3-year-old killed: Front page or P. 15?

It depends on whether the 3-year-old is Jewish or Arab.
Yesterday, the Post put the account of a 3-year-old child killed by a Palestinian rocket on the bottom of p. 15. This may not seem so terrible, but remember that if a Palestinian child is accidentally killed by Israelis, it almost always appears on the front page (which yesterday was too busy with items like week-old discussions pertaining to a possible baseball team in Washington).

The article does not even mention that the child's mother was seriously wounded until the 8th paragraph (where most people have stopped reading)!! If it had been a Palestinian mother, I bet she would have been in the headline too: "3-Year-Old killed, Mother gravely wounded by Israelis". And yes, the headline would have called him a "3-year-old", not just a "boy". (This is not mere speculation; I can give examples.)

Now let's look at today's followup, with the same town (Sderot) being hit by five more rockets during a visit by Prime Minister Sharon. As it happens, the three local papers (Washington Post, Washington Times, and Baltimore Sun) used the same AP account, but with one significant difference: Only the Post truncated the dispatch just before it mentioned the killing of the 3-year-old!!! Of course if a Palestinian child is accidentally killed, the Post is sure to remind its readers for days, if not weeks, afterward.

Guerrillas in the Post's Mist

The Post reports that IDF soldiers killed "senior guerrilla leaders."

So they are guerrilla leaders now...does that make Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah guerrilla organizations?

From Arutz Sheva we learn that

"IDF sources report that eight wanted terrorists in the Shechem area were killed by Israeli forces on Saturday, the third day of a counter-terrorism operation in Shechem. Among the terrorist leaders eliminated were Naif Abu Sharah, the commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, Faddy Bahti, a commander of the Islamic Jihad, and Jaffer Mitsri, a leader in the Hamas.

Among many other attacks, Abu Sharah behind a suicide bombing in Tel-Aviv, in January 2003, in which 23 civilians were murdered and dozens were injured, and a suicide bombing in November 2002, in which two Israeli civilians were murdered and 30 were injured. His many attempts to dispatch suicide bombers were sometimes funded by the Hizbullah, sometimes by the Palestinian Authority. Islamic Jihad commander Bahti and Hamas leader Mitsri were each responsible for dispatching terrorists and for their organization's respective explosives laboratories in Shechem."

The Debkafile reports that the IDF also found a "Large stock of explosives and bomb belts discovered in the wanted men’s hideout."

So you decide - are they guerrilla leaders or mass murdering terrorists?

A more insightful report would also address why the terror leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah are all hiding together...but hey...that would also be asking too much of John Worthless Anderson.

Read the rest of the Post's version.


Israeli Raid Kills Six Palestinian Leaders
Attack is One of Deadliest on Guerrillas
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 27, 2004; Page A23
JERUSALEM, June 26 -- Israeli troops discovered an underground room being used by Palestinian militants as a hideout in the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday and pounded it with grenades and gunfire, killing six senior leaders from three Palestinian groups, Israeli army officials and Palestinian security sources said.


It was one of the deadliest attacks on a group of senior guerrilla leaders since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. The dead included the West Bank leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Nayef Abu Sharekh, who was in his forties, and the leader of the Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank, Fadi Bahty, 26, according to Palestinian security and hospital officials."

Post's Moore is Less.....Reports Half the Story About Hebron IDF Exhibit

Post correspondent Moore doesn't break silence....she breaks the code of journalist ethics.

From www.andrewsullivan.com see these pictures JIHADIST KIDS PLAY BEHEADING: Yep, it gets even more depressing.

The link is to the video of the beheading of the Korean hostage and to Muslim children play at beheading.

A video located today on Sheik Abu Hamza's website, www.shareeah.org, features four children, doing what as children the world over do: pretending.

But what is completely unnerving about this video is what they are pretending.

One young boy kneels in front of three other children, in the same manner of the condemned man; Three other children stand behind him in the same way that the terrorists stood over the men prior to their beheading. The three standing children are armed with pretend weapons. One of the three children is a girl.

The tallest of the three standing children pretends he is Zarqawi, and reads a list of demands.

The film clip ends with the pretend beheading of the kneeling child.

Chilling.

Now look at the photos of the exhibit of alleged mistreatment by the IDF and Hebron settlers that Moore finds so arresting and you decide where the real mistreatment is.

Of course, guess which photos get the Post's coverage.

The immediate problem in Moore's coverage is that she nowhere states that the IDF is investigating the allegations under court order or that the IDF is under order to question the exhibitors and confiscate pictures and videotape that could help the investigation.

Even the AP mentioned the court order for gosh shakes..and they're no friend of Israel.

Read this

"The army said it summoned the soldiers for questioning and issued a court order Wednesday that they hand over any material that could assist the investigation."

To give balance to the coverage, the AP reports that:

"Those who put together the exhibit allegedly committed the mistreatment while soldiers and therefore fall under the auspices of the military court system, a military official said. The investigation is based on "testimony of those involved and eyewitnesses."

"The army teaches its soldiers to act morally even in complex situations," a spokeswoman said. She refused to confirm Tuesday's raid.

The army initially welcomed the exhibit, but said the soldiers should have complained about the situation to their commanders while they were on duty."

In contrast, the Post implies throughout the article - by using the unsubstantiated allegations of the organizers who are themselves the target of the investigation - that the IDF "interrogated" the organizers to silence them, then repeats the organizers unsubstantiated allegations of mistreatment committed by the IDF and settlers, while portraying the Palestinians as harmless and innocent.

Here Moore, without regard for balance, quotes one IDF soldier, "The bride is crying, the father of the groom is really begging," he continues. "You see on their face how they are anxious about the most significant day in their life. On the other hand, I can see the deputy commander looks at them and does not see them as humans."

The subtext of subjournalist Moore's broad strokes, is that the IDF and the hated settlers routinely mistreat the struggling peasants of impoverished Palestine and are now silencing the witnesses.

Indeed, if I were not so committed to fairness, I would say that Moore looks at Israelis and does not see them as human....but hey, how could I know that?

Here are her opening three sentences and again notice the juxtaposition of the military's substantiated statement (substantiated by the unmentioned court order) with the organizers unsubstantiated allegation that the IDF is trying to silence the exhibitors.

Read the entire article to feel the experience of the full slander.

Military police on Wednesday interrogated three Israeli reserve soldiers who organized an exhibit of photographs and videotapes chronicling mistreatment of Palestinians by troops and Jewish settlers.

A statement issued by the military said the three men were ordered to provide testimony as part of an investigation into the "allegedly violent crimes against Palestinians and damage to Palestinian property" depicted in the show.

"The army wants to keep us quiet and scare us away," Micha Kurz, 22, said after what he described as seven hours of questioning by investigators. "They're not going to shut us up, because we have a lot to say, and they're not going to scare us off."

She then makes this assertation:

"In one of the most arresting pictures, two stick-wielding Palestinian boys play a game of "hands up," pretending they are Israeli soldiers lining up four other Palestinian children, including a female toddler in a pink suit, against a wall. An Israeli soldier stands nearby, grinning, an assault rifle cradled in his arms. Another picture shows settler children ripping down the brick wall of a Palestinian shop."


'Breaking the Silence' on West Bank Abuse
Israeli Soldiers' Exhibit Depicts Mistreatment of Palestinians by Troops, Settlers in Hebron

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 24, 2004; Page A17

Post Tries US Torture - Israel Incriminated as Usual

Our friend Leo wrote to Glen Frankel regarding his recent article about Israel's use of moderate physical force, which the Post calls 'torture'.

For a paper that refuses to use the t-word for terrorists, they seem quick to describe Israel's use of physical force as 'torture.'

I thought Frankel's reporting mostly vindicated Israel's use of physical force against known terrorists and as our friend Leo notes, was sensitive to Israel's dilemma, but you have to read it carefully.

Frankel or his editors implicitly make the false comparison of Israel's professional police practices with those US servicemen's amateurish and sadistic practices used at Abu Ghraib. Frankel kinda makes the point that the US practices are mostly wanton and against common prisoners. Israel's practices are against terrorists planning their terrorism. But why, when the differences are so great, compare them in the first place?

As our colleague wrote in our media alert, the scandal in the reporting is the use of the photo, the use of the word 'torture', the comparison with Abu Ghraib and the placement of the article on the front page when there was no news.

Also, Frankel's attempt to link Israel's use of physical force to the occupation or to a prison warden's unchecked power is way off base. Hmmmmm......do you think Frankel has a political point of view, especially when the thrust of the balance of the article is that Israel's practices are deliberate and effective, not the unchecked use of force? It seems, no article at the Post is complete without some jibe at Israel's administration of the territories.

.....and anyway, WHAT IF THE ISRAELI or US PRACTICE SAVES LIVES...isn't that what is important?

Prison Tactics A Longtime Dilemma For Israel
Nation Faced Issues Similar to Abu Ghraib

By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; Page A01

Dear Mr. Frankel:

You did a commendable job with you article about the dilemma Israel faces about how far to allow abuse and/or torture of Palestinian terror suspects at a time when it is the target of a brutal terror campaign. Like you, I believe there can be no moral justification for torture. But I tend to disagree with you when you end your piece with a rather simplistic conclusion that, once you have a military "occupation" and give prison wardens unchecked power, such abuses are inevitable. It ain't that simple, as even your own reporting makes clear.

The question you apparently didn't ask -- and it may not be answerable -- is whether use by Israel of questionable interrogation tactics works and to what extent. We know that Israel has far more accurate and precise intelligence about terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza than the U.S. had about Iraq before the war or has now about insurgent forces rampaging across much of the country. Israel has an unrivaled record of terrorism prevention (by some accounts it now foils 90 percent or more of all terrorist attempts -- wish we could duplicate this in Iraq!) and, with an amazing intelligence capacity, can take out terrorist kingpins as they drive around Gaza, Nablus or Ramallah, or emerge from a mosque after prayers.

What makes the difference? Human intelligence. The Israelis have it in ample forms. We still don't in Iraq. We also know that Israel compiles its intelligence from agents posing as locals in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as from Palestinian collaborators.

What we don't know (or at least I haven't seen anything detailed published on this point) is to what extent Israel also garners critical and actionable intelligence about terrorism through coercive interrogations. In other words, is there a demonstrable payoff from abusing prisoners? Are lives saved because a prisoner, under tough questioning, spills the beans and lets Israel prevent a suicide bomber from blowing up dozens of civilians in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv? Has it helped save Palestinian lives if it creates a paradoxically "virtuous" cycle of fewer successful suicide attacks and thus fewer reprisal raids? I don't know the answer. And again from a strictly moral standpoint, it shouldn't make a difference.

And yet, might your piece not have been more enlightening if you had pressed former or retired Shin Bet officials and other potential sources to what extent coercive interrogations pay off? I wouldn't expect current Israeli officials to divulge such information. But as you well know, Israel is a very open place where leaks occur even more frequently than in Washington.

Suppose you had looked far and wide for such information and reached the conclusion that torture is not productive. If that were the case, the immorality of this practice would be even more damnable. But suppose it is productive, at times perhaps vitally so. Then, can you just confine yourself to an easy moral indictment that it's the inevitable evil of superior military power, or do you have to confront a much more difficult question: If hateful tactics save many lives, can we avert our eyes from a seemingly callous cost-benefit analysis, or should we find solace in an absolute moralism that opens the door to greater carnage? I would suggest that Israel's dilemma, which you depict with commendable sensitivity, is nothing less than the same dilemma that confronted Harry Truman on a much greater and terrifying scale with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even six decades later, we can debate whether Truman was right or wrong. What is less debatable is that he was not simply wreaking nuclear destruction just because he had the power to do so. He was convinced he was saving tens of thousands of U.S. -- and Japanese -- lives by shortening the war. Means and ends. Quite a dilemma!

Saudi Racism Buried by Post

As our colleague wrote in our media alert, the Post omitted a whopper. Why do they cover for the Saudi racists?

Our friend Leo picks up on the omission.

To the owner, publisher and editors of the Washington Post:

There was an egregious omission in your front-page story of Sunday, June 20, about the aftermath of the beheading of an American in Saudi Arabia and the shootout between Saudi security forces and terrorists.

Missing was a statement, made according to European and Mideast media, by Crown Prince Abdullah who went on Saudi TV to tell his people: "We are not 100 percent sure, but we are 95 percent sure that what happened in Saudi Arabia is the product of Zionist hands. They have poisoned the minds of our sons."

The importance of this comment by Saudi Arabia's supreme ruler cannot be exaggerated. If he and his government feel that these indigenous terrorists are merely a small band of "deviants" brainwashed by Jews instead of the product of fanatical indoctrination by Saudi clerics and Islamic religious teachers, what chance is there that Abdullah will crack down effectively on his madrassas?

Of course, this was the second day in a row that the Post reported the story from Berlin -- a little distance from Saudi Arabia. For a newspaper that rightly has two permanent reporters in Israel, one would think that at a time when the grip on power by the royal family in Saudi Arabia is ever more open to question, the Post would at least have as many reporting assets in Riyahd.

Is this an instance where Saudi Arabia won't allow you to open a bureau in Riyahd because it prefers you to get the news from Prince Bandar or its propaganda flak in the embassy in Washington who masquerades as a foreign-policy adviser? Or does the Post see no need to spend money for a regular on-the-scene presence in Saudi Arabia? If it's the former, your coverage is bound to rely more on spin from Saudi officials or other assorted "experts." If it's the latter, your journalistic priorities seem a bit cock-eyed.

Either way, I would suggest, you have a responsibility to tell readers about any governmental barriers that might prevent regular access not only in Saudi Arabia but also in places like Iran and Syria so they can judge for themselves how credible your coverage is.

Your readers deserve more transparency and accountability.

What the Post doesn't want you to know

One of the worst sins of the Washington Post is avoidance of news that helps to explain or justify Israel's actions. These are stories it doesn't want its readers to know. I'm not sure whether to call them "no-nos", "no-knows", or "no-news". Anyway, this latest one is a killer:
According to the NY Times News Service (6/20/04), Israel blocked one of the largest Hamas attacks ever by arresting SIX (!) suicide bombers who had planned to blow themselves up simultaneously. Can you imagine the exposure if the US had foiled such an attack by Al Qaeda? But this story didn't even appear in the Post.
Then the article went on to describe how Israel arrested a 15-year-old girl in Nablus, who, along with her younger (!) sister, had planned to carry out a suicide bombing for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, but "gotten cold feet". This also wasn't in the Post, although stories of teenage children who are hurt or killed by Israel are put on the front page.
The NY Times article then mentioned a thwarted car bombing in Gaza on Tuesday, and went on to describe the huge reduction in terrorist attacks since March and to credit this to the barrier wall and to aggressive anti-terrorist actions.
But none of this appeared in the Post. Instead, the Post's lone Middle East article on 6/20 was, in its entirety, "Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at an empty metal workshop in the central Gaza Strip. No one was injured, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli army said the workshop was used by the militant group Hamas to make weapons. The strike came a day after Israeli helicopters attacked two empty metal workshops in Gaza City." (Like Bob (see home page), I also wondered about the word "empty". It somehow smacks of disapproval, yet would the Post think it better if the weapon factories had been filled with people? Is this another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation?)
By denying its readers so many stories like the NY Times one, the Post brainwashes its readership into believing that Israel is an evil aggressor nation, and not a besieged nation waging a defensive war.

Post Pull's Putin

Russia warned about Iraq's terrorism against US and the story is buried on page 11 of the Saturday paper. Doesn't Putin's revelation alone justify the war?

The Post doesn't address the importance of the revelation....it doesn't have a clue.

Russia Warned U.S. About Iraq, Putin Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 19, 2004; Page A11


Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that his intelligence service had warned the Bush administration before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was planning attacks against U.S. targets both inside and outside the country.

The Post, rather than directly addressing the importance of the revelation, links it to the commission investigating 9/11 and reports that the commission finds no collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda.

....hmmmm....what does that have to do with Putin's revelation?

Putin's statement came as Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials are defending their statements -- made before the war and as recently as this week -- that Hussein's government had a relationship with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

But isn't the issue whether there were threats against the US and isn't the real revelation of the 9/11 Commission report that there was an "evolving terrorist threat" across the 1990's that was largely ignored.

And regarding the Commission's report about those links...over to Stephen Hayes...to show the Post get's it wrong as usual.

There They Go Again
From the June 28, 2004 issue: The 9/11 Commission and the media refuse to see the ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
by Stephen F. Hayes
06/28/2004, Volume 009, Issue 40


But the contents of the documents have been widely misreported. Together the new reports total 32 pages; one contains a paragraph on the broad question of a Saddam-al Qaeda relationship, the other a paragraph on an alleged meeting between the lead hijacker and an Iraqi agent. Nowhere in the documents is the "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link...Dismissed," as Washington Post headline writers would have us believe. In fact, Staff Statement 15 discusses several "links."

Post's Toles Tantrum Tickles the Terrorists

Friend of the blog Leo sent another great letter to the Post

Subject: The Berlin War and Israel's Security Fence


To the Editor:

Cartoonist Tom Toles has his facts upside-down and inside-out when he likens Israel's security fence to the Berlin Wall. Unlike the East German regime which cut Berlin in two to prevent its own people from fleeing Communist rule, Israel is not building its barrier because Israelis are gung-ho to leave Israel and settle in Nablus or Ramallah. The Israeli fence is designed to keep Palestinian terrorists out. Even before its completion, it has saved many lives.

Slamming Ariel Sharon with patent falsehoods should be beneath the Post. Would Toles draw a similar cartoon about a U.S. president and the American fence at the Mexican border, designed to cut down the flow of illegal immigrants? Mexico is not even exporting terrorism but I don't see Toles or the Post demonizing George W. Bush or his predecessors for erecting our do-not-trespass fence.

Fences may not always make good neighbors, but they often make better neighbors -- especially when the alternative is to allow free rein to the slaughter of innocents.

Post Drops its Probe of Sharon

Post reporter follows the herd and misses the story.

Israel Drops Its Probe Of Sharon
Evidence Insufficient, Attorney General Says

By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; Page A16

Reporting about Prime Minister Sharon's exoneration, subjournalist Shulman phones in what every other critic of Israel's prime minister reports...that the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

.....hmmm....true enough. What's to criticize?

Here are the money graf's:

"The evidence in this case does not bring us even close to the existence of reasonable possibility of a conviction," Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told reporters.

His decision contradicts the recommendation of State Attorney Edna Arbel, Israel's chief prosecutor, who investigated the case and announced in March that the prime minister should be indicted.

"It was always a judgment call," said Yoram Shachar, a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, adding that either decision would have been legally defensible.

At issue are payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a developer to Sharon's son Gilad in the late 1990s. The investigation focused on whether Sharon, then foreign minister, used his position to lobby the government of Athens to help approve a Greek island resort for the developer, David Appel, who has been indicted. The resort was never built, but Gilad was paid $100,000 in salary and another $580,000 was transferred to the account of the Sharon family ranch in the Negev desert.

In Postthink the crux of the story is that Gilad was paid a fortune, although the Greek Island development was never built. With only slight inference, this makes it, ergo in the words of the 'good' professor, "a judgment call" about whether father Sharon is a crook.

Let's see what a real journalist writes about the Attorney General's statement and the larger scandal.

Only the news that fits

Larry Derfner

Jun. 16, 2004

In all that time, in all the millions of words written and broadcast about the affair, nobody to my knowledge ever hinted at the crucial revelation presented by Mazuz –that Gilad Sharon worked his butt off for the money he got from David Appel.

The key to Ariel Sharon's guilt, it seemed before Tuesday, was that Gilad didn't know anything about marketing and didn't do anything to promote Appel's Greek island tourism project, so how could Gilad's $3 million in payments and potential bonuses have been taken as anything but a bribe to his father? How could Ariel Sharon not have known what was going on?

BUT IT turns out, according to Mazuz's evidence – including secret wire taps and videotapes – that Gilad actually earned his money. He got very high marks for his work from one of his associates, Zvi Friedman, who is considered the father of Israeli advertising. Gilad's fees might have been exorbitant, but not compared to what Appel was paying other people on the project, a project which he expected to return even more exorbitant profits.

What does Derfner then exhort? As you read, substitute 'Post' with Israeli.

"So what should Israeli journalists do to avoid committing the same magnitude of blunder again? Clearly, we have to start being skeptical of justice officials and stop treating them like the children of light who are going up against the children of darkness – i.e., the politicians and their rich friends.

We should also restrain our tendency to tell news stories like morality plays – they can make for great reading, but real life is rarely that neat. Real life, we've been reminded, can surprise the hell out of you.

The writer is a veteran journalist."

Tell the Post, it was not a judgment call and Israel and her leaders are not the children of darkness.

Sharon: Mr. Gorbachev, can I have these blocks?

Letter to Post:

Shame on Tom Toles (cartoon, 6/16/04, p. A26) for equating the Berlin wall and Israel's wall. Yes, they're both walls, but the purposes are diametrically opposite. The Berlin wall was to keep people IN and prevent them from escaping to a land of freedom. Israel's wall is to keep suicide bombers OUT and prevent them from attacking and destroying a land of freedom. The difference is like night and day, sin and virtue, freedom and tyranny - which is to say, immense.

The shame is that this kind of message, found all too often in your paper, tends to brainwash your readers into believing that Israel, in its attempts at self-defense, is actually the oppressor. Remember, if the Palestinians don't want the wall, all they have to do is remove its cause, i.e., stop their attacks.

Post wary as U.S. gains influence in Iraq....hides Iran's terrorism

How wrong can Wright be? Do they not read the newspaper there?

In the world of Postthink, Iran is building "health clinics" ...read that again, "health clinics" ..... to compete with US influence in Iraq....and about those pesky suicide bombers......never heard of them.

If you don't have time to read the entire post, remember 10,000 recently signed up for an Iranian suicide squad and volunteers can select whether they want to commit mass murder in Israel, Iraq or Chechnya.

10,000 sign up for Iranian suicide squad:[Daily Edition]
MATTHEW GUTMAN. Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Jun 9, 2004. pg. 03


You have to read the entire Post article to believe it, but here are some excerpts.

U.S. Wary as Iran Works to Increase Influence in Iraq

By Robin Wright

Saturday, June 12, 2004

"Although U.S. funding has focused heavily on infrastructure, almost all of Iran's assistance has focused on more visible public services, such as health clinics, community centers and power generators that have boosted local allies. "They've tried to help Shia who have influence in the community get more influence," said a senior U.S. coalition official in Baghdad who also requested anonymity because of the sensitive subject."

"Yet in contrast to the U.S.-Iran struggle for influence in Lebanon two decades ago, when Iranian surrogates were held responsible for the deadliest attacks against U.S. embassies and a Marine headquarters, U.S. officials said Iran -- which is predominantly Shiite -- has not been linked to attacks on the U.S.-led coalition by predominantly Sunni extremist groups."

"We believe they do see advantages to having us be a little bloodied and to make clear that whatever happens will not be seen as a U.S. success in the region," the U.S. intelligence official said. "But the Iranians are very sensitive about getting exposed for doing anything open or violent against us."

"Ironically, U.S. officials said the United States and Iran share the long-term goal of a stable, secular and unified Iraq where leaders are selected in democratic elections, because Iraq's Shiite majority would almost certainly give Shiite leaders a decisive edge. Iranian analysts agreed."

So in Postthink, Iran is afraid of being exposed....and they're dying for stability.


When you're through banging your head, read the entire Michael Ledeen article in NRO to see how wrong Wright can be.

Ledeen links to this JPost article that connects Iran to Hizbullah to the terror war against Israel. Here is the money quote:

"In the past two months, eight smuggling tunnels have been uncovered, one by Egypt, an Operations Branch official told the committee.

Ya'alon said most of the weapons are being delivered on the Sinai shores by an operation that is almost entirely financed by Iran and being conducted via Palestinian groups in Damascus and Hizbullah in Lebanon. He said weapons are also coming from Saudi Arabia and Africa."


Here is the entire Ledeen article.

Trouble with Iran

June 14, 2004

Iran is making trouble, and finessing it is a dangerous strategy.

Abu Musab al Zarkawi, born Ahmad al Khalayla in Jordan, is the current deus ex machina of the terror war against the Coalition in Iraq. He is credited with numerous assassinations — including that of an American official, Thomas Foley, in Amman — and suicide bombings, along with the spectacular but little-reported attempt to launch a chemical attack against American targets in Jordan. Secretary of State Colin Powell named him on February 3, 2003, in his speech to the United Nations. Powell reported that Zarkawi had been sighted in Baghdad, where one of his legs had been amputated due to injuries sustained in Afghanistan.

Two months earlier, I had written about Zarkawi on the basis of German and Italian intelligence documents, presented by the prosecution in court cases against members of his European network. At that time, I noted that these documents identified Iran as the base of Zarkawi's operations. Powell was making a case against Iraq, and understandably omitted the Iranian connection, but the evidence of the Iranian matrix has just been reinforced in a book by Stefan Dambruoso (and co-authored by Guido Olimpio, a well-known journalist at Corriere della Sera), one of the Italian judicial officers charged with investigating terrorist activities in Milan. The book is entitled Milan-Baghdad, and excerpts dealing with Zarkawi appear in the current edition of Panorama, the leading Italian weekly newsmagazine.

Dambruoso flatly confirms what I wrote in December 2002: "Our investigations permit us to establish that the country of the Ayatollahs is the preferred springboard for militants headed for Iraq." Dambruoso lays it out in some detail. Zarkawi had already organized groups of fighters before the liberation of Iraq, and they operate alongside the remnants of Saddam's killers. The European network is used to recruit new bodies for the jihad in Iraq, and they enter from Iran in groups of three to five, with phony passports and usually pretending to be businessmen (or, I can add, journalists). They rent or buy small apartments in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ramadi, where they organize larger cells, and then move into the battle area. Zarkawi himself entered Iraq by this method, along with one of the leading ideologues of the jihad, Abu Masaab (a Syrian).

Dambruoso seems to believe that the relationship between Zarkawi and Osama bin Laden is ambiguous, having seen some evidence (primarily the famous letter captured by U.S. special forces late last year) that Zarkawi was unhappy about the lack of support from al Qaeda. But whatever their tactical and personal disagreements (and these can be feigned), they share a common strategy for Iraq: kill members of the Coalition and any Iraqi who cooperates, and provoke internal conflicts among the various ethnic and religious communities. That tracks with my own analysis, which is that we are dealing with several different groups, supported by the various terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh, in a joint operation within the overall matrix of Hezbollah — which of course means Iran.

I think Iran's diabolical hand can also be seen in the evolution of the image of Zarkawi. As Dambruoso points out in his book, the figure of Zarkawi has become more glorious, and he is not only a fighter but a preacher, who, like Osama, posts sermons on jihadist blogs.

Dambruoso explicitly refers to American intelligence sources for some of this information, including the movements from Iran to Iraq. Yet as recently as Saturday, June 12, Robin Wright of the Washington Post was loyally transmitting messages from unnamed "intelligence sources" claiming that Iran was not causing trouble in Iraq, and presenting the usual disinformation about a regime said to be internally divided and strategically paralyzed.

That sort of thing makes one wonder whether anyone at the CIA takes time to read the newspapers, or whether they rely entirely on classified cables from blind men "in the field." Had they read the newspapers they would have seen the mullahs calling for a new wave of suicide terrorism against us in Iraq, and even the remarkable spectacle of a formal signup sheet for those who want to blow themselves up (it thoughtfully gives the volunteer a choice of becoming a martyr in Iraq, Israel, or elsewhere).

I suppose this doesn't constitute troublemaking, huh?

Well, how about the news from Agence France Press on June 7 that Ukrainian troops in eastern Iraq arrested "about 40 Iranians trying to enter the country illegally...with assault rifles, Kalashnikovs, hunting guns and ammunition..."

I suppose the CIA thinks the Iranians were members of a peace-loving gun club.

Well, then, how about the report from IDF Chief of Staff Yaalon to the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on May 18, which dealt with a massive arms smuggling operation from Egypt to Gaza? Yaalon said that most of the operation was "almost entirely financed by Iran and being conducted via Palestinian groups in Damascus and Hizbullah in Lebanon. He said weapons are also coming from Saudi Arabia and Africa."

We are inundated from all sides with evidence that should drive our strategy in the Middle East. The war in Iraq is part of a broader struggle, and we will not be able to succeed there unless we also defeat the terror masters who are funding, arming, training, and directing the terror war in Iraq. But instead of going after the Iranian regime by supporting a mass movement to democratize the country, our leaders tell pliant journalists that the Iranians aren't causing trouble, and the real danger comes from the possibility that Ahmad Chalabi leaked some information to the mullahs.

Did no journalist think to ask an anonymous source the obvious question: If Iran's not a problem, why are you so upset about the leak? And if Iran is a problem, why don't we have an Iran policy after four years of discussion? Is there a national-security process or not?

The Bush administration has clearly decided to try to "manage" Iraq and "finesse" Iran, hoping to muddle through until the election and then, if victorious, consider its options in the broader theater. The president and his top advisers evidently want to avoid "new adventures" between now and November.

But this is a very dangerous strategy, because it leaves the initiative, in Iraq and elsewhere, entirely in the hands of people like Zarkawi and his longtime Iranian sponsors. Indeed, it seems to me that doing nothing is an open invitation to "new adventures" in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the United States.

You don't need classified information to see this; it's right in front of our noses. Yet we refuse to see it. This is what intelligence failures are really about: denial of the most obvious facts about the world. And it's what policy failures are about as well: refusal to take the obvious steps to protect our citizens, our allies, and our national interests.

We buried Ronald Reagan. Let's hope we haven't buried American courage along with him.

Faster. Please?

Arab Children Recruiting Arab Children for Terrorism Against Israel

Read the entire New York Times article, dated June 13, 2004, but the opening graf makes the point.

Israel Says Children Enlist Children as Suicide Bombers
By GREG MYRE

ABLUS, West Bank - When teenage suicide bombers began emerging from Nablus last fall, Israeli and Palestinian leaders expressed concern that Palestinian factions were cynically exploiting the youths.

What.....cynical Palestinians!!!? Shocked, I tell you, I'm shocked.

When was the last time you saw an article like this in the comPost...now that would be shocking.

Europe Won't Publish Pro-Israel Books

More evidence of anti-Semitic Bias in Europe.

In our previous post, the EU Observer noted that despite investigating fraud in the PA, the MEP couldn't reach agreement about the strength of the evidence.

Evidence under discussion
The accusations to the Palestinian Authority, which have been ongoing for the last three years, split an investigating group of members of the European Parliament on 2 April.

By a margin of just one vote, a majority of MEPs backed a report that said there was no conclusive evidence that EU money had gone to terrorists.

But an alternative 'minority report', backed by six of the 13 members of the group, said that the evidence "cannot be discarded".

Now, read this excerpt from Frontpage.com of an interview, with Rodger W. Claire, author of the new book, Raid on the Sun - Inside Israel’s Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb, about his experience trying to publish in Europe.

Read the entire interview, but this excerpt stagers the mind.

FP: You encountered difficulty selling the publication rights in Europe. What happened?

Claire: Every European publisher, including Britain, France, Italy, and Spain, passed on the rights to the book, having never even seen the galleys. Stunned, my agents, The Robbins Office, made inquiries and were told that European readers shied away from anything that put Israeli in a positive light. The publishers were not so much pro-Palestinian as anti-Israeli. But it is no secret that a new wave of anti-Semitism is moving through Europe, fuelled by the European Left and the huge Muslim immigrant populations. Obviously, my book became a victim of that. It is not a political book, it is an exciting, pulse-pounding military tale, revealing what incredible feats a human being can accomplish in the most impossible of circumstances, and that faith and teamwork and duty can overcome almost any obstacle – or any tyrant.


hmmmmmm...could this help explain why the obvious is a minorty view in Europe....and the Post.

More Evidence EU funding PA terror campaign....tell the Post

From the EU Observer, more news you'll never read in the comPost.

Investigations into EU-financed Palestinian terror allegations not over, says OLAF
09.06.2004 - 17:46 CET | By Mark Beunderman


OLAF, the EU's anti fraud office, has signalled that new evidence could arise over the alleged misuse by the Palestinian Authority of EU funds to fund terrorist activities.

In a television programme by the Bayerische Rundfunk on Monday (7 June), the General Director of OLAF Franz-Hermann Brüner said that his employees had to cope with a constant flow of new documents raising new questions.

"We would be happy if we could end (our investigations) by this summer. But I am not optimistic, because again and again we are in the situation where we receive new documents, and on the basis of these documents new questions and obligations arise, which is why we cannot estimate when this process will be finalised".

Last April, on the basis of a majority report by the European Parliament, the European Commission was quick to claim that evidence that funds were misused had not been found, in spite of "intensive investigations".

EU money on uncontrollable accounts
However, the row over the possible financing of terror attacks with EU money by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat seems far from over.

The Bayerische Rundfunk reported that 246 million euro of EU money, granted to the Palestinian Authority by the European Commission, ended up on fully uncontrollable
bank accounts.

Contrary to specific project-based EU aid, these direct money transfers to the Palestinian Authority could be spent freely, the television report said.

The Bayerische Rundfunk said, on the basis of a letter by Mr Arafat that it had obtained, that the Palestinian leader personally ordered terrorist attacks, using the accounts where the EU money ended up.

Evidence under discussion
The accusations to the Palestinian Authority, which have been ongoing for the last three years, split an investigating group of members of the European Parliament on 2 April.

By a margin of just one vote, a majority of MEPs backed a report that said there was no conclusive evidence that EU money had gone to terrorists.

But an alternative 'minority report', backed by six of the 13 members of the group, said that the evidence "cannot be discarded".

US Conducted Targeted Killings with Significant Civilian Casualties

The next time the comPost, our State Department or the U.N. demonize Israel for the targeted killings of terrorists, refer to this article in the New York Times.....and keep in mind that Israel's strikes have largely been successful, with few civilian casualties.

Here are some excerpts:

Errors Are Seen in Early Attacks on Iraqi Leaders
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: June 13, 2004


WASHINGTON, June 12 — The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.
The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said.

An explicit account of the zero for 50 record in strikes on high-value targets was provided by Marc Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who headed the joint staff's high-value targeting cell during the war. Mr. Garlasco is now a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, and he was a primary author of the December report, "Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq."

General Moseley, the top Air Force commander during the war who is now the Air Force vice chief of staff, said in the interview last summer that commanders were required to obtain advance approval from Mr. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was likely to result in the deaths of 30 more civilians. More than 50 such raids were proposed, and all were approved, General Moseley said.

The four case studies examined by the organization included the failed March 19, 2003, strike on Mr. Hussein and his sons at Dora Farms, which it said killed a civilian. According to Human Rights Watch, a failed April 5 strike that singled out General Majid in a residential area of Basra killed 17 civilians; a failed April 8 strike that was aimed at Mr. Hussein's half brother Watban Ibrahim Barzan in Baghdad killed 6 civilians; and the second raid on Mr. Hussein and one or both of his sons, on April 7 in the Mansur district of Baghdad, killed an estimated 18 civilians.

Can you imagine how the world, lead by the comPost, would react if Israeli pilots killed 18 civilians and missed their target?

Do you think this will change attitudes toward Israel.....we can dream it can't we?

Subject: A Definition of Hamas

Leo, a friend of the blog, shared with us this letter he wrote to the editor,


To the Editor:

The Post's efforts to soften the image of terrorist groups never ceases to amaze. A front-page story about a prominent American Muslim activist provides the latest example ("Alleged Plot to Kill Saudi Ruler Detailed" June 11). In referring to a supposed connection with Hamas, it describes the group as one that "sponsors" suicide bombings against Israelis.

"Sponsors"? As in "sponsoring" a kid to camp and not being responsible for what he or she does there? Or as in Al Quaeda "sponsored" 9/11 with perhaps just "Bon Voyage" wishes to the hijackers?

Hamas doesn't just "sponsor" suicide attacks. It organizes, orchestrates, finances, directs and executes suicide missions with killers it indoctrinates from childhood to covet the hereafter pleasures of "martyrs." It's time for the Post to get real instead of feeding politically correct pap to readers about the gravest danger confronting the civilized world.

Well said, Leo....and thanks.

Repeat 50 times...they are not enemy combatants, they are terrorists

Words for the reporters at the comPost to remember, from Judge William Young in sentencing Richard Reid (the shoe bomber):

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.

We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

........Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down.

And to the Post we say, Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand them down.

The Public Doesn't Trust the Post....errrr.....Media

The public continues to express skepticism toward news outlets and those who run them. More than half (53%) agree with the statement "I often don't trust what news organizations are saying." Nearly as many (48%) believe people who decide on news content are "out of touch."

..hmmmmm...should the Post be concerned?

Read the latest Pew Research Poll that shows declining public trust in the media. The Post isn't named in the poll but can their be any doubt about public skepticism of their reporting.

Even with declining circulation, do you think they'll listen?

The Post has been losing readers since 1993, with circulation falling 8.25% weekdays, to 746,724, and 7.97% Sundays, to 1,048,122. Nationwide, from 1993 to 2001 (the latest figures available), newspaper circulation dipped 7.08% daily and 5.55% Sundays.

And if any should doubt whether the Post's hostile headlines, pictures and article placement matter...find this statistic in the Pew Poll

....(46%) are "news grazers," who check in on the news from time to time. Grazers are younger, less dedicated to the news, and have an eclectic news diet.

Damned if you do...

...Damned if you don't

Let me see if I understand this:

Israel announced it will remove its settlements from Gaza, and was criticized by The Washington Post. Now Israel says it will remove some businesses from an area of Gaza where "at least 11 Israelis" have been killed by Palestinian attacks since November 2001, and is criticized by the Post.

In "Israelis to Quit Gaza Industrial Zone" (p. A17, 6/9/04) the Post, with "damned if you do, damned if you don't" reasoning, devotes 16 paragraphs of this article to criticisms of the action and to the economic hardship on Palestinians, and only 4 to Israeli reasons for the withdrawal. The criticism is emblazoned in the subheadline "Many Palestinians Will Lose Jobs at Border Site", but one has to wait until the fifth paragraph to learn that "at least 11 Israelis" (I think it's more) were killed in that area (without even stating that they were killed by Palestinian terrorists).

Does it occur to anyone at the Post that Israel can't both stay and not stay? Does it occur to the Palestinians that if they want Israel to keep its businesses there ("We need them for money", says a Palestinian tailor), perhaps they should stop the attacks? Or does everyone involved have an IQ in the single digits?

One wonders what Israel must do to please the Post. If it withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza, but left behind a $100,000 endowment for each Palestinian (with an extra bonus for the suicide bombers), would the Post then approve? Or would it take an actual act of self-destruction?

Damned if you do....damned if you....well..... if you're Israel

How do their subjournalists do it everyday?

When they tire of slandering Israel for her occupation...they slander her for withdrawing.

If you can stomach it, read this in today's article, Israelis to Quit Gaza Industrial Zone
Many Palestinians Will Lose Jobs at Border Site


Israeli businesses will be withdrawn from an industrial zone on the border with the Gaza Strip that has been a source of employment for thousands of Palestinians for more than three decades.....

...oh...so now we learn that Israelis are a source of employment for the Palestinians and for three decades at that.

And what?...they don't want Israel to close their businesses.

Hasn't the subtext of all of their reporting over the years been how oppressive ...even inhumane...the occupation has been.

Doesn't the Post refuse to call terrorists what they are because that is so...judgmental... when all those desperate martyrs really want is freedom from Israel's harsh occupation.

But that was soooooo yesterday.

Today, the story is how spiteful Israel is for leaving....and how they will destroy Palestinian families by the thousands....yes, read that again... for leaving.

"We were all shocked by this hasty decision," said Sami Abu Zarifa, an economic adviser to the Palestinian Authority.

"They are going to destroy thousands of Palestinian families," said Abu Musa, who owns a clothing factory. "This is an unwise decision."

Yah.....we're shocked alright.

Tunnels are harmful...tell the Post

Could the Post be more decisively refuted in such a short time?

Remember the seething editorial Wrong Way in Gaza Tuesday, May 18, 2004?

The Post rants that Israel's Gaza offensive "only make matters worse."

Without a hint of concern for the recent deaths of 13 IDF soldiers killed in ambushes despite noting that "the bodies of some of the soldiers were dismembered by Palestinian attackers" or for the growing threat from the tunnels or the anti-aircraft missiles waiting in Egypt.

They save their concern for the "116 dwellings destroyed over the weekend, leaving more than 1,000 people homeless -- have been carried out without regard for the welfare or possessions of desperately poor Palestinian residents. If the operation continues, thousands more will be made homeless."

What about Israel's welfare? Which is worse, destroying homes or murdering soldiers?

But set aside the editor's inverted moral tone....is the Post's basic premise correct?

Did Israel's recent measures in Gaza make matters worse?

Read the Reuters dispatch from Gaza.

Palestinians turn on tunnel men, June 06, 2004 By Nidal al-Mughrabi

Running guns and contraband through tunnels into Rafah refugee camp from nearby Egypt was once both profitable and patriotic in Palestinian eyes. It put rare cash into a poor economy and fuelled "resistance" to Israeli occupation in Gaza.

But communal support for the smugglers has cooled as Israeli forces have razed more and more parts of Rafah said to be hiding tunnels. With 13,000 people now homeless, many of whom say they concealed nothing, residents are turning on the tunnel men.

"Many people now oppose our work. I know of cases where people have noticed others digging a tunnel and they have assaulted them," said Mustafa, a veteran Rafah tunnel builder who declined to give his family name.

Read on....

Growing community opposition, together with increasing Israeli incursions that have progressively reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, have slowed down tunnel construction and with it the arrival of fresh arms and ammunition.

Prices are soaring as a result. The cost of a Kalashnikov bullet has doubled recently to 30 shekels (3.50 pounds).

Tunnel builders said they were hearing that Egypt was rounding up cohorts on the other side of the border and meting out long prison terms. Israel has long called for such a crackdown by Egypt, pointing to their 1979 peace treaty.

It's so rare that the Post can be so decisively refuted within a couple of weeks of one of their rants..but there it is.

When even the Gazans ...and surprise, the Egyptians....realize the tunnels are bad, do you think the Post will?

Once again, nah!!!!

Israel's actions in Rafah are hard but not harder than anything the US has not recently done in Iraq and not harder than what other western countries would do facing a terror threat of the same magnitude - think of the British who invented demolishing homes or of the French who committed genocide in Algeria.

What really distinguishes Israel's actions are how effective they are...tell the Post.

Israel is Winning....tell the Post!!!

Would the subjournalists at the Post ever report that Israel is winning...or that the targeted killing of terrorists is working....nah.

For insight into Israel's success, go to the Jerusalum Post

Security officials say that in the first months of this year there has been a steady rise in the number of attacks thwarted. According to their statistics, Israel has successfully intercepted and prevented 60 suicide attacks so far this year.
Most of these were planned by Tanzim terrorists and not Hamas. Intelligence from interrogations of detained Palestinians is key to thwarting attacks.
According to security sources, Hamas in the West Bank where most of the suicide attacks have been launched has been badly hit. Cells there have not been able to stage a suicide attack in Israel since the bombings at Jerusalem's Caf Hillel and a bus stop near the Tzrifin army base on September 9, 2003.

And why the decline...good intellegience from detainees, and...

The main factor in the decline of their (Hamas) capability is the killing and capture of their leadership.

Or this:

Dr. Shimon Bar, an expert on Hamas, said that the group's leadership is so devastated there is no one to talk to even if the Palestinian Authority wanted to make a deal with the group.

"Their rotating leadership is expending all its energy hiding. They are afraid of Israel hitting them which makes any sort of sophisticated planning difficult," said Bar, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

If only we could get the Post's leadership to expend their energy hiding.

Hey, we can dream it can't we.

Israel's secret plan to supply drinking water for Palestinians

Israel fulfilled its requirements under Oslo and ....something you'll never read in the Post....is now doing more.

Read this from the New Scientist

Here are some money quotes:

The new plans call for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into the West Bank, where a network of pipes will deliver it to large towns and many of the 250 villages that currently rely on local springs and small wells for their water.

Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa.

But of course, no article would be complete without slandering Israel. In fact, like the Post's slanderous coverage, this slander is made gratuitously:

But now it appears that Israeli water planners see desalination as a means of retaining control of those aquifers.

huh...how does that follow from what was just reported.

Why, its worthy of the comPost!

Sad But True

A fellow in Paris saw a pit bull attacking a girl.
He killed the pit bull and saved the girl's life.
Reporters swarmed the fellow.
"Tell us! What's your name? All of Paris will love you! Tomorrow's headline will be: Hero Saves Girl From Vicious Dog!!"
The guy says, "But I'm not from Paris."
Reporters: "That's OK. Then the whole of France will love you, and tomorrow's headline will read: Hero Saves Girl from Vicious Dog!!"
The guy says, "But I'm not from France, either.
Reporters: "That's OK also. Then all of Europe will love you. Tomorrow's headlines will shout: Hero Saves Girl from Vicious Dog!'"
The guy says, "But I'm not from Europe, either".
Reporters: "So, then where ARE you from?
The guy says, "I'm from Israel".
Reporters: "OK. No problem! Then tomorrow's headlines will proclaim to the world: 'Israeli Kills Girl's Dog!'"

The media for terrorists ...err...ambulances-for-terrorists scandal again

Here is a must read article about the on-going UN ambulance scandal by the courageous Michelle Malkin. She explains why it matters for the American taxpayer....and she notes the media scandal that refuses to cover the story...

...."not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers" ...think our comPost also.


The ambulances-for-terrorists scandal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Here are some money grafs:


"Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with the agency's blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene."

but "...... not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers."

"....this ambulances-for-terrorists program has been going on for years. And "humanitarian" workers have been willing collaborators."

Michelle even cites a terrorist's confession:

According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official U.N. vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. He was in charge of distributing food supplies to Palestinian refugees. Nidal 'Abd al-Fataah 'Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists.

She then shows the scandal has a history:

U.N. vehicles aren't the only ones being used by terrorists. An intensive-care ambulance carrying the acronym of the Palestine Red Crescent Society was used to deliver an explosive belt found underneath a stretcher on which a sick child was lying in spring 2002. Female suicide bomber Wafa Idris, who blew herself up in a January 2002 attack in Jerusalem, was a medical secretary for the PRCS. Her recruiter was an ambulance driver for the same organization. PRCS receives financial support from governments and organizations around the world, including the American Red Cross and International Committee of the Red Cross.

The UNRWA has long been suspected of providing aid and comfort to terrorists. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, recently documented how "buildings and warehouses under UNRWA supervision are allegedly being used as storage areas for Palestinian ammunition and counterfeit currency factories." Cantor's 2002 report also noted that UNRWA hosts summer camps in martyrdom for young terrorists-in-training. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., has also lobbied for increased scrutiny of UNRWA funding, which has been used to publish anti-Semitic textbooks and posters in schools that "glorify homicide bombers and the slaughter of innocents."

Moreover, according to Rep. Smith, a UNRWA school hosted a Hamas rally by a key Hamas leader in July 2001 and another UNRWA employee praised homicide bombers, proclaiming: "The road to Palestine passes through the blood of the fallen, and these fallen have written history with parts of their flesh and their bodies."

Egypt warms to Israel...will the Post

At nineteen to one, would you consider it fair?

The Post uses 19 paragraphs to give the heads of the several Gaza terror groups and their spokesliars yet another chance to spread their...well...lies.

In contrast, the Post uses one paragraph for a single unnamed Israeli voice to counter the lies.....and no surprise, they still miss the real story.

The Post uses the terrorist's spokesliars to disparage what they call Israel's unilateral disengagement...when of course, the shocking, surprising and almost unheard of story is that first Jordan and now Egypt are warning Arafat to step down in a multilateral act to help Israel achieve security.

To understand the large changes occuring with both Jordan's and Egypt's leaders, read this account by Ehud Ya'ari: Dreams across the River, and weep for what is missing from the Post account.

Here's another account that makes the even more newsworthy point that Egypt is warming its relationship with Israel....something you'll never read in the Post.

Report: Egyptian security chief warns Arafat
Israel’s Channel 1 News reported Monday night that Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman recently presented PA Chairman Yasser Arafat with a list of demands intended to facilitate an orderly transformation of power in the Gaza Strip following an Israeli withdrawal. The report was based on a story that appeared in the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi. The demands included the unification of all Palestinian security services, the granting of real authority to PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei to conduct negotiations over disengagement, and the acceptance by Arafat of a purely symbolic role. According to the report, Arafat was given until 15 June to comply, with the alternative to be “left in the hands of Ariel Sharon”. The report indicated that though delivered by Suleiman, the demands were drawn up in consultation with the US and Israel.

If accurate, Suleiman’s demands demonstrate the extent to which the planned Israeli ‘unilateral’ withdrawal is becoming decidedly multilateral. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is scheduled to fly to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss Egyptian pressure on Arafat to comply to these demands. Overt Egyptian commitment to involvement in Gaza’s future is increasing: President Mubarak spoke to PM Sharon on Monday, reiterating his support for the disengagement plan, and a joint committee to discuss ‘varous bilateral issues’ including the disengagement plan has been set up.

Behind the Egyptian involvement lies a desire to play a constructive role in a US-supported initiative, in a way which carries virtually no potential cost. Egypt, a major recipient of US aid, has been under growing US pressure to carry out internal reform. Support for the disengagement plan offers a way whereby the Egyptians may support their patron, present themselves as a moderate, mediating force in the conflict, and, hopefully, divert attention from their failure to act on internal reform.

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