Updates from AIJAC

Jenin / The UN

Given the pace of events in the Middle East, and the space they are occupying in the news, I hope readers will forgive one additional Update above the standard three this week.

We lead with the editorial from Ha'aretz, the famous Israeli daily newspaper, pointing out , after investigations, that there was no massacre in Jenin. Ha'aretz has a left of centre political slant, is generally not very supportive of Israeli PM Sharon or his Likud party, and has never been afraid to be extremely critical of the government. They are also a very good newspaper. In other words, if there was any indication of a massacre, they would say so.

Next, American academic Michael Rubin takes on the fact that the UN runs the camps in which much Palestinian terror originates, but allows it to go on. This, he says, part of a pervasively biased UN attitude, which views not attempting to stop terrorism, something blatantly illegal under international law and UN conventions, as part of remaining "neutral." Finally, Updates brings you the speech of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at last Sunday's massive pro-Israel rally in Washington. Whether you agree with his politics or not, one must admit Netanyahu puts his arguments very well, and he makes some excellent points, especially his comparison of the behaviour of Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein.

Ha'aretz, Friday, April 19, 2002

Editorial: There was no massacre in Jenin

The claim that there was a "massacre" in the Jenin refugee camp has been taken up by many news media around the world, human rights groups and even among many governments. This claim, originally made during the height of the fighting in the refugee camp, reverberates with gravity, seriously damaging Israel's political campaign to justify its self defense against terror and the legitimacy of the means it is using in that campaign.

In Israel, too, suspicions were raised that there was truth to the Palestinian claims. Many feared that Jenin would be added to the black list of massacres that have shocked the world. The IDF contributed to those fears when it issued a preliminary estimate of hundreds of dead in the camp (it turned out that several score were killed, with the exact number still unknown) and by blocking journalists from entering the camp to report what was happening inside. That was an invitation to another charge, also widely reported, of an alleged cover-up.

In recent days, journalists - including Ha'aretz reporters - have visited the camp, gathering their own first-hand impressions and eyewitness testimony about the IDF's operations. Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass spent several days in the camp, and her report appears in today's pages. There is evidence of intense combat, but, with appropriate caution, it can already be said what did not happen in the Jenin refugee camp. There was no massacre. No order from above was given, nor was a local initiative executed, to deliberately and systematically kill unarmed people.

In Israel of 2002, there is practically no way to cover up atrocities. Testimony by commanders and fighters in Jenin, many of whom were civilians called up into reserves for the purpose of the operation, as well as testimony by those who observed the events through various means refute the claims of a massacre. The fighting was intense, as could be expected in built-up areas, and especially against the background of rapid Israeli successes in other areas, particularly the Nablus casbah. Armed Palestinians shot, blew up and mined houses and alleyways. The soldiers, who had difficulty progressing, used bulldozers and suffered heavy losses - 23 soldiers were killed. Under such circumstances, civilians were also harmed. That is a terrible, sorrowful fact, resulting from the nature of the fighting, and in some specific cases there should be an examination to determine whether everything necessary was done to prevent civilian casualties. But declaring the fighting in Jenin a "massacre" is a mistake on the part of the naive, and a slander by others.

Palestinian propagandists have made perverse use of legends that, in part, were invented outside Jenin. Leading these propagandists were officials of the Palestinian Authority who issued baseless charges of "executions," fanning the flames of hatred against Israel. The readiness of international elements, including the heads of the European Union, to accept the Palestinian version without question, is testimony to their character, to Israel's fragile situation and to Ariel Sharon's negative image.

The UN's Refugees

By Michael Rubin

Wall Street Journal April 18, 2002

On Monday, France, Belgium and four other European Union members endorsed a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Hence, six European Union members and the rights commission now join the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimising suicide bombers. By their logic of moral equivalence, terror is justifiable because its root cause is Israel's occupation. That Palestinian terror predates occupation, or that suicide bombings became a tactic of choice only after the initiation of the Oslo process, is too inconvenient to mention.

Unfortunately the U.N. goes beyond giving rhetorical support for terrorism. In a variety of ways, its agencies have been complicit in Middle Eastern terror. Start with the refugee camps.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees began operation in 1950. The establishment of Israel, and its simultaneous invasion by five Arab states, resulted in the creation of approximately 600,000 Palestinian refugees. An equivalent number of Jews fled their homes in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, and other Arab countries, and settled in Israel.

As disruptive as it was, the number of Jewish and Arab refugees pales in comparison to that created by the partition of India. There are today more than 100 million descendants of the original 15 million Indian and Pakistani refugees. The U.N. remained outside the conflict, and provided no political or economic incentive for refugees not to settle. Too bad the same restraint has not characterised the behaviour of the U.N. and Arab states in the Middle East.

As it is, UNRWA and the Arab League hold Palestinian refugees in limbo. UNRWA operates 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and another 32 camps in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. It counts nearly four million Palestinians as refugees, including those whose grandparents never saw Palestine. (If U.N. High Commission for Refugees' criteria are applied, the figure is significantly lower). In 2001 alone, UNRWA spent $310 million on the camps.

It is these camps that have been at the centre of violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen. On Feb. 28, following a series of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel (including an attack on a young girl's Bat Mitzvah celebration), Israeli forces rolled into the Jenin and Balata refugee camps. They remained for three days. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer explained the Israeli strategy: "We are interested in one thing only, to stop and disrupt this wave of suicide attacks. We intend to go in and get out."

U.N. officials were instantaneous in their condemnation. Kofi Annan called on Israel "to withdraw immediately." High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson labelled the incursions "in total disregard of international human rights." On March 21, a UNRWA spokesman called on Israel to compensate the agency for damage to its refugee camps.

Israel's raids did damage the camps. But as a result of the operation, Israel uncovered illegal arms caches, bomb factories, and a plant manufacturing the new Kassam-2 rocket, designed to reach Israeli population centres from the West Bank and Gaza. Confronted with evidence of illegal Palestinian mines, mortars, and missiles, no U.N. official questioned how it was that bomb factories could exist in U.N.-managed refugee camps. Either the U.N. officials were unaware of the bomb factories -- a fact which would suggest utter incompetence -- or, more likely, the U.N. employees simply turned a blind eye.

Unfortunately, UNRWA is not alone in reinforcing the U.N.'s reputation as an organization incapable of fighting terror. On May 24, 2000, Israel unilaterally pulled back from southern Lebanon, a withdrawal the U.N. certified to be complete. Terror did not end, though. On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah guerillas crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers (including one Israeli Arab), all of whom they subsequently killed. Observers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon videotaped the scene of the kidnapping, including the getaway cars, and some guerillas.

Inexplicably, they then hid the videotape. Questioned by Israeli officials, Terje Roed- Larsen, the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, chided Israel for "questioning the good faith of senior United Nations officials." When after eight months the U.N. finally admitted to possessing the tape, officials baulked at showing it to the Israeli government since that might "undermine U.N. neutrality." The fact that U.N. observers protected and defended guerillas who crossed a U.N.-certified border, using cars with U.N. license plates while under the cover of U.N. flags, was apparently of no consequence to UNIFIL. Pronouncements aside, U.N. moral equivalency in practice dictates that terrorists are equal to states. Fighting terror compromises U.N. neutrality.

The U.N. has turned a blind eye to terror in Iraq as well. Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, a series of bomb explosions wracked the safe haven of northern Iraq. Kurdish authorities long suspected the complicity of certain U.N. drivers who crossed freely between the safe haven and Iraq proper. On July 19, 2001, Kurdish security arrested a Tunisian U.N. driver found in possession of explosives. A Yemeni national serving as deputy director of the U.N. mission in northern Iraq demanded that the driver be released before any investigation could be completed; he was. The U.N.'s reputation, in other words, trumps protecting innocents from Saddam Hussein's bombs.

The U.N. has a terrorism problem. Syria, a nation that hosts more terror groups than any other, sits on the Security Council. Along with Iran, Syria is a prime sponsor of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Just two months after Nasrallah declared that "Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities" and that Israel was a "cancerous body in the region . . . (which) must be uprooted," Mr. Annan bestowed international legitimacy upon Nasrallah by agreeing to an unprecedented meeting.

U.N. officials can make all the high-sounding pronouncements they desire, but if the U.N. wishes to defuse regional tensions and signal that terrorism is not acceptable, then there must be no equivocation. Perhaps Mr. Annan can be forgiven for not being aware that U.N.-funded refugee camps housed arms factories, or for allowing U.N. complicity in terror cover-ups in Lebanon and Iraq. But in a Middle East where perception is more important than reality, Mr. Annan's silence is deafening and his moral equivalency is interpreted as a green light for terror. The main casualty is U.N. credibility.

Mr. Rubin is an adjunct scholar of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Text: Binyamin Netanyahu at Washington Rally

MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2002

[http://www.israelrally.org/transcript.doc ]

At this very hour, the entire nation of Israel is silent. The Jewish state is commemorating the 20,000 soldiers who gave their lives to defend the state of Israel and the thousands of civilians struck down by the forces of terror in our long battle for freedom. Just a few months ago, America too lost thousands of its citizens to terrorist savagery. And we stand here today to honor these fallen sons and daughters of liberty.

But I've also come here today, my dear friends, to give thanks, to thank all of you for standing up for the Jewish state when so many outside America stood silent -- (applause) -- to thank the American people and their government for remembering the difference between freedom and tyranny, between right and wrong, between good and evil, to thank President Bush for boldly declaring that terrorism, the deliberate attack on civilians, is never justified; it's always evil -- (applause) -- and for bravely charting a course that will lead the free world to victory.

No greater friend of Israel has ever been in the White House, and no president has ever championed a cause that was more just. Israel and the United States are today fighting the same battle, waging the same war, confronting the same evil. Like the United States, Israel did not seek this war. It was forced on us by a savage enemy that glorifies in a culture of death, a culture where murderers are called martyrs and where suicide is sanctified.

My friends, an enemy that sends children to die and to kill other children is an enemy that cannot be placated. (Applause.) An enemy that openly preaches the destruction of our state is not a partner for peace. (Applause.) With such evil, there can be no negotiations and no concessions -- (applause) -- because the only way to confront -- to fight such evil is to confront it. The only way to defeat it is to destroy it. (Applause.) And once terror is defeated, I believe other Palestinians will come to the fore with whom we will forge a genuine and lasting peace.

Now, I don't want you to be fooled by the apologists of terror. They tell us that the way to end terror is to appease it, to meet or give in to the terrorists' demands -- because -- listen to their argument -- because, they tell us, the root cause of terrorism -- did you ever hear that? -- the root cause of terrorism is the deprivation of national and civic rights.

Well, let's examine that proposition. If that were the case, then in the thousands of conflicts and struggles for national and civil rights in modern times, we would expect to have found endless examples of terrorism. But guess what: We don't.

Mahatma Gandhi did not use terrorism in fighting for the independence of India. (Applause).) The peoples of Eastern Europe did not resort to terrorism to bring down the Berlin Wall. (Applause.) But one other example; one other example. Martin Luther King did not resort to terrorism in fighting for equal rights for all Americans. (Applause.) In fact, speaking in this city, in this very place, four decades ago, Martin Luther King preached a creed that was the very opposite of terrorism -- not violence, non-violence; completely the opposite.

So now we must ask ourselves, why did all these people pursue their cause without resorting to terror? Because they believed in the sanctity of each human life, because they were committed to the ideals of liberty, because they championed the values of democracy; simply put, because they were democrats, not terrorists. That's why. (Applause.)

But, you see, those who practice terrorism do not believe in these ideals. In fact, they believe the very opposite. They believe that the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything and everything. They believe that it allows them to break any law, to discard any moral code, to trample all human rights into the dust. They believe that their cause permits them to indiscriminately murder and maim innocent men and women. They believe that it lets them blow up a bus full of babies.

My friends, there's a name for the mindset that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism. Indeed, this is the root cause of terrorism. The root cause of terrorism is the totalitarian mindset, a tyranny that systematically brainwashes the minds of its subjects, to suspend all moral constraints for the sake of a twisted cause. And this is why, from its inception, totalitarianism has always been wedded to terrorism, from Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to the ayatollahs to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden to Yasser Arafat. (Applause.)

My friends, I want you to listen to me carefully, because I want to say something else. It is not merely that the goals of terrorists do not justify the means they use. It is that the means that they choose tell you what their real goals are, because those who target the innocent will never protect freedom and human rights.

And how can we see that? We can see that clearly every time terrorists come to power. Those who fight as terrorists rule as terrorists, setting up dark dictatorships, whether in Iraq or in Iran or in Afghanistan or in Arafatistan. (Applause.)

And indeed, Yasser Arafat is the quintessential terrorist. Both his means and his goals are illegitimate. Arafat pursues a goal of policide, the destruction of a state, by employing the means of suicide, suicide and mass terror. Arafat does not want a Palestinian state next to Israel. He wants a Palestinian state instead of Israel. (Applause.)

But my friends, any time that Israel was confronted with an Arab leader who was genuinely interested in peace and delivered a message of peace to his own people in Arabic, every time we were confronted with such a leader, we made peace.

Menachem Begin made peace with Egypt's Anwar Sadat, and Yitzhak Rabin made peace with Jordan's King Hussein. (Applause.) But five Israeli prime ministers have been unable to make peace with Arafat. Do you know why? For a simple reason: Because Arafat does not want peace. (Applause.)

Now, let me show you the difference between one leader and another. Until the day I die, I will not forget the day that King Hussein came with me to visit the bereaved families of seven young Israeli school girls, 12 years old, gunned down by a deranged Jordanian soldier. He knelt before the families, before the mothers and fathers. He was weeping. There were tears streaming down his eyes and he said, "Please, please forgive me. Please forgive me."

Now, contrast that to Yasser Arafat. Do you know what he does? He glorifies these mass killers. He calls public squares after them. He names buildings, streets in their honor. He has suicide kindergarten camps. He has suicide universities. He has suicide museums. For God's sake, this is the man who pays the checks. He signs the checks for the explosives of the suicides. He is a terrorist, if there ever was one.

Now, you may remember that many right here, right here in this town, and many in Israel, many in Washington and many in Jerusalem, had hoped, at the beginning of the Oslo accords, that Arafat would prove to be a statesman, a Palestinian King Hussein. Instead he's proved to be a Palestinian Saddam Hussein. (Applause.)

And I ask you, what do you do with Saddam Hussein? Do you negotiate with him? Do you make concessions to him? Do you appease him? No, exactly. You do the same thing to him that the U.S. just did to the Taliban. You defeat him.

America rightly defeated the Taliban. And today, in an historic mission that deserves the support of civilized peoples and nations everywhere, President Bush is courageously leading the free world to dismantle Saddam's regime before it acquires nuclear weapons. (Applause.)

Well, if we're to end terror and begin peace in our own part of the world, Israel must too now dismantle Arafat's regime, a mission also worthy of support from all foes of terror and all friends of liberty.

I think that garnering this support is much easier now than it was a year ago. I think that the face of Palestinian terror has finally been unmasked. The people of this great nation are not fooled by Yasser Arafat and the con artists he employs on American television. Americans know that Yasser Arafat is nothing more than Osama bin Laden with good PR. (Applause.) Americans know that if it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck, it's a terrorist. (Applause.)

Today, gathered in the capital of liberty, we send a powerful message to the entire world. To those in Europe who 60 years ago did nothing to prevent the slaughters of millions of Jews and who today side with the mass killers who seek to destroy the Jewish state, we send this message: History's shame will once again fall on you. (Applause.)

To the anti-Semites of the world, we send a message of defiance. The Jewish people are not afraid. We will roll back the savage assaults, those assaults that you direct against us. We will courageously stand up to you and to all other enemies. And to the terrorists and terror regimes that support them, we send a warning: The free world, led by President Bush, has awoken to your evil. Terror will be given no quarter, no peace, until it is wiped out from our world. (Applause.)

My friends, I want to congratulate all of you on the largest rally in support of Israel in Israel's history. (Applause.) I want to assure you that standing tall, standing proud, we will win this war. We will secure our states and we'll preserve our liberty. And in defending the Jewish state, all of you here today in Washington, Jews and non-Jews alike, are defending the cause of liberty, a cause that has once again made America, Israel and the defenders of freedom the last, best hope on earth. We shall win.

Thank you very much, all of you, and God bless you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. (Applause.)