We, too, are deeply troubled

Jerusalem Post Editorial, June 10, 2003,   UPDATE 4/17/04, Rantisi eliminated. 

After sentencing al-Qaida shoe-bomber Richard Reid last January, US District Court Judge William Young turned to Reid and said, "You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice."

Abdel Aziz Rantisi is a terrorist. As one of the senior leaders of Hamas, he is a senior terrorist. He has for years been involved in all aspects of Hamas's terrorist infrastructure. Rantisi incites Muslims to become suicide bombers. He raises funds for weapons. He mobilizes operatives to strike. And after each successful bombing he acts as a terrorist spokesman and apologist.

According to a statement released yesterday by the Defense Ministry, Rantisi has personally overseen Hamas terror operations for the past several months stepping in after Salah Shehada was killed and Muhammad Deif was taken out of action by IDF strikes. We have no reason to doubt the veracity of this statement.

We also do not doubt the Defense Ministry's statement that Rantisi shares the criminal responsibility for the murder of 227 Israelis and the wounding of 1,393 others since the beginning of the Palestinian terrorist war three years ago.

As one of the heads of Hamas, Rantisi, like Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, is culpable for the actions of their organization regardless of whether they personally issued every specific kill order. Rantisi and Yassin are the brains of Hamas. At their direction, the organization murders. With their guidance, the organization grows and increases its public support. They, together with other terrorists like Yasser Arafat, are responsible for the indoctrination of large swathes of Palestinian society to believe that the murder of Jews is moral and just.

Following the air force's unsuccessful attempt to kill Rantisi yesterday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was quick to say that US President George W. Bush is "deeply troubled" by the IDF's action. The president apparently believes that, by taking out Rantisi, the government is somehow harming the chances for peace.

To this we can only comment that we were unaware the US believes that Hamas is an organization worthy of protecting. We would also point out that Rantisi is an enemy of the US. Ahead of the US operation to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime, Rantisi called on the Iraqis to carry out suicide bombings against US forces in Iraq.

In an article published on Hamas's Web site in late December, translated by MEMRI, Rantisi wrote: "In order to defend the homeland from the terrorist Crusader [i.e. US] attack, there is a need for people who yearn for Paradise, and the shortest way to Paradise is death for [the sake of] Allah.

Some of us should see the joyful and satisfied faces of the mothers in Iraq when they part from the fruit of their loins, who go off to the realms of honor, the realms of martyrdom. This is so that the enemy of the nation knows that safeguarding honor and the homeland is dearer than life, and that our mothers in Iraq, like our mothers in Palestine, [are willing] to sacrifice the fruit of their loins but not their honor."

Then, too, in a debate among Islamic scholars in 2001 on the question of whether Islam permits suicide bombers, Rantisi cited a 1996 fatwa by one Sheikh Qardawi who extolled the Islamic virtue of suicide bombers. Qardawi is one of the heads of the Muslim Brotherhood the Egyptian jihadist movement that spawned Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al-Gama'at al-Islamiya a sister organization of al-Qaida. So Rantisi and Osama bin Laden share the same preacher.

All of this of course brings us to the blatant hypocrisy of the US when considering Palestinian terrorists. While it is clear that anyone in any way related to al-Qaida is a terrorist, we are told that there is a distinction between "political" and "military" wings of the terrorist organizations that are mainly dedicated to killing Israelis. The only thing "political" about a killer like Rantisi is that he orders others to do the dirty work for him.

While the US can take out anyone related to al-Qaida, it expects Israel to protect bin Laden's Palestinian counterparts in the terrorism business. We must by this logic allow them to freely congregate to plan attacks, appear on television to incite attacks in Arabic and justify them in English, and watch quietly as they conduct "negotiations" with Egypt and the EU.

Like Bush, we too are deeply troubled by yesterday's attempt to take out a mass murderer of our fellow citizens. We are troubled because Rantisi has lived to murder another day. We wish the air force better luck in the future in carrying out its mission of safeguarding the lives of Israeli citizens from the murderous likes of Rantisi.

Jerusalem Post Editorial, June 10, 2003

UPDATE 4/17/04, Rantisi eliminated. 

Hyperlinks and emphasis added by PAC

No turning back

Jerusalem Post Editorial, June 10, 2003

By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine.
Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, from his hospital bed

Israel is targeting Palestinian civilians, so Israeli civilians should be targeted. From now on all Israeli people are targets.

Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, after the Israeli attempt to kill Rantissi

Sheikh Yassin says that now Hamas will attack Israeli civilians. Rantisi says now they will drive every Jew from Israel. Now they are really angry.

Imagine for a moment that Osama bin Laden's redoubt was being bombed by the United States, and the world responded by lecturing the Americans about torpedoing the possibility for negotiations and feeding a "cycle of violence." Imagine further that bin Laden responded to the bombings with threats to "retaliate" against Americans everywhere.

Yet no one believes in negotiations with al-Qaida. And there would be little point in al-Qaida contending that it was "retaliating" after it had murdered 3,000 Americans.

What makes Israel's war against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah different? There are two ostensible differences. First, the terrorists are identified with a cause that is supported by Israel and the United States: creating a Palestinian state. Second, a diplomatic process is in motion that, by some combination of force and negotiations, is supposed to substitute for simply crushing these organizations.

Neither of these proposed reasons for treating Palestinian terrorists differently holds water. As Rantisi and every other terrorist leader openly proclaims, their goal is not a Palestinian state beside Israel, but one replacing Israel. Rantisi is an Islamo-fascist of the same stripe as bin Laden, with similar totalitarian and genocidal goals.

If the goal is two democratic states living peacefully side by side, there is no logic in treating Hamas with kid gloves. Their struggle has no more legitimacy than al-Qaida's, and is in fact a branch of bin Laden's struggle to defeat the "Zionists and Crusaders."

But what about the peace process? How could Israel make Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's job more difficult by attacking the very people with whom he's attempting to negotiate a cease-fire? Even President George W. Bush is "troubled" by Israel's action.

Actually, the trouble is that the negotiated alternative was not working, and had no chance of working. Abbas has repeatedly ruled out using force against Hamas. And the pace of attacks has only increased since the Aqaba summit, including the five Israeli soldiers killed at Erez and in Hebron, the couple stabbed to death in a forest in Jerusalem, continuing mortar attacks against Sderot, and the 16 murdered yesterday in Jerusalem by a suicide bomber.

The terrorist organizations had no reason to heed Abbas's toothless calls and every reason to continue their attacks. If Abbas is indeed trying to make peace with Israel, why should they help him? At the same time, if Abbas is unwilling to take it upon himself to curb Palestinian terrorism, who will?

For now, the only credible answer is the IDF. As for the notion, in wide circulation here and particularly overseas, that IDF retaliation only prompts further Palestinian terrorist attacks, we can only point to the dozens of attacks that occurred in the absence of Israeli "provocation," stretching back to the bus bombings of the 1990s. That there are still people so indefatigably credulous as to believe that every Palestinian atrocity must have been provoked by some prior Israeli misdeed amazes us.

We are similarly amazed by the notion that the Sharon government should have abstained from retaliation. Exactly how many victims, we would like to know, must a terror attack claim in order to justify Israeli retaliation? And just how much time should Sharon give Abbas's efforts at negotiation? A month? A year?

In truth, a policy of Israeli retaliation only serves Abbas's immediate purposes, not least because they absolve him of the responsibility and the domestic political fallout for taking on Hamas. It might be argued that this is a responsibility Abbas had best discharge himself. But that argument doesn't wash as long as Abbas doesn't confront Hamas head on.

The task now is not to cower from Hamas's threat of retaliation, as if retaliation is what these people do. The task is to strike at Rantisi and his cohorts again, truly to drive the organization underground, and to create the conditions in which Abbas, if he is sincere, can assume the responsibilities he made his own at Aqaba.

Until that point is reached, there can be no turning back.

Hyperlinks and emphasis added by PAC

Sharon's unenviable decision

Column One, By Caroline B. Glick

Jerusalem Post, June 13, 2003

With brotherly love and deepest respect, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas Sunday embraced Ahmed Jbarra during his morning press conference in Ramallah. In the shadow of a dawn attack conducted jointly by Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad that left four IDF soldiers dead and four wounded, Abbas lauded Jbarra who on July 4, 1975, placed a refrigerator full of mortar bombs in Jerusalem's Kikar Zion.

The bomb left 14 Israelis dead.

So far, securing Jbarra's release from prison and that of another 91 terrorists is Abbas's proudest accomplishment as prime minister, and his embrace was pregnant with symbolism. Like Yasser Arafat's eulogy for Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayash after Ayash was killed by Israeli security services in February 1996, Abbas's gesture was made to show that that the PA's reformist prime minister is a loyal soldier in the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel. The message couldn't have been clearer. Terrorism is legitimate. Terrorists are heroes of the revolution.

And if the photo-op was insufficient, Abbas went to great lengths to explain its meaning. He told reporters that his most urgent goal as prime minister is to secure the release of all Palestinian terrorists currently held in Israeli jails. "The release of detainees is our top priority," he said. Beyond springing murderers from jail, Abbas proclaimed that his other goal is to have a dialogue "with all factions." The goal of the talks he said is "to achieve calm, not civil war." Arafat's posthumous embrace of Ayash unleashed eight days of unrelenting terrorism against Israel that killed 60 and wounded more than 150 people. Abbas's embrace of Jbarra, of course, came in the midst of an all-out terrorist offensive by all groups, including his own Fatah.

For his part, Abbas's security chief Muhammad Dahlan has for the past two months been engaged in implementing Abbas's plan for embracing the sons of the revolution. His plan for reforming the Palestinian militias involves paying terrorists to join his new "reformed" security force. As this paper reported, two months ago Dahlan began making monthly payments of $200 to members of Fatah terrorist cells in the West Bank.

Now, with US backing, Dahlan has upped his ante. He has offered each terrorist $6,000 for his rifle and an additional $6,000 signing bonus for joining the new CIA-trained force. Among those who have been offered the payoffs are members of the Fatah Aksa Martyrs Brigades cell who on October 25, 2002, executed Haifa Sultan, a 39-year-old mother of seven from Nablus and shot her younger sister, Adibeh, in the legs. The victims' crime was "helping the Zionist enemy." So that's it: Dahlan's big plan to fight terrorism involves drafting the terrorists whom Abbas embraces into his US-financed and trained army.

As for the US, if there were any room for doubt as to the Bush administration's plans for resolving the Palestinian conflict with Israel, it vanished this week. Together with Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush made it clear that the administration has staked its reputation on the dynamic duo of Abbas and Dahlan. In other words, the Bush administration's Middle East policy now is predicated on the singular demand that Israel surrender to the Palestinian terrorist war.

How is this manifested? Let us run through this week's events. After Sunday's attacks in Hebron and Gaza, Powell and Rice said in television interviews that the killings were directed against the peace process and not against Israel. On Tuesday, Bush himself attacked Israel harshly for attempting to kill Hamas chieftain Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The president justified his unprecedented support for a Hamas terrorist by claiming that Israel's action weakened Abbas. In Bush's words, "I'm concerned that the attacks will make it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to fight off terrorist attacks." That is, counterterrorist measures by Israel weaken Abbas, who has repeatedly made clear that he has no intention of fighting terrorism.

Then too, following Wednesday's massacre of 17 in Jerusalem, Bush reacted by again reiterating that the attack was against peace. Or, more succinctly, the wanton murder of innocent Israelis had nothing to do with them or the fact that their murderers want to destroy Israel. Later in the day, Powell explained that the lesson we must take from the rampant massacre of Israeli civilians is that "now is the time for us to remain steadfast" in pursuing the road map. As well, The New York Times reported earlier in the week that the administration supports Abbas's demand that Israel release terrorists from prison and is pressuring the government to do so in order to strengthen Abbas.

Taken together, the meaning of all these US protestations and demands could not be clearer. Abbas is their man. Like Arafat during the Oslo days, everything must be done to strengthen him. Counterterrorist operations by Israel weaken him and therefore must not be carried out. Failure to submit to his demand to release terrorists weakens him so Israel must release murderers so that they may kill again. Jewish construction in the territories weakens him so Jews must be prohibited from building. The presence of settlements in the territories weakens him and therefore they must be dismantled. The demand that he fight terrorism weakens him and therefore he must be allowed to co-opt, rather than combat, terrorists. In short, Israel must surrender to terrorism so that Abbas's position may be strengthened. [PAC note: What happened to the vision Pres. Bush laid out June 24, 2002?]

The implications of this new Bush administration policy for Israel are also plain. In the first instance, it shows that Sharon made an egregious strategic error in accepting the road map. Far from weakening the new post-Iraq war hostility of the Bush administration, accepting the road map merely opened the wellspring of further demands and attacks.

Speaking hours after the bus massacre, Sharon sounded as confused as his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, who after bringing Arafat into the territories was suddenly beset with the most murderous campaign of terrorism Israel had experienced since the 1950s. Reacting to that terrorism, Rabin coined the hollow phrase, "We will fight terrorism as if there is no peace process and we will fight for peace as if there is no terrorism." Echoing this message, Wednesday night Sharon said that Israel "is deeply committed to making every attempt to advance in the diplomatic process that will bring, we hope, quiet and peace." To this he added, "We will take all steps to safeguard the security of the citizens of the State of Israel."

But in light of the 25 Israelis murdered since last week's summit at Aqaba, and given the fact that both the Palestinians and the US have made clear that fighting terrorism runs contrary to a peace process, Sharon is faced with an unenviable decision. He can either combat terrorism to safeguard our lives and the future of our country or he can enjoy positive relations with the White House. As it is presently formulated, the Bush administration's Middle East policy leaves no room for maneuver.

Since Israel stands to gain nothing from an overt confrontation with the White House, Sharon must steer away from angry declarations and concentrate on the work at hand of destroying Israel's enemies in the PA. In this vein, we would do well to recall Israel's actions in Operation Defensive Shield. Then too, the Bush administration began demanding that Israel end its counterterrorist operations almost immediately after they began. Israel ignored these calls and set up a 24-hour-a-day information campaign to explain why the IDF's operations were necessary and justified. Like dogs barking at passing cars, the administration's protests were ignored.

It is true that last year Bush had not staked his reputation on a new peace process as he has now done. This makes the task before the government of saying no to the administration harder today. Yet the alternative is unacceptable.

It must be noted that Sharon's umbrage at Bush's criticism of the air force's strike against Rantisi has met with wide approval by the US Congress. As well, Jewish and Christian groups have loudly criticized Bush for his anti-Israel statements this week. Then too, poll after poll of American public opinion has shown that the American people are supportive of our efforts to defeat our terrorist enemies.

In light of this, Sharon should feel a modicum of self-assurance when he bucks the US president. At the same time, even if this critical support for Israel's counterterrorist war did not exist, Sharon would still have to choose destroying terrorism to appeasing the White House. Our enemies from Rantisi and Arafat to the last of their terrorist foot soldiers have explained through word and deed, time and again, that their vision of a peaceful region involves the destruction of Israel. Until we deprive them of all vestiges of power, engaging in discussions of peace means participating in our own destruction.

Hyperlinks and emphasis added by PAC

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