[iwar] [fc:To.court.Arafat.is.to.succour.the.enemy.of.our.ally.Israel]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-16 15:36:13
Next message: 7Pillars Partners: "Re: [iwar] [fc:teve.Emerson.is.a."Jewish.Fanatic".(Propaganda.countering.his.reporting)]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:teve.Emerson.is.a."Jewish.Fanatic".(Propaganda.countering.his.reporting)]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200110162236.PAA24190@big.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 15:36:13 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:To.court.Arafat.is.to.succour.the.enemy.of.our.ally.Israel]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

      To court Arafat is to succour the enemy of our ally Israel
                          By Daniel Johnson
                        The London Telegraph
                            Oct. 16, 2001

 IF 5,500 people had not been horribly murdered in America on
September 11, would Tony Blair have invited Yasser Arafat to Downing
Street? Why, in the midst of a war against terrorism, does the Prime
Minister embrace the man who, more than any other, invented
international terrorism?

September 11 ought to have strengthened Israel's relationship with the
West. Israel's enemies are our enemies. In such a common predicament,
to demonstrate solidarity with Israel ought to have been an elementary
duty. Instead, our governments have so far done the opposite. America
and Britain have talked up the creation of an independent Palestinian
state. The purpose of the "peace process" is no longer to make peace,
but to satisfy one party to the conflict. No peace without full
sovereignty for Arafat's Palestine will be regarded by London and
Washington as just and permanent.

Mr Blair is demanding that Israelis accept a new state, carved out of
territory that is now being used to attack them, over which they will
have no control. Most Israelis accept, as I do, that such a new state
will one day exist. But what reason do they have to suppose that the
new Palestine will not be a terrorist state, like Syria, Iraq, Libya,
Iran and Afghanistan? Other states, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
offer covert sponsorship. So does Yasser Arafat. From Oslo to Camp
David, even unprecedented Israeli concessions could not persuade Mr
Arafat to sign a treaty. The disillusionment of Israeli public opinion
with the peace process since the resumption of the intifada is total.
Yet Mr Blair is demanding that Israel resume talks with Mr Arafat as
if the suicide bombings, which some 75 per cent of Palestinians
support, had never happened. Why should Israel trust a man who has
probably had more Jews killed in the past 50 years than anyone since
Hitler?

Osama bin Laden is thus already well on the way to achieving one of
his declared aims: the "liberation", that is Islamisation, of
Jerusalem. Yesterday Mr Arafat insisted that east Jerusalem must be
the capital of the new Palestinian state. By feting Mr Arafat at such
a time, Mr Blair effectively endorsed his demands. The US State
Department is also said to favour a divided Jerusalem.

Hence the significance of Jack Straw's recent visit to Iran - sponsor
of Hezbollah and other terrorists - and the notorious article in which
he compared outrage at September 11 to "the anger which many people in
the region feel at events over the years in Palestine". The Foreign
Secretary was suggesting a moral equivalence between Israel and
terrorists of bin Laden's stamp, a standard trope of Islamist
propaganda.

Yesterday Mr Blair, too, implied an equivalence between September 11
and "the suffering of the Palestinians". He revealed that the
Americans and British had been pressuring Israel even before the
crisis. Ariel Sharon was at first defiant, seeking to shame the West
by invoking the bogy of appeasement and foolishly implying that Mr
Bush was a Chamberlain. When the President reacted angrily, the
rattled Israeli Prime Minister apologised.

Indeed, Mr Sharon has often seemed by turns belligerent and weak. But
he would have been blamed whatever he had done. The Israeli premier is
despised in the State Department and the Foreign Office. Mr Sharon is
being blamed for creating a vacuum that has been filled by bin Laden.
Western diplomats have long blamed Israel for the Middle Eastern
conflict. Now Israel is blamed for Islamist terrorism too. The
strategic justification of American support for Israel is widely held
to have ended with the Cold War. Now the moral justification seems to
have been dumped too.

Yet Israel has been engaged in the same struggle against the same
enemies for two generations. Terrorism in its modern form - the
hijacking and destruction of airliners - is a consequence of the
failure to annihilate Israel by military assault. Its emergence
created the climate in which messianic revolutionaries such as Osama
bin Laden could flourish. He is merely the latest in a long sequence
of demagogues - Nasser, Gaddafi, Arafat, Khomeini, Saddam - who have
used terrorism not only against Israel, but against the West.
Terrorism is a continuation of jihad by other means. It cannot be
appeased, only defeated.

That the motivation for the assault on New York was, in part,
anti-Jewish was already evident at the time. Anti-Semitism is more
virulent than ever in the Islamic world. The suicide killer makes
sense only within the context of a genocidal ideology. The scenes of
mothers celebrating the self-immolation of their sons are otherwise
incomprehensible.

Europeans and Americans fail to understand the ferocity of this
struggle, even though it is dawning on them that the Islamists who
have long menaced their own Jewish citizens along with Israel have now
become a threat to everybody. Israelis are often accused of paranoia.
But there is a subliminal anti-Semitism at work in the persistent
desire of the West to identify with states and movements that deny
Israel's right to exist. The power of the Islamic lobby here is
palpable; witness David Blunkett's law on incitement to religious
hatred, demanded by Muslim leaders and instantly conceded. If the
Palestinian spokesman Afif Safieh is correct that Western public
opinion sees Israel as "the Prussia of the Middle East", then Israelis
have reason to be paranoid.

Yet there is a pragmatic case for standing by them. Israel is still
the only true democracy in its region. Zionism is a Western ideology;
unlike Islamic fundamentalism, it is compatible with modern secular
culture. Israel is now the Silicon Valley of the Levant; it is a
reliable source of intelligence - in both senses. We have many allies
in the Middle East, but Israel is the only one we cannot imagine as
our enemy.

To abandon Israel now would give the Islamists the strongest possible
incentive to escalate the global jihad. Nemesis would overtake the
West. Such a betrayal, and such a nemesis, are too hideous to
contemplate. Instead, Mr Bush must once again mobilise the great
arsenal of democracy on behalf of its only champion among the despots
of the Orient.

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get your FREE VeriSign guide to security solutions for your web site: encrypting transactions, securing intranets, and more!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/UnN2wB/m5_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: 7Pillars Partners: "Re: [iwar] [fc:teve.Emerson.is.a."Jewish.Fanatic".(Propaganda.countering.his.reporting)]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:teve.Emerson.is.a."Jewish.Fanatic".(Propaganda.countering.his.reporting)]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-12-31 20:59:55 PST