When the Palestinian intifada broke out in September 2000, world sympathy was overwhelmingly in favor of the uprising. It seemed that everyone was shedding tears for the "poor, oppressed Palestinians struggling for liberation from the lengthy, harsh Israeli military occupation." With all the misery, poverty, disease, disasters and starvation in the world, the most tears were shed for the "plight of the Palestinian refugees," who were maintained in UNRWA refugee camps for 55 years.
Collections of food, money, and clothing were made for the "Palestinian children, who were the neglected, innocent victims of the long, turbulent conflict." This implied that that the Israeli children, who were killed and maimed by Palestinian terror attacks, must have been guilty victims. Their crime was to ride a Jewish bus on the way to a Jewish school, in the free, democratic, sovereign, successful Jewish State of Israel. On the other hand, Palestinian boys were cheered and encouraged as they threw stones at the big, bad Israeli soldiers with their long rifles and heavy riot helmets.
The Palestinian suicide bombers were glorified as martyrs, willing to sacrifice their lives for the desperate struggle to obtain a little homeland for their people. Their leader, Yasser Arafat, was honored by the international community as a statesman and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was welcomed by presidents and prime ministers around the world, who gave him hundreds of millions of dollars each year to help achieve his goal of "an independent Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital."
In contrast, the State of Israel was verbally attacked and vilified by journalists, academics and diplomats. Academics at prestigious universities labeled Israel, "a racist, apartheid state engaged in a program of genocide against the Palestinian people." University presidents were urged to divest college funds from Israeli institutions. Israeli produce was boycotted in Europe and left to rot in their crates. Israeli policies towards the Palestinians were compared to Nazi persecution of the Jews during the Third Reich. When challenged to support these statements, Palestinian sympathizers cited unsubstantiated Palestinian allegations about the Israeli security practices at checkpoints, border crossings and interrogations. That's hardly a fitting comparison to transports, concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria.
When the New York Times published a photo of a bloody teenage boy crouching below an Israeli soldier, the world expressed outrage at the brutality of the Israeli soldiers and wept for the unfortunate Palestinian victim. That time, though, the tears only lasted for a few days - until the paper printed a correction that the "Palestinian boy" was actually an American yeshiva student who was beaten by Palestinian youths, and the soldier ran to assist him. Of course, a highly respected paper like the New York Times can be forgiven for an occasional, little error.
On September 30, 2000, news media around the world showed the image of 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Dura being shot and dying in his father's arms. These images quickly became the symbol of "Israeli brutality" and were used to justify the intifada. Of course, nobody bothered to ask what he was doing with his father in a combat zone, or whether he was really shot by an Israeli bullet. A clue to the answers to those questions came from an interview that Sakhr Habash, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, gave to a Palestinian newspaper in December, 2002. He said, "We have weapons that the Zionist enemy does not have. The boy - Fares Odeh, who attacked an Israeli tank with stones and was killed - is our strongest weapon. He reflects the true image of the Palestinian people for the world, which supports us."
Shortly thereafter, when the investigation into the Al-Dura incident was completed, Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, commented that Al-Dura could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet, and that most likely the whole incident was a hoax, a staged forgery designed to justify the intifada and gain support.
A few months later, in March, 2003, gallons of tears were shed for Rachel Corrie, an American student who was killed when she got in the way of an IDF bulldozer in Rafiach. The IDF was operating there to stop weapons smuggling through tunnels. A Google search on "Rachel Corrie's death" yielded 9,650 results from around the world, mostly sympathetic to Corrie. She was hailed as a "courageous martyr," who died in a brave battle with the big, evil Israeli demolition monster that wanted to devour little Palestinian homes. There were many who believed, like Rachel and her ISM colleagues, that Israel should not have the right to defend itself against Palestinian terror.
A year later, in March 2004, Steven Niva, an instructor of international politics and Middle East Studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where Rachel Corrie was enrolled, wrote a mendacious, vitriolic attack on IDF policies in the Gaza Strip. According to Niva, "Any weapons that get through tunnels are only used in guerrilla action against soldiers and settlers within the Gaza Strip, not against civilians within Israel." Apparently, Niva has better intelligence sources than the IDF and knows exactly where these weapons are going. According to Niva, if the weapons are being used to kill Israeli soldiers and settlers, then they are being used legitimately, and Israel shouldn't have the right to defend its soldiers and citizens.
Perhaps Rachel Corrie can be forgiven for her foolishness. She was young, naive and inexperienced - a misguided victim of environmental influences and instructors like Steven Niva. That same excuse can't be used for the United Nations and its agencies. In March, 2002, 125 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorist acts. On March, 29, 2002, Israeli troops entered Ramallah, then other Palestinian cities, to destroy terror cells. The UN lost no time in responding to the incursion. On March 30, 2002, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1402 by a vote of 14-0. The resolution called for immediate "withdrawal of Israeli from troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah," thereby rejecting Israel's right to self-defense. Then, three weeks later, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1405, which expressed concern for the "dire humanitarian situation of the Palestinian civilian population" and emphasized the need for humanitarian access to Palestinians.
None of the UN resolutions ever noted that Jews have a long history of association with the cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho and Nablus (Shechem). They only became "Palestinian cities" because the Arab pogroms in Jerusalem and Hebron from 1920 to 1938 made it unsafe for Jews to live among the Arab population. Also, there was never a UN resolution demanding humanitarian access to Israelis who were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists.
Resolution 1405 was adopted after the IDF completed its military operation in Jenin. Peter Hansen, the UN Commissioner of UNRWA supported the Palestinian allegations about a large civilian massacre. He remarked, "I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid that these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history." Apparently, Hansen didn't believe that the Passover Massacre in Netanya, three weeks earlier, was a human catastrophe.
What really has few parallels in recent history is a refugee relief agency that maintains refugees for 55 years without offering them any opportunity for resettlement elsewhere.
Three weeks after the Jenin operation, a UN fact-finding team reported that 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed in Jenin. According to the report, "Allegations by a senior Palestinian Authority official that some 500 were killed in Jenin have not been substantiated." Instead, the casualty figures supported Israeli assertions that the IDF put its own soldiers at greater risk in house-to-house combat, rather than use aerial bombardment, which would have increased civilian casualties. Despite the UN fact-finding report, the Palestinians continue to circulate books and movies about the "massacre" in Jenin, and the UN continues to pass biased resolutions against Israel. There can be no excuse for the UN's anti-Israel bias. Those experienced diplomats in the Security Council should know better.
Neither can there be an excuse for Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, architect of the Camp David accords, author of 16 books, Distinguished Professor at Emory University, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In an article in the Washington Post, Carter wrote, "It has been recognized that Israeli settlements on the occupied territories were a violation of international law and the primary incitement to violence among Palestinians." So, according to Jimmy Carter, peaceful Jewish communities on desolate lands are inciting Arabs to commit barbaric acts of murder and terrorism.
Lest you believe that this is an isolated view, Mr. Carter quoted former Secretary of State James Baker who said, "I don't think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace." Carter believes, then, that settlement activity is a bigger obstacle to peace than terrorist activity. What was most astonishing about Carter's article was the date: September 23, 2003. This was two years after the terrorist attacks in the United States and six months into the Iraq war. Did Jimmy Carter also believe that Israeli settlements were to blame for the terrorist attacks in the US, Bali, Madrid, Turkey, Kenya, Beirut and everywhere else? How would Mr. Carter explain the Fatah terrorist attacks from 1965-1967, when there were no Israeli "settlements" or "occupied territories"? Does Carter really believe that if all Israeli settlements were removed, then the Palestinians would throw away their guns and bombs, and devote their efforts to building homes, raising goats and growing olives?
When Carter wrote his article, we already knew the nature of the enemy that Israel was facing. We already knew about the incitement to hatred and violence coming from the mosques and classrooms. We knew about the Palestinian corruption, abuse of funds, arms smuggling and calls for jihad. President Bush had already shunned Yasser Arafat, condemned him as a failure, and noted the suffering that he caused. A week before Carter's article, Yaakov Perry, former head of Israel's Shabak intelligence agency, remarked, "Arafat came to be revealed as a trickster, a liar and the biggest manipulator in our history. Since the Oslo process, we have been living in one ongoing deception. I, also who believed in him, just like Yitzhak Rabin, felt disappointed and even somewhat foolish." Yet, Carter still claimed that Israeli settlements were the "primary incitement to violence." There is no excuse for Carter's bias against Israel, he should know better.
[Part 1 of 2]
Collections of food, money, and clothing were made for the "Palestinian children, who were the neglected, innocent victims of the long, turbulent conflict." This implied that that the Israeli children, who were killed and maimed by Palestinian terror attacks, must have been guilty victims. Their crime was to ride a Jewish bus on the way to a Jewish school, in the free, democratic, sovereign, successful Jewish State of Israel. On the other hand, Palestinian boys were cheered and encouraged as they threw stones at the big, bad Israeli soldiers with their long rifles and heavy riot helmets.
The Palestinian suicide bombers were glorified as martyrs, willing to sacrifice their lives for the desperate struggle to obtain a little homeland for their people. Their leader, Yasser Arafat, was honored by the international community as a statesman and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was welcomed by presidents and prime ministers around the world, who gave him hundreds of millions of dollars each year to help achieve his goal of "an independent Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital."
In contrast, the State of Israel was verbally attacked and vilified by journalists, academics and diplomats. Academics at prestigious universities labeled Israel, "a racist, apartheid state engaged in a program of genocide against the Palestinian people." University presidents were urged to divest college funds from Israeli institutions. Israeli produce was boycotted in Europe and left to rot in their crates. Israeli policies towards the Palestinians were compared to Nazi persecution of the Jews during the Third Reich. When challenged to support these statements, Palestinian sympathizers cited unsubstantiated Palestinian allegations about the Israeli security practices at checkpoints, border crossings and interrogations. That's hardly a fitting comparison to transports, concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria.
When the New York Times published a photo of a bloody teenage boy crouching below an Israeli soldier, the world expressed outrage at the brutality of the Israeli soldiers and wept for the unfortunate Palestinian victim. That time, though, the tears only lasted for a few days - until the paper printed a correction that the "Palestinian boy" was actually an American yeshiva student who was beaten by Palestinian youths, and the soldier ran to assist him. Of course, a highly respected paper like the New York Times can be forgiven for an occasional, little error.
On September 30, 2000, news media around the world showed the image of 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Dura being shot and dying in his father's arms. These images quickly became the symbol of "Israeli brutality" and were used to justify the intifada. Of course, nobody bothered to ask what he was doing with his father in a combat zone, or whether he was really shot by an Israeli bullet. A clue to the answers to those questions came from an interview that Sakhr Habash, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, gave to a Palestinian newspaper in December, 2002. He said, "We have weapons that the Zionist enemy does not have. The boy - Fares Odeh, who attacked an Israeli tank with stones and was killed - is our strongest weapon. He reflects the true image of the Palestinian people for the world, which supports us."
Shortly thereafter, when the investigation into the Al-Dura incident was completed, Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, commented that Al-Dura could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet, and that most likely the whole incident was a hoax, a staged forgery designed to justify the intifada and gain support.
A few months later, in March, 2003, gallons of tears were shed for Rachel Corrie, an American student who was killed when she got in the way of an IDF bulldozer in Rafiach. The IDF was operating there to stop weapons smuggling through tunnels. A Google search on "Rachel Corrie's death" yielded 9,650 results from around the world, mostly sympathetic to Corrie. She was hailed as a "courageous martyr," who died in a brave battle with the big, evil Israeli demolition monster that wanted to devour little Palestinian homes. There were many who believed, like Rachel and her ISM colleagues, that Israel should not have the right to defend itself against Palestinian terror.
A year later, in March 2004, Steven Niva, an instructor of international politics and Middle East Studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where Rachel Corrie was enrolled, wrote a mendacious, vitriolic attack on IDF policies in the Gaza Strip. According to Niva, "Any weapons that get through tunnels are only used in guerrilla action against soldiers and settlers within the Gaza Strip, not against civilians within Israel." Apparently, Niva has better intelligence sources than the IDF and knows exactly where these weapons are going. According to Niva, if the weapons are being used to kill Israeli soldiers and settlers, then they are being used legitimately, and Israel shouldn't have the right to defend its soldiers and citizens.
Perhaps Rachel Corrie can be forgiven for her foolishness. She was young, naive and inexperienced - a misguided victim of environmental influences and instructors like Steven Niva. That same excuse can't be used for the United Nations and its agencies. In March, 2002, 125 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorist acts. On March, 29, 2002, Israeli troops entered Ramallah, then other Palestinian cities, to destroy terror cells. The UN lost no time in responding to the incursion. On March 30, 2002, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1402 by a vote of 14-0. The resolution called for immediate "withdrawal of Israeli from troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah," thereby rejecting Israel's right to self-defense. Then, three weeks later, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1405, which expressed concern for the "dire humanitarian situation of the Palestinian civilian population" and emphasized the need for humanitarian access to Palestinians.
None of the UN resolutions ever noted that Jews have a long history of association with the cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho and Nablus (Shechem). They only became "Palestinian cities" because the Arab pogroms in Jerusalem and Hebron from 1920 to 1938 made it unsafe for Jews to live among the Arab population. Also, there was never a UN resolution demanding humanitarian access to Israelis who were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists.
Resolution 1405 was adopted after the IDF completed its military operation in Jenin. Peter Hansen, the UN Commissioner of UNRWA supported the Palestinian allegations about a large civilian massacre. He remarked, "I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid that these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history." Apparently, Hansen didn't believe that the Passover Massacre in Netanya, three weeks earlier, was a human catastrophe.
What really has few parallels in recent history is a refugee relief agency that maintains refugees for 55 years without offering them any opportunity for resettlement elsewhere.
Three weeks after the Jenin operation, a UN fact-finding team reported that 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed in Jenin. According to the report, "Allegations by a senior Palestinian Authority official that some 500 were killed in Jenin have not been substantiated." Instead, the casualty figures supported Israeli assertions that the IDF put its own soldiers at greater risk in house-to-house combat, rather than use aerial bombardment, which would have increased civilian casualties. Despite the UN fact-finding report, the Palestinians continue to circulate books and movies about the "massacre" in Jenin, and the UN continues to pass biased resolutions against Israel. There can be no excuse for the UN's anti-Israel bias. Those experienced diplomats in the Security Council should know better.
Neither can there be an excuse for Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, architect of the Camp David accords, author of 16 books, Distinguished Professor at Emory University, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In an article in the Washington Post, Carter wrote, "It has been recognized that Israeli settlements on the occupied territories were a violation of international law and the primary incitement to violence among Palestinians." So, according to Jimmy Carter, peaceful Jewish communities on desolate lands are inciting Arabs to commit barbaric acts of murder and terrorism.
Lest you believe that this is an isolated view, Mr. Carter quoted former Secretary of State James Baker who said, "I don't think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace." Carter believes, then, that settlement activity is a bigger obstacle to peace than terrorist activity. What was most astonishing about Carter's article was the date: September 23, 2003. This was two years after the terrorist attacks in the United States and six months into the Iraq war. Did Jimmy Carter also believe that Israeli settlements were to blame for the terrorist attacks in the US, Bali, Madrid, Turkey, Kenya, Beirut and everywhere else? How would Mr. Carter explain the Fatah terrorist attacks from 1965-1967, when there were no Israeli "settlements" or "occupied territories"? Does Carter really believe that if all Israeli settlements were removed, then the Palestinians would throw away their guns and bombs, and devote their efforts to building homes, raising goats and growing olives?
When Carter wrote his article, we already knew the nature of the enemy that Israel was facing. We already knew about the incitement to hatred and violence coming from the mosques and classrooms. We knew about the Palestinian corruption, abuse of funds, arms smuggling and calls for jihad. President Bush had already shunned Yasser Arafat, condemned him as a failure, and noted the suffering that he caused. A week before Carter's article, Yaakov Perry, former head of Israel's Shabak intelligence agency, remarked, "Arafat came to be revealed as a trickster, a liar and the biggest manipulator in our history. Since the Oslo process, we have been living in one ongoing deception. I, also who believed in him, just like Yitzhak Rabin, felt disappointed and even somewhat foolish." Yet, Carter still claimed that Israeli settlements were the "primary incitement to violence." There is no excuse for Carter's bias against Israel, he should know better.
[Part 1 of 2]