Hamas in Gaza is attempting to reactivate its sleeper cells in the West Bank, the IDF warned last week.
Hamas's
terrorist infrastructure was destroyed in West Bank cities by the IDF
following Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 and subsequent
counter-terrorism efforts but the organization is seeking to gradually
regroup in the area.
Its efforts are being thwarted successfully by the IDF and the Shin Bet
[Israel Security Agency], which maintain a tight grip on intelligence
and security in the area.
But just give them a 'state' and they'll stop trying to regroup the terror organizations.... Right....
Shelly Yacimovich to Hamas: 'Stop the shelling! Can't you see we're in the middle of an election'?
The woman who would be Prime Minister, the choice of the 'Center-Left,' the former radio broadcaster turned politician, wants a million Israelis to cower in bomb shelters... at least until January 23.
Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich, on a tour of the rocket-hit South,
positioned herself against intensive military action, telling Army
Radio, "We are on the eve of elections, and operations beyond air
attacks or targeted strikes require stability and national consensus at
home."
"It could be that such an operation is necessary, but not now," Yacimovich continued.
I'd bet there's a national consensus on this one. Operation Cast Lead, which was directed by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after his government resigned enjoyed 91% approval among Israelis. Of course, in that case, the opposition in the person of one Binyamin Netanyahu also supported the operation. Will Yacimovich support it? Or will she risk the wrath of a million voters in southern Israel by telling them what we all know already: The Labor party believes that southern Israel is NotInMyBackYard.
Yacimovich's boosters at Haaretz are claiming that Netanyahu doesn't want a full-scale Operation Cast Lead before the elections, and are therefore trying to pin the blame for the current situation on him. But since that article is behind Haaretz's pay wall and I refuse to pay, I cannot tell you what it says....
In the meantime, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is a Netanyahu confidante, is calling for an operation like Defensive Shield, the 2002 operation that shut down 'Palestinian' terror during the second intifada.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, of the Likud, warned that over time,
rocket fire would hit closer and closer to Israel's center, and said
Israel "cannot simply adjust and shield itself."
Despite the scope
of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza 2008, Steinitz said that Israel has not
yet had an operation along the lines of Defensive Shield, the intensive
2002 anti-terror operation in the West Bank.
For those who have forgotten, the biggest difference between Defensive Shield and Cast Lead is that after Defensive Shield, the IDF stayed in place in Judea and Samaria, whereas after Cast Lead it withdrew from Gaza.
Hmmm. Maybe Yacimovich needs to adjust herself to some new realities....
Because nothing says "ally" better than advocating for the release of a terrorist.
The New York Times article reported by David Kirkpatrick is disturbing for the way it downplays Morsi's brazenness. First there's:
Mr. Morsi referred briefly to Mr. Abdel Rahman in an almost offhand aside in the context of a vow to free Egyptian civilians imprisoned here after military trials under the rule of the generals. “I see signs for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees’ pictures,” he said. “It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman.” A Brotherhood spokesman said later that Mr. Morsi intended to ask federal officials in the United States to have Mr. Abdel Rahman extradited to Egypt on humanitarian grounds. He was not seeking to have Mr. Abdel Rahman’s convictions overturned or calling him a political prisoner. An Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, shrugged it all off as empty talk, saying, “There is zero chance this happens.”
That wasn't an "offhand" remark. In comparing the "Blind Sheikh" to the detainees, Morsi was making an equivalence, one that should be offensive to the United States. The spokesman must have realized how awful Morsi's comment must have sounded to most Americans (at least those who aren't newspaper reporters) and tried to walk it back. The spin, accepted uncritically by Kirkpatrick, is not convincing.
Later Kirkpatrick reports:
In an interview with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center, Mr. Morsi once said he harbored suspicions that unknown hands might have played a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “When you come and tell me that the plane hit the tower like a knife in butter, then you are insulting us,” Mr. Morsi said, according to an article Mr. Hamid wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. “How did the plane cut through the steel like this? Something must have happened from the inside.” Although it is nearly impossible to find an Egyptian who supports terrorist attacks like those on Sept. 11 or the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center garage, many are very skeptical of official American accounts about who was responsible.
Again, this is reported uncritically. So what if "many" Egyptians are skeptical of American claims? How does that excuse Morsi, a political leader, for feeding that paranoia.
Mr. Morsi’s pledge to seek Mr. Abdel Rahman’s extradition may also play well with Egyptians who perceived Mr. Mubarak as a lackey to Washington. But it runs sharply counter to assiduous efforts over many years by Brotherhood leaders to convince the West that their group advocates only peaceful reform and does not condone violence.
The premise of this paragraph is that those "assiduous efforts" were sincere. Kirkpatrick doesn't allow that Morsi's statements were, indeed, representative of the Brotherhood true intentions. Kirkpatrick and his ilk have been doing their best to help the Brotherhood convince the West of its peaceful intentions. He doesn't give himself enough credit.
2) Correction
Last week, I criticized an article that appeared ten years ago in the New York Times for failing to acknowledge that Israel lost thirteen soldiers in one battle as it attempted to defeat the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin. I was wrong. The reporter, James Bennett, wrote:
Israeli soldiers and Palestinians said Palestinian fighters had salted the camp with booby traps. From the second floor of one home, Palestinians pointed to an area, by a blackened building and a palm tree, where they said 13 soldiers died in an ambush. The area is now leveled. In all, 23 soldiers died in the fighting.
I still believe my criticism of the article is valid. My point was that those soldiers died in an attempt to limit the collateral damage. In no way does Bennett suggest that Israel limited the damage they caused by risking troops instead of bombing from planes. In fact the gist of the article is to suggest that Israel used disproportionate force. No claim of excessive force is ignored and no effort was made to verify the claims. In fact at the beginning, Bennett tips the scales subtly:
Israel says Jenin was a center of terrorism, which it is determined to weed out. Israeli officials have spoken of 100 to 200 dead here, and Palestinians have estimated two, three, or four times that number. No one yet knows how many were killed in fighting that has lasted 11 days, and is now all but over, but already the battle here seems certain to be argued over in the contest between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Israeli officials "have spoken" and Palestinians "have estimated." Which verb is more definitive? We know now that even the Israeli estimate was high and that the Palestinian number was wildly exaggerated. What did Bennett think at the time? My guess is that he was more convinced of the Palestinian narrative and numbers; he wasn't willing to consider any evidence that Israel's response was measured or justified.
Shamir sought to break the ice with a friendly question. “So,” he said to the delegation’s leader, “how long are you planning to be here? A week?” I don’t know if he was joking about the impending deadline but a look of pure fear and panic leaped onto Mr. Bird’s face. “Are you kidding!” His voice shook with dismay. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow!” (Those were his precise words.) Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was making himself look like a fool. He tried to calm down and recover. So he added, albeit with equal ham-handedness, “But I guess you have to stay here.” (Honest, that’s what he said.) Rubinstein answered with a big smile on his face: “Oh, no. We don’t have to stay here. We just happen to like it here.” I will never forget the even bigger smile on Shamir’s face. Mr. Bird and all the little birds who fancied themselves great statesmen and Middle East experts had no idea what had just happened.
Prof Rubin recalls, also that the United States didn't keep its pledge to protect Israel from Scuds and reward it for its cooperation (in not joining the fight against Saddam.) In fact Shamir got the back of President Bush's hand and King Hussein of Jordan who helped arm Saddam was invited to the White House.
He also noted that Shamir was not charismatic, a fact that hurt him in numerous instances. It allowed opponents to define him.
For example in 1988, Prime Minister Shamir referred to Israel's enemies (or critics) as grasshoppers. Charles Krauthammer debunked the charge, showing it to be a textbook example of media distortions of Middle East coverage:
Now, it turns out that Shamir did not say that Palestinians will be crushed like grasshoppers. The word "crushed" serves to make the grasshopper reference look sadistic and bloodcurdling, but it is pure invention. What Shamir did say is that "those who would destroy what we are building . . . they are in our sight like grasshoppers." Here is where the ignorance comes in. Anyone who is familiar with Hebrew culture would know that the grasshopper reference, which to begin with is an odd political metaphor, is a quotation from perhaps the most famous story of national panic and dissension in the Old Testament. When wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites sent spies to scout the Promised Land. Upon returning, they delivered a report of abject defeatism: "And there we saw giants . . . and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:33). (The news so alarmed the Israelites that they demanded to return to the safety - and slavery - of Egypt. They were punished for their faithlessness by being made to wander 40 years in the wilderness.) Anyone in Shamir's audience would have recognized the reference. The meaning of the metaphor is clear: It refers to size and strength only, not to the presence or absence of human characteristics. The Biblical spies were saying: In comparison to our enemies we felt small and weak. They were not saying (they were, after all, speaking of themselves): We felt subhuman, insect-like.
The fact that Krauthammer debunked Shamir's critics in 1988, didn't stop Andrew Sullivan from dredging up the charge last year. Ron Kampeas rebutted Sullivan.
Also, after he was defeated for re-election Shamir was quoted as saying he would stall peace talks with the Palestinians. As a New York Times headline said, Shamir Is Said to Admit Plan To Stall Talks 'for 10 Years'. What Shamir said (and I was told that the interviewer agreed) was that he expected negotiations to take ten years, not that he intended to stall negotiations. Furthermore note that even Yitzchak Rabin didn't intend to cede as much territory as is now considered "what everyone knows" is necessary to bring peace. (The obituary is incorrect in explaining Shamir's succession of Begin as Prime Minister. It was a subsequent election when Shamir and Peres agreed to a rotating premiership as part of
In an otherwise hostile obituary to Shamir (written by the one time Israel correspondent, Joel Brinkley) in the New York Times:
In 1988, at a meeting of the political party Herut, he sat slumped on a sofa, gazing at the floor as party stalwarts heaped praises on him. Shortly thereafter, he said: “I like all those people, they’re nice people. But this is not my style, not my language. This kind of meeting is the modern picture, but I don’t belong to it.”
Shamir was not much concerned with the polish that is so important to politicians nowadays. This incident shows the degree to which he was aware that he was not playing the game the way he was expected to. Was Shamir's obituary less ambiguous than Arafat's?
In Simcha Raz's biography of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, he told the story of how Shamir met his wife and married while underground. One of Shamir's contacts noticed that the female courier who reported to Shamir cared very much for him and suggested that Shamir marry her. Shamir demurred claiming that he couldn't very well register with the authorities to marry. So his contact brought the matter to Rabbi Levine who arranged a number of prominent Rabbis officiate at the unofficial wedding.
The Shamir's son Yair, a former CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries was an early investor in Mirabalis that created the ICQ network, which was later bought by AOL for its instant messaging service. The younger Shamir, was one of the pioneers of Israel as a "start-up nation."
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, June 29.
The unappreciated sacrifice
There's a tribute to Israelis killed in terror attacks at Israel's Foreign Ministry website. There are 15 soldiers who were killed on April 9, 2002. Thirteen of them were killed in an ambush as they entered the refugee camp in Jenin.
The IDF chose to send the soldiers in to reduce the chance of killing civilians had it bombed the area from the air.
A three-hour tour here today, made with local guides who picked paths around Israeli tanks, showed destruction on a scale far greater than that seen in the other Palestinian cities that have fallen before Israel's offensive, its biggest ground operation in 20 years. Israel says Jenin was a center of terrorism, which it is determined to weed out. Israeli officials have spoken of 100 to 200 dead here, and Palestinians have estimated two, three, or four times that number. No one yet knows how many were killed in fighting that has lasted 11 days, and is now all but over, but already the battle here seems certain to be argued over in the contest between the Israelis and Palestinians. ... Israel says that its soldiers were careful to avoid shooting civilians, and that most of the dead were fighters. Residents of the camp said many civilians were killed.
There is no mention in the article of the dead soldiers, just this:
A public relations struggle is under way over this ruined place. The battle for the Jenin camp is already becoming another significant, harshly contested episode in the history of both peoples.
On the Palestinian side that struggle was marked by the false claim of a massacre in Jenin. The New York Times failed to report on one of the most relevant details in debunking that libel.
Q. Can the IDF code of ethics undergo changes? “The code is stable. The more abstract the values are, the less they change. The doctrines can change because we are in new situations all the time. The doctrine of combating terror, which I dealt with together with Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, who was the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, includes a new situation in which terrorists live among civilians. We must free ourselves from the attitude that regards others’ lives with fear and trembling while holding the lives of our own combat soldiers in complete contempt. International law wants to impose a position on us whereby soldiers are a consumable resource and that the lives of enemy civilians must be protected more than the lives of our own combat troops. Bandages are a consumable resource. Water is a consumable resource. Human beings are not. “If we warned the terrorists’ neighbors to leave the area, in Arabic, in any way — flyers, telephone calls, television broadcasts, a warning noise — and they stay anyway — why are they staying? Because they choose to be human shields for terrorists. I do not want to kill a human being only because he is a human shield, if he is not a threat to me. But should a soldier of mine risk himself for him? Is the blood of a human shield any redder than the blood of my soldier? A soldier has no choice other than to be in Gaza, in that alleyway. But to be sent inside — why? In the battle in Jenin, in the middle of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF knew that the refugee camp was booby-trapped. But they still insisted on not bombing from the air in order to keep from harming civilians, and they suffered terrible losses. That was a mistake. They should have made an effort to get the civilian population out of the terrorist environment, and then there would have been no need to send in the infantry.”
Even ten years later it's astounding to reflect on how oblivious the world is to the care Israel's takes to avoid collateral damage.
In 2002, Israel was fighting operation Defensive Shield, its ultimately successful effort to destroy Arafat's "suicide factory." Israel didn't start Defensive Shield until after the horrific Park Hotel massacre. Yet Israel found itself judged daily for the necessary force it deployed to protect its citizenry.
Actually, I find it comforting to hear that Professor Kasher recognizes that not bombing Jenin from the air was a mistake. That recognition will likely save the lives of many IDF soldiers in the future.
Maan publishes whiny rant about Church of the Nativity terrorists
Ten years ago on Thursday, a group of 'Palestinian' terrorists gave up their hostages in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and were deported to Cyprus, from which they were distributed among various European countries. They had been there for more than a month - from April 2 to May 10, 2002.
After a decade in exile, deportees say they have been abandoned by the Palestinian Authority and all political factions. They have not been allowed to return to their families in the West Bank.
Deportees had planned to demonstrate on Thursday but canceled the protest to stand beside prisoners on hunger strike, spokesman for the group Fahmi Kanan said at a press conference on Monday.
Instead, deportees will go on a 3-day hunger strike on Thursday in solidarity with detainees in Israeli jails, Kanan said.
As to Maan's account of what happened in the church... it's a bunch of lies. Here's a brief summary of what really happened:
On April 2, 2002, as Israel implemented its Defensive Shield operation to combat the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure, in Bethlehem "a number of terrorists took over St. Mary's Church grounds and...held the priest and a number of nuns there against their will. The terrorists used the Church as a firing position, from which they shot at IDF soldiers in the area. The soldiers did not return fire toward the church when fired upon [emphasis added]. An IDF force, under the command of the Bethlehem area regional commander, entered the Church grounds today without battle, in coordination with its leaders, and evacuated the priest and nuns."
That same day, "More than 100 Palestinian gunmen...[including] soldiers and policemen, entered the Church of the Nativity on Tuesday, as Israeli troops swept into Bethlehem in an attempt to quell violence by Palestinian suicide bombers and militias." The actual number of terrorists was between 150 and 180, among them prominent members of the Fatah Tanzim. As the New York Times put it, "Palestinian gunmen have frequently used the area around the church as a refuge, with the expectation that Israel would try to avoid fighting near the shrine" [emphasis added].
And in fact this was the case. The commander of the Israeli forces in the area asserted that the IDF would not break into the church itself and would not harm this site holy to Christianity. Israel also deployed more mature and more reserved reserve-duty soldiers in this sensitive situation that militarily called for more agile, standing-army soldiers.
On the other hand, the Palestinians did not treat it the same way. Not only did they take their weapons with them into the Church of the Nativity and fire, on occasion, from the church, but also reportedly booby-trapped the entrance to the church.
On April 7, "one of the few priests evacuated from the church told Israeli television yesterday that gunmen had shot their way in, and that the priests, monks and nuns were essentially hostages....The priest declined to call the clergy 'hostages,' but repeatedly said in fluent English: 'We have absolutely no choice. They have guns, we do not.'"
Christians clearly saw the takeover as a violation of the sanctity of the church. In an interview with CWNews, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's Undersecretary of State and the top foreign-policy official, asserted that "The Palestinians have entered into bilateral agreements [with the Holy See] in which they undertake to maintain and respect the status quo regarding the Christian holy places and the rights of Christian communities. To explain the gravity of the current situation, let me begin with the fact that the occupation of the holy places by armed men is a violation of a long tradition of law that dates back to the Ottoman era. Never before have they been occupied - for such a lengthy time - by armed men." On April 14, he reiterated his position in an interview on Vatican Radio.
On April 24, the Jerusalem Post reported on the damage that the PA forces were causing:
Three Armenian monks, who had been held hostage by the Palestinian gunmen inside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, managed to flee the church area via a side gate yesterday morning. They immediately thanked the soldiers for rescuing them.
They told army officers the gunmen had stolen gold and other property, including crucifixes and prayer books, and had caused damage.... One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, later told reporters: "They stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything.... They stole our prayer books and four crosses...they didn't leave anything. Thank you for your help, we will never forget it."
Israeli officials said the monks said the gunmen had also begun beating and attacking clergymen.
When the siege finally ended, the PA soldiers left the church in terrible condition:
The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine, and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol. The indulgence lasted for about two weeks into the 39-day siege, when the food and drink ran out, according to an account by four Greek Orthodox priests who were trapped inside for the entire ordeal....
The Orthodox priests and a number of civilians have said the gunmen created a regime of fear.
Even in the Roman Catholic areas of the complex there was evidence of disregard for religious norms. Catholic priests said that some Bibles were torn up for toilet paper, and many valuable sacramental objects were removed. "Palestinians took candelabra, icons and anything that looked like gold," said a Franciscan, the Rev. Nicholas Marquez from Mexico.
A problem that arose during the siege again shows Christian fear of Muslim domination. Two Palestinian gunmen in the church were killed, and the PA wanted to bury them in the basilica. "With two Muslim bodies inside the Church of the Nativity, Christianity could be facing an absolute disaster in Bethlehem," said Canon Andrew White, the special representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Middle East. "It would be catastrophic if two Muslim martyrs were buried in the church. It could lead to a situation like that in Nazareth," he said. Only after intensive mediation efforts were plans to bury the bodies inside abandoned.
But 60 Minutes blames Israel for the situation of Christians in the 'Holy Land.'
The “Jenin Massacre” proved that the Durban Strategy could be used successfully to wage political war. The Israeli government and military were unprepared to defeat this attack. Eventually, the facts began to replace the myths, but by then, the demonization campaign had already achieved its goals. On the basis of the Jenin fabrications, the first round of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) efforts began. This template was repeated many times afterwards, and perfected in the selection of Judge Richard Goldstone (a confidant of HRW’s Kenneth Roth) to head another pseudo-investigation based again on NGO allegations and inventions. ... Belatedly, Goldstone had the courage to acknowledge that the framework was biased against Israel, and the NGO “evidence” did not support the allegations. The campaign against Israel did not operate in a vacuum. Tracing the accounts of the battle of Jenin through selected articles in the New York Times is instructive.
Late tonight, an Israeli official said as many as 200 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. Most, he said, were armed men. Palestinian resistance in Jenin, the fiercest that Israeli forces have encountered, appeared to be ebbing. ... The Israeli Army continued to block journalists from entering Jenin, saying it feared for their safety. But Israeli officials were also nervously looking ahead to the eventual withdrawal, fearful that Palestinians would try to present the many corpses as evidence of an Israeli massacre. Palestinians accuse Israeli ground forces of firing randomly into their neighborhoods. But many soldiers and Israeli officials said the Israeli Army was acting morally, and was even endangering its own men by applying force cautiously in an effort not to harm civilians.
In the middle of the article, Bennet quoted a young man who claimed that his mother and brother were killed by "...bullets from an Israeli helicopter...," but he makes no judgment about the credibility of his witness or whether he attempted to verify the story.
On April 14, 2002, Bennet followed up with Refugee Camp Is a Scene of Vast Devastation. Bennet described two bodies he had seen in a tour of Jenin given by "local guides." Both bodies are apparently those of children; no others are described.
While he mentions that the number of dead could have been one and two hundred according to Israel or much higher according to the Palestinians, these examples went to show that non-combatants were killed. No doubt his guide realized this. Bennet should have emphasized what role his guide had in determining what he reported.
In general these reports discuss how both Israel and the Palestinians were attempting to frame the events in Jenin, but the specific, personal accounts come mostly from the Palestinians and the general arguments come from Israeli officials. Bennet, then, was consciously or not, helping frame the debate in a way that gave greater weight to the Palestinian narrative.
Since he visited the Jenin refugee camp last week and expressed his horror at what he saw, Terje Roed-Larsen, the chief United Nations representative here and the man who began the secret contacts that led to the Oslo agreements, has come under an unusually harsh personal attack by the Israeli government. He has been accused of ''record-high audacity'' and ''anti-Semitic ideas,'' and officials in the prime minister's office have talked of having him expelled. The attacks may be the most furious the 54-year-old Norwegian has faced, but they are hardly the first. As an active supporter of the land-for-peace process that he helped begin in Oslo a decade ago, he has been assailed by both Israeli and Arab foes of the agreements. His denunciations of suicide bombings have also prompted some accusations of bias from the Palestinians. ''I feel supremely confident because I know I did the right thing and I know I'm doing the right thing,'' Mr. Roed-Larsen said in a telephone interview. ''Any decent human being in that place on that day, seeing corpses dug out just below the surface, smelling the stench of decay, would have been shocked and horrified. That is not an accusation. That is a reaction to human tragedy.''
As an aside it's quite remarkable that Schmemann could write (without irony) that Palestinians considered Larsen's condemnations of suicide bombings as a sign of bias. If they really believed that (and if he does too) it's an indictment of their society (and of his own moral compass.) Moreover, Schmemann also ignored the role Larsen played in covering up the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers a year and a half earlier.
Schmemann also quoted then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan defending Roed-Larsen, on account that the Norwegian never used the term massacre. Still as the BBC reported, Roed-Larsen's language about Israel was quite harsh:
A United Nations envoy has said that the devastation left by Israeli forces in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank is "horrific beyond belief". Terje Roed-Larsen, who toured the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday, said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel had not allowed emergency workers in for 11 days to provide humanitarian relief.
Did Roed-Larsen need to say "massacre" to have been slandering Israel? And why didn't Schmemann quote from Dr. David Zangen who had been in Jenin?
"I was incensed by Larsen's remarks. He must not be allowed to continue with these lies", stated Dr. Zangen to Maariv. "I was there during the fighting, and I saw close up what was happening. I know that the IDF did everything it could to prevent civilian casualties. It is clear to everyone that if the IDF had resorted to aerial bombardment or heavy artillery, we would have completed [our mission] in the refugee camp within half a day, without suffering any casualties on our side. We did not adopt that policy, and we took risks in the fighting, in an attempt to rescue those innocent civilians that were caught up in the battles. Anyone who says that Israel carried out a massacre is lying and inciting the Arabs. Instead of acting to bring about reconciliation and peace, Larsen is creating hatred."
This article was more like a press release defending Larsen than a news story.
The United Nations study supported previously published accounts that said 52 Palestinians were killed in the Jenin refugee camp, along with 23 Israeli soldiers. In one of the study's equivocal judgments, it reported that "up to half" of the Palestinian dead "may have been civilians." The United Nations report, attributed to Secretary General Kofi Annan, was largely based on published accounts and descriptions by humanitarian groups and other organizations, because Israel blocked the United Nations from conducting a first-hand inquiry unanimously sought by the Security Council. Israeli officials said they had feared an investigation by the United Nations would be biased.
And how did everyone react?
Today, Israeli officials seized on the conclusions as validating their version of the fighting in Jenin, a battleground of the 22-month conflict now accorded nearly mythic status by both sides. The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the report "overwhelmingly negates this Palestinian fabrication" of a massacre. Palestinian officials called the report an important step but expressed frustration that the United Nations conducted a limited inquiry.
Bennet opened his report describing the UN's findings as "...dismissing as unsubstantiated Palestinian claims that 500 people were killed." Of course it would have been more appropriate to write that the report refuted exaggerated Palestinian claims. Israel needed to seize nothing.
Nor did this report inspire a follow up editorial to "Inching Forward in the Mideast" from April 30, that called for a fact finding mission acknowledging that Israel had been vindicated.
A year later reporter Greg Myre reported, New Battle Over Jenin, on Television. The article was about Pierre Rehov's "The Road to Jenin," "Jenin Diary -- The Inside Story," by Sgt. Gil Mezuman, and "Jenin, Jenin," by Mohammed Bakri. Even after acknowledging the results of the U.N. investigation, Myre added:
But many Palestinians still argue that Jenin was a massacre, and point to the Israeli Army bulldozers that crumpled apartment buildings in the center of the camp as an example of excessive Israeli force they say has been commonplace during 30 months of fighting. ''This is a film that saw things from an Israeli point of view, and I do not think it reflects reality inside the Jenin refugee camp,'' Fares Qadura, a Palestinian legislator, told Israeli television during a discussion after the program.
By doing this Myre gave credence to a demonstrably false story.
Though she didn't work for the New York Times, in July 2002 the Philadelphia Inquirer's ombudsman, Lillian Swanson made a very telling observation that applies to much of the American media:
So it goes in the media war, where American newspapers - by most accounts, far more pro-Israeli than their western European counterparts - take it on the chin from both sides. And keep on reporting.
It would be more correct to say that American newspapers are less anti-Israel and therefore more accurate than European newspapers. But Swanson (now the managing editor of the Forward) couldn't bring herself to acknowledge that Israel was in the right, even implicitly.
The NGO's cited by Prof Steinberg had accomplices in their goal of undermining Israel - the media.
2) Pesach 5762
Of course the Israeli attack on Jenin and the wider Operation Defensive Shield did not occur in a vacuum. Israel had been suffering from organized terror originating in territories controlled by the PA for 18 months when Defensive Shield was launched. Pesach of 2002 (5762 in the Jewish calendar) though, with the terror attack on a Passover Seder in Netanya was especially horrific.
The NGO and media assaults on Israel were especially noxious. The peace process and the legitimization of the PLO were premised on a commitment of Yasser Arafat to renounce terror and to fight future terror against Israel. The so-called Aqsa intifada demonstrated Arafat's insincerity and perfidy. Israel paid a terrible price for trusting its security to the nascent Palestinian Authority.
Yet every step Israel took to defend itself was criticized by these advocates of peace, whose premise had been shown to be false. Targeted killings of terrorists became "extrajudicial killings," checkpoints "humiliated" the Palestinians, military actions were "excessive force" and land used for building the security fence to hinder terrorists' access to Israel were "illegal expropriations." Instead of condemning Arafat's betrayal of the peace they promoted, the NGO's and media sought to prevent Israel from defending itself. There were few Palestinian violations of Oslo that evoked sustained outrage from these hypocrites; that was reserved for Israeli self-defense.
During Pesach ten years ago, there was too much tragedy and loss in Israel. But there was also some remarkable heroism. Haim Smadar was killed, but his sacrifice probably saved more than twenty lives.
Haim Smadar, who worked as a guard at a school, was only working as a security at the supermarket in Jerusalem's Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood during the Passover holidays. He usually guarded in a school, but it was closed for the holiday. On Friday afternoon, a 16-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber, wearing a belt of explosives around her waist, walked into the supermarket on Friday afternoon and blew herself up. Haim Smadar, the security guard, who prevented the bomber from going deep inside the store, was killed in the blast along with Rachel Levy, a shopper; 28 people were injured.
Smadar, who was born in Tunisia, reportedly overheard the young terrorist warning Arab women near the store to move away. He didn't worry about his own safety; according to witnesses his last words were "You are not coming in here. You and I will blow up here."
In his final act, Haim Smadar demonstrated true courage.
Falistian was with her boyfriend that night, she recounted Tuesday. Her parents, both of them in their seventies, would be celebrating the holiday at the Park Hotel. At midnight, her boyfriend turned on the television and heard the news. She rushed to local hospitals but did not find her parents. At 5a.m. she was called to identify them at the Tel Aviv morgue. Falistian spoke of her struggles in the years since. She credited an Israeli organization, One Family, which assists terror victims and organized the hotel memorial, with helping her regain her bearings.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made four critical decisions during the second intifada. In three cases, he set his ideology aside and ignored his basic instincts. He decided to build a separation fence, which significantly reduced suicide bombings in Israel; he did not assassinate Yasser Arafat (it will be a surprise if this is ever proved otherwise; Sharon’s uncharacteristic restraint in this matter averted a rift with the Bush administration); and he led the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which drew broad international backing for Israel. And then there was Sharon’s most important decision: Exactly 10 years ago, at the end of March 2002 and following months of hesitation, he sent Israeli troops into the dense casbahs of the West Bank cities and the narrow alleys of the refugee camps. Some of the methods were brutal, but Operation Defensive Shield suppressed Palestinian terrorism, including Hamas and Fatah’s deadly suicide bombings. Though its impact was not fully apparent until three years later, the operation restored normalcy on both sides of the Green Line. Even though the second intifada claimed seven times as many Israeli lives as the Second Lebanon War, most Israelis seem to have erased it from their memory.
Toward the end of the article, the reporters make a very important point:
West Bank Palestinians are indeed better off now than they were at the height of the intifada and compared with their counterparts in the Gaza Strip. But the relative economic stability is no guarantee against a new flare-up. There is growing frustration in the West Bank, in part due to Israeli indifference.
Any progress reported about the Palestinian usually fails to acknowledge this. During the early years of the Oslo Accords, Arafat built a "suicide factory" in the areas under his control. It took Defensive Shield to destroy that infrastructure. Israel was condemned for a phony massacre in Jenin and "disproportionate force" generally, and for building a security barrier. Ignored in all the condemnations is why Israel had to do all that to restore normalcy to its citizens. But as Harel and Issacheroff note, Defensive Shield benefited the Palestinians too. The pessimistic note the reporters strike is unfortunate. It is probably due more to the feckless leadership of the Palestinians than anything Israel has done or could do.
His greatest passions were Torah and Israel, and he combined the two by studying for the rabbinate in the Merkaz Harav Kook yeshiva. He came to Israel after high school graduation, and never returned to America. He married a girl from kibbutz - a second-generation survivor who wanted to help repopulate a Jewish people decimated by the Holocaust - and they had nine children. Shmuel was their third. ... At the shiva last week, Iky told of a coincidence, or unis as we all call it, that so often occurs in our small world. Iky was a counselor at Bnei Akiva's summer seminar program for 12th graders in Pennsylvania, where one of the participants was Rina Tolchinsky. Iky had a major influence on Rina, and would later help her to make aliya. Her son, Matanya Robinson, served in the same unit as Shmuel. On Monday, Matanya was mortally wounded in Jenin. Shmuel, a medic, rushed to his side to try to save him, and it was there that the two of them were killed in a spray of bullets.
2) The international IDF
Back in 2003, Israel inducted its first Eskimo into the IDF:
Tomorrow morning, Meir and Dafna Ben Sira, residents of the village of Nir Etzion south of Haifa, will take their oldest daughter Eva to an induction center and, like all the other proud parents, will watch her get on the bus to commence two years of army service. Eva is headed for a squad commanders' course, somewhere in the south. The Ben Siras realize that, during her service, Eva is in for some astonished questioning; after all, the smiling, quiet young woman with the long black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes looks a little different from the average Israeli female conscript. Eva was born in Alaska to a Yupik Eskimo mother and a Cherokee Native American father. A check of the archives of the army's Bamahane magazine, which for years has tried to track soldiers who come to Israel from remote places, indicates that she is evidently the Israel Defense Forces' first Eskimo soldier.
One of these soldiers is Vun Zon, a new recruit who came to Israel all the way from China. Zon arrived to Israel in 2007, after finding out his grandfather was half-Jewish. When asked about Zon, his commanders spoke with great admiration. “To tell you the truth, it’s the first time we ever commanded a Chinese soldier, and it was definitely a great experience,” said one commander. “His joy of life and sheer happiness is unlike anything we had ever seen in a soldier. He understands Hebrew perfectly now, and has really made big progress integrating into Israeli society.”
3) Maikel Nabil Sanad Maikel Nabil Sanad is among the "Facebook" revolutionaries in Egypt. Though he's been jailed for his activities, he gets less attention that others - I suspect because he's unapologetically pro-Israel. Jackson Diehl had a great profile of Sanad yesterday:
For writing this, Nabil was arrested, hauled before a special military court and summarily sentenced to three years in prison, for “insulting the armed forces.” At first, few Egyptians supported him: Like the Obama administration, they believed that the Supreme Military Council that replaced Mubarak was committed to establishing a democracy and yielding to civilians. Moreover, Nabil was an outlier, even among Egypt’s secular democrats. He is not just of Coptic Christian origin but an avowed atheist; not just anti-military, but a conscientious objector who refused to serve; not just pro-Western, but pro-Israel — a stance than almost no one in Egypt dares to espouse. “There are still 20 beliefs in Egypt that are considered crimes,” Nabil told me. When I asked how many of them he held, he grinned: “Probably the majority of them.”
Politically, you and I have much in common, as we both lie firmly on Israel's left. (In the religious-Zionist circles in which I run, that makes me a bit of an oddball.) I, like you, have significant moral and political misgivings about the occupation, which we both understand to be an existential threat to Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state. I agree that American and Israeli Zionism require some important new conversations that will expand the range of what is currently being said. More, I thought it important for Zionists to hear directly from Palestinians in more robust ways than television sound bites allow. But Open Zion quickly staked out its territory in the troubling location where left-wing Zionism drifts into post-Zionism which drifts into anti-Zionism. Perhaps that is the wave of the future—the result, as you suggest, of young American Jews' discovering real or imagined contradictions between liberalism and Zionism. You offered that generation an opportunity to debate the questions concerning them: Must we leave Zionism completely, or can we remain ambivalent Zionists even today? Should we boycott some, all, or none of Israel? But if those are the questions of central concern to tomorrow's leadership, the Jewish people is in significant self-induced trouble. If those are the questions of great concern to today's young Jews, I can only stake my own territory elsewhere.
In related news, despite the media blitz Beinart's "The Crisis of Zionism" still has not achieved the status Beinart likely hoped for.
There is one and only one effective answer to terror
Ten years ago on Thursday (on the Gregorian calendar, after more than 100 Israelis had been murdered by 'Palestinian' terrorists in the space of a month, the IDF gave the only effective response to 'Palestinian' terror: It used force against the terrorists in Operation Defensive Shield.
Ten years ago on Thursday, after terrorists killed more than 100 civilians in one month, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield, and sent its soldiers deep into West Bank cities and towns.
Palestinian gunmen set up ambushes in residential areas.
They killed 30 IDF soldiers, and wounded 127.
But Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations suffered greater casualties in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Kalkilya, Hebron and Tulkarm. The offensive began a turn-around that eventually succeeded in ending the second intifada’s deadliest wave of suicide terrorism.
“Unfortunately, this operation proved that the only way to stop terrorism is with force,” Rami Igra, a former senior Mossad official, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“Before the operation, there was an explosion in Israel often. Afterward, it came to a stop,” he said.
Igra stressed that the construction of the West Bank security barrier, and the intelligence effort that came after the offensive, were as pivotal in ending suicide bomb attacks as Defensive Shield.
Ultimately, he argued, the offensive was a “clear slap to all those on the Israeli Left who believe in diplomatic means. More than anything, this symbolizes the differences in approach between us and the Palestinians.”
The cultural differences with radical Islamist elements are enormous, and the threat can only be dealt with using force, Igra said.
While Israel believes that it is possible to reach compromises, “de facto, this isn’t true from a Palestinian perspective,” he added.
Israel is forced to maneuver in a “game of violence, though this is not our wish,” he continued.
Operation Defense Shield succeeded in stemming terrorism from the West Bank, but it did not convince Palestinians to abandon the path of war and the notion that they can one day destroy Israel, Igra said, adding, “This has been a 100-year-old struggle.”
There's a lesson there not only for Israel's Left, buy also for the Left generally. The only effective answer to terrorism is force. It may be force in combination with other tactics, but without force, one cannot fight terror and without the deterrent threat of force once cannot control it once it is defeated.
In March, Israel's Supreme Court suggested to 'Israeli Arab' filmmaker and actor Mohamed Bakri that he apologize to five IDF soldiers who had sued him for libel due to the way that the IDF was depicted in the 2003 film Jenin, Jenin.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the film was 'not defamatory' to the five soldiers.
Ofer Ben-Natan, Doron Keidar, Nir Oshri, Adam Arbiv and Yonatan Van-Kaspel originally sued Israeli Arab actor and director Muhammad Bakri in 2003 for producing the film Jenin, Jenin, and the theaters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for screening them, even though the film had been banned at the time by the state censor.
All of the five soldiers fought in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
The five filed an appeal to the Supreme Court after the Petah Tikva District Court dismissed their libel suit against Bakri.
...
The five soldiers' lawsuit included 13 incidents it describes as libel, including a section of the film that had been edited to give the impression that a bulldozer had run over a group of Palestinians lying on the ground.
In dismissing the suit, the judges ruled that even though Bakri's film was "full of things that are not true" and even though it was hurtful to the feelings of the five soldiers, there was no provision under the law for them to bring a civil claim against Bakri because the film made reference to the IDF's operations in Jenin as a whole and not to any specific soldier.
"Attributing acts such as those described in the film to IDF soldiers are some of the worst accusations that can be thrown at someone. It puts them on a par with the very worst war criminals and the very worst murderers. The allegations in the film are very severe and cannot be underestimated," wrote Judges Miriam Naor, Yitzhak Amit and Yoram Danziger.
"In the final analysis, it is my belief that a reasonable person viewing the film would not recognize any slander against any single soldier belonging to the group of soldiers fighting in Jenin."
So if the IDF sues, will they find for the IDF? Or will they say that the IDF has no standing to sue? Or will they say that the film has to have injured specific IDF soldiers?
Supreme Court suggests Arab filmmaker who libeled IDF reservists apologize
Mohammad Bakri made the movie Jenin, Jenin. Here's a review of that film that was done by CAMERA in which the film was compared with Pierre Rechov's Road to Jenin. Bakri's film (which is available on the Internet) is a blood libel, which depicted IDF soldiers as genocidal murderers of hundreds of 'Palestinians.' In fact, during the IDF's action in Jenin (which shut down the terror organizations), 52 'Palestinians' were killed, only 14 of whom were civilians. Twenty-three IDF soldiers were sacrificed to keep down the 'Palestinian' casualty total. In 2007, Bakri was sued for libel by five IDF soldiers who served in Jenin.
In the lower court, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Michal Nadav found that although the film was libelous, the soldiers were a non-specific public, and only the attorney general could take action against Bakri. While the attorney general refused to do so, he joined the reservists' civil action.
On Monday, the reservists' appeal was heard before the Supreme Court. Incredibly, the Justice hearing the case, suggested that the filmmaker apologize and say that the film was not a documentary. The reservists' attorney refused to accept any apology without compensation, and then there was this scene before the court.
A confrontation broke out between Israeli Arab director Mohammad Bakri, who is being sued for libel for making the film "Jenin, Jenin," and prosecution laweyer Yisrael Caspi, who represents IDF soldiers. Caspi slammed Bakri during a hearing, saying that he "serves the enemy, and received money from the enemy." In response, Bakri called Caspi and his clients "stray dogs." Court security had to hold them back to prevent a violent fight from breaking out between them.
I hope this guy gets such a heavy fine that he's left penniless. Unfortunately, that seems very unlikely to happen.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
