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From the Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com
(21:45) Pakistan wants Israel out of emerging coalition
US Secretary of State Colin Powell this evening said the United States will consider Pakistan's request not to include Israel and India in the emerging coalition against worldwide terrorism, Army Radio reported.
"We understand the sensitivity of the subject and will take it into consideration," Powell said.
Pakistan said the United States may use its territory for any eventual strike against Afghanistan, provided Israel and India are not part of the coalition.
Afghanistan is harboring Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of last week's terrorist attacks in the US.
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From Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com
(17:45) Arab League: No Arab states in coalition with Israel
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said today on Al-Jazeera Television that no Arab country would participate in the coalition against terrorism being organized by the United States if such a coalition includes Israel.
Moussa charged that Israel "continues to harm the Palestinians and to destroy their homes in the occupied territories." Israel also did not participate in the Western coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War, Moussa noted.
He added that it is inconceivable that any Arab country would attack Afghanistan or that any Arab country would be attacked in America's war against terrorism.
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From Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com
21:30) Good terrorists vs. Bad terrorists By Sally Buzbee, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - As they gear up for a global war on terrorism, America and its close allies could have trouble agreeing - beyond Osama bin Laden - just who is a terrorist.
Some Arab nations already warn they will not help the United States if the target is Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hizbullah. All three are Islamic extremist groups listed by the United States as terrorists and with suspected ties to bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Yet some Arab nations view them as legitimate fighters against Israel.
"Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there," President George W. Bush pledged to the nation in a speech before Congress on Thursday night. "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."
That's when some allies may start to get cold feet.
"You have to pick carefully how wide your net is thrown," said Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Many countries are not going to share intelligence if they think we're coming after people on their ground, or people they don't want us to come after."
Top US officials answer vaguely when asked how the US might work with two nations they have reached out to - Syria and Iran - that currently are on a list of nations that America says sponsor terrorism.
"We're leaving open the possibilities and we're exploring," the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said today. "But let me be very clear. We are not going to declare that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists. There's terrorism. And if you sponsor terrorism, you are hostile to the United States."
In the first days after the September 11th terror attacks in New York and Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others seemed to suggest the United States would go after any group it considered terrorist. That could be more than two dozen, including groups like the Shining Path in Peru and ETA, the Basque separatist group in Spain.
Bush was careful to stress in his speech last week that the fight would target terrorists with global reach, O'Hanlon noted.
The United States needs a strong coalition of nations, especially Arab ones, for a military campaign against bin Laden's suspected terror camps in Afghanistan - considered the almost-certain first target - because it needs somewhere to base airplanes and stage troops.
Intelligence from Arab nations also is needed.
Yet a senior Saudi official, speaking from Riyadh, cautioned that any aid from Arab and smaller Persian Gulf states must be preceded by a clear and specific declaration of which countries and groups will be targeted.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates will not agree to engage in a conflict with groups that resist Israel in its struggle with Palestinian groups, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. He specifically cited Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah.
The Arab nations worry their citizens will become outraged if they help America go after groups that resist Israel, said Anthony Cordesman, a Mideast specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Since the terror attacks, US officials have pressed both Israel and the Palestinians to contain Mideast violence.
What may happen, said one Middle East expert who teaches at a US defense college, is that the United States will join with Egypt, for example, to go after a few Middle East terrorist groups, but then avoid a public linking with Egypt when it goes after a terrorist group with popular support inside Egypt. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Bush administration also may single out groups in order to lure allies. In his speech Thursday, for example, Bush named the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, both of which threaten leaders from whom the United States wants assistance, in Egypt and Uzbekistan.
Administration officials have said they are seeking not just military and intelligence assistance, but also diplomatic help and help tracking terrorists' money.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that the US campaign, no matter how sweeping, cannot stop terrorism altogether.
"We may not eliminate it completely from the face of the earth, which we surely will not," Rumsfeld said. The goal, he said, "is to go after this worldwide problem in a way that we can continue our way of life."
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From http://www.foxnews.com
Terror Groups Met Twice to Plot New Holy War Against U.S., Israel Sunday, September 16, 2001 By Carl Cameron
WASHINGTON 97 The world's most extreme terrorist groups met twice earlie r this year in an effort to set aside their philosophical differences and unite in a new holy war against the United States and Israel, law enforcement officials tell Fox News. The two meetings, according to the officials, took place in Beirut, Lebanon in February and the Iranian capital of Tehran in late April. The gatherings are described as "unprecedented," and went largely unnoticed in the west. A handful of officials in the White House were briefed on the event. Dubbed the "Jerusalem Conference" by its 400 or so participants, the group drafted a document pledging to unite behind the Palestinians and win total Arab control over Jerusalem. "The only decisive option to achieve this strategy is the option of Jihad (holy war) in all its forms," the document says, according to law enforcement officials who have seen it. "America today is a second Israel." The group made up of Usama Bin Laden92s al-Qaeda, the Palestinians, Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions, the Lebanese Hezbollah and militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Qatar, Yemen, Sudan and Algeria 96 has named its task ahead, "The Jerusalem Project." Sources tell Fox News that at least one participant went to the conference from the United States and returned here afterward. The sources say "The Jerusalem Project" is headquartered in Beirut and led by two men -- Musa Abu Marzouq, a Hamas leader who was in 1977 arrested in New York and later deported to Jordan; and Ramadham Abdullah Shallah of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who has two sons that served in Bin Laden's Mujahedin unit against the Soviet's in Afghanistan. Iran reportedly sent several official diplomats to the meetings, including Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashami, a well known Iranian intelligence offici al.
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From: www.Jpost.com
4 Tishri 5762 22:01Thursday September 20, 2001
(20:50) FM official: US may view Israel as an obstacle
By Herb Keinon
Foreign Ministry officials are concerned that Israel is increasingly being perceived as an obstacle to American attempts to build its anti-terror coalition, something that could have dangerous diplomatic ramifications for Israel.
An Israeli diplomat in the US sent a cable to the ministry recently warning that "If Israel will find itself on the wrong side of the equation the US is trying to present, the diplomatic damage will be tremendous, and I am not exaggerating in estimating that there will be real ramifications for US-Israeli relations."
Diplomatic officials maintain that one of the reasons that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is so keen on meeting Yasser Arafat now, is because US President George Bush has requested it, and Peres does not want Israel to appear as the country at this time saying "no" to the US president.
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From: Ephraim & Rimona Frank To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org Subject:Ceasefire in Israel?
Shalom Fellow Israelite,
This morning, Thursday, while listening to the News, my eyes were opened to a new reality. I don't know where I have been until now, but at last, today, a new realization dawned on me. The first item on the News was a report on the many Palestinian attacks all over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip. I thought to myself: "Arafat is lying again, as there is no evidence of a ceasefire!" Then followed some information about President Bush's success in convincing many of the Arab states to join, at least in some form or fashion, the war against global terrorism. Next was an account of Arafat's travels to Egypt and Jordan, followed by a report on Syria's President Assad's visit to Egypt, where he made the announcement that Syria will back the American's lead in ridding the world of terrorism with one stipulation; that this coalition will also fight against illegal land occupations by foreign forces, and recognize that such an occupation may be thrown off by any means available to those subjected to it. Syria would not agree to support the Americans if the latter will not back up the Arabs' demand that opposition against foreign occupation be formed, as was done in Kuwait (no mention was made of the Palestinians or Israelis). To top off the News, Secretary of State Powell announced that the ceasefire, which has been in place for the past 24 hours according to this statement, makes Arafat and Peres' meeting imperative and that they are bound to sit down immediately and resume negotiations.
Shocked at the Secretary of State's demand, I thought: "ceasefire! What ceasefire??? How can that be, with the past two days full of violence and armed attacks; with one woman being killed and her husband severely wounded, being just one among several others who have been shot and whose lives are in danger?" Then it dawned on me... The United Nations, including the United States, have determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel, as an occupier of all the territory that according to UN resolution 242 and 338 belongs to the PA, renders Arafat and the PLO exempt from the definition of a terrorist organization, and indirectly accords them full rights to fight against the occupiers of the said territory. In light of this, after the so-called war against terrorism, the same coalition will have to enforce an ultimatum on Israel to implement the agreements and definitions that she herself consented to in the Oslo Accords, or face a United Nations armed force the likes of which the world has never seen.
Now I understood why Powell said what he did. Since the territories are not a part of Israel, when the Palestinians launch attacks on the Israeli occupiers (civil and military) outside the ''67 boundaries', they are merely defending their own land. Arafat and his forces are therefore fulfilling their part of the agreement if they refrain from attacking Israel 'proper'. The question that is now looming before us is, what stand will Israel take? Will she back down and give in to the United States-cum-Nations or ????
Shabbat Shalom
Shevet Achim
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ARAFAT'S DOUBLESPEAK CONTINUES
In response to Prime Minister Sharon's declaration that a 48-hour cease fire would enable a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli talks, the following contradictory statements emerged from the Palestinian Authority:
" 'I have issued strict instructions for a total commitment to the cease-fire' Arafat said..." [The Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2001]
"This [cease-fire] declaration is nothing more than a tactical initiative and a political maneuver on the part of the [Palestinian] Authority, so that the Palestinians won't be perceived as hostile towards the peace process."
[Amin Maqbul, Member, Fatah World Leadership and Fatah Delegate in Shechem (Nablus), the Palestinian Authority official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 20, 2001] (Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, September 20, 2001)
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From: Barbara Di Gilio To:heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org Subject: To The Honorable George W. Bush from Tiberias, Israel
Shalom to all,
The President of America gave a good speech last night. However there was one point many Believers in Messiah had trouble with, that being "Islam" being "good and peaceful." It maybe President Bush does not really know all this about Islam or Allah! I know many Christians who think "Allah" is the same "God" we serve, but he's not. At least not according to many Muslims who now know the real "God, the Almight one of Israel." The letter and the commentary below are really worth reading, and passing on to those who do not know what the Quran (Koran) really teach.
Blessing in His Light, Barbara <>< ~~~~~~~~~~~
September 21, 2001 - Tiberias, Israel
Another Open Letter to The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States
Dear President Bush,
Like every other thinking person in the world, I with very great interest noted your carefully chosen words spoken last evening .
While I agree with and support much of what you say, please bear with me when I point out that you missed a central point of my earlier letter. In your address last evening, you said, in part (emphasis my own):
"I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah"
Again, Mr. President, let me respectfully point out to you some of the teachings as they are set forth in the "Holy Koran" and thus embraced by all Muslims, both those that you call "peaceful" and those that you call "terrorists" alike. All observant Muslims must take these words literally and obey them. Mr. President, I beg you to read these words carefully and then to honestly ask yourself: Can any of these "teachings" by any reasonable standard in any way by construed as "good and peaceful?"
...The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land....(Quran; Surah 5:33)
...beware of them lest they seduce you from some part of that which Allah has revealed to you. And if they turn away know that Allah's will is to smite them...(Quran; Surah 5:49)
...Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guides not these wrongdoing people. (Quran Surah 5:51)
---Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." (Quran, Chapter IV, Verse 34 "Women")
...And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can overcome. Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all you can by armed force... (Quran; Surah 8:59-60a)
...slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare to ambush them. But if they repent and establish [Islamic] worship... their way is free. Lo! Allah is forgiving and Merciful. (Quran; Surah 9:5)
...Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them... (Quran; Surah 9:73)
...And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. (Quran, Surah 2.191)
In my frustration and deep sadness last evening, I struggled to draft another open letter to you in order to encourage your better understanding of the realities of Islam and the error of your current efforts to establish an international coalition that excludes Israel but involves as "partners" those very Arab nations (including Yassar Araft's PLO) that are known to actively embrace, perpetrate and/or support the very international terrorism you are asking them to come against. While I worked hard and long to draft such an appropriate letter, in the end my words were far too sarcastic, hyper critical and not in keeping with the genuine respect I have for you, your high office and America. I thus trashed them and turned to the Lord for further guidance.
This morning I came across the very clear statement I could not find the peace to write myself. The following commentary from the September 20th "Wall Street Journal" is an absolute masterpiece that should be read by all Americans, and especially by you and other American decision makers at all levels.
Please, Mr. President, I beg you, read this! What Norman Podhoretz says here is God's truth and you would be very well advised to reformulate your approach to this terrible situation around his insights.
In the name of the Lord God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, YHWH is His Holy Name.
Raymond R. Fischer Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (ret.) Citizen of Israel and the Untied States ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 20, 2001
Commentary
Israel Isn't the Issue
By Norman Podhoretz. Mr. Podhoretz is editor-at-large of Commentary and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Is American support of Israel behind the hatred of this country that pervades the Arab world and that literally exploded into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11? Certainly this is what many in Europe believe.
Yet, remarkably, within the Arab word itself, there has been less emphasis on Israel as the root cause of the attacks than might have been anticipated. To be sure, one of the great "crimes" of America in Arab eyes remains its support of Israel. Nor is there any doubt from what they say to one another in Arabic (as opposed to what their diplomats say in English, French or German) that wiping Israel off the map is still one of the major hopes of Arabs everywhere -- and of most non-Arab Middle Eastern Muslims like the Iranians as well.
'Smaller Enemy'
But only about two weeks before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Abd Al-Mun'im Murad, a columnist in Al-Akhbar, a daily newspaper sponsored by the Egyptian government, wrote: "The conflict that we call the Arab-Israeli conflict is, in truth, an Arab conflict with Western, and particularly American, colonialism . . . is helped by the smaller enemy, and I mean Israel." And in another column, also published in late August, Mr. Murad gave us an inkling of what he had in mind for America: "The Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, must be destroyed. . . . [T]he age of the American collapse has begun."
If this is the kind of thing we get from an Arab country that everyone regards as "moderate," in radical states like Iraq and Iran nothing less than identifying America as the "Great Satan" will suffice. As for the Palestinians, contempt among them for America is hardly exceeded by loathing of Israel. For example, the mufti -- or chief cleric -- appointed by the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat has prayed that God will "destroy America," while the editor of a leading Palestinian journal has declared: The American "murderers of humanity, the creators of the barbaric culture and the bloodsuckers of nations, are doomed to death."
The point is that if Israel had never come into existence, or if it were magically to disappear, the U.S. would still stand as an embodiment of everything that most of these Arabs consider evil. Indeed, the hatred of Israel is in large part a surrogate for anti-Americanism. Israel is regarded as the spearhead of the American drive for domination over the Middle East--the "little enemy," the "little Satan."
We have all been repeatedly instructed in the past few days that suicide bombing represents a perversion of Islam fostered by a tiny minority of fundamentalists. This may well be so. Yet it is also true that exhortations to, and celebrations of, this tactic by leading Muslim clerics in the Middle East have drowned out the few lonely protests against it.
Nor is it only against Israel that suicide bombings have been wildly applauded. Only last November, for instance, one of the official Palestinian Authority newspapers reported the results of a poll in which 73% of Palestinians supported "suicide missions against American interests in the Middle East." Is it any wonder, then, that there was rejoicing among the Palestinians over the attacks "against American interests" in America itself when in textbooks published by the PA Ministry of Education, and in use this very school year, students were being taught that Western civilization "has begun to collapse and to become a pile of rubble"? A pile of rubble: The sight of the World Trade Center reduced to endless tons of debris must have seemed the fulfillment of a prophecy to young minds poisoned by such teachings.
Even before Sept. 11, there was something repellent about the continual exhortations to "restraint" coming out of our State Department whenever Israel responded with any degree of force to suicide bombings and other attacks on its territory or its people. But now the U.S., having experienced at first hand what Israel has been going through, has rightly declared war not only against individual terrorists but also the groups or states that harbor or nourish or encourage them.
At such a time, it is quite simply bizarre that Secretary of State Colin Powell should be pressing the Israelis to meet with Yasser Arafat, who has been, and still is, guilty of everything we have now pledged ourselves to extirpate. What will the State Department come up with next? A proposal that American diplomats sit down with Osama bin Laden? After all, he denies having been responsible for the attacks on us, just as Mr. Arafat denies that he is behind the outbreak of terrorism that has been his response to a recklessly generous Israeli offer last year of terms for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. Having signed a piece of paper in 1993 in which he promised to eschew violence, Mr.Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Why not get Osama bin Laden to make the same promise, and then give him the Nobel Peace Prize too?
The absurdity of the State Department's position on Mr. Arafat is compounded by its efforts to build a coalition against terrorism that will include some of the very states -- especially Syria and Iran -- against which we have in effect declared war for harboring and sponsoring this evil (in their case, it is Hezbollah, which almost certainly took part in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and of American embassies in Africa in 1998). Evidently the idea is to make them change their policy. Yet given the enormous popularity of terrorism among their own peoples, the leaders of these countries are highly unlikely to act against it.
President Bush's father needed a coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait, partly because there was so much opposition at home to Desert Storm. But "Little Bush," as he is mockingly characterized by some in the Arabic press, has the country solidly behind him, and the only possible justification for the coalition envisaged by Mr. Powell is to get staging areas and overflight rights in the region for military operations. Hence courting Pakistan and offering it incentives at least makes some sense. But no comparable justification can be jiggered up for pursuing the Syrians or the Palestinians or the Iranians, who are among those we should be punishing instead of wooing.
Finally, it would be both immoral and stupid of this administration to exclude Israel as a major ally in the war against terrorism. The president's father prevented the Israelis from participating in Desert Storm (even after the Syrians, of all governments, acknowledged Israel's right to defend itself against the Scud missiles Saddam Hussein was aiming at it). In thus excluding Israel, the elder Bush forfeited what we now know would have been an invaluable military asset in locating and destroying the Scuds that were also being fired at American troops in Saudi Arabia.
If George W. Bush were to repeat this egregious error, he would risk losing an equally invaluable asset in the new kind of war into which we have entered -- namely, the intelligence capabilities and the expertise of the country that has experienced more terrorism than any other.
What We Are
Clarity of purpose cannot be achieved without intellectual and moral clarity; and in this situation, what clarity reveals is that we Americans are in the same boat as the Israelis. But what is harder for us to grasp is that, just as the fervent wish of the Arab world to wipe the Jewish state off the map derives not from anything Israel has done or failed to do, but rather from its existence alone, so we are hated not because of our policies but because of who and what we are.
A Palestinian textbook sums up one item of the indictment: "Western civilization. . . deprived man of his peace of mind, stability and noble human examples. . . when it turned material well-being into the exemplary goal. . . his money leading him nowhere, except to suicide."
True, the Arabs accuse us of all manner of horrible crimes. But as someone recently said, what really arouses their enmity is not what we have done wrong but what we have done right. To them our democratic polity, and the freedoms that go with it, are as corrupting as our economic system. They want to destroy all this, first in the Middle East itself, and then in as much of the world as they can, so that the way of life they believe is commanded by Allah can rise up again in all its sacred purity from out of the degenerate rubble.
Copyright c 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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