CAFI Newsletter #89
cafi-list@christianactionforisrael.org
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Fri, 21 Jun 2002 18:19:31 -0400
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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER #89 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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Friday, June 21, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. "PRIDE" OF SUICIDE ATTACKER'S MOTHER
2. NO STATE FOR TERROR
3. THE TEN BEST REASONS WHY ARIK'S
"FENCE" WILL NOT WORK
4. THE WAR ON NON-COMBATANTS:
TARGETING TODDLERS
5. QUOTES TO NOTE
6. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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1. 'PRIDE' OF SUICIDE ATTACKER'S MOTHER
By Orla Guerin - BBC Middle East correspondent
In Gaza, the mother of a Palestinian suicide
attacker who killed two Israelis before being
shot dead has spoken of her feelings about her
son's actions.
A video released by Hamas shows a proud mother
taking up arms beside her favourite son.
We believe our sons go to heaven when they are
martyred... when [Jewish] sons die they go to hell
Naima al-Obeid was saying goodbye to her
23-year-old Mahmoud, a college student on his
way to carry out a suicide attack.
"God willing you will succeed," she says.
"May every bullet hit its target, and may God
give you martyrdom. This is the best day of my life."
Mahmoud says: "Thank you for raising me."
Naima got her wish.
Mahmoud was shot dead attacking the Jewish
settlement of Dugit in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the ambush.
Their deaths are being celebrated near Mahmoud's home.
We found crowds coming to the mourning tent -
and not just because of him.
People here aren't just remembering Mahmoud -
they are honouring his mother.
She has become a heroine, being talked about
on the streets, praised in the local papers.
Some Palestinians are taking a great deal of
pride in a mother who saw her son go to kill
and die without shedding a tear.
They are already saying she will inspire other
women to do the same.
Heaven and hell
In her home, in Gaza, she showed me pictures of
the son she calls "my heart".
She had no sympathy for the dead Israelis, no
regrets over the loss of her own son.
"Nobody wants their son to be killed. I always
wanted him to have a good life.
"But our land is occupied by the Israelis. We're
sacrificing our sons to get our freedom," she told me.
I asked her if it mattered whether her son
killed women and children.
"The women and children are also Jews," she said,
"They're all the same for me.
"And I want to tell Jewish mothers - take your
children and run from here because you will never
be safe. We believe our sons go to heaven when
they are martyred. When your sons die they go to hell."
Naima is surrounded by well-wishers, no one asking
why she gave her son a licence to kill.
She has nine more children, whom, she says, all
have a duty to fight the Israeli occupation.
=======
"They're telling us we are -- we have no
feelings for our children? We're not human
beings? We're not parents? We're not mothers
or fathers? This is just incredible. I sometimes
say I don't want to sink to the level of responding,
or proving I'm human. I mean, even animals have
feelings for their children."
Palestinian spokeswoman, Hanan Ashrawi
("60 Minutes," October 24, 2000)
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2. NO STATE FOR TERROR
June 21, 2002 -- New York Post
President Bush was scheduled to deliver a major
speech yesterday outlining his vision for the
Middle East, including support for some "interim"
Palestinian state.
He didn't.
And good thing, too.
"It's obvious [this] is not the right time," his
spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Wednesday. "It's
hard to get people to focus on peace today when
they're still suffering from the consequences of
terrorism as we speak."
"We're not going to be able to do [the speech]
right now," Secretary of State Colin Powell
reportedly told foreign leaders yesterday.
"There [are] people getting blown up. You can
understand that with the kind of harm that the
Israelis are suffering right now the environment
is not receptive . . . to a different way forward."
Damn straight, this is not the right time.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian terrorist killed 18
people in a Jerusalem bombing. Another attack
Wednesday left seven more dead. Yesterday, a
Palestinian gunmen killed four more Israelis.
How on Earth could Bush hand Palestinians a
state after that?
But the reason to put off the speech is not, as
some Bush folks implied, that the bombings have
temporarily closed Israeli minds to a "way forward."
After all, who could have blamed Israelis for being
outraged, had Bush tried to ram Palestinian
statehood down their throats - even as Israelis
were being butchered in their streets by
Palestinian bombers?
The "obvious" - and more important - reason for
Bush to hold off on his call for statehood is that
appeasing the terrorists, handing them such a
prize in the hope that they'll halt their attacks,
undermines Bush's own war on terror.
Indeed, if Osama bin Laden's gang sees that
bombings can gain concessions for the Palestinians,
it won't be long before they'll be launching attacks
in Times Square.
Still, Bush's delay, and reports that he may set
stiff conditions for statehood, could be useful.
By now, Arabs know that a new nation for Palestinians
- with American and even Israeli acquiescence
- is a very real possibility.
All the Palestinians have to do is end their
war of terror.
Which, of course, they'll never do.
But if Bush wants to call their bluff - and throw
a bone to his friends in the Arab leadership
- little's the harm.
If, on the other hand, he chooses appeasement,
he'll be jeopardizing not only Israelis - but,
soon enough, Americans.
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3. THE TEN BEST REASONS WHY ARIK'S
"FENCE" WILL NOT WORK
1. Sharon is Trying to Resolve the Problems of
the Barbarians with technology from the second century
AD which failed to work even back then. Just ask the
Chinese and the Romans, and see how well their
walls worked. Did they keep out the barbarians?
2. You can shoot mortars and missiles over the
fence. Sharon is not planning to build a fence that
is 17 miles high.
3. You can dig under any fence.
4. You can sail from Gaza around any fence.
5. You can blow holes in any fence.
6. The fence is not fencing in the Palestinians in
small terror enclaves, it is fencing them OUT of
Israel by fencing the Jews IN, by putting the JEWS
inside cages! In other words it is a form of
putting the Jews under siege, not the Palestinians.
7. The fence serves as marker, precedent, and
"focal point" in the sense of Schelling, in
demarcating the Green Line as the borders of some
Palestinian state.
8. The delusion that Israel can just forget about
whatever happens on the other side of the fence
and go about its business means that the area
beyond it will be filled sooner or later with
Iraqi, Iranian, self-hating New York Jewish Marxists,
and other "volunteers" fighting with the Palestinians.
It will be an ideal terror training area that will make
the mountains of Afghanistan look like the Catskills.
9. It is yet another excuse for Israel's politicians
to pretend the country is not at war.
It is make-pretend "action" that serves as figleaf
for the total inaction of the Israeli government.
10. It abandons the Jews living beyond the Green
Line and signals that Israel considers them legitimate
targets for terror. It sacrifices those Jews to
the Oslo pagan goddess.
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4. THE WAR ON NON-COMBATANTS: TARGETING TODDLERS
Sylvana Foa - The Village Voice, June 2002
Lately it has become ever so politically correct
to describe Israel as a land of brutal murderers.
The ayatollahs of political correctness feed you
numbers to back it up—1500 Palestinians but only
500 Israelis killed in the last 20 months, they snigger.
It's time we took a closer look at those casualty
figures. The International Policy Institute for
Counter-Terrorism (ICT) is doing just that. ICT,
at the prestigious Interdisciplinary Center in
Herzliya, is a think tank developing public-policy
solutions to international terrorism.
"According to data from Palestinian sources,
55 percent of the Palestinian dead were combatants,"
said Don Radlauer, an ex-New Yorker, who is building
a casualty database at ICT. "And we rated all kids
under 13 as non-combatants, even if they were
armed when they were killed."
On the Israeli side, statistics show that
only 25 percent of the dead were combatants.
The data on the number of women killed is even
more telling. Radlauer said the findings "were
not what we were expecting."
"Less than 5 percent of all Palestinian
casualties to date were female," he said, "while
30 percent of Israeli casualties were women."
"Among the non-combatants killed, and again
relying on Palestinian reports, we found that
7 percent were Palestinian women," he said.
"In contrast, 37 percent of the Israeli non-combatant
dead were women."
Looking at solid numbers, the Palestinians
report a total of 66 women killed as of the end
of April. In the same period, 135 Israeli women died,
all but three non-combatants. "But if you only
look at non-combatants, excluding female suicide
bombers and women killed in bomb factory 'work
accidents,' etc., the number drops to 40
Palestinian women killed," Radlauer said. "Do the
math—132 Israeli female civilians compared with
40 Palestinian women," he said. "That's more than
three Israeli women killed for every one Palestinian."
"Palestinian data on fatalities do not bear
out the claim that Israel is attacking a civilian
population in their homes," said Radlauer.
"The Palestinian fatalities are an engineered tragedy,"
he added. "If I am angry at anything it is that the
Palestinian leadership is willing to put so many of
their own kids in harm's way just to gain
propaganda points."
Suicide bombings are the Palestinians' weapon
of choice, and they've staged well over 100 of
them since the Intifada began in September 2000.
The scene is almost always the same after some
pathetic Palestinian kid is cajoled into blowing
himself up in the biggest crowd of Israelis he can find.
"The first thing that hits you is the strong
smell. It's the smell of burning hair," said Achy
Sheffer, 42, a volunteer medic with the First
Responder corps, a unit of Magen David Adom,
Israel's answer to the Red Cross. "There's
always lots of blood everywhere," he said. "Hands,
legs, and arms, and sometimes heads, are
scattered on the ground. I try not to see what
I don't have to see."
"And there are always nails," Achy said.
"One woman I treated had over 40 nails in her legs
and arms—you don't see them, they just go inside."
"If the attack was a bad one, it's eerily quiet.
Like at the Passover seder massacre in Netanya
[where 29 people were killed and 140 were injured],"
he said. "It was very bad and it was very quiet. No
one was screaming." Often the silence is broken by
the ringing of the victims' mobile phones scattered
on the ground. Desperate parents trying to find
their kids, or kids trying to find their parents.
"The worst for me was the Dolphinarium," said
Achy, who responds to an average of 43 emergencies
each month. "I arrived on the scene early. The first
thing I saw was a pile of dead, pretty teenage
girls—10 to 12 bodies, literally packed one on
top of the other."
The massacre at the discotheque in the seaside
Dolphinarium happened just a year ago. Twenty-one
young people, mostly teenage girls, were killed
and another 83 injured. There's a little memorial
on the site; it is always covered with fresh
flowers. "One girl I cannot forget lost an eye.
She had fractured legs and one arm was crushed,"
said Achy. "I don't know if they saved her arm,
because it was very bad.
The explosion threw her about 60 feet."
"I didn't sleep for two weeks after the
Dolphinarium," he said. "I just sat at home
writing poems and crying."
Shiran Cohen is only 11 years old but she
already knows how to spot a suicide bomber. Shiran
was at a shopping mall in Petach Tikvah, seven
miles east of Tel Aviv, when the latest suicide
bomber detonated a device that spewed nails and
bolts across a veranda filled with toddlers in
their strollers. It was carnage.
"I saw him drive his motorbike between the
tables," Shiran said from her hospital bed.
"I just knew what he was and I told Mama to look.
She didn't understand and started scolding him
for driving on the pedestrian mall. Then he
exploded. It happened so fast." Shiran is among
the 50 injured. In a room nearby, a two-year-old
with serious head wounds is fighting for her life.
The baby's mother coos at her to move her fingers
and the tiny little hands tremble.
So far, there are two dead, including
18-month-old Sinai Kenaan, who was sitting in
her stroller at the terrorist's well-chosen
target—an ice cream parlor. Ice cream parlor?
How low can you go? Supermarkets, cafés, pool halls,
and hotel dining rooms give suicide bombers a
wide array of ages to maim and kill. But an ice
cream parlor on a warm evening is sure to be
packed with little kids.
Personally, I hate terrorists, particularly
the ones who target toddlers. But then, I'm a
New Yorker and I've always prided myself on
being politically incorrect.
Shiran's father, Samir, is doing a lot of
hospital hopping. His wife, Dalia, is in a
different hospital with wounds to her face and
total hearing loss. "She can't close her mouth
and just cries and cries," said Samir, a taxi
driver. "She keeps talking about seeing a baby's
skull come off and her brains pouring out."
Shiran's older sister Berta is in yet another
hospital. The blast sent her flying and she
smashed to the ground on her stomach. "She is
eight months pregnant," said Samir. "The doctors
aren't sure about the baby—they can't find a heartbeat."
"And people talk about an overuse of force by
Israel," scoffed Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Rafowicz,
a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. "When you
attach 15 kilos of explosives to a man with a brain
it becomes an extraordinarily lethal weapon, much
more lethal that anything we use. That man can wait
around for 20 to 30 minutes just to choose the
right moment to kill as many people as possible."
"Suicide bombing is perceived as the weapon of
the weak, but it is the most lethal weapon in the
conflict," he said.
"Suicide bombings should be classified as
'nonconventional warfare.' "
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5. QUOTES TO NOTE
"My only advice to Ted Turner is if people
assume you are stupid, it is just best to keep
your mouth shut rather than open your mouth and
[have everyone be sure]."
-- Israeli government spokesman Daniel Seaman,
responding to Turner's remarks that the Israelis
and Palestinians are both terrorizing each other.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY
Copyright 1983 by Bob Dylan Album: Infidels
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.
He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.
What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.
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"We have an effective weapon in our hands
and the whole world is trying to take it
away from us; this kind of reaction shows
it to be the most effective way."
Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza,
defending the use of suicide bombers.
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6. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES ON OUR SITE
A GUARANTEE OF MORE VIOLENCE
This rewarding of terrorism is not just a moral
scandal. It is disastrous diplomacy. What does this
provisional state say to the Palestinians? You can
reject the state you were offered two years ago,
start a war, murder daily, and then be re-offered
a state--this time without even having to be
asked to make peace.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/june02/guarantee.html
ISLAM: PRETENDER TO THE THRONE OF DAVID
What would happen to the Holy sites of the Jewish
people and of Christendom if Islam were to control
Jerusalem? We already have an answer because Islam
did control Jerusalem from 1948 (the birth of Israel)
to 1967 (the Six Day War, during which Israel took
Jerusalem). From 1948 to 1967, while King Hussein
was in charge of the West Bank, which he annexed to
Jordan adding East Jerusalem to it without a
squeak from the world.
There were fifty-eight synagogues in the Jewish
quarter and Islam demolished each and every one of them.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/pretender.html
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For more great reading, visit our new EDITORIAL ARCHIVE
http://christianactionforisrael.org/previous.html
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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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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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