CAFI Newsletter #103

[cafi-list@christianactionforisrael.org]

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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER  #103 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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               Friday, September 27, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

  1.    THE BEST AND WORST
  2.    MOTIVE FOR MASSACRE
  3.    THE BULLDOZER'S BULLDOZERS
  4.    THANK ALLAH IT'S FRIDAY
  5.    STICK TO YOUR POETRY AND PIANOS
  6.    QUOTES TO NOTE
  7.    HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES

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   1.    THE BEST AND WORST

by Mona Charen  September 27, 2002  Townhall.com

 Doctors in Israeli hospitals had been noticing that
when they operated on people wounded in homicide
bombing attacks, patients often continued to bleed
even after being sutured. Eventually, a young medical
resident figured out why: The terrorists filled their
bombs with as many nails, screws, glass shards and
pieces of shrapnel as they could, and these were
first dipped in rat poison. The rat poison worked
as an anti-coagulant.

Now Israeli emergency room doctors can treat bombing
victims with Vitamin K to control the bleeding, but
as the Rocky Mountain News reported, stronger
drugs can cost up to $10,000 per vial.

And so Israel struggles from day to day.

The homicide bombings have diminished as a consequence
of Israel's tough response -- so much for the argument
that force would only intensify "the cycle of violence."
But the depraved hatred the Palestinians have revealed
by their sponsorship of such violence has left many
Israelis with a sense of horrified despair.

In the midst of this abomination, one story deserves
more attention than it has received. It is the
story of 19-year-old Jonathan (Yoni) Jesner. He was
a religious Jew from Scotland who had gone to Israel
to study in a Yeshiva before beginning medical school.
On Friday, Sept. 20, he boarded a bus in Tel Aviv
that was blown up by a homicide bomber.

Yoni was one of six who died. When doctors told the
stunned family of their son's death, they asked whether
they would like to donate Yoni's organs. His father
later explained: "There were about 20 of the family
in the hospital, and we had to consider for 10, 15
minutes. But we thought that because Yoni was going
to be a doctor and he wanted to help people that the
organs should be donated for humanitarian purposes.
We weren't told and we didn't care whether it went
to a Palestinian, an Israeli or an American, or
whatever, and Yoni wouldn't have cared."

Yasmin Abu Ramila is a Palestinian 7-year-old from
East Jerusalem. She has been undergoing dialysis
in an Israeli hospital -- yes, an Israeli hospital
-- for nearly two years. When Yoni's kidneys became
available, Yasmin's name was next on the waiting list
for transplants. She is doing well, and while it's
too early to say whether the transplant was a
complete success, she has been given a chance at
life. The girl's father has said he would like
to meet the Jesner family some day.

The child's mother was grateful. "I don't know
what to say to thank the family of the man killed
in the attack," she told the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.
"I grieve for their loss and thank them for
their donation."

But what of the larger Palestinian community that
has greeted each bombing with war whoops and cheers?
Can a gesture as tender and humane as the Jesner
family's penetrate their hate-distorted minds?
A Jewish kidney now keeps little Yasmin Abu Ramila
alive. But the question,

  "Can a Jew touch a Palestinian's heart?"

remains open.
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   2.    MOTIVE FOR MASSACRE

It's not about "the West."
It's about religious beliefs.

Paul Marshall  Wall Street Journal September 27, 2002

On Wednesday, gunmen entered a Christian charity in
Karachi, Pakistan, separated Christian from Muslim
workers and methodically shot seven Christians in the
head. Although this massacre is the sixth in a series
of attacks aimed at Christian targets in Pakistan,
much of the media has played down religion's role
in favor of a secular storyline.

The New York Times described this latest attack as
ending a lull in assaults on "Western targets" and
suggested that the charity was chosen because it was
not as well guarded as "foreign embassies and Western
companies." It quoted a police official saying that
the attack was designed to drive away "Western business."
Agence France-Presse quoted a human-rights worker
arguing that the violence was not against Christians
but against those "striving for a tolerant society."
CNN International opined that there "is no indication
of a motive."

This approach is typical. After the massacres at a
Pakistani Christian school and hospital in August,
Reuters headlined its story "Pakistan attack seen
aimed at West, not Christians," while the BBC said:
"The attack appears aimed at Western interests,
rather than Pakistan's Christian minority." The
Associated Press argued that the assaults were
"directed against western interests."

The people believed to be behind the attacks, though,
have made their motives plain. Members of
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the terrorist group claiming
responsibility for an October 2001 massacre in a
Christian church, said that "they planned to kill
Christians" in revenge for Muslim deaths in Afghanistan.
The men who claimed responsibility for attacking the
school in August announced that they "killed the
nonbelievers." Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal
reporter kidnapped in Pakistan in January, was
killed not only because he was a Westerner but also
because he was Jewish, as his murderers made explicit.

Similarly, the Taliban made Hindus and Buddhists put
distinguishing marks on their clothing and demolished
the two largest Buddhist statues in the world. Recent
intelligence reports suggest that al Qaeda members are
involved in anti-Christian violence in eastern
Indonesia. Extremist Islamists are attacking
indigenous people in dozens of countries--including
fellow Muslims--who do not share their extremist beliefs.

The key in each case is not a geopolitical affiliation
but an unacceptable religious belief. When al Qaeda
was formed in 1998, it was named the "World Islamic
Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders." Osama
bin Laden stressed in an Al-Jazeera interview at the
time that his target was "World Christianity,
which is allied with Jews and Zionism."

While al-Qaeda makes its religious views explicit,
religious terms in the West are avoided or hedged.
Policy makers, diplomats, journalists and scholars,
writes the defense expert Edward Luttwak, are ready
to "dissect social differentiations" and "minutely
categorize political affiliations," but they regularly
disregard "the role of religion, religious institutions,
and religious motivations in explaining politics."
Instead of taking religion seriously, we redefine it
as "ethnic," coining the term "ethnic cleansing" to
describe, say, the murder of Muslims in the Balkans.
Or we use "fundamentalist" and "right-wing" as vague,
catch-all terms to characterize militant groups who are
actually defined by very particular beliefs. After all,
pious, nonmilitant Sufi Muslims are "fundamentalist,"
and the designations "left" and "right" have nothing
to do with abhorring "infidel" Western troops in
Saudi Arabia or resisting attempts to build a Hindu
temple on the site of a mosque in northern India.

Religion shapes politics from Palestine to Chechnya,
from the Sudan and Nigeria to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
At the moment, we face a politicized religious
fanaticism, one that each day announces its rationale.
Al Qaeda and its imitators in Algeria, Uzbekistan
and the Philippines--and in Pakistan as well--do not
trade in euphemism. They state their desire to
impose an extreme version of Islam on, first, Muslim
countries and then the rest of the world. Their
particular hatred is directed at nonbelievers, not
at "the West," whatever the headline writers and
analysts may say the next time a massacre happens.

And it will.

Mr. Marshall, the author of "Islam at the Crossroad,"
is a fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom in
Washington, a division of Freedom House.
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   3.    THE BULLDOZER'S BULLDOZERS

By Uri Dan   Jerusalem Post  September 25, 2002

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave US Secretary of
State Colin Powell the reasons that caused his
government to decide, unanimously, to completely
isolate Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser
Arafat in Ramallah. The long conversation took
place last Saturday night, two days after a
Palestinian suicide bomber slaughtered six
passengers on bus No. 4 and injured another
60 in Tel Aviv.

"We shall not permit the Palestinians to continue
murdering Jews, at the same time telling us they
are introducing reforms," said the prime minister.
"Several countries have expressed concern to us
and wanted to know why we are destroying the
buildings in the Mukata, Arafat's headquarters.
But not one wanted to know about the victim of
the attack opposite the Great Synagogue in Tel
Aviv who complained to a nurse in the hospital
that he couldn't feel his hand. The nurse lifted
the blanket and told him he had lost his hand.
None of those who contacted us about the bulldozers
took any interest in the innocent citizen whose
head was blown off in the terrorist attack."

Sharon told Powell that it would be easier and
faster for Israel to send its troops to the Mukata
and extract the Palestinian terrorists by force.
However, he explained, Israel preferred to use the
bulldozer to save as many lives as possible. The
operation could be ended rapidly, he said, if all
the international pressure were directed at the
leader of the terrorism, Arafat, in order to
make him hand over the wanted terrorists.

Powell's concern in his phone call to Sharon was
understandable. The US had succeeded in recruiting
impressive support for its plan that the
Palestinians elect a prime minister who would
direct their affairs one who would in fact replace
Arafat and be as far as possible from his sphere
of influence. In the State Department's view,
this was a strategic achievement.

But in Israel's view, Palestinian terrorism itself
during the last two years of the war initiated
by Arafat has become a threat that is also strategic.
Not prepared to let Arafat renew with full force
the waves of terrorism that were reduced following
Operation Defensive Shield in April, Sharon's
concern is no less understandable. He is not
prepared for Jews to pay with their blood in
the interval until the Palestinians reform.

Sharon is also not prepared for Jews to continue
to be murdered while Israel sits on its hands
because of the approaching war against Arafat's
partner, Saddam Hussein. It would be neither
morally nor diplomatically justifiable to wait
to deal with Arafat until it can be done amid
the fog of battle in Baghdad.

After Hamas assumed responsibility for last
week's slaughter in Tel Aviv, the media rushed
to announce that Sharon had convened a security
cabinet meeting with the participation of the
entire government in order to take a decision
to attack Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

BUT SHARON is experienced enough not to fall
into Hamas's dangerous trap, particularly after
Israeli military correspondents alerted Hamas
to the fact that the IDF would attack. Thus,
after preliminary agreement with Defense Minister
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Sharon brought to the
cabinet meeting an objective that contained
the element of surprise. The movement of IDF
tanks and bulldozers toward Arafat's HQ came
as a complete shock.

Arafat had done nothing to halt the terrorist
offensive. On the contrary, he encouraged it with
the total cooperation of the wanted terrorists
to whom he has given protection. But he was
tempted to believe that Israel wouldn't dare
to renew the siege against him, and so he
gave those terrorists refuge.

The bulldozers didn't begin the systematic
destruction of the remains of Arafat's kingdom
in Ramallah until the government had been
persuaded to unanimously approve the prime
minister's proposal. To his credit, even
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Arafat's 1994
Nobel Peace Prize partner, supported it.

Certain members of the media attempted to
create a distorted picture, as if the razing
of the Mukata and the isolation of Arafat would
produce no benefit. They claimed Sharon had
actually enhanced Arafat's status, when
in fact it had already hit rock bottom.

"Sharon saved Arafat" was the headline of an
article in Ha'aretz by Danny Rubinstein, a veteran
PLO sympathizer. Anchorman Amnon Abramowitz on
Channel 1 said that "Arafat has been given
artificial respiration" by Israel." Yoram Binur
on Channel 2 interviewed Palestinians who
insisted Arafat would remain their leader forever.
Kol Yisrael announcer Carmit Gai mockingly
inquired about the connection between
disconnecting the air conditioners in Arafat's
offices and the war against terrorism, and
asked why Sharon wasn't fighting Hamas.

During the years since the Oslo agreement these
self-accredited geniuses have developed the
slogan that Arafat is a "partner for peace,"
and therefore ought to congratulate Sharon for
"saving" Arafat, their disappointing hero.

Let me assure them that their joy will be
short-lived. The power of the bulldozer in
the right time and place is greater than that
of the tank. These journalists and their
colleagues have never understood what Arafat
really is, just as they have never comprehended
who Sharon is, when he protects Jews against
their murderers.

This human bulldozer, with his decisiveness
and ability to taking care of business, is far
more powerful that the bulldozers he sent to the Mukata.

During the last day of Succot in 1973, at the
peak of the Yom Kippur War, when he commanded
the 143rd Armored Division, Sharon prepared
bulldozers to break down the high mound of
earth on the east bank of the Suez Canal. There
he erected a bridgehead for crossing the canal
and turned Israel's defeat into victory. It
brought Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem to ask for
peace in 1977. This Succot, Sharon's bulldozers
are another step toward the defeat of terrorism.

The writer is the Mideast correspondent of The New York Post.
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   4.    THANK ALLAH IT'S FRIDAY

>From "Best of the Web Today"  Wall Street Journal
http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110002354


Today is Friday, the day of the khutbah, a sermon
delivered during Islam's most important prayer of
the week. In the interest of cross-cultural
understanding, here are some excerpts from khutbahs
delivered over the past few years in Saudi mosques,
courtesy of the indispensable Middle East Media
Research Institute: (MEMRI)

"In this distorted and deformed religion, to which
many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can
see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path
of righteousness by talking about the concept of
the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost:
three who are one."

"The Jews are the objects of Allah's [promised] wrath,
while the Christians deviate from the path of
righteousness. . . . The Koran described the Jews
as a nation cursed by Allah, a nation at which he
was angry--some of whom he turned into apes and pigs."

"The [kind of] terror [in Arabic, "striking of fear"]
that Islamic religious law permits is terrifying the
cowards, the hypocrites, the secularists, and the
rebels by imposing punishments according to the
religious law of Allah. . . . The meaning of the
term 'terror' used by the media . . . is Jihad for
the sake of Allah. Jihad is the peak of Islam. . . .
The Mujaheed who goes out to attain a martyr's
death or victory and returns with booty is a
terrorist as far as the enemies of Allah are concerned."

"[The Greeks and Romans] succeeded in their
conquest, establishing mighty empires. When the
woman began to beautify herself, and to go out to
clubs and public places . . . she corrupted the moral
values of the men, weakened their combat skills--
and their civilization collapsed. . . . This is
the strategic goal towards which the enemies of
the Muslim nation strive, as is written in the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. . . . The enemies
of the Muslim woman are the Jews, the Christians,
the hypocrites, the secular, and the opportunists
trailing behind them."

The Arab News quotes Prince Naif, the Saudi interior
minister, as saying his country's poor image in the
U.S. is "orchestrated by the Zionist lobby which
works against the American people's interests."

THOU SHALT NOT KILL (Sometimes)
Arutz Sheva translates an editorial from Asharq
Alawsat, "the London-based Saudi newspaper of record,"
which denounces the recent mass murder by Muslims
of 29 Hindu worshippers in India. "The attack on a
Hindu temple in Gandhinagar in India's Gujarat state
was an act of utter barbarity," the editorial
declares. "This barbarity, along with the equally
barbarous execution-style murder of six Christian
charity workers in Karachi, does unimaginable harm
to Islam. . . . There has to be an end to such evil.
The victims are not only those who get killed. It
is also Islam's good name. That affects every
individual Muslim the world over."

Well, one cheer for Ashraq Alawsat. Now where's
the editorial making the same points about
Muslim massacres of Jews?
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   5.   STICK TO YOUR POETRY AND PIANOS

Marcus Gee  Globe and Mail, September 27, 2002

   Pierre Berton, author; Anton Kuerti, pianist;
Margaret Atwood, author; Bruce Cockburn, musician;
Robert Bateman, illustrator; David Suzuki, author.

   This week, some of Canada's foremost artists and
intellectuals put their name to a letter opposing
military action against Iraq. In "Time to Move
Beyond War," which they are handing out to every MP,
they argue that using military force to disarm
Iraq would be "profoundly immoral."

   If ever there were proof that brains and common
sense don't always go together, this is it. The letter
is a strange soup of woolly minded pacifism,
wide-eyed naiveté and crafty distortion. It would
not be out of place in an undergraduate class on U.S.
imperialism and the thought of Noam Chomsky. That
it emerges from some of Canada's best-known
international figures is shocking.

   The authors claim that any use of force against
Iraq would be "unprovoked aggression." Unprovoked,
Mr. Berton? Saddam Hussein has defied at least 16
United Nations commands to stop building weapons
of mass murder. He has started two wars of aggression
against his neighbours, used chemical weapons against
his own people, fired ballistic missiles at Israeli
civilians and tried to assassinate a former U.S.
president. If that isn't provocative, what is?

   The authors say there is "no convincing evidence"
that Mr. Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
No evidence, Mr. Kuerti? Only this week, the British
government released evidence that he already
possesses ready-to-use chemical and biological
weapons and could build a nuclear bomb in one or
two years if he gets his hands on fissile material.
An independent London think tank, the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, came to similar
conclusions.

   The authors say using force against the Iraqi
regime "would almost certainly result in destabilizing
repercussions that would endanger the whole world."
Is that so, Ms. Atwood? And what about the
"destabilizing repercussions" of a sadistic dictator
armed with weapons capable of killing millions?

   The authors say it's wrong for nations with
vast arsenals of nuclear weapons to try to prevent
other nations from trying to get the same weaponry.
What are you saying, Mr. Cockburn? That nuclear
weapons in the hands of Britain and France are as
bad as nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein?
That we can't do anything about his weapons until
every other country gets rid of every atomic warhead?

   The authors say bombing sites that could contain
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could
cause "global human and environmental catastrophe."
Interesting, Mr. Suzuki. So are you conceding that
Iraq does, in fact, have those weapons? If so, what
if he uses them? Wouldn't that be a worse
environmental catastrophe?

   The authors say 1.5 million Iraqis, half a
million of them children, have died because of UN
sanctions. Are you sure, Mr. Bateman? Those figures,
cheerfully exploited by the Iraqi government, are
mostly guesswork. And if they were close to being
accurate, who is really to blame for the suffering
of the Iraqi people? Sanctions could have ended at
any time over the past dozen years if Mr. Hussein
had simply stopped trying to obtain weapons of mass
murder. Instead, he has starved his own country
to satisfy his hunger for destructive power.

   That fact, alone, should make any sensible
person wonder about Mr. Hussein's intentions. Yet
not once in their 11-paragraph jeremiad do the
authors concede that Saddam Hussein is the
slightest threat to world, much less propose
what to do about him.

   Instead, they suggest that "the most powerful
nations in the world" are to blame for "eroding
the standard of living, environment, and the
security of people throughout the world."

   "Peace can only be built upon a foundation
of diplomacy and justice," they intone. "We must
work to uphold international law and to safeguard
human rights, the environment and global
human security."

   No one could possibly argue with that.
But who is the real threat to all those fine things?

   International law, Mr. Berton? Saddam Hussein
has been defying it for more than a decade, by
flouting the will of the UN. Human rights, Mr. Kuerti?
There are few worse violaters that Mr. Hussein,
a killer and torturer who has trampled on the
rights of his own people ever since taking power.

   The environment, Mr. Suzuki? Who set fire to
Kuwait's oil fields in the Persian Gulf war, filling
the atmosphere with acrid fumes and fouling the
gulf waters?

   Human security, Mr. Cockburn? What security do
people in the Middle East enjoy as long as Mr. Hussein
is arming himself with the world's worst weapons?

   There are arguments to be made against war on
Iraq and they deserve to be heard. Instead, Canada's
finest give us this parade of platitudes.

Seldom have so many said so little.
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   6.   QUOTES TO NOTE

    “If the resolution [by the UN Security Council
     calling on Israel to exit from Ramallah] is
     fulfilled to its letter—in other words, if
     the PA suddenly, by some miracle, takes action
     against the terrorists [about 20 have taken
     refuge in Arafat’s headquarters] and arrests
     them—the reason for our being where we are today
     would be gone…so we would comply.”

—Senior adviser to P.M. Ariel Sharon,
Raanan Gissin (Ha’aretz, Sept. 24)
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   7.    HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES ON THE SITE

OUR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS
It serves as a refreshing reminder that although
we are besieged by enemies at home, we still have
plenty of warm and caring friends abroad who are
willing to stand with us even in the most
difficult of times.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/sept02/friends.html

EVERYONE IS A CRITIC
"Coexistence" requires two parties - by definition;
two parties that do not wish to eliminate one another.
As long as Arabs want to undo Israel, Jews who really
care about Israel and the Jewish people could do the
most good by attempting to convince the Arabs and
their apologists - for whom they seem to care more
than for their own - to uphold the same values. One
need not be Jewish to believe in the sanctity of life.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/sept02/critic.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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