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archive for April 2002
 2002.04.30 (Tuesday) Susan Kitchens: "John W Dean made this announcement : He's gonna reveal the identity of Deep Throat on June 17th." 2002.04.28 (Sunday) As We May Outline.... Dave's outline rendering howto, posted earlier this week, was the final piece of information I was missing to indulge my long restrained outlining mania. The temporary result is activeRenderer, a UserTalk / CSS / Javascript combo which translates OPML outlines created with Radio's outliner into HTML pages that keep some 'outlinerish' features. [read more] [s l a m] Sins of the Fraudis, cont.: Air controllers: Saudi wanted only men (Dallas Morning News)
Texas aviation officials said the controversy began Thursday morning when members of the prince's entourage approached the manager of the Texas State Technical College airport in Waco, the airfield used by Mr. Bush and dignitaries visiting his ranch in nearby Crawford.
"Apparently, what happened is that an advance group of Saudi Arabians went in and talked to the airport manager and told him they did not want any females on the ramp and also said there should not be any females talking to the airplane," said Ruben Gonzalez, regional manager for RVA Inc., which operates the airport's control tower under a contract with the FAA. Our Fiends the Saudis, cont: Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women (National Review Online)
The Saudi Information Agency has obtained a tape by prominent government official cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik calling for enslaving Jewish women. The tape is called “a Monkey Desecrates Mosque,” and was delivered in a Riyadh government mosque. The monkey refers to Jews.
Al-Buraik, a Wahhabi cleric, is closely tied to Prince AbdulAziz Ben Fahd, the king’s youngest son, and member of the Saudi delegation accompanying Crown Prince Abdullah on his current visit.
Al-Buraik was the host of the two-day long telethon raising funds for Palestinians, which raised $109 million. He is also the host of "Religion and Life,” a program on government television Channel One and on MBC television owned by Prince AbdulAziz Ben Fahd. Al-Buraik said on the tape that the money raised would go to Palestinian fighters.
The following are excerpts of the tape:
On Jews and Christians he said:
People should know that Jews are backed by the Christians, and the battle that we are going through is not with Jews only, but also with those who believe that Allah is a third in a Trinity, and those who said that Jesus is the son of Allah, and Allah is Jesus, the son of Mary.
About America he said:
I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment;
I am against America even if the stone liquefies
My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse.
She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth.
Who else implanted the tyrants in our land, who else nurtured oppression?
Oh Muslim Ummah don’t take the Jews and Christians as allies.
Jewish women as slaves he says:
Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?
Our Fiends in the House of Fraud, cont.: After giving access, Saudis seize tapes of interviews, notes and a laptop (MSNBC)
During an MSNBC visit to Saudi Arabia, students were surprisingly open in their comments about Sept. 11, the United States and the Mideast conflict. “Film anything you want. We are a free and open society,” said an official at the information ministry in Jeddah. The ministry, along with the Arab News newspaper, helped set up interviews.
Too good to be true? You bet. Brian Lenihan: "I smelled like a rotting corpse but nobody said anything. Amazing."
One man's doctor-free adventure in gangrene 14 Christians Killed by Muslims in Indonesia. Assailants in black masks stabbed and burned to death 14 Christians, including a six-month-old baby, in Indonesia today, threatening a fragile peace pact. [New York Times: International News] Palestine is Jordan: Israel
should enlist Jordan in the cause (Yossi Klein Halevi in the Washington Post)
Israel needs a strategy that combines the insights of its left and right: that we can neither occupy the Palestinians nor make peace with them. We should revive what Israelis once called the Jordanian option -- ceding most of the territories to the Hashemites, who governed the West Bank and East Jerusalem before 1967.
As a first step, the Palestinian Authority must go the way of the Taliban. Arafat should be placed on a plane to Baghdad and his terrorist "police" apparatus dismantled. Israel would then cede most of the territories to Jordan, concentrating the settlements in areas close to the 1967 borders. Until the situation stabilizes, Israel would remain in control of a united Jerusalem, though it would cede the Temple Mount to the Hashemites who, as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's family, have a compelling claim as custodians of the site. Finally, Israel would retain a military presence along the Jordan River.
Jordan is the only Arab country that has entered into a strategic relationship with the Jewish state. The Hashemites fear a PLO state no less than the Israelis do. Ironically, Ariel Sharon, who once advocated transforming Jordan into Palestine, has become one of the stalwarts of the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. Perhaps Sharon is the man to help transform Palestine back into Jordan. 2002.04.26 (Friday) Global Warning: First quarter of 2002 is "warmest for a millennium" The warmest start to year yet recorded reached its high temperatures without the help of a major El Niño event [New Scientist] 2002.04.19 (Friday) What Really Happened in Jenin: The 'engineer' (via Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing)
You've heard what the Palestinians are telling the world. Here, from Al Ahram, is what they're telling their own people and allies:
Omar admits he is one of only a few dozen fighters not to emerge either dead or in plastic handcuffs from the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the Israeli army's invasion of the West Bank.
Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.
"Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month."
Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.
"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.
"We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses -- in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."
The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men.
Connected by wires, the bombs were set off remotely, triggered by the current from a car battery.
According to Omar, everyone in the camp, including the children, knew where the explosives were located so that there was no danger of civilians being injured. It was the one weakness in the plan.
"We were betrayed by the spies among us," he says. The wires to more than a third of the bombs were cut by soldiers accompanied by collaborators. "If it hadn't been for the spies, the soldiers would never have been able to enter the camp. Once they penetrated the camp, it was much harder to defend."
And what about the explosion and ambush last Tuesday which killed 13 soldiers?
"They were lured there," he says. "We all stopped shooting and the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving." The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby- trapped area.
"When the senior officers realised what had happened, they shouted through megaphones that they wanted an immediate cease-fire. We let them approach to retrieve the men and then opened fire.
"Some of the soldiers were so shocked and frightened that they mistakenly ran towards us." 2002.04.14 (Sunday) Our Friends in the House of Fraud: Saudi ambassador to Britain glorifies suicide bombers (Associated Press)
The Saudi ambassador to Britain, a renowned poet, praised Palestinian suicide bombers and criticized the United States in a poem published Saturday in a pan-Arab daily.
"May God be the witness that you are martyrs ... You died to honor God's word. (You) committed suicide? We committed suicide by living like the dead," Ghazi Algosaibi wrote in "The Martyrs," a short poem published on the front-page of the London-based daily al-Hayat. So long, BBC Israel Log
Back in February, I started a "BBC Israel Log: Logging the Madness of 2002" as a way to track what was happening. The idea was to save the day's Israel news from the BBC news feed, to try to get a sense of the broader rhythm of the increasing madness.
Something was happening, I sensed an escalation, and I wanted the data points to take stock. I couldn't keep in my head the attacks, the reprisals, the talks.
Two months later, the situation has changed; the gathering storm has exploded. The rain is still falling, the wind is still knocking down the trees, the lightning is still setting fires. But there's no longer any need to keep reading the barometer.
Accordingly.... several weeks after stopping work on the Israel Log, I declare it on indefinite hiatus.
Peace, Shalom, Salaam.
2002.04.11 (Thursday) "PATHOLOGY OF THE HOMICIDE BOMBER" (HF mailing list)
What really makes a suicide bomber? According to this summary of reports from PBS, the Washington Post and the London Times, it's a mixture of religious belief, parental pressure, and Iraqi bounty. Well worth the read. Geeky feature: Description Filter Callbacks.  [Scripting News] 2002.04.08 (Monday) Reb Yudel says: Why panic, where there is so much cause for leisurely despair? 2002.04.06 (Saturday) And the Nobel Prize goes to the man with the most dynamite.... (reprinted from InstaPundit.com)
THE 1994 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WAS A MISTAKE, THE NOBEL COMMITTEE SAYS. At last, I thought, they're coming to their senses. BUT NOOOO. . . . It's not the award to Arafat they regret. It's the award to Peres:
In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, committee members said they regretted that Mr Peres' prize could not be recalled because, as a member of the Israeli cabinet, he had not acted to prevent Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian territory.
One member said Mr Peres had not lived up to the ideals he expressed when he accepted the prize.
"What is happening today in Palestine is grotesque and unbelievable," said Hanna Kvanmo.
"Peres is responsible, as part of the government. He has expressed his agreement with what [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon is doing," she said.
If Arafat were killed by Israel, Peres could "share in the blame"
"If he had not agreed with Sharon, then he would have withdrawn from the government."
Oslo Bishop Gunnar Stalsett, a committee member for the past eight years, describes as "absurd" what he sees as the involvement of a Nobel laureate in human rights abuses.
Other committee members argue that the Israeli government's actions in general and Mr Peres' involvement in particular are threatening to bring the prize into disrepute.
Words fail me. These guys aren't just idiots. They don't just lack moral judgment. They have negative moral judgment. I believe the traditional term for that characteristic is "evil."
UPDATE: Meanwhile, over 200,000 non-evil people have signed a petition to revoke Arafat's peace prize at this site.
Posted 4/5/2002 09:25:37 PM by Glenn Reynolds
EVERYONE'S A MEDIA CRITIC THESE DAYS, and lots of 'em are good. I love this observation:
Haven't seen / heard anyone mention the seeming inconsistency in language used to describe the IDF incursion into the West Bank.
The Palestinians say that Israel "occupies" Palestinian land, and in fact use that as the principal reason for the need to perform acts of terror. Yet most news reports are calling the latest defensive maneovers in the West Bank as a "reoccupation" of the West Bank....
Maybe I am missing something (and I truly might be), but how can someone "reoccupy" an area that they supposedly already "occupy?"
Just asking.....
Good question.
THIS IS WHAT WE GET for Bush's outreach to American muslims right after September 11:
Thousands of miles from the bloodshed, one heard anger, disbelief and a teen-age girl saying that she, too, would blow herself up.
There is no other option, she said yesterday during an Arab-American and Muslim rally to protest the latest developments in the Middle East.
She is 14, a girl of Syrian and Jordanian roots. She wears braces. And she talks of willingly strapping on explosives.
"This is what desperate people do," she said.
Few people at the spirited but peaceful rally at the Islamic Center of San Diego said they thought it would come to this, that even young Palestinian women would become suicide bombers, although an 18-year-old blew herself up and killed two others a week ago in Jerusalem.
Few condoned it, but many said they understood. And some, like the teen, said she would do it, too. I don't condone the notion of putting all Arab-Americans in internment camps. But too many unchallenged comments like this from Arab-Americans and I'm going to understand it.
When will the Arab-American community start demonstrating patriotism, instead of mouthing Islamist catchphrases and offering Zogby-like excuses?
UPDATE: Matthew Hoy, who sent me this link, has some comments of his own. Excerpt:
Unlike the American Muslims today, Japanese-Americans never asked the American public to understand what could have driven the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. . . .
All Americans need to be wary of the hatred in our midst. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be long before many Muslims are clumped in with the Ku Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam. Politicians can only proclaim Islam as a "religion of peace" for so long, when so many of its adherents practice hate, terror and praise suicide bombers. In time of war, immigrants are expected to prove their loyalty. So far, the Arab-American community is falling short. 2002.04.05 (Friday) Not again!: Student suspended for science project knife [Romenesko's Obscure Store] Yudel's Line:
Leave Arafat Alone: Kill the "Martyrs" Instead
Here's my fear: Arik Sharon still doesn't understand religion, and is fighting a 30-year-old war against Palestinian nationalism. That's why he's raising an international outcry by humiliating old man Arafat, rather than pissing off the Europeans by actually giving the Muslim Palestinians what they want: martyrdom.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that the desire for suicidal, mass-murdering martyrdom can't be expunged. Of course, we are told, some sort of lack of hope leads Palestinian teenagers to lose their lives by massacring Jews at their Passover Seders for the first time since the Holocaust.
Balderdash. It's not lack of hope. It's an excess of hope that's responsible: Hope that there's a better life waiting for them in the World To Come.
Whether or not that belief is true is irrelevant. It's time for Sharon to understand that the belief is real, and dangerous.
So what to do? Can beliefs be changed?
You bet they can.
First, accept that it's the belief that's the problem, not the political goal that's piggybacking on the bodies of the suicidal Palestinians. So criminalize the belief. Make it unacceptable to preach the belief in a Mosque, in a school, in a private dwelling.
You say that your son just killed himself up along with a dozen Jewish teenagers, and that you're proud of him and his status as a martyr?
Then the Israeli government ought to see that you join him in Paradise.
Yes, let me make this clear: I'm advocating that Israel deliberately target the families who are proudly mourning their murderous children. Kill them. And kill their neighboring well-wishers too.
This may not wipe out the belief, immediately. But it will at least send it underground. And I suspect that the anti-suicide theologians will begin to receive a better hearing.
Meanwhile Israel will have helped the Palestinian Muslims realize their religious self-actualization. Isn't that what the Holy Land is all about? Heck, isn't that why Israel has a Muslim department in its Ministry of Religious Affairs?
Will this really work? One data point. In the year 135 c.e., Rabbi Akiba was the greatest Jewish religious leader in the Land of Israel. He was also virulently anti-Roman. Was it any surprise that when the revolt he applauded failed, not only was he martyred, but the study of Torah was banned altogether for some time?
And should it come as any surprise that two generations later, around the year 200, the greatest Jewish religious leader in the Land of Israel, Rabbi Judah the Prince, was as renowned for his close ties to the Romans as he was for his rabbinic acumen?
p.s. By the same token, it wouldn't hurt to realize that his erstwhile new coalition partners from the National Religious Party believe that the World To Come awaits whoever displaces the most Palestinians from the Land of Israel... which is not exactly the same thing as believing in military solutions. It's that belief which has led to the absurd, if not obscene, lack of a fence separating the Palestinian areas from Israel.
Another software outage here at YudelLine.... as if there's nothing to write about! If you can read this, there should be more coming! 2002.04.04 (Thursday) Just reinstalled Windows... 2002.04.02 (Tuesday) New feature: Recent Posts. By popular request, a new macro is on its way -- radio.macros.recentTitledBlogPosts. 2002.04.01 (Monday) Sin of the anti-Oslo Messianists: The Hubris Of No Fences (Gerson Gorenberg in the Washington Post)
The terrorist simply walked in. No fence protects the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh, perched on a hilltop above the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank. The bedroom community of red-roofed houses is open to the surrounding countryside by choice. Last Thursday, the killer needed nothing but the darkness of early evening to enter the settlement and murder four members of a family before being killed himself.
Elon Moreh serves as a symbol of Israeli miscalculations. Pointing out those mistakes in no way justifies the brutality of Palestinian attacks against civilians or reduces the urgent need for international pressure on the Palestinians to end the terror. Neither, though, does Palestinian brutality exempt Israelis from reconsidering the country's direction.
Start with the decision of Elon Moreh's settlers not to build a fence around their community. As reported, that was an ideological choice: A fence, residents reasoned, would turn the settlement into a "ghetto." It would cut them off from the land around them, when Elon Moreh's very purpose was to establish the Jewish claim to the entirety of the Land of Israel.
For similar reasons, no fence marks the boundary between sovereign Israel and the occupied West Bank. Successive Israeli governments have done their best to erase that border. Even today, when it is clear that a sophisticated border fence could reduce the chance of a suicide bomber reaching Israeli cities, Ariel Sharon's government refrains from erecting one, for fear of conceding Israel's claim to the land the lies beyond the fence.
Elon Moreh isn't just one settlement out of many. Established in 1975, it was the tipping point in Jewish settlement of the West Bank. Until then, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had sought to keep Israeli settlements out of heavily populated Arab parts of the occupied territories, so they could be traded for peace. With Elon Moreh's creation, at the climax of a long public campaign against Rabin's first government, the way was open for scattering Israeli communities between Palestinian towns and villages across the West Bank. The work that peace negotiators would later face was rendered immeasurably more difficult.
Both Elon Moreh's location and its lack of a fence reflect the hubris of power, the belief that Israeli military strength is sufficient to persuade Palestinians to accept a permanently subservient position under Israeli rule. It's no accident that Sharon, then a novice politician, was an ally of Elon Moreh's original settlers -- or that West Bank settlers are the most vocal advocates today of reconquering Palestinian land, erasing the Palestinian Authority and crushing the current rebellion by force.
Synagogue burnt down in Marseilles. A fire at a synagogue in the French port city of Marseilles adds to fears of French Jews that they are face a sustained campaign of violence. [BBC News: world] BTW, here is the eVectors site for the Remote Edit Tool. This tool is in beta, but it will allow you to edit your Radio templates in Photoshop, FrontPage, and GoLive. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
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