organization
of the Fatah... the number of participants was 150 boys and girls, ages 9
to15. Participants in the ceremony... included Nahid Al-Ris..." [**Ayat
Al-Akhras, a girl of age 17, was the youngest woman suicide bomber.] [Al
Quds Aug. 14, 2003]


4. Who is bankrolling the Beilin Geneva "Plan"?

Who backs Beilin?
By URI DAN
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1069819713317

Billionaire George Soros recently announced that he would spend money like
water to prevent President George W. Bush's re-election.

He explained that he opposes Bush's foreign policy, especially the war
against Saddam Hussein.

This doesn't surprise me.

Soros has also long adopted a pro-Palestinian posture in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Unlike many Jewish millionaires, Soros hasn't learned the lessons of the
Holocaust, despite being one of the few survivors of Hungarian Jewry.

Bush made a stand against extremist Muslim fanaticism which threatens the
free world.

Israel is fortunate that Bush created a common front against this fascist
terror, together with Britain's Tony Blair, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, and
other leaders.

They realize that if this terror is not defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
any other place where it emerges, the world is liable to experience a
tremendous economic recession.

There are other talented people whose pride goes to their heads.

Daniel Barenboim, for example, an expatriate Israeli, is a gifted
musician.

But he imagines that his musical ability gives him the right to dictate
Israel's foreign policy.

At every opportunity he pushes the Palestinian cause and condemns Israel.

Every time he visits Jerusalem he also tries to hold a concert in
Ramallah, even though his music is drowned out by the explosions of
suicide bombers.

For his part, Soros has a reputation as a financial wizard who has made
hundreds of millions of dollars by his speculations in sterling.

Unfortunately, his financial successes seem to have convinced him that he
is also an expert in diplomacy, and this has led to his current crusade
against Bush.

IT'S A mistake to ignore the influence of money on shaping public opinion.
Furthermore, important media such as The New York Times regularly provide
permanent platforms for defeatist views.

The same thing happened in the 1930s when Britain's Fleet Street supported
Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy and tried to silence Winston
Churchill's warnings against the emerging Nazi threat.

To Soros's credit he has openly declared war against Bush, and his
campaign contributions can be monitored according to US law.

The important factor is that Bush's policy contains a truth which is
stronger than Soros's money, and Bush's policy is supported by the
majority of Americans who aren't ashamed to be called patriotic.

In Israel, even though Ariel Sharon was re-elected only 10 months ago, his
political opponents are spending a fortune in their attempts to undermine
his government.

In contrast to Soros they are concealing the sources of funding of their
subversive activities.

The Peres Peace Center has raised millions of dollars abroad with no real
auditing for "projects for the Palestinians."

The managers of the center, who receive generous salaries, engage in
vicious propaganda against the government and travel abroad in order to
sponsor concessions to the Palestinians.

Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh also exploit Israeli democracy in order to
oppose the government's policy.

Despite being a former head of the GSS, Ayalon is strongly influenced by
Nusseibeh, an extreme Palestinian nationalist.

Then there is the wretched Geneva Accord whose promotion has cost a
fortune.

Where is the money coming from?

The mailing costs alone of their ludicrous document of surrender to
Palestinian terror is estimated at a million dollars.

Yossi Beilin is reputed to have raised ten times as much, some of it from
the Swiss government.

More has come from the European Union, which supports an Israeli
surrender.

Who knows where else Beilin's money is coming from?

Such questions are legitimate since the Oslo architect doesn't stop short
of approaching any sources of funds.

Contrast Soros to Beilin. Even though Soros's ideas are politically
outlandish, at least the billionaire is an honorable man.

You know where his money is coming from.

The same can't be said of Beilin.

The writer is the Mideast correspondent of The New York Post.

Posted 11/27/2003 11:59:00 AM

Subject: The Brat with No Hat



The Brat with no Hat, or, The Tail of the Geneva "Accord"
by Dr. Steve ñåñ Seuss

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So they sat in Geneva
With murderers all day.

And then
We connected the dots!
How those dots made us plotz!

We looked!
Could not believe the nerve of the brat!
We looked!
And we saw it!
The Brat with no Hat!

And he said to us,
"We?re gonna make peace just like that?

I know it is dumb
And this brat is not funny.
When he mails us this treason, using lots of bad money!

"I know some appeasements we can play,"
Said the brat.
"I know some new tricks,"
Said the Brat with no Hat.
"Capitulations, to terrorists true,
Your mother,
Will be blown to bits when we do."

Then you and I
Did not know what to word.
We were tongue tied and forlorn, when we read the ?accord?.
But our lemmings said, "No! No!
We can make the war go away!

Just tell all them settlers that they just cannot stay
They should not be there.
They should not be about.
They should not be around
When the bombers come out!"

"Now! Now! Have no fear.
Have no fear!" said the brat.
"My accords are not bad,"
Said the Brat with no Hat.

"Why, we can have
Lots of fun, yes we shall,
With a game that I call
Send the Guns to the Pals!"
"Stop the deaths!" said the Jews.
"Stop, we see red!
?Reverse course!" said the Jews.
"Before we?re all dead!"

"Have no fear!" said the brat.
"When have I been wrong?
?Their right of return should be implemented ?fore long,
With a pen in my hand!
And sly tricks up my sleave!
That is not ALL I have done!"
Just ask Steve.

"Look at me!
Look at me now!" said the brat.
"With a terrorist deal
I?ve pulled out of my hat!

I can set up TWO states!
One for them and one more!
Two states for two peoples!
And thereafter war!

And look!
I can hop up and down on the law!
But that is not all!
Oh, no.
That is not all...

"Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It is fun to surrender
But you have to know how.

And look! With my arm
I can hold a red flag!
To promote my agenda
With no Aloni hag!
But that is not all.

Oh, no.
That is not all....".
That is what the brat said...
Kassem rockets dead ahead!
And you and I,
We saw ALL the bombs fall!||

"Now look what you did!"
Said the Jews to the brat.
"You gave them a state!
How could you do that?
You sank our own state,

Sank it deep in the mud.
You set them up armed
And sank us in blood.
You SHOULD NOT be here,
When common sense is not.
You get out of this house!"
Said the Jews to the sot.

"But I like to be here.
Oh, I like it a lot!"
Said the Brat with no Hat
To the Jews on the spot.
"I will NOT go away.
I do NOT wish to go!
And so," said the Brat with no Hat,SoSoso...
I will show you
Another good game that I know!"

And then he ran out.
And, then, fast as a fox,
He flew to Geneva and
came back with a box.

A treasonous box.
To be sold hook or crook.
"Now look at this deal,"
Said the brat.
"Take a look!"

"I will impose my will.
On the Jews, otherwise.I will force upon them to submit, to demise.
The Jews and I
did not know what to do.

So we had to shake hands
with Thing One and Thing Two.
We shook Yassir?s paws.
While our minds said, "No! No!

Those Things should not be,
In this land! Make them go!

"They should not be here,
When they shoot at us guns!
Put them out! Put them out!"
Said the Jews of the bums.

"Have no fear, little Jews,"
said the Brat with no Hat.
"These Things are good Things."
And he gave them a pat.
"They are tame. Oh, so tame!
They have come here to play.
They will give you some peace
On this bright Oslo day."

Posted 11/27/2003 11:07:00 AM

1. As you know it is racist (in the "minds" of the fundamentalist left)
for colleges to have any admissions standards. That is because
admissions standards produce results that are not homogeneous across
ethnic/racial groups. In the US, blacks and Hispanics do worse on
admissions tests than do others. Asians do the best. In Israel,
Ashkenazi Jews do the best. These facts are the basis for the regular
demands that all standards be scrapped altogether and instead students be
admitted on the basis of "diversity" (just as long as no one demands that
any faculty in any department at any school must be diversified in terms of
the professors' political opinions).

In other cases, pseudo-standards are used,
such as "emotional intelligence", an oxymoron if there ever was one,
because they purportedly serve as alternatives to regular old-fashioned
intelligence in admissions that guarantee lots of "minority" admissions.

A couple of years back, Israel's Ivory Cartel, the Supreme Soviet of
Higher Education in Israel (the Council on Higher Education), proposed
doing away with IQ tests for admission into college. Some had been
demanding
this because in some schools, especially in Arab schools, grades are
inflated, so using grades alone without an IQ test would boost Arab
students accepted to college. But Israel also uses matriculation tests,
and in spite of the best efforts of the PC Lobby to get rid of those as
well, they are still in place. To the outrage of the Left, students must
still know how to read and add to get into Israeli college.

Meanwhile, Israel's Ivory Cartel this week decided to reimpose IQ
tests. The reason is that after they were revoked,
many schools and departments
were administering their own admissions intelligence tests to screen out
the illiterate, and so the ban on IQ tests was not having its desired
effect of dumbing down all college admissions.

But the Left is screaming! Yossi "Call Me Ishmael" Sarid
from Meretz is screaming the loudest! Far-Leftist Haaretz is IRATE and
outraged. On its front page it
runs a banner headline that the Council on Higher Education has been taken
over by anti-Arab racists (in fact it is controlled by the Left) who have
reimposed admissions tests as an act of racism designed to exclude the
Arabs. Watch for similar headlines at a liberal newspaper or web site
near you!

2. On Palestinian "Humiliation":
The Palestinian "Humiliation" Saw
By David Bedein
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 27, 2003


Last Wednesday, President George W. Bush, addressing a crowded press
conference in London in the presence of British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
called on Israel to stop what he termed the "daily humiliation" of
Palestinian Arabs at checkpoints where IDF troops and Israeli police
conduct security searches of Palestinian Arabs before they can enter
Israeli cities.

I asked a U.S. consular official in Jerusalem why Bush would claim that
Israel was subjecting Arabs to humiliation at checkpoints. The U.S.
consular official took offense at the very question. "I think that it is
obvious that if my staffers from Bethlehem are made to wait an inordinate
amount of time in their cars at the checkpoint, then that would be a clear
matter of humiliation," he retorted.

The U.S. consular official went on to say that his staffers had clear IDs
as to who they are and where they worked. Since Bethlehem is well known
for spawning industries that produce countless counterfeit documents, I
asked the consular official if it was not understandable that Israeli
security officials be extra careful in examining all identification, as an
added measure of caution, before allowing vehicles to pass into the
nation's capital.

The U.S. consular official took even greater offense at that question,
indicating that he hoped I would not write about this issue. I could only
take that as a blessing to explore the matter further. What was of
particular concern was that the U.S. consular official did not seem to be
aware of what had transpired on Tuesday at one of the checkpoints between
Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The incident took place at 6 o'clock Tuesday morning at the checkpoint
near Beit Jalla, just south of the tunnel road that goes through Beit
Jalla into Jerusalem. The sun had just risen. A Palestinian Arab from
Bethlehem, who looked familiar to the young IDF troops at the checkpoint,
proceeded to get out of his car with a prayer blanket. This was the last
week of Ramadan, and the young, devout-looking man made a hand signal that
he wanted to pray. The IDF troops at the checkpoint afforded him the
opportunity to pray and did not conduct a security search of his vehicle
nor his person. The man then knelt to the ground, spread out his prayer
blanket, and proceeded to pull out an AK-47 and murder two young IDF
troops at point blank range. Moshe Belsky, age 23, who was speaking on his
cell phone with his mother, and Shaul Lahav, age 20, the checkpoint
commander, were killed instantly.

The killer then hopped into his car and sped back to Bethlehem, where he
donned his uniform as an officer in the Palestinian Authority police
force. The news media overseas only reported that two Israeli soldiers had
been killed at the entrance to the Jerusalem tunnel by a "militant."
Arafat's Fateh Tanzim took credit for the murder on the official PBC Voice
of Palestine radio.

Israel had granted the PA the use of Israeli radio air waves in 1993 and
still does so in order to foster a "voice of peace" for the PLO. The
message communicated on the Voice of Palestine over the past ten years has
hardly been a "a voice of peace."

I met Shaul Lahav on the day before his death. I had stopped by the
checkpoint for a few minutes with tourists from the U.S., and they were
pleased to meet Shaul, because he knew English. His parents had moved to
Israel at roughly the time that I had moved to Israel, in the early
1970's. He was the oldest son in the family, their first "sabra," and was
almost the same age as my oldest son (who just turned 21 and also serves
in an IDF combat unit). Shaul interrupted his conversation with us at the
checkpoint to receive a call from his girlfriend from his Kibbutz. Shaul
might have married, raised a family and led a happy life. At the age of
20, everything is just ahead of you. What can be more of a "humiliation"?
A young man cut down by the PLO in the prime of his life or the
enforcement of strict security measures so the PLO does not murder another
young man in the same exact place?

Other examples of alleged Palestinian "daily humiliation" at the hands of
the IDF, duly reported to the U.S. consulate, are the sIDF's trict
searches of Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances. People tend to forget
that the Red Crescent is run by Fatchi Arafat, Yasser Arafat's brother,
and that the IDF has reported numerous instances in which the Red Crescent
ambulances were used to smuggle armed terrorists and weapons in a terror
campaign that has seen 20,000 armed attacks in Israel in three years.

Most recently, Jerusalem's Alternative Information Center, funded through
the Ford Foundation and the New Israel Fund, and run by self-proclaimed
Trotskyite Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, provided a film for the
U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. The film documented the "humiliation" Arabs
in East Jerusalem must endure at these security checks. It depicted an
iron gate that Arabs have to go through for security checks that lead into
the East Jerusalem offices of the Israel Ministry of Interior and the
Israel Ministry of National Insurance. Both of these offices provide vital
health, education, registration and welfare aid to the local population.

What the Alternative Information Center film "forgot" to illustrate was
that the iron gate and the severe security restrictions on entering
Israeli government offices in East Jerusalem did not exist until three
years ago. That's when Aish Kodesh Gilmore, a part time Israeli security
guard, was shot in the neck and killed by an officer in Arafat's Fateh
Tanzim militia. The Fateh Tanzim issued an immediate press release to the
media, praising the murder of Aish Kodesh Gilmore, the same as was done
after Shaul's murder.

I knew this young man, Aish, whose unusual name stuck with me. He was
named for a Rabbi known as the Aish Kodesh - A Rabbi in the Warsaw Ghetto
during World War II. His weekly stenciled prayer sheets and Bible
commentaries kept up the spirits of the starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto
throughout their ordeal -- until Aish Kodesh was himself banished from
Warsaw. (He later perished from famine.) Aish Kodesh's writings were found
preserved in a jar after World War II and were of great inspiration to the
musically inclined Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who was the Rabbi of
Colorado-born Reuvein Gilmore.

Reuvein Gilmore later became one of the founders of the Moddiin collective
community that Rabbi Carlebach's students pioneered just north of
Jerusalem. Inspired by Rabbi Carlebach's stories of the Aish Kodesh,
Reuvein gave the name of his little boy Aish Kodesh. I remember him well
as a little fellow with long blonde curls, who would sit on Rabbi
Carlebach's knees and listen as the Rabbi played songs of hope and
Hassidic inspiration on his guitar. I had lost contact with Aish Kodesh,
until I heard of his murder. I interviewed his young widow, shortly after
the tragedy.

When I went to interview Zahava Gilmore, Aish Kodesh's widow, just one
month after he was murdered in his role as a security guard in East
Jerusalem, the person who ran to greet me at the door was Talia, Aish
Kodesh's orphaned three-year-old daughter. Zahava explained that Talia
always runs to the door, expecting her father to come home. If that is not
the ultimate of humilation, what is?

Aish Kodesh's widow remarked that Aish was proud of the special role he
performed in helping the people of East Jerusalem get the government
benefits that they deserved.

You sometimes have to ask over and over and over: Which is the greater
"humiliation": a young man cut down by the PLO in the prime of his life,
or the enforcement of strict security measures so that the PLO does not
murder another young man in that exact same place?

President Bush must be understand that the staff of the U.S. consulate in
Jerusalem may need to take some lessons on the meaning of "humiliation"
during a time of war. U.S. troops are busy learning the lesson of constant
terrorist harassment the hard way in Iraq.

After all, Bagdad and Basra are not very far from Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Shaul and Aish Kodesh were no different than American boys serving their
country against a lifelong sponsor of terrorists. And Moshe Belsky's
mother feels the pain as much as any dead soldier's mother -- maybe more
so, since she was speaking to him at the moment of his murder.

President Bush should know well that Israel deserves the right to protect
its sons at the checkpoints. Ask the mothers of Shaul, Moshe and Aish
Kodesh.

A security check is not humiliation. It is protection.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11029

3. Arafat's Private Banking:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10834

4. Beilingrad:
Geneva's initiators, the AG's attackers
By Israel Harel

There are many suspicions regarding the Geneva initiative, partly because
because it was devised, like other misguided initiatives by Yossi Beilin
and his friends, using the same methods used to devise the catastrophic
Oslo accords. What is happening this time too, shows - since even animals
learn through experience - that these people have no restraint even during
a war. And the media are one of the main contributors to this
suspiciousness toward them and toward the mixture they have concocted.

The media are not hostile, heaven forfend, to Geneva. On the contrary, the
media cast suspicion on the initiative precisely because they enlisted to
the cause, impassioned and devoted, without examining, without
distinguishing and without clarifying the means. The media did not
separate the chaff from the grain, as befits professional press; they did
not differentiate between truth and deceptions and also - which
particularly outrages the common citizen - support subversive processes
against the elected government during a war.

This support reached the height of contempt for journalistic ethics in the
propaganda spot broadcast by Ilana Dayan on her program "Uvda" (Fact).
Razi Barkai declared on his program, "Tik Tikshoret" (Media File) - this
is what he said on television - that the media "spread its legs for
Geneva."

Even before they debate the content, the "what" - meaning the deliberate
deception that the Arabs compromised on the right of return; or that they
recognized the basic right of the Jewish people to a state in the land of
Israel - ordinary people are outraged by the "how." Just imagine what
would have happened to members of the British opposition if they had
negotiated with official representatives of the Nazi regime - and many in
England wanted this - behind the back of the British War Cabinet.

Meanwhile here, even during a war, there is a group that is acting not
only in the political-security sphere - and has not come to terms with the
fact that it is a minority opposition - it is permitting itself to do
almost everything in every sphere of our lives, whatever it pleases.

Since most of the senior officials in the media and in the legal
authorities are members of the philosophical and quite often also the
social fringes of this group, everything is fine for it, including raising
money from foreign governments and foundations that are hostile to Israel,
to finance its activities against the elected government of Israel. It is
not hard to imagine the intensity of the reaction of the State Attorney's
Office, the tax authorities - and especially the media - if the right-wing
parties had raised funds, for settlement needs, for example, from foreign
states.

The lack of regard for this aspect of Geneva is a clear expression of the
legitimacy that the various establishments give the subversive activities
of the left.

A straight line - conceptual, normative, political and even social - leads
from the belligerence of Geneva to losing control in the Elyakim
Rubinstein affair. The same circles that do not stop at a political red
light - and in the media these are practically the same people - are also
involved in the cruel, merciless attack on the attorney-general.

Here too the double standard screams heavenward. The same judicial and
media circles that are fighting today for Police Commander Moshe Mizrahi,
head of the Criminal Investigations Department, were formerly leaders of
the forces that combated the insufferable ease with which wiretapping was
done. But now, when the attorney-general is the one who wants to regulate
this unruly issue, these circles are actually protecting the one against
whose actions the attorney-general published a critical report.

On the one hand, they are lashing out at the attorney-general for invading
the privacy of an individual reporter (when he allowed the phone numbers
of his conversations to be traced, not, heaven forfend, their content),
and on the other hand, they vocally defend a senior police officer who
transcribed wiretappings approved by the court, and who broadly
interpreted the permission he was given to include conversations with
politicians and conversations of an intimate nature.

Just imagine what would have happened if Tel Aviv District Court Vice
President Sarah Sirota had spoken out against an attorney-general from
"our circles," let's say Justice Aharon Barak, when he served as
attorney-general, the way she spoke about Rubinstein.

Almost certainly the media, the Israel Bar Association, public figures and
politicians would have forced her to resign the same day. And if she had
not resigned of her own free will, the president of the Supreme Court, who
has the authority, would have fired her.

This is also how the justice minister would have behaved, had the
attorney-general been part of the clique, in the uprising of the female
prosecutors against the attorney-general.

Rubinstein, who has filled a wide variety of post in his 30 years in the
civil service and knows all its workings, does not whine when he states,
with sadness and pain, that this is what will be done to a person, most
certainly if he wears a skullcap, who defies the dictate of the proper
associations, thoughts and behaviors.

More than a few law scholars, among them some of the most well-known and
established lawyers, feel that Rubinstein has been done an injustice. But
not one of them has spoken up in his defense. That would seal my fate with
the prosecution and the courts, one of them told me. And that statement
expresses the fear and dread that has been created by the belligerent and
unacceptable symbiosis - and not only in the eyes of law and justice -
between the legal establishment, the police and the media.

Posted 11/26/2003 06:20:00 PM

1. Islamofascists have a new cause:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1069819708573&p=1006953079865

2. Mumia's French Friends:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article2877.html

3. You might enjoy http://www.whybejewish.org/

4. Arab Knesset Member involved in Espionage, but not arrested.
Protected speech, no doubt:
http://israelnn.com/news.php3?id=53456

5. Haaretz November 23, 2003

Jews out of Palestine

By Amnon Rubinstein

According to Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim, Jew hatred has three
stages. In the first stage, the message is you can't live among us as
Jews; in the second, it's you can't live among us; and in the third, it's
you can't live. The first stage is coerced conversion, the second is
expulsion and the third is destruction.

The message of the fourth stage is you can't live in your own country. In
the 1930s, the streets of Germany filled with two kinds of graffiti: "Jews
Out" and "Jews to Palestine." The call of the new anti-Semitism of our age
is "Jews out of Palestine." It characterized
not only the traditional Israel haters but also - and mostly - circles
dubbed the left nowadays, in Israel, Europe and among "liberal" Americans.

The absurd thing is that negating Israel's right to exist, which provides
the intellectual
backing for the threats of its destruction, is being done in the name of
the most supreme doctrines of human rights and equality. In other words,
all nations have the right to self-determination - except the Jews. There
is no substantial difference between that and the first stage of
traditional anti-Semitism according to Fackenheim: "You can't live among
us as a member of the family of nations."

The fact that the extremist intellectual left is now carrying the banner
once hefted by the
fascist right in Europe is as traumatic for many contemporary Jews as it
was in the late
19th century. True, there are no pogroms and no Dreyfus trial, but the
chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk, goes on radio to tell Jews to avoid
wearing a skullcap in public - a call that should have shocked the most
secular Jews to their core. The European Social Forum, meanwhile, invites
anti-Semitic Muslim intellectual Tarek Ramadan to join its ranks, and the
left in general inspires only deep disappointment when it does not
demonstrate alongside Jews who are afraid to wear a skullcap and are
killed at prayers in synagogues.

Those not tainted with fashionable academic ignorance who read Moshe
Lilienblum and Yehuda Pinsker nowadays cannot help but feel deep
identification with those two writers. It's not only Jews who are hurt by
the combination of extremist Muslims and anti-Semitic leftists. The French
press - including the media very critical of Israel - was shocked by what
has happened. On November 18, Le Monde justifiably praised the rapid
response by President Jacques Chirac, who called a special session of his
cabinet after arsonists struck a Jewish school in Paris on November 15.
The newspaper warns of the combination of violent Islamic anti-Semitism
and traditional French anti-Semitism. Le Figaro, on November 17, drew a
connection between the events in Istanbul and Paris and the public opinion
poll in which Europeans ranked Israel as the leading country endangering
world peace. The newspaper added that the greatest success of the
newanti-Semitism is its very banalization.

Gerard Dupuy, writing in Liberation on November 17, opens an editorial on
the Turkish bombings with this stunning statement: "In 2003, a person can
be killed simply for being Jewish - in Istanbul, Jerba, and Casablanca."
He adds that anyone trying to explain the
anti-Semitism, if not justify it, in the context of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is making a moral mistake, because it is a
murderous trend, rooted in Muslim society, and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is just an excuse for it. French-Jewish jurist Robert Badinter, a
former justice minister and now a socialist senator, was bitter in an
interview with a Catholic publication about how the new anti-Semitism is
guised in anti-Zionism. And
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced a special session of the
European Council on Peace and Security to discuss the issue of the new
anti-Semitism in the spring.

Maybe those same Israeli leftists who dismiss the charges about signs of
the new
anti-Semitism should read these articles that appeared overseas.

Posted 11/25/2003 07:35:00 PM

1. Dance the Marxarena (to the tune of Dance the Macarena)

First you throw your granny in the Gulag,
Cupboards empty, nothing in your stoomache,
Then you go and liquidate the kulaks,
DO the Marxarena!

Steal the land and starve away the peasants,
Apparachiks getting all the presents,
Endless lines but never show resentments,
Do the Marxarena! Yes, Do the Marxarena!


2. The Mikey and Cornell Show - The Marxist Plantation

http://jewishpress.com/news_article_print.asp?article=3089
Lerner And West, Blind To The Truth
Posted 11/19/2003
By Clifford D. May
Michael Lerner and Cornel West regard themselves as brave because they
"dare" to
question "America`s almost blind support for Ariel Sharon`s government."

What arrogance and malarkey.

In case you`re hazy about who these two characters are, allow me to
refresh your memory.
West is a left-wing professor, the author of such edifying works as "The
Ethical Dimensions of
Marxist Thought" and "Toward a Socialist Theory of Racism." Lerner is the
left-wing editor of
Tikkun magazine, the current issue of which pays "tribute" to Edward Said,
calling him "a great
thinker." The late Said called conservative American Christians "a menace
to the world" and
labeled the American liberation of Iraq "absolutely repellent."

Last week they penned a Washington Post op-ed in which they make the
ludicrous charge
that "liberal Democrats who are normally the champions of free speech" are
blocking "a serious
public discussion of our Israel-Palestine policy."

Are they really blocking such discussion? (And are they really champions
of free speech
when that speech is by spoken by people with whom they disagree? Give me
one example.)

Professors and editors should have at least a passing acquaintance with
history. Start with
this: "America" could not have been blindly supporting Sharon during the
Clinton years
because Sharon wasn`t in office then. He only became Israel`s prime
minister in 2001. Just prior
to that, the prime minister was the dovish Ehud Barak, whose arms Clinton
twisted into pretzels
at Camp David in 2000 in order to make him come up with an offer that
Yasir Arafat the most
frequent foreign guest at the Clinton White House might accept.

Barak eventually offered Arafat much more than most Israelis would have
been content to
give away e.g. an independent state in virtually all of the West Bank and
Gaza, a capital in
Jerusalem, and the dismantlement of most Jewish settlements on the West
Bank.

Arafat turned down the offer and produced no counteroffer. Instead, he
launched the most
lethal wave of terrorism the Middle East has ever seen, and he has made it
obvious to all but the
deluded that he agrees with Hamas, Hizbullah, and similar terrorist groups
that the goal should
be the destruction and elimination of the Jewish state.

In response, Israeli voters handed Barak`s Labor party a crushing defeat,
and the Likud
and Sharon were installed in their place.

President Bush does appear to get along with Sharon. In particular, in the
aftermath of
9/11, the president clearly appreciates what it means to be a leader who
every day waits to hear
the next report of innocent men, women, and children being massacred by
suicide terrorists.

Nevertheless, Bush has made an extraordinary offer to the Palestinians an
offer that
may not have pleased Sharon and without question displeased many in his
party. He has told the
Palestinians that they can have an independent state and that he will
support that goal if they
will only end their support for the mass murder of children as a means to
that ends. Is that really
so much to ask, especially in the midst of a global war on terrorism?

Bush also has asked the Palestinians to rid their society of the stunning
corruption that
plagues it; Arafat did not become a billionaire by inventing a new
browser. And Bush would like
Palestinians to begin to construct democratic institutions such as a free
press, an independent
judiciary and tolerance for a political opposition.

This offer from Bush is unprecedented. From 1948 to 1967, Egypt ruled
Gaza, while
Jordan ruled the West Bank. They could have set up an independent
Palestinian state in those
territories, but they didn`t even consider it. Instead, in 1967 they used
Gaza and the West bank to
launch a war that was unambiguously aimed at destroying Israel, which is
how Israel came into
possession of those territories in the first place.

Immediately prior to that, the British controlled Palestine, then handed
it to the UN which
in 1947 offered an independent Palestinian state not only in the West Bank
and Gaza but in other
parts of what is today Israel. That offer also was rejected and the
fledgling Jewish state instead
had to fight for its life as Arab armies invaded from all directions.

Before that, for centuries, the area called Palestine (including what is
now Israel, Jordan,
the West Bank and Gaza) was ruled by the Ottoman Empire with its capital
in what is now
Turkey. Needless to say, the idea of an independent Palestinian state
never occurred to the
Ottoman pashas.

The U.S. has supported one principle not blindly but with clear vision:
The right of
Israel to exist. This is not a right uniquely granted to Israel. All other
states in the world enjoy it
and the U.S. has gone to war to defend this principle, most recently to
guarantee Kuwait the right
to exist after Saddam Hussein attempted to wipe it off the map. America
has resorted to force of
arms to protect the existence of other communities mostly Muslim
communities, as it happens
in such places as Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kurdistan.

American leaders of both parties for half a century have agreed that
Israel`s right to exist
is not a negotiating position, is not an issue to be haggled over at
anything misleading called a
"peace conference." The Jews are among the oldest-surviving peoples of the
Middle East (along
with the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs). As columnist Charles Krauthammer has
pointed out, the
Israelis speak the same language, practice the same religion, and live on
the same land as did
their ancestors 3,000 years ago. What other peoples can say that?

It`s true that many Jews also lived for centuries in Baghdad, Alexandria,
and even in what
is now Saudi Arabia. But they were ethnically cleansed from those places
long before the term
"ethnic cleansing" had become part of our vocabulary.

But Hamas and their ilk do not accept any of this. On the contrary, they
candidly
acknowledge that their goal is the elimination of the world`s only Jewish
state. They want that
territory to become the world`s 23rd Arab state, and to be added to the
more than 50 states that
are predominately Muslim. They are cagey about what would happen to the
Israeli Jews after
that, but it shouldn`t be hard to hazard a guess.

Even former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, a relative
moderate
strongly supported by Bush, could never bring himself to say publicly that
the Jewish state has a
right not to be destroyed. Maybe he calculated that had he acknowledged
Israel`s right to exist,
his term in office would have been even shorter than it was, given the
years of indoctrination of
the Palestinians by Arafat`s deputies, the many times they`ve been
promised that if they`ll just be
patient, their suffering will lead to victory not a peace settlement but
victory over Israel.

Or he may have feared that what happened to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
after
making peace with Israel he was assassinated by a group led by a man now
in al Qaeda`s
leadership would happen to him as well.

Look, I disagree with Michael Lerner and Cornel West not only over the
canard that the
U.S. "blindly" supports Sharon but on just about everything. Nevertheless,
I support their right to
exist. I would strenuously argue with anyone who said that to be
"even-handed" I must be neutral
about whether they live or, perhaps, face a firing squad.

Does that mean I blindly support Lerner and West? If they think so,
perhaps I should
reconsider. (NationalReviewOnline)

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the
president of the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on
terrorism.

3. The PC Assault on Israel: http://israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3002

4. "Refugees" for You and Me
Who is a "Palestinian Refugee"?
by Ariel Natan Pasko
November 25, 2003

Who is a "Palestinian Refugee"? Well, the short answer is, it could be
almost anyone, even you or me. The long answer gets a bit more
complicated, but not too much. You see "Palestinian Refugee" is a prized
political status. Let me explain. But first...

Lately, a lot has been made of the so-called "right of return" of
"Palestinian Refugees". Two different private "peace" initiatives have
come to light recently. The first, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon document, called
"the People Vote" is a petition that a former head of the Israeli General
Security Service - Israel's F.B.I. - Ami Ayalon and Palestinian professor
Sari Nusseibeh have circulated. It calls on Israel to give up all the
territory the Arabs lost in the 1967 Middle East war and turn the land
over to the Palestinians for a state. Although Article 4, covering the
refugee issue, says "Palestinian refugees will return only to the State of
Palestine; Jews will return only to the State of Israel," it doesn't
define who is a "Palestinian Refugee".

US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech in Washington
recently, disclosed he had met with Ayalon and Nusseibeh. Praising their
efforts, Wolfowitz said that the Nusseibeh-Ayalon proposal represented "a
significant grass-roots movement."

The second, more significant initiative, by former Israeli Justice
Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser
Abed Rabbo, has been dubbed the "Geneva Accord". They held private talks
and came up with a plan for a Palestinian state on nearly all of the West
Bank and Gaza. Most Jewish settlers would be uprooted. In their agreement,
they use the term "Palestinian Refugees" to mean those registered with the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East (UNRWA). But nowhere in the agreement is the term clearly defined.

The Geneva Accord draft was recently sent to all Israeli families, as part
of a public campaign ahead of the December 1st accord-signing ceremony to
be held in Geneva. The draft consists of 48 pages, including a map; it is
claimed that 1.9 million copies in Hebrew were printed, under the title of
The Geneva Initiative - a model for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian
agreement. Two hundred thousand copies were said to be printed in Arabic,
and 100,000 in Russian. The cost of the campaign has been estimated at
three million shekels - about $650,000. France and Belgium are rumored to
be underwriting the costs.

These unofficial and unauthorized negotiations drew virtually no official
US attention until Secretary of State Colin Powell recently responded with
an encouraging letter to Beilin and Rabbo. "Dear Yossi and Yasser," Powell
wrote, "The U.S. remains committed to the president's two-state vision and
to the Road Map, but we also believe that projects such as yours are
important in helping sustain an atmosphere of hope."

The Quartet - US, EU, UN and Russia - issued in April 2003, "A
Performance-Based Roadmap To A Permanent Two-State Solution To The
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict". Israel - through Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon - and the Palestinian Authority - through then-Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas - at the Aqaba Summit, accepted the Road Map. But the Road
Map only mentions refugees in passing, never defining them, and leaves it
to final-status talks to determine their disposition.

Back in the summer - after the Road Map was announced - Palestinian
Authority Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, speaking at a hotel in the
Lebanese capital Beirut said, "No condition has been set for a return
[only] to an independent Palestinian state. The right of return is no
longer an illusion. It is an integral part of the Arab peace initiative,
which is one of the reference points in the Road Map." Shaath continued,
"I want to be clear, this right includes returning to an independent state
and to Palestinian cities in the Jewish state. Whether a person returns to
Haifa [in Israel] or to Nablus [Shechem in Judea/Samaria, the West Bank]
their return is guaranteed," he promised. The PA minister was referring to
the Saudi initiative adopted by an Arab League summit meeting in Beirut in
March 2002. Evidently, the Palestinians see the Road Map very differently
than the Israelis do.

So problematic is the "right of return" for Israeli politicians that even
opposition leader Knesset Member Shimon Peres of Labor and far-left Meretz
party MKs Yossi Sarid and Ran Cohen, after hearing of Shaath's speech,
emphasized that they would adamantly oppose a peace agreement that
includes a Palestinian right of return to Israel, since such a right poses
a threat to the state's identity and to the solution of two states for two
peoples. Labor MK Matan Vilnai said, "The Palestinians had better realize
that all the parties in Israel are united against the so-called right of
return."

Quickly, senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials said that, "there will
never be a return of refugees to the State of Israel." And Israeli
government spokesman Avi Pazner emphasized that the Road Map did not
address the right of return, and that refugees would never be allowed to
return to Israel. "It's a statement that can only hurt things because it's
false," he said. "The Road Map says absolutely nothing about the
[refugees'] right of return and this statement is detrimental" to
implementation of the Road Map.

"Israel has no intention, under any circumstance and within any framework,
of accepting the return of refugees in Israeli cities which Nabil Shaath
terms Palestinian cities," Pazner said. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin also jumped in, declaring, "There is no
Israeli government that will ever accept it. There will be no Palestinian
state so long as they continue to espouse the right of return."

And they're all right; Israeli Jews won't accept "Palestinian Refugees"
returning to Israel. According to a recent study, the Peace Index Project
conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv
University, on August 31 to September 2, 2003, when told that "according
to international law, people who leave their homes during war out of their
own desire or because they are expelled, have the right to return to their
home at the end of the conflict," and then asked, "Do you agree or
disagree to the idea that this principle is appropriate also for the case
of the Palestinian refugees?" 76.3% of Israeli Jews disagreed.

Then asked, "If the last thing in the way of reaching a peace agreement
was Israel's recognition in principle of the right of return of the
Palestinian refugees, where this recognition did not mean actually giving
the refugees the opportunity to return; under those circumstances, would
you support or oppose Israel recognizing the principle of right of
return?" Again, an overwhelming majority of two-thirds opposed such an
agreement. But notice in all this discussion that who is a "Palestinian
Refugee" is never defined.

Neither the former PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas nor the current one
Ahmed Qureia have given up their perceived "right of return for refugees,"
neither have any other Palestinian leaders. In a September 1999 visit to
China - according to the newspaper Al-Ayyam - Qureia demanded the
so-called "right of return" as a basic condition for peace, "Either [we
achieve] a just peace that will guarantee the legitimate national rights
of the Palestinian people, including [the] return, self-determination, and
the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital,
or there will be no peace, but a return to the struggle in all its forms,"
he said.

Two of the better articles to have appeared recently, discussing many
different aspects of the "Palestinian Refugees" issue - including whether
the so-called "right of return" is recognized by General Assembly
Resolution 194 - it isn't - are, "Who Wants to be a Palestinian Refugee?"
by Steven Plaut, and "How the West Weakens Israel" by David Bedein. Yet
they never define who a "Palestinian Refugee" is either.

I think I've kept you in suspense long enough; lets look at the only
existing "legal" definition of who a "Palestinian Refugee" is. It comes
from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East (UNRWA), which is a "relief and human development agency,
providing education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid to over
four million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan,
Lebanon and the Syrian Arab republic," as per their website. So-called
"Palestinian Refugees" living the good life in America, Europe, or
elsewhere don't count.

"Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons
whose normal place of residence was Palestine [the Palestine Mandate]
between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of
livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA's services
are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this
definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance.
UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who
became refugees in 1948. The number of registered Palestine refugees has
subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002,
and continues to rise due to natural population growth." Again, as per
their website.

Notice the phrase "covers the descendants of persons," unlike other
refugees under the UN's auspices; "Palestinian Refugees" are able to
transfer refugee status on to their heirs. What a political concession
from the UN...

Before discussing anything further, I want to point out that the
registration of "refugees" occurred a full two years after the conflict.
Many other reliable estimates put the figure lower, at about
550,000-600,00. But even that includes the 36,800 "legal" and "illegal"
Arab immigrants - from North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and
the Arabian Peninsula - to the Palestine Mandate as reported by the
British administration of the time. That also includes 57,000
Bedouin-nomads who had no permanent domicile. And that includes at least
170,000 Arabs - originally from the West Bank or Gaza - who moved into
Jewish areas - that later became the State of Israel - looking for work
during the Mandate period, and who later returned home. If you subtract
all these people, real refugees probably number no more than 300,000.

Joan Peters in From Time Immemorial notes that her "maximum figure of
343,000 is less than half the number of refugees claimed by the Arabs
immediately after their leaving, before the numbers were reportedly
further 'inflated' in the refugee camps." By 1950, the Arab nationalists
of Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and North Africa, Syria, and Lebanon
who volunteered to be "Palestinian Refugees" managed to triple the figure.
So it is that we have the impossible claim that 300,000 people in 1948
have grown to more than 4 million in just 55 years.

I want to point out that UNRWA's definition of "Palestinian Refugees" as
"persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine [the Palestine
Mandate] between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and
means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict," in
theory could have applied equally to Jews as well as Arabs. In fact,
before 1948 Jews were called Palestinians - because they lived in the
Palestine Mandate - whereas, Arabs frowned on the label and continued to
identify themselves only as Arabs, claiming to be part of the greater
"Arab nation". It can be seen even in how they named their institutions,
such as the Arab Higher Committee.

As UNRWA said, "services are available to all those living in its area of
operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency
and who need assistance." It should be noted that about 900,000 Jews
became refugees from Arab countries, when they were expelled or fled under
threat of death - in the same period - another 20th century example of
ethnic cleansing. They lost their land, homes, property and possessions,
businesses, and community assets - such as synagogues and other communal
properties. About 650,000 went to the Palestine Mandate area - later
Israel. If the State of Israel hadn't taken care of them, they too would
have qualified for UNRWA aid. Why didn't the Arab states help their
brothers?

For that matter, when the Arab states, Arafat and the PA demand
compensation for the so-called refugees, you should know that Israel, back
in the early 1950's - to help alleviate the plight of the "Palestinian
Refugees" - released monies from dormant bank accounts of the refugees,
totaling over $50 million at the time, through the UN agencies dealing
with them. They might demand the return of real estate - how much did they
really own? - but their liquid assets have long been turned over to them.

There you have it, the UN's definition of a "Palestinian Refugee": Any
person who lived in the Palestine Mandate two years before the creation of
the State of Israel (1948), and their descendants.

So you may end up with absurd scenarios, like a young Arab man from Iraq
moving to the Palestine Mandate in the late-1930's, looking for work, and
then fleeing when the war broke out in 1948. He then moves to Jordan and
marries a nice Bedouin girl, not "Palestinian". He has seven kids, and
they marry nice Bedouin boys and girls. Today, he has 29 grandchildren,
and 11 great-grandchildren. That means at least 48 refugees - according to
the UN - plus the spouses (family reunification, don't forget). Maybe
that's how you get from 300,000 to 4 million?

Or, the equally absurd scenario of a young North African Arab man fleeing
the British war against the Nazis in 1945, who then settles in the
Palestine Mandate, marries a nice Italian girl, only to flee to Gaza with
the outbreak of hostilities against the Jews in 1948. He's counted along
with all his descendants - who, by the way, also married Europeans - as a
"Palestinian Refugee". Forget the "natural population growth" the UN
claims. The numbers are being played with. "Palestinian Refugee" status is
a coveted political symbol, not to mention a lucrative "job", with
economic benefits from UNRWA and the PLO.

It is ludicrous that someone who lived in the Palestine Mandate for two
and a half years could be on the "International Dole" for the next 50
years, along with all his descendants. It's just plain wrong that people
who moved to Haifa or Tel Aviv from the West Bank or Gaza, then returned
home, should claim refugee status, and cry over their lost economic
opportunities - working for the Jews - and demand the world give them a
hand-out. What a cushy "job". What great benefits, at the world's expense.

UNRWA's largest donors are the United States, the European Commission, the
UK and Sweden. Other major donors include the Gulf Arab States,
Scandinavian countries, Japan and Canada. They should all be furious...

And why should all these "Palestinian Refugees" - many of whom aren't even
indigenous to the area - have a "right of return" to the area of the
former Palestine Mandate - Israel or the Palestinian Authority?

I just can't get it out of my head. Who is a "Palestinian Refugee"? Well,
it could have been you or me.

(c) 2003/5764 Pasko