| A
Activists
Activists,
Palestinian: This term is often used to describe Palestinians engaging
in violent acts such as shooting, rock-throwing or launching mortars. It
is also applied to Palestinians who are members of groups listed as
terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department, such as Islamic
Jihad and Hamas. Like “protestor” or “demonstrator,” “activist” suggests
someone who participates in marches, waving signs and shouting slogans.
Examples of misuse: ... [Fighting] reached a crescendo Friday with
air raids against Palestinian targets by Israeli fighter jets in response
to a suicide bomb attack that killed five Israeli civilians and the
assailant, a Palestinian activist (Wall Street Journal, 5/21/01).
In the West Bank town of Hebron, a 23-year-old activist in Arafat’s Fatah
movement hurled an explosive device and fired shots at Israeli troops (AP,
1/13/01).
Recommended language: Terrorists, rioters, militants, gunmen
Al Aqsa Intifada:
This terminology echoes the Palestinian contention that violence beginning
in September 2000 was a spontaneous response to Ariel Sharon’s visit to
the Temple Mount and that the Muslim shrine was threatened, neither of
which was true. Even some Palestinian officials acknowledge that the
violence was neither spontaneous nor a response to Sharon’s trip to the
Temple Mount.
 Back
Antisemitism
disguised as criticism on Israel
Is it anti-Semitic to criticise Israel?
(Excerpts of an
article, prepared by the Auckland Jewish Council.)
No one will deny the historical existence of
anti-Jewish hatred and persecution, but few want to believe that
it is still prevalent in the modern, post-Holocaust world.
However, the establishment
of the state of Israel, a Jewish state, has seen the development
of newly disguised anti-Semitism (meaning, in this case, being
anti the Jewish people) which takes the form of political
criticism of Israel.
In itself, political
criticism is a free right reserved by citizens of democracies, and
it is irresponsible to label it otherwise. To condemn the
political actions of the Israeli state is not, of itself, to be
anti-Semitic. Israel's policies, as regards settlements and
targeted killings, are legitimate targets for criticism and should
be subject to scrutiny as the actions of other countries are.
But if it is complained (as
it is) that some Jews are unable to distinguish between criticism
of Israel and anti-Semitism, it would seem that this is a
widespread phenomenon that non-Jews suffer as well. After all, why
should anti-Israel protest necessitate the defilement of Jewish
graveyards, the burning of synagogues, fresh Nazi-themed graffiti
at Holocaust camps and memorial sites, or verbal and physical
assaults on Jews in Paris and Berlin? How do these acts advance
political discourse?
Since the Israel-Palestine
peace process collapsed in 2000, and the second Palestinian
Intifada began, anti-Semitic incidents in the western world have
been at their highest level since the Holocaust. Acts of
anti-Semitism reached such proportions in Europe last year that
Time magazine felt prompted to devote a cover issue to its
resurgence, and a British daily, The Sun, published a full-page
article headed "The Jewish faith is not an evil religion".
In such times, it is
important to ask whether the distinction between being anti-Israel
and being anti-Semitic has been blurred, and to consider that on
occasions, in fact, they are the same thing.
Today, we witness a distinct
tendency towards acceptance of this new anti-Semitism in "polite
society", under the guise of political comment. Especially
political and intellectual circles are contributing towards a
climate of anti-Jewish antipathy in which it quickly becomes
legitimate to hate Jews. |
|
Back
Arab and Israeli Territories
The size of the Arab and Israeli
territories held today by the Arabs and by Israel is not the only issue,
but an issue which can not be overlooked. The land mass of the Arab states
today is 5,414,000 square miles (14,000,000 km2) as compared with 8,290
sqmi (21550 km2) for pre-1967 Israel and 2,130sqmi for Judea, Samaria and
Gaza (total 10,420 square miles or 27000 km2).
This is an Arab - Israeli area ratio of 540 to one. So can anybody
seriously believe that what the Arabs and Palestinians want is exactly
that 2,130 sqmi, or 0.4 promil, addition to their vast territories and
then they want to be sincere good neighbors to Israel?
(data from "A Place Among the Nations" by B. Netanyahu)
Back
Arab East
Jerusalem: This term is demographically
and historically misleading. Demographically, the eastern part of the city
is about evenly divided between Arabs and Jews. The entire Old City of
Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount (where the Jewish First and Second
Temples once stood) and the Western Wall, is within eastern Jerusalem.
Statistical data from many sources, only some of them Jewish, confirm that
there were many Jewish residents, institutions and holy sites throughout
Jerusalem, including the eastern portion, until 1948 when Jordan gained
control of that part of the city. Jordan killed or expelled all the Jewish
residents there, and, in an effort to erase evidence of centuries of
Jewish presence, destroyed all 58 synagogues. Also in eastern Jerusalem
are Hebrew University (built in 1925), the Jewish National and University
Library (built in 1930), and Hadassah Hospital (built in 1938).
Back
Arafat
Arafat Always Goes Too
Far
From: The Wall Street Journal - Europe - Tuesday, July 10
In the '70s, the PLO ran riot in Jordan and Lebanon.
BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
The crackdown was swift and brutal. Though the government was deeply
divided between hard-liners and those favoring more negotiation with the
Palestinians, the hard-liners won. Towns and refugee camps that had raised
the flag of the Republic of Palestine were shelled, while Yasser Arafat
proclaimed a "genocide" and urged his people to resist. There were
numerous casualties on both sides. The Arab League called for a
cease-fire, and then for a meeting of its heads of state. But Mr. Arafat
rejected their proposals. At a meeting with the government shortly
thereafter, he accused his opponents of being imperialists in league with
the U.S.
If this sounds familiar, it should--except that the start of this conflict
was September 1970, not September 2000; it happened in Jordan, not Israel
and the West Bank; and Mr. Arafat's nemesis was King Hussein, not Ehud
Barak or Ariel Sharon.
In 1970, Palestinians, both citizens and refugees, were almost as numerous
in Jordan as King Hussein's own Bedouins. Mr. Arafat used the estimated
20,000 Palestine Liberation Organization fighters in Jordan to exercise
control over much of the Palestinian population. In many parts of the
country, he was the de facto government. The king had grown increasingly
worried that Mr. Arafat posed a threat to his regime, and cross-border
attacks into Israel and other acts of PLO terror had put intolerable
strains on his relations with the West.
The last straw came on Sept. 6, when the PLO hijacked four civilian
airliners, flying three to Dawson's Field in PLO-controlled northern
Jordan and one to Cairo. After European governments secured the release of
the hostages by agreeing to release PLO terrorists from their prisons, the
PLO blew up the planes.
The Jordanian response, from which one of the PLO's most notorious
brigades was to take its name, became known as Black September. An
estimated 2,000 PLO fighters and several thousand more Palestinian
civilians were killed. Mr. Arafat fled to Cairo, where an angry meeting
with King Hussein nonetheless led to a cease-fire. But Mr. Arafat soon
returned to join the rump of his forces, which had retreated to northern
Jordan, close to their Syrian sponsors. Within 10 months they were driven
out of the country.
As the world waits to see whether the current, fragile cease-fire will put
an end to nine months of low-level warfare between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, the past may prove instructive. For, in essence,
we've been here before. And regardless of what one thinks of Mr. Arafat
from a moral standpoint--is he simply a terrorist, or does he come, as he
famously told the United Nations in 1974, "bearing an olive branch and a
freedom fighter's gun"?--his history, wherever he has gained a territorial
foothold, has not been that of a reliable or even rational partner, even
with potential Arab allies. His history is one of pushing too far. Is the
Jordan example not convincing? Well, a replay wasn't too long in coming.
Within months of their expulsion from Jordan, Mr. Arafat and the PLO were
setting up shop in Lebanon and tearing at the fabric of that country too.
Lebanese Christians, particularly, resented suffering the Israeli
retaliations that the PLO's cross-border raids provoked. In April 1974,
for example, the PLO killed 18 at Kiryat Shimona and 20, mostly
schoolgirls, at Maalot, both in northern Israel.
The early '70s were also boom years for PLO terrorism on the international
stage. The year 1972 alone saw PLO groups blow up a West German
electricity plant, a Dutch gas plant and an oil refinery in Trieste,
Italy; kill, in conjunction with the Japanese Red Army, 24 at Israel's Lod
airport; and massacre 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. In early
1973, Black September took the American ambassador and his deputy (along
with one Belgian diplomat) hostage in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and,
after President Nixon refused to negotiate, murdered them.
Flush with money from his Arab and Soviet sponsors, as well as an income
tax levied by the Gulf states on Palestinian workers, Mr. Arafat quickly
built up a state--called the Fakhani Republic after the Beirut
neighborhood in which he operated--in much of Lebanon. By 1975, he had
some 15,000 troops under his command, with many more associated
paramilitaries, and was acquiring tanks and anti-aircraft guns.
PLO-affiliated conglomerates, including one controlled by Ahmed Qurei, who
would later negotiate the Oslo Accords, monopolized everything from shoes
to baby food. Billions of dollars flowed through the PLO, the only
thorough record of which seemed to be a small notebook Mr. Arafat carried
on his person. His underlings levied arbitrary taxes on the Lebanese, and
practiced other forms of extortion, car theft and racketeering.
That year--1975--Christian rage boiled over, and Lebanon's long civil war
began. By early 1976, the PLO and its allies controlled most of the
country. But that summer Palestinian assassins murdered the U.S.
ambassador to Lebanon, and the U.S., Israel and the Arab states tacitly
supported a Syrian-led invasion of the country, which reversed many PLO
gains. An October cease-fire stabilized the situation. But 40,000 had been
killed. And in subsequent years, PLO attacks into Israel continued,
provoking more Israeli retaliation.
The endgame began in June 1982, when renewed PLO attacks on Israel
coincided with an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador in
London. Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered Defense Minister Ariel
Sharon to send Israel's armed forces into Lebanon to drive out the PLO.
Mr. Arafat's appeals to the Arab League and the U.N. went unheeded, while
ordinary Lebanese took to crying "Enough!" whenever they spotted him. In
August President Reagan convinced Israel to stop the fighting, but Mr.
Arafat, whose forces had been routed, had already told the Lebanese
government he would leave the country. On Aug. 30, he left for Tunis,
while his forces dispersed to other Arab countries. The Lebanese would
suffer eight more years of the civil war he provoked.
The extent of Mr. Arafat's personal involvement in the numerous terrorist
acts that have left an indelible stain on the Palestinian cause has long
been a matter of debate among knowledgeable observers. But there is no
question that, if not outright front groups for Mr. Arafat's Fatah
faction, the groups that claimed responsibility were most often fully paid
up members of the PLO, and that Chairman Arafat did nothing to stop them.
Persistent rumors that the U.S. and Israel possess tapes of Mr. Arafat
directing the 1973 Khartoum murders (confirmed to me by Ariel Sharon late
last year) have gained further credence with the recent allegations of
James J. Welsh, a former Navy and National Security Agency intelligence
analyst. He says the NSA sent out a warning of a possible PLO attack,
based on shortwave intercepts, that was inexplicably downgraded by the
State Department. After the murders, it was covered up. His story deserves
congressional attention. After all, there is no statute of limitations on
murder.
But the more pressing question is what the future holds for the little war
now going on in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Mr. Arafat's history in
Jordan and Lebanon suggests this is headed for no good end. From internal
corruption and abuse of power, to the repeated breach of agreements, to
the apparent use of territory as a base for terrorism, the situation of
today's Palestinian Authority is strikingly similar to those two prior
episodes.
Perhaps such observations played a part in convincing former U.S. envoy
Dennis Ross, who spent a decade trying to convince the word otherwise, to
conclude this year that Mr. Arafat "is not capable of negotiating an end
to the conflict." And if Prime Minister Sharon soon feels compelled to act
decisively against Mr. Arafat, as he did in 1982, and as King Hussein did
in 1970, it would behoove the world to think carefully about where blame
for the continuing Palestinian tragedy really lies.
Mr. Pollock is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's
editorial page.
See also
Arafat's relations
to Christianity
Back
|
a
n,
“hashish users.” After passing through French or Italian, the word came
into English and is recorded in 1603 with reference to the Muslim
Assassins. " (from The American Heritage®
Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
The emphasize is by ZM)
