Why is the State Department whitwashing jihad terror attacks against Israel? From Daniel Pipes in FrontPage:
Patterns of Global Terrorism, an annual report compiled by the Department of State, provides the authoritative U.S. government survey of the scourge of terrorism. Unfortunately, as I documented in an article about the 2001 edition (“State's Terror Untruths”), it is "a highly politicized document, reflecting the Washington debate and diplomatic imperatives, but this year it has veered into unreliability and even falsehood. It's a dangerous document likely to harm the war on terrorism."
He goes on to list 22 murders of Israelis that didn't make the report:
Jan 2, 2003 - The charred body of Massoud Makhluf Alon, 72, from Menahemiya in the Lower Galilee, was found in the northern Jordan Valley in his burned out car. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder.Jan 12, 2003 - Eli Biton, 48, of Moshav Gadish was killed and four people wounded when terrorists infiltrated the community and opened fire. Two terrorists were killed by Israeli forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 19, 2003 - Zion Boshirian, 51, of Mevo Dotan was shot and killed while driving in his car between Mevo Dotan and Shaked in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 4, 2003 - The body of Tali Weinberg, 26, of Beit Aryeh, was discovered in a garage in Rosh Ha'ayin with numerous stab wounds. The suspect, Weinberg's boyfriend, arrested on June 11, a 21-year-old Arab resident of Kafr Qasem, is believed to have carried out the murder as part of a "loyalty test" administered by Palestinian terrorist organizations.
May 5, 2003 - Gideon Lichterman, 27, of Ahiya, was killed and two other passengers, his six-year-old daughter Moriah and a reserve soldier, were seriously wounded when terrorists fired shots at their vehicle near Shvut Rachel, in Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 11, 2003 - Zion David, 53, of Givat Ze’ev near Jerusalem, was shot in the head and killed by Palestinian terrorists in a roadside ambush half a kilometer from Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Both Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 17, 2003 - Gadi Levy and his wife Dina, aged 31 and 37, of Kiryat Arba were killed by a suicide bomber in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 19, 2003 - Kiryl Shremko, 22, of Afula; Hassan Ismail Tawatha, 41, of Jisr a-Zarqa; and Avi Zerihan, 36, of Beit Shean were killed and about 70 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at the entrance to the Amakim Mall in Afula. The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades both claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 5, 2003 - The bodies of David Shambik, 26, and Moran Menachem, 17, both of Jerusalem, were found near Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem, brutally beaten and stabbed to death. Believed to be terror victims.
June 12, 2003 - Avner Maimon, 51, of Netanya, was found shot to death in his car near Yabed in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 17, 2003 - Noam Leibowitz, 7, of Yemin Orde was killed and three members of her family wounded in a shooting attack near the Kibbutz Eyal junction on the Trans-Israel Highway. The terrorist fired from the outskirts of the West Bank city of Kalkilya. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 19, 2003 - Avner Mordechai, 58, of Moshav Sde Trumot, was killed when a suicide bomber blew up in his grocery on Sde Trumot, south of Beit Shean. The suicide bomber was killed. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
June 26, 2003 - Amos (Amit) Mantin, 31, of Hadera, a Bezeq employee, was killed in a shooting attack in the Israeli Arab town of Baka al-Garbiyeh. The shots were fired by a Palestinian teenager, who was apprehended by police. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
July 7, 2003 - Mazal Afari, 65, of Moshav Kfar Yavetz was killed in her home on Monday evening and three of her grandchildren lightly wounded in a terrorist suicide bombing. The remains of the bomber were also found in the wreckage of the house. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
July 15, 2003 - Amir Simhon, 24, of Bat Yam was killed when a Palestinian armed with a long-bladed knife stabbed passersby on Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade, after a security guard prevented him from entering the Tarabin cafe and was wounded. The terrorist, who was shot and apprehended, is a member of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
Aug 10, 2003 - Haviv Dadon, 16, of Shlomi, was struck in the chest and killed by shrapnel from an anti-aircraft shell fired by Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon. Four others were wounded.
Aug 12, 2003 - Yehezkel (Hezi) Yekutieli, 43, of Rosh Ha’ayin, was killed by a teenaged Palestinian suicide bomber who detonated himself at the local supermarket.
Aug 29, 2003 - Shalom Har-Melekh, 25, of Homesh was killed in a shooting attack while driving northeast of Ramallah. His wife, Limor, who was seven months pregnant, sustained moderate injuries, and gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section. The Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Sept 9, 2003 - Nine IDF soldiers were killed and 30 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a hitchhiking post for soldiers outside a main entrance to the Tzrifin army base and Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Senior Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, 39, of Haifa; Chief Warrant Officer Yaakov Ben-Shabbat, 39, of Pardes Hanna; Cpl. Mazi Grego, 19, of Holon; Capt. Yael Kfir, 21, of Ashkelon; Cpl. Felix Nikolaichuk, 20, of Bat Yam; Sgt. Yonatan Peleg, 19, of Moshav Yanuv; Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, 19, of Moshav Ganei Yehuda; and Cpl. Prosper Twito, 20, of Upper Nazareth. Sgt. Liron Siboni, 19, of Ramat Gan died of her wounds on November 19.
Sept 26, 2003 - Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, and seven-month-old Shaked Avraham, both of Negohot, south of Hebron, were killed during the holiday meal on the eve of Rosh Hashana in the Yeberbaum home when a Palestinian terrorist who infiltrated the settlement opened fire with an M-16 assault rifle. The terrorist was killed by IDF forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Nov 22, 2003 - Two Israeli security guards, Ilya Reiger, 58, of Jerusalem, and Samer Fathi Afan, 25, of the Bedouin village Uzeir near Nazareth, were shot dead at a construction site along the route of the security fence near Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. The Jenin Martyrs’ Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Dec 25, 2003 - Adva Fisher, 20, of Kfar Sava; St.-Sgt. Noam Leibowitz, 22, of Elkana; Cpl. Angelina Shcherov, 19, of Kfar Sava; and Cpl. Rotem Weinberger, 19, of Kfar Sava were killed and over 20 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a bus stop at the Geha Junction, east of Tel Aviv, near Petah Tikva. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.
That the Department of State, even in revising its basic research document on terrorism, does such a shoddy job points to its inability to carry out this task which needs to be handled by some other department or agency, one that can do properly objective work.
Hear, hear.
The tutelary spirits of those in the State Department who deal with such matters, that is to say, matters connected to the Middle East and to Muslim terrorism, are two: one is that of Breckenridge Long, the Assistant Secretary of State who was so instrumental in keeping Jewish refugees from being accepted into the United States before and during World War II; the second is the late and unlamented Loy Henderson, he of the doleful countenance, who was so instrumental in moving heaven and earth in keeping the United States from recognizing the nascnet state of Israel, and did what he could to help smother it in its cradle. The palpable want of sympathy of Long and Henderson continues to this day, only now it is aided and abetted by the prospect of working as hirelings of Arab governments, and the fear of recognizing the true nature of the Arab oppoisition to Israel -- which is simply a case of a classic Jihad against an Infidel sovereignty in the midst of dar al-Islam, carefully redefined as a struggle for "nationalist operations" of the recently (post-1967) invented "Palestinian people."
One hopes that the next Secretary of State will be keenly aware of this problem. The refusal to understand the tenets of Islam in some quarters, precisely because a true understanding would make Israel's case stronger, and the Arab case weaker, is not surprising. In the 1930s, those with an inherited or acquired animus against "the Jews" were the last to see, or admit to, the threat that Hitler posed -- for preecisely the same kind of reasons.
That is why even those who are not outraged at the hypocrisy of the treatment of Israel had better become outraged at the larger issue -- which is the failure to come to grips with the Jihad as a natural and logical expression of central tenets of Islam, and not, as some would have us believe, simply the beliefs of a "handful of extremits," something that expresses a "sense of humiliation" (no, it is not "humiliation" but a feeling of being thwarted, because Islam "is to dominate and not be dominated" as the celebrated phrase puts it, and any evidence that this is not happening goes against the natural order of the universe, and is intolerable to Arab and Muslim beliefs and amour-propre.
The State Department is not, as a whole, a nest of ninnies, but in the area that is now of most concern -- that of the understanding of Islam, it certainly seems to be. When one has some evidence that there are those who have a glimmering of such understanding, who are horrified by the appeasement and apologetics that have characterized so much of what has gone on among those who deal with the Middle East -- including those now retired to posh positions elsewhere, and who like to assure one and all that "everyone agrees on the final disposition of things -- a two-state solution" -- this is said with a tone of complacent self-assurance -- by the likes of Edward Djerijian and his colleagues -- that the evidence for such an absurdity, that ignores the uncompromising division of the world between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb and the real nature of the relentless Jihad against Israel (it is Israel in any dimensions, that is the problem for the Arabs and those Muslims over whom they hold sway)-- is not even addressed. When people start prating about what "everyone knows to be true" or start invoking the word "solution" for something that in fact will exacerbate the problem -- that idiotic "two-state solution" -- then one's mental antennae should quiver.
A confederacy of dunces, a nest of ninnies, well-- you are free to come up with your own brand-new terms of venery, just like Julia of Norwich.
A nest of ninnies will do just fine. To add insult to injury, these ninnies have dedicated several web pages to the beauty of Islam!
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/muslimlife/
They fail, however, to find anything else about America to be so worthy.
From the State Dept. document cited above:
That's because Timothy McVeigh didn't claim he was obeying God's will by murdering innocent victims, whereas the Muslim militant terrorist jihadists do claim to act in the name of religion.
We don't link such acts with religion, the perpetrators do. And as long as Islamic jihadist terrorists link their actions to Islam, so will the non-islamic world. When islam is no longer a threat to the non-islamic world, it will be tolerated. In the 1400-year history of the jihad however, it has proved again, and again, and again, that the islamic ideology has always been, is now, and will always be, a threat to non-islamic civilization.
It is the Islamic ummah itself that links its violent ideology with the concept of religion. And like its failed sister ideologies such as nazism, communism, racism, etc., it is destined to be tossed yet again into the dustbin by the present generation of non-islamic peoples as surely as it was crushed by the likes of Jan Sobieski, Hulegu Khan, et al.
For those who wish to read about those in the State Department who, for years, served as apologists for the Axis Powers, and pooh-poohed the threat they posed throughout the 1930s and right up until Pearl Harbor, I recommend Robert Bendiner's "The Riddle of the State Department" (1942).
A similar book needs to be written about the State Department today. It would have to focus on the training, and choosing, and comprehension of Islam, of our diplomats, consuls, and others. Not to mention a little education in what an oligopoly is, and what the laws of supply and demand are all about, including price elasticity, and how one might, without those myths of Saudi "friendship," have saved oh -- I don't know -- would a trillion dollars faze you, in the last 30 years, in the United States alone, if only the State Department's "Arab experts" had not been largely fools and apologists.
The anti-Isarel bias is too obvious to bother mentioning. But the failure to understand how Islam, and how an Islamintern (on the model of the Comintern) was slowly but surely taking over the United Nations, was causing a political, economic, intellectual, and moral appeasement within Europe, which not only did nothing to stop the flow of Muslim immigrants (now perceived everywhere as a permanent and growing danger to the very existence of these societes as part of the West) into Western Europe, but adapted a policy of distancing itself not only from Israel but from its historic ally, the United States -- the results of which we all see today.
There needs to be not merely talk, but real housecleaning of those who, protecting each other, and thinking all alike, within those areas bring disgrace, by association, to all the intelligent and sensible members of the State Department -- who, as it happens, are largely outside the preserve of MIddle Eastern and Islamic matters.
Another Secretary of State is clearly called for -- one who, for example, will not hesitate to call for the use of force in the southern and western Sudan, not by U.N. troops (the forces of Jihad, of Islam, long ago captured the U.N., so such an action is impossible), but by American troops, who at one fell swoop can hearten black Christians in and out of Africa, not least among the Ibo and other Christians of southern Nigeria, rescue for Christendom, or at least keep out of dar al-Islam, that part of the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, which in a slow-motion and unopposed campaign of rape, looting, mass murder, and forced conversion (that about sums it up), the Arabs have been conducting a Jihad against the nearly helpless blacks of the south and now of Darfur -- against Infidels in the first place, and "mawali" or non-Arab Muslims, in the second.
John Bolton? John McCain? Rudolf Giuliani? Name your antidote -- we already know the poison.
The reason why most of those numerous incidents Pipes lists do not appear in the State Department Report is because a panel of US officials, including representatives of State and CIA, view any violence that occurs in the "Occupied Territories" as a domestic conflict, unless someone other than an Israeli is hurt or killed.
Therefore, almost all incidents in the OT do not meet the standard the US government has set for inclusion in its official database -- that standard being significant acts of "international" terrorism. Only acts inside Israel-proper, minus a few less sensational attacks that fall through the cracks, are considered for inclusion in the list.
The fact that Israelis and Palestinians are two distinct peoples has so resonance with US diplomats who I presume, for the purposes of advancing the "peace process," would prefer not to give Palestinian killing of Jews all the attention it deserves.
When the "fence" is completed and Israel becomes the first nation to formally recognize the Palestinian state, instantly transforming the status of the fence into an international border, all violent acts against Israeli citizens, whether they be perpetrated within Israel or outside of Israel, will be by definition, "international" acts of terrorism.
So when Palestinians attack Israel across the new border, such attacks will by international law be recognized as belligerent acts of a neighboring state (invasion) and Israel will have the right to retaliate with as much force as Israel deems necessary to repel the invasion.
The math might look like this:
1 homemade katusha lobbed over the border from Palestine to Israel = 1 Palestinian town erased by 3 days of continuous IDF air and artillery strikes.
Impunity to Israel to level whole towns and villages granted by Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Article 51 of course doesn't come into play until the state of Palestine actually exists. That's why I believe Israel will be the country that introduces the UN resolution to formally recognize its existance. Once that is done, the gloves really come off.
Khan's point about whether Israel would be legally justified in responding to Palestinian provocation AFTER statehood -- that Israel should agree to statehood now in order to somehow gain more of a right to respond to terror -- makes little sense to me.
A Palestinian state created NOW that, due to its current leadership, would likely support and employ terrorism should not be created in the first place. Once that issue is resolved -- that is, setting in place the requirements for a stable, productive and peaceful state -- then a state can be created and the issue of Israel's legal response given that state's existence becomes relevant.
Killing innocents is morally repugnant. If it is not overtly outlawed under international law now, then it should be. That's all the legal authority and justification Israel needs to fight Palestinian terrorism. It doesn't need to acquiesce to creation of a Palestinian state in order to have a right to protect its citizens. Besides, Israel and the US have endorsed creation of a Palestinian state. It's the Palestinians who are preventing its creation by having a leadership that supports terror and is unprepared to bury the hatchet with Israel. In years, decades, or generations to come -- when Palestinians elect/appoint leaders who, like them, are tired on violence and backwardness -- the hatchet will be buried and there will be lasting peace.