CAFI Newsletter #84
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Fri, 24 May 2002 17:00:47 -0400
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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER #84 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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A PALESTINIAN STATE ?
Is It Inevitable? - Or Is It A Disastrous Idea?
http://christianactionforisrael.org/palstate.html
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Friday, May 24, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. CLOSE CALL
2. "THE NAKED TRUTH"
3. THE LESSON OF AL-HUDAYBIYAH
4. THE BLAMING OF ISRAEL FROM WITHIN
5. ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION
6. QUOTES TO NOTE
7. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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1. CLOSE CALL
Israel narrowly avoids the worst attack yet.
By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz May 23, 2002
A terrorist attack potentially as destructive as
September 11 was averted Thursday when an explosive
device destroyed the cabin of a fuel truck as it was
being filled with diesel at Israel's largest fuel depot,
Pi Glilot, in Herzliya. Firemen on site managed to
extinguish the fire within minutes, but the target was
clearly the flammable fuels stored at the facility.
Later, police sappers discovered a second bomb that
failed to explode attached to the vehicle's chassis.
Apparently detonated by a cellular phone, the bombs
were intended to cause the explosive destruction of the
entire depot, killing anyone in the area, and raining
death onto the nearby residential areas of Herzliya
and northern Tel Aviv. It would have been, security
officials said, "a strategic event."
That expression means that, had it been successful,
the fuel-depot attack would have been several orders
of magnitude more serious than even the worst of the
recent suicide bombings. Ninety percent of the people
in proximity to the facility, including motorists on
the major highways passing nearby, would have been
killed immediately, and 50 percent of the residents of
the neighboring residential areas would have died in the
ensuing fires or from the poisoned air that would have
blanketed the area. Ehud Yatom, a former General Security
Services officer and one-time nominee to head the prime
minister's antiterrorism task force, commented that a
successful attack on the installation could have caused
a chain reaction culminating in a full-scale regional war.
Therefore, Yatom said, "Israel must work together with
the United States in preparing its reaction, as the
ramifications are world-wide." Former minister of national
infrastructures, Avigdor Lieberman, had noted and warned
of the possibility of a disaster such as the one that was
avoided Thursday morning during his tenure in the government.
"It is clearly a tempting target for hostile elements,"
Lieberman said on Israel Radio. The Israeli intelligence
community has been warning of a "massive attack" against
strategic targets over the last few months. A successful
attack on the Pi Glilot facility would definitely have
fit that description.
While almost all players on the Israeli political stage
appear to be in agreement that a successful attack on a
target like the fuel depot would lead to, even demand,
massive Israeli retaliation, a massive Israeli
retaliation does not appear to be in the offing just yet.
It is clear that such a response at this point would be
met with even less sympathy from the world community than
Operation Defensive Shield was following a month of daily
suicide bombings, even though the type of attack attempted
today was a far greater strategic threat to the Jewish
state. It remains an open question, of course, if a
successful attack on the fuel depot would have led to
a United Nations condemnation of the PLO or of Israel.
Some in Israel, however, are insisting that the failed
Pi Glilot attack should be treated just as seriously as
if it had been successful. "In the Middle East," the head
of the Israeli Air Force commented, in another context,
"if you fail to retaliate, it is not seen as goodwill,
but as weakness." Referring specifically to Thursday's
attack, Ehud Yatom told Israel Radio, "A near-miss is
just as serious as a successful attack…" Failing to
retaliate immediately, he said, would be a "clear signal
of weakness to the terrorists, and it will increase their
motivation to employ non-conventional weapons."
Americans with a little bit of historical knowledge can
probably appreciate those sentiments. One wonders what
might have happened — or rather, what might not have
happened — in 2001 had the United States treated the
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which was meant
to bring at least one tower crashing down, as if it had
done so and gone after terrorist infrastructures the
world over in the 1990s. More importantly, today, would
the Bush administration support an Israeli preemptive
strike to prevent the tragedy yet to come?
— Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor at
www.IsraelNationalNews.com. He writes from Israel.
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2. "THE NAKED TRUTH"
Ellen W. Horowitz 24 May 2002
"Lots of children grow up as orphans."
What a warm, nurturing thing for a mother to say.
The Palestinian mother who came up with that one got
caught before she could trigger her suicide belt.
Another female bomber met with success (sic!) in
Jerusalem, when she detonated what appeared to be her
pregnant stomach. We have indeed entered another phase
of what Saddam Hussein called, "The Mother of All Battles"
or the "War of the Wombs" (I coined that one).
In one corner we have the Palestinian Mother who
lovingly straps TNT to her ten year old son, while
her six year old sits and plays with grenades instead
of Legos. Meanwhile, her four year old daughter
robotically and methodically snaps the heads and
limbs off of Barbie dolls.
In the other corner, we have a Jewish mother in
Jerusalem. She is teaching her three year old to
say a morning prayer, thanking G-d for giving him life.
At the same time, she is packing a care-package for
her son in the army (with enough clean socks and
brownies to keep him and his entire battalion happy for
a week). Her daughter isn´t home, because she´s a
national service volunteer at the hospital,
comforting victims of the latest terrorist outrage.
Does something seem a little off here?
Are your insides churning a bit?
You don´t have to be an anthropologist to know that
civilization´s consistent prioritization of the life
of women and children during times of crisis has to
do with averting an existential threat to the
continuance of mankind. In other words, children
represent the future and women represent a source of
life. My husband had a friend who once discovered two
grenades hidden inside the bra of an Arab woman. I guess
this guy had a finely attuned sense of female anatomy.
So, when faced with a choice of either a military prison
sentence for sexual impropriety or death, he quickly
stripped off the veils off this devout, modest young
woman and exposed her deadly secrets. It seems that
even the very religious among us will have to open their
eyes and take a good look around them. In light of the
current situation, I assume that´s it´s one hundred
percent permissible for a young Charedi woman to run
up to a police officer, point out an Arab and scream,
"Is that a gun is his pocket or is he just happy
to see me?"
Are you embarrassed yet?
There is another way. We can rid our streets of the
problem. Then, the world will call us Nazis, accuse
of apartheid, fascism etc., etc…. Boy, do we Jews hate
to be called "Nazis". Heck we´d rather die than be
called that word. Well, in case you haven´t heard,
they´re already calling us all of those nasty terms.
Once our security services have to start yelling,
"drop your jeans" at every suspicious Arab male in
the streets, and those ravenous media monsters start
snapping pictures, you can bet that the name "Nazi"
will stick.
We could sit on the problem, negotiate and mull it
over a bit, or come up with some temporary fix. Yet,
what happens when the enemy whips out even bigger
phallus symbols equipped with bio-chemical or
nuclear warheads?
You can try to get past this one with every
psychological, sociological or philosophical
rationalization that´s ever been written, but trust
me, no matter how many times you attempt to work it
through, you can´t. What we are dealing with here is
absolute, unadulterated evil. We´re talking about
something so purely profane that the Islamic nations
couldn´t even agree to slightly dilute the concept and
come up with a lukewarm condemnation of suicide missions.
That’s because they worship death.
When countries and nationalities start corrupting
sacred ideas like the purpose of creation, and
advocating the use of their own organs for unproductive
or destructive purposes, then the world is on the brink.
Suicidal maniacs should not be negotiated with or
allowed to remain in our midst. They need to be sent
far, far away to "Never, Never Again Land". In the
meantime, the rest of us had better wake up and
grow up. And we´d better do it quickly.
Ellen lives in the Golan Heights with her husband
and six children. She is a painter, writer and
political activist.
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3. THE LESSON OF AL-HUDAYBIYAH
By Joseph Farah - WorldNetDaily.com May 23, 2002
President Bush was quick to praise Yasser Arafat's
pledges of reforms and elections to the Palestinian
Legislative Council.
My guess is that the administration didn't actually
read a translation of Arafat's long-winded speech.
Yes, Arafat took "full responsibility" for any mistakes
he has made.
Yes, he called for political reforms by his
Palestinian Authority.
Yes, he pledged to hold new elections.
Yes, he even held out the possibility of establishing
peace with Israel.
But here's the rest of the story. Let me explain why all
that is meaningless in the context of Arafat's address.
The "peace" Arafat discussed with his people was only
discussed as a "strategic option." Let me explain what
he means about "peace" with Israel and what he has
always meant when he uses this term.
Arafat cited as his model for that "peace" – as he
has so often throughout his bloody career – the treaty
signed by Mohammed with the Quraish tribe in Mecca in
the 7th century at Hudaybiyah.
"Let us remember the Hudaybiyah Conciliation Accord
out of our concern for the national and pan-international
solidarity with your people and your cause," Arafat
told the group May 15.
Perhaps you've never heard of Hudaybiyah. But if you
don't understand Arafat's reference to it, you cannot
grasp the Islamic principle he is promoting in his
most recent double-talk.
Hudaybiyah is a small oasis between Mecca and Medina
where Mohammed fought a battle in the early years of
Islam. When he saw he was fighting a losing battle,
Mohammed signed a strategic 10-year peace agreement
with the Quraish tribe who lived in Mecca. Two years
later, when his forces were stronger and the Meccans
were living securely and off their guard, Mohammed
marched into the city and captured it.
There is a principle in Islam known as Takiya, the
right to fake peace when you are weak for the
purposes of defeating your enemy when you are stronger.
This is the only principle at work in Arafat's
notions of "peace." It has always been the only
principle at work in his notions of "peace."
Arafat has cited Hudaybiyah over and over again as
the model for his special brand of false peace.
On April 18, 1998, during an interview on Egyptian
television, Arafat was asked about his participation
in the Oslo Accords – the very basis of all
negotiations between Israelis and Arafat since
1993. He cited Hudaybiyah.
Shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords in
1993, Arafat gave a speech in English in South
Africa. He cited Hudaybiyah. You can hear this
speech for yourself in a video documentary sold
exclusively through WorldNetDaily's online store.
This is the sick, twisted Arabic joke that the
western world simply doesn't get.
Arafat laid it out clearly May 15 for anyone who
wanted to bother translating his Arabic:
"The Palestinian public opinion and the Arab public
opinion have reached the conclusion that these
operations (terrorism) do not serve our goals, and
only incites numerous large sectors of the
international community against the United States.
... These operations are causing a controversy. I
call on your respected council to talk over this
issue, which is now controversial in our
Palestinian and Arab arenas."
And here's the punch line:
"Let us remember the truce of al-Hudaybiyah."
"What we want is true freedom and full independence
in the independent state of Palestine, with holy
Jerusalem as its capital, whether they like it or
not," he laughed. "Those who do not like it,
they can go and drink from the Dead Sea."
Some from the council corrected Arafat:
"From the Gaza Sea."
"No, it is more bitter in the Dead Sea," he joked.
After 40 years of Arafat, you would think the world
would catch on to his antics. I'm sorry to say the
United States is among those still being hoodwinked
by his strategic deception.
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4. THE BLAMING OF ISRAEL FROM WITHIN
Tom Gross - Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2002
The past 19 months of orchestrated Palestinian
violence against civilians, coupled with the incitement
to kill Jews that permeates the official Palestinian
media, have led some of Israel's "new historians" to
take a less indulgent view of Yasser Arafat and his
Palestinian Authority.
For some years now, the new historians have attempted
to rewrite Israeli history to show that at almost every
stage the Zionist movement was at fault as much as, if
not more than, other parties, such as Arab despots and
intransigent Palestinian nationalists. This argument is
not so easy to make now. Prof. Benny Morris, one of the
leaders of the new-historian group, recently wrote that
he now feels "like one of those western fellow travelers
rudely awakened by the trundle of Russian tanks
crashing through Budapest in 1956."
Mr. Segev, a columnist for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading
liberal newspaper, is perhaps the foremost journalist
among the new historians--or "post-Zionists," as many of
this clique have styled themselves. "Elvis in Jerusalem"
Metropolitan, 167 pages, $23), begins by describing how
the communal, socialist ideals of Israel's Zionist
pioneers have given way to an American-style society
where trips to McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are
commonplace. Mr. Segev welcomes this dilution of
national identity, pointing to…the growth of cable
television to the spread of the Internet. He believes
the Americanization that has taken place in the past
decade has had an extraordinarily beneficial effect
on Israeli society, offering not only "normalization"
but increased tolerance, individualism and
liberalism on an American-style model.
Naturally, he forgets to mention the many ways in
which Israel has been ahead of Western societies with
liberal breakthroughs, from the election of a female
prime minister some three decades ago to the awarding
of spousal benefits to the partners of homosexual
soldiers long before countries like Britain and
America would contemplate even allowing openly
practicing gays in their military.
It turns out, however, that "Elvis in Jerusalem" is
less a series of anecdotes about Israel's Americanization
than another critique of Israel and Israelis in general.
Mr. Segev writes of Israeli "war crimes," repeatedly
refers to "the Zionist enterprise," as if the state of
Israel might be only an experiment, and slips in many
dubious claims, such as that in Israel today "once
again it is acceptable to hate the Palestinians openly."
I can only comment that, however much Israelis may
fear Mr. Arafat and his suicide bombers, in my many
years of living in Israel I have rarely heard an
Israeli express hatred for the Palestinians, either
openly or in private. This despite the fact that
unbridled expressions of hatred from the Palestinian
side, toward Jews, are all too frequent. Unsurprisingly,
Mr. Segev has next to nothing to say about this
Palestinian hatred, let alone about the outrages of
those engaged in "the Palestinian enterprise."
Instead, at times he seems to side with the most
hardline PLO positions, for example calling Ehud
Barak's sweeping concessions at Camp David
"a peace of surrender" for the Palestinians.
The movement now known as post-Zionism gained
considerable public attention in the 1990s, thanks
to the efforts of a small group of academics and
journalists like Mr. Segev and the eagerness of
Israel's many enemies abroad to give prominence to
their works. In fact, as Mr. Segev notes, it is not
new. In the 1920s the Tel Aviv poet Uriel Halper
infamously declared: "I'm not Jewish." Halper and
his colleagues--as Mr. Segev explains--believed that
Muslims, Druze and Christians could be members of the
Hebrew nation. And in 1985, Ha'aretz's chief editor,
Gershon Schocken, called on Israel to encourage mixed
marriages between Jews and Arabs to create
"a true Israeli nation."…
The generation of revisionist historians that came
to prominence in the 1990s believed that they were
performing a valuable service by making Israel even
more self-critical than it already was. Their own
critics, on the other hand, believed that the
post-Zionist campaign was dangerous, aiming to bring
about what the enemies of Israel have so far been
unable to do by force: to destroy the Jewish state
spiritually from within, under the banner of liberalism.
Even if Mr. Segev sympathizes with the aspirations
of the post-Zionists, there are moments in his book
when he appears to display the kind of pride
associated with more traditional Israelis. At one
point he calls Israel "one of the great success
stories of the twentieth century," and he acknowledges
that, unlike the British who previously governed
Jerusalem, Israelis "have nowhere else to go."
He also recognizes at the end of his book that,
thanks to a new wave of Palestinian terror that has
"pushed Israelis back into the Zionist womb," the age
of post-Zionism seems to be over, at least for now.
He quotes Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister,
saying that Israel has moved on to an age of
"post-post-Zionism." Calling this "a retreat into
the past," Mr. Segev adds that "regrettably, Netanyahu
may be right." Most Israelis, by contrast, wanting
their country to survive as a Jewish state, may
not regret this at all.
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5. ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION
By Eric Hoffer (LA Times 5/26/68) YES... 1968
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to
other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations
drive out thousands, even millions of people and there
is no refugee problem. Russian did it, Poland and
Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million
Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia
threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one
says a word about refugees. But in the case of
Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal
refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take
back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the
displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than
any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when
victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms.
But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real
Christians in this world. Other nations when they
are defeated survive and recover but should Israel
be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser
triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off
the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to
save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any
government, including our own, is worth the paper
it is written on.
There is a cry of outrage all over the world when
people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are
executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered
Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who
are ready to break of diplomatic relations with
America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not
let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews.
They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings,
and serviced his troop trains to Norway. The Jews
are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be
solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and
unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than
Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine
what would have happened last summer had the Arabs
and their Russian backers won the war to realize
how vital the survival of Israel is to America and
the West in general. I have a premonition that will
not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go
with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust
will be upon us.
Eric Hoffer 1968
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6. QUOTES TO NOTE
“If you’re raising money [for a terrorist organization],
this [Canada] is the place to do it. You put all that
in jeopardy by walking in to a supermarket with a
suicide bomb. We know that there is substantial
terrorist presence in Canada, and I think that
[terrorists] are going to be very reluctant to take
away the one place where they have, in some ways,
been left to themselves.”
—Reid Morden, a former CSIS director, said terrorist
organizations operating in Canada would likely avoid
attacking local targets because the groups quietly
benefit from lax Canadian laws (National Post, May 21)
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WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH wakes up in the morning, his
first thoughts are not about Europe. America in the
George W. Bush era sees Europe a bit like CANADA.
It is mostly friendly, occasionally annoying and
seldom worth worrying about. When important
decisions are made or large initiatives carried out,
Europe is to be politely consulted but rarely given
a big role and never a veto. In fact,
"the Canadization of Europe" is a phrase that pops
up sporadically these days.
Fred Barnes in the May 21, 2002 London Times
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7. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
STOP YOUR FOOLISH IMAGININGS
The politician will welcome the new Arab state with
warm words and praise the two sides for their fortitude.
He will stir his audience to tears, mentioning the
names of Arab and Jewish victims of what he will call
"the cycle of violence." He will invoke Biblical
images of the end of days. He will quote, of course,
from the Bible and from the Quran.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/may02/imagings.html
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
But the usual inference - that Palestinians have
suffered the most because they've been killed in
greater numbers - misses the story. If there is a
"moral ratio" to accompany the "kill ratio," then
surely there can be no better indicator of it than
the proportional number of women, children, and the
elderly killed on both sides. And here the brunt of
the suffering has very lopsidedly been borne by Israelis.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/may02/lambs.html
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For more great reading, visit our new EDITORIAL ARCHIVE
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Become a WITNESS TO THE NATIONS and let them know what
great things our Lord is doing for Israel and what great
things He will continue to do for her, His firstborn.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/witness/home1.html
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