www.hirhome.com

This is a large file, please be patient . . .

Is the US an ally of Israel? A chronological look at the evidence Historical and Investigative Research -- by Francisco Gil-White [ this piece updated regularly ] http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm ____________________________________________________________ NOTE: In this document, when you see a red footnote this means that, in addition to giving the source and/or a link, there is extra material (sometimes relatively lengthy) that is worth reading and which provides additional context and clarification. Many of my sources are available on the web and I have provided the hyperlinks in the footnotes (whether red or not) so that readers may easily examine them. ____________________________________________________________ ...continued from http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm The 1930's -  Negative - The US Establishment helped sponsor the rise of the German Nazi movement. 1939-1945  -  Negative - This year's material is divided into the following sections: Introduction 1. The general policy of the Allies towards the plight of the Jews 2. No US visas for European Jews trying to escape the Nazi slaughter 3. The allies refused to sabotage Hitler's Final Solution by military means 1945 - Negative - After 1945, the US created US Intelligence by recruiting tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals. 1947-48 - Mixed to Negative - Forced by external circumstances, the US government gave lukewarm support to the creation of the State of Israel. But then it reversed itself and implemented policies designed to destroy Israel. 1949-1953 - Negative - In Israel's hour of supreme need, the US allied with Israel's mortal enemies. 1955 - Mixed - The US forces Israel to withdraw from Sinai, but makes some concessions to the Israelis. 1955-1965 - Positive (in one regard only) - Israel indirectly gets some US weapons. 1958 - Negative - Israel assists US military intervention in the Middle East; when this places Israel in danger, the US does...nothing. 1964 - Mixed - The US abandoned its previous official policy of trying to get Israel to relinquish the territories won in the War of Independence. Why had it been trying to do this? 1964-1967 - Negative - Although Israel suffered terrorist attacks from its Arab neighbors during these years, when they staged a full-scale military provocation, the US refused to help. 1967 - Negative - After the Six-Day War, the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish the territory gained, even though it knew it was indispensable to Israeli defense. 1969 - Negative - The Arabs attack the Israelis. The US response is to try and remove the Israelis from territory they need for their defense. 1970 - Positive - Washington temporarily abandons the diplomatic effort to make Israel withdraw from the territories. 1973 - Positive - The US assisted Israel in the Yom Kippur War. 1974-1975 - Negative - The US supported the election of a pro-PLO Nazi war criminal to the post of UN Secretary General. 1975 - Negative - The US reached an agreement with Israel not to have contacts with the PLO. The US immediately violated the agreement. 1977 - Negative -  Jimmy Carter worked hard to give the terrorist PLO the dignity of a 'government in exile,' and then he teamed up with the Soviets to try and saddle Israel with a PLO terrorist state next door. 1978 - Negative - When Israel tried to defend itself from the PLO terrorists, the US forced Israel to stand back. 1979 - Negative - Jimmy Carter began large-scale US sponsorship of antisemitic Islamist terrorists, especially in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. 1981 - Negative - The US pushed for a PLO state in the West Bank against Israeli objections. 1982-1983 - Negative - The US military rushed into Lebanon to protect the PLO from the Israelis. 1985 - Negative - 1985 includes more material than other years, so we have divided it into subsections. 1. Shimon Peres acted as a US agent, against Israeli interests. 2. Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti (respectively, the Italian prime minister and foreign minister) committed political suicide for the sake of pushing the PLO. The US was behind them. 3. Ronald Reagan denied the Holocaust 4. Who was in charge of US covert operations in 1985? 1987-1988 - Negative - The 'First Intifada' was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed 'underdogs.' 1989 - Negative - With Dick Cheney, the US began supporting a PLO state in the open as the 'only solution' to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 1991 - Negative - Bush Sr.'s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza. 1994 - Negative - Yasser Arafat was given a Nobel Peace Prize, and the CIA trained the PLO, even though Arafat's henchmen were saying in public, this very year, that they would use their training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews. 1996-1997 - Negative - The United States exerted such strong pressure on the Netanyahu government (including threats) that, even though Netanyahu had been elected on an anti-Oslo platform, he had the necessary cover to betray the Israeli public that had elected him. 2005 - Negative - Mahmoud Abbas, who will soon have total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking 'peace' the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas. (I will soon post documentation for the missing years in between.)  ____________________________________________________________ 1981 [ negative ] The US pushed for a PLO state in the West Bank against Israeli objections ____________________________________________________________ On November 14, 1981, the UN adopted a resolution condemning Israel for destroying a nuclear installation in Iraq.[63] Israel and the US were the only two countries to vote against. That may look like US support for Israel. However, just a few days later the US voted for a resolution condemning Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights.[64] The US then also reversed itself on the prior resolution concerning the attack on Iraq, launching a frontal diplomatic attack on Israel. The outgoing Secretary General of the UN, the Austrian Nazi Kurt Waldheim, exulted publicly over this turn of events, and added that, by the way, the West Bank and Gaza Arabs should be given their own state.[65] US president Ronald Reagan's attacks on Israel were so sharp that many prominent members of the American Jewish community interpreted this as antisemitism, so Reagan met "with 32 Jewish supporters... [and then]... with the presidents of 34 Jewish organizations" Reagan was quoted as giving them the following non-sequitor: that "his administration 'will not condone anti-Semitism and will attack it wherever it surfaces.'"[66] But nobody was asking Reagan to attack antisemitism wherever it surfaced; the complaint was that antisemitism had surfaced in the office of the president! In addition, "…The White House adviser…said Reagan assured his Jewish supporters that 'the only path to peace we're following is the Camp David process,' and not either peace initiatives proposed by Saudi Arabia or Europeans. Reagan had raised some Jewish concerns by praising what he called implicit recognition of Israel in the plan advanced by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi plan calls for establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and peace between countries in the region. The plan never mentions Israel. The Europeans have questioned whether any settlement can be reached without active PLO participation." So Reagan, first, endorsed a Saudi ‘peace’ plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state “with its capital in East Jerusalem,” and which didn’t recognize Israel’s actual existence, let alone recognize its right to exist. Then, Reagan said that no, the Saudi plan would not be followed, and neither would he pay any attention to the Europeans, who were calling for a PLO state. Instead, the “Camp David process” would be his policy. But the “Camp David process” was Jimmy Carter’s policy, and it called for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, the creation of a self-governing Palestinian Arab authority, and, after three years, “negotiations will take place to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza.”[67] Since Carter had pushed very hard for including the PLO in the Geneva ‘peace’ conference, it is obvious that this strategy, which looks and sounds exactly like what the Oslo process later became, was meant to create a PLO state in the West Bank and Gaza. Adding insult to injury, Reagan decided to sell arms to Saudi Arabia (in addition to the secret buildup that nobody knew about - see 1979 section). But Reagan had some cover because, only a month earlier, American businessman Edgar Bronfman Sr., the president of the World Jewish Congress, had written an editorial in the New York Times in which he: 1)  argued for an American role in a Middle East peace process; 2)  spoke about "genuine Palestinian needs"; 3)  presented the Arabs as genuinely wanting peace; and 4)  advised the Israeli prime minister to accept the Arabs' preconditions and to find "an acceptable solution for the Palestinians." "Mr. Begin...," Bronfman explained, "must be prepared to go further than endorsing the idea of Palestinian autonomy."[68] More than autonomy: in other words, a Palestinian state! Bronfman was certainly not doing Israel any favors. This must be kept in mind, because, as we will see by the sequel, Bronfman is quite prominent in the American halls of power. This is true as a general rule: only Jews who go out of their way to attack Israel (openly or not so openly) have any influence in Washington. Now why might that be?  ____________________________________________________________ 1982-1983 [ negative ] The US rushed to protect the PLO in southern Lebanon from the Israelis. ____________________________________________________________ Not content with the above, in September 1982, Edgar Bronfman, from his perch as President of the World Jewish Congress, publicly endorsed Ronald Reagan's plan for Middle East peace. Reagan was using Bronfman as a 'Jewish diplomat' to speak for Israel, and American newspapers dutifully carried the headline "Jewish leader OKs Reagan peace plan."[69] But who cares what Bronfman said? He was not a spokesman for the Israeli government. As a matter of fact, "the [Likud] Israeli government [led by Menachem Begin]...unanimously and totally rejected the American initiative."[70] And what was Bronfman endorsing? "The Camp David peace accords call for an interim, five-year period of autonomy for the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza during which the final status of the territories is to be negotiated."[71] Autonomy leading to final status was code for a peace process leading to a Palestinian state. We have already seen that the US was quite keen to have Yasser Arafat and the PLO terrorists run such a state (see 1977 section). Thus, Reagan's plan to create a Palestinian state, which Bronfman endorsed, was another American attack on Israel. Even as US President Ronald Reagan was pressing for a Palestinian state run by the PLO, these terrorists were attacking Israeli civilians from their bases in Lebanon. Above we noted that in 1970 Jordan's King Hussein had militarily expelled the PLO terrorists from his country. "Thereafter the PLO shifted its bases to Lebanon and continued its attacks on Israel. The PLO's relations with the Lebanese were tumultuous, and the organization soon became embroiled in Lebanon's sectarian disputes and contributed to that country's eventual slide into civil war."[72] This was a repeat of the problems the PLO had earlier caused in Jordan.[73] Because the PLO was murdering Israeli civilians, Israel invaded Lebanon, and launched a "campaign that Israel said would wipe out the PLO as a political and military force and open the way for true peace in the Middle East."[74] The Israelis very nearly did just that. They failed, however. But not for lack of trying. Rather, what happened is that as Israeli troops got ready to deliver a knockout blow to the PLO, the US intervened to save them. The Washington Post noted the contrast between the PLO's earlier exit from Jordan, and from Lebanon: "From Amman [Jordan], the PLO troops left unheralded, in ridicule. From Beirut [Lebanon], they left in a compromise negotiated by the United States, waving their Kalashnikov rifles. Arafat left not in the middle of the night but with an emotional dockside sendoff from the Lebanese prime minister, a French Navy escort and U.S. air cover."[75] But why did the US do this? Because the PLO is the US's pet, and the US meant to use it again as an attack dog (as we shall see). If any further evidence for this 'master-pet' relationship were needed, consider that, in Lebanon, the US had been using the PLO as its *guard* dog: "The Lebanese occupation by Israel caused the Palestinians to have to leave Lebanon eventually...They had been the protectors for the American diplomatic community in Beirut...There was liaison with the PLO, and the Americans were depending on them for their security." -- Vincent Cannistraro, senior intelligence official.[76] It's a love affair! A bit later, a rival Lebanese faction assassinated Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese phalangists. Two days after that, in the resulting chaos, a massacre was committed in Sabra and Shatila, blamed on these now-headless phalangists. Despite the fact that nobody was blaming Israeli soldiers, Ronald Reagan (who was then using the Contra terrorists to kill innocent civilians in Nicaragua) launched a ferocious diplomatic attack against Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and his Likud government, claiming Israel was responsible for this. Edgar Bronfman Sr., president of the World Jewish Congress, again provided cover for Reagan by supporting this attack wholeheartedly.[77] Before closing this section, it is important to note that despite the US rescue of the PLO, Arafat's eviction from Beirut was a severe blow that essentially defeated the organization. By 1983, the Christian Science Monitor was writing as follows: "The Palestine Liberation Organization continues, meanwhile, a loss of regional influence that began with Israel's summer 1982 invasion of Lebanon. As part of the initial cease-fire, Mr. Arafat and the majority of Palestinian guerrillas abandoned their base in Beirut. Since then, a hard-line faction has challenged Arafat's PLO leadership. Now Arafat's back is literally against the sea, and his departure from [the northern Lebanese city of] Tripoli seems only a matter of time."[78a] Sure enough, two months later, the New York Times reported that: "Mr. Arafat, who is believed to be in Tunis, is scheduled to meet Monday with Lebanon's Prime Minister, Shafik al-Wazzan, to discuss his organization's terms for withdrawing the rest of its guerrilla forces from [Tripoli,] Lebanon."[78b] The US did what it could to make sure that the remaining PLO troops would get out of Lebanon safely: "White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the Reagan administration wished for the 'unhampered' withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization troops loyal to Arafat."[78c] And the Reagan administration became quite strident about this, in fact. "The United States said today that it had told Israel that it 'hopes and expects' the Shamir Government will halt its military actions around Tripoli and allow Yasir Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization fighters to be evacuated from the city. ...officials said privately that Washington was losing patience with the Israeli tactics that have delayed Mr. Arafat's withdrawal."[78d] At the time, as the same New York Times article explains, President Ronald Reagan's point man on the Middle East was one Donald Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense in George Bush Jr.'s administration. "Today, in what State Department officials said was an effort to demonstrate to the Arabs the American desire for good relations with them as well as the Israelis, Donald Rumsfeld, the special Middle East envoy, arrived in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi leaders. Mr. Rumsfeld is the highest ranking American to visit Iraq since the Reagan Administration took office in 1980." What has been reviewed for the years 1982-83 does not suggest in the least that the Reagan administration really intended to have good relations with the Israelis. To confirm that, it suffices to read on and find out what happened in 1985. From its new base in Tunis, the defeated PLO would find it very difficult to attack Israel, which is why it resorted to such high jinks as taking hostage the Italian ship Achille Lauro in 1985 (see below). The US would therefore make sure to revive the PLO, and eventually bring it to power in the West Bank, where it could once again easily kill innocent Israeli civilians. ____________________________________________________________ 1985 [ negative ] ____________________________________________________________ Early in 1984, the Christian Science Monitor wrote, "This week marks a fundamental reexamination of US Mideast policy. ...Tuesday saw a flurry of activity in Washington regarding the Middle East. President Reagan met with special envoy Donald Rumsfeld and with Republican congressional leaders to discuss new directions in US peacemaking efforts there."[78e] A bit later, in March of the same year, the New York Times wrote, "The Reagan Administration is fashioning a new Middle East strategy... The officials said there had been unending meetings to try to find something new to say and do to put the new strategy into effect. A decision to send Donald Rumsfeld, the special Middle East negotiator, back to the region was said to be waiting on this."[78f] What was this "new strategy" that the "Reagan administration [was] fashioning"? In 1985 there were three main US initiatives against Israel and the Jews. One by Shimon Peres who, as we shall see, behaved as a hostile American puppet, rather than an Israeli patriot. One by the Italians, acting as agents of the Americans on behalf of the US pet, the PLO. And one by Ronald Reagan in person, as a very public and vocal antisemite. 1. Shimon Peres acted as a US agent, against Israeli interests _____________________ A once useful, though now almost irrelevant, simplification: the Labor party in Israel was traditionally in favor of a Palestinian state; the other main party, Likud, was traditionally against. (The labels 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' in Israel have a superficial rather than substantive connection to their traditional meanings, by the way, because it is the so-called Israeli 'left-wing' that advocates for the PLO, an extreme right-wing organization, and the so-called Israeli 'right-wing' that is opposed to the PLO.) In 1985 the Israeli government was divided: the prime minister was Shimon Peres, from Labor, and the foreign minister was Yitzhak Shamir, leading the opposition Likud party. When a parliamentary government is divided this way it is a breach of the highest sort for the prime minister to conduct foreign policy without consulting his foreign minister, especially on the question that most divides Israeli society: the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, when the Labor Prime Minsiter Shimon Peres circumvented his Likud foreign minister by using Edgar Bronfman Sr., a US businessman and president of the World Jewish Congress, as his private diplomat to the Soviets, and also the leaders of the American Jewish Congress as his private diplomats to the Arabs in Amman and Cairo, this naturally provoked a crisis. Wrote the Guardian, "...the question of who speaks for the Jews, and for Israel itself, suddenly surfaced twice: in Moscow and in Amman."[79] It was all very mysterious... "[Bronfman's] departure for the Soviet Union a week ago Sunday was not announced; the Soviets did not publicly acknowledge his visit on Monday and Tuesday; and his return to New York on Thursday went unreported. The trip was made public only when Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir criticized it in an interview with the Jerusalem Post."[80] And when Bronfman came back to New York, he was "refusing to disclose whom he met and what, if anything, he had achieved..."[81] What was all this about? According to Israel Radio, the discussion with the Soviets was about "Israeli agreement with Syria over the future of the occupied Golan Heights,"[82] and "One Israeli newspaper also reported that Bronfman carried a position paper on a phased Israeli withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights."[83] As for the Arabs, wrote the Guardian, "The message [the private diplomats] brought to Mr Peres, from both [Egyptian president] Mubarak and [Jordanian King] Hussein, was: put the PLO to the test, and allow it some role in the diplomatic process. But this, of course, is anathema to the Likud half of the government, led by [foreign minister!] Mr Yitzhak Shamir."[84] In other words, Peres used non-Israelis to do a diplomatic end-run around the Likud foreign minister. And to what end? To maneuver simultaneously for an Israeli withdrawal from strategic high ground, and in order to create a diplomatic process that would place the genocidal PLO in control of the West Bank. This sort of thing is usually called 'treason.' Yitzhak Shamir "criticised his own Premier [for using] Mr Edgar Bronfman ...[and added that]... Israel can talk directly to the Soviet Union...it does not need intermediaries."[85] As to the content of this diplomacy, Shamir's response was "not merely to reject the substance of the talks in Amman, but to blast the American Jewish figures for presuming to speak on these matters ...[and he] extended the same logic to attack Edgar Bronfman."[86] But Yitzhak Shamir did not accuse Shimon Peres of treason - he should have. Ariel Sharon (then Trade and Industry Minister), on the other hand, was not so shy: "Mr Sharon has accused Mr Peres of going behind the Government's back to hold secret talks with King Husain of Jordan, and has even claimed that the Prime Minister is prepared to consider what amounts to the ultimate Israeli treason: talking to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Prime Minister's actions, Mr Sharon has said, amount to 'unparalleled cynicism, with disregard for every administrative norm' ...[and he has]...accused him of 'acting with deliberate and premeditated slyness.'"[87] Sharon was quite right: this didn't smell good. So was the US involved? On the surface, it would appear not. At this time there was a "Soviet proposal for an international Middle East peace conference that would include the Soviets and the Palestine Liberation Organization."[88] In January 1985, "The United States and Israel...rejected calls for a peace conference that would include the Soviet Union and the PLO."[89] That looks like American support for Israel. But that's a bit funny, because: 1) the US had already teamed up once before with the Soviet Union to try and impose the PLO on Israel (see 1977 section); 2) the PLO is an American pet (see 1982 section); and 3) just two months later, in March, when Edgar Bronfman's trip to the Soviet Union was being set up, the Washington post reported that "[US Secretary of State George] Shultz, fresh from reporting to President Reagan on his Moscow conversations with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said Reagan 'firmly intends' to seize the moment for high-level dialogue and improvement in relations... [US] Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said... [that a]mong the signs of possible progress... is an invitation to Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, to visit Moscow..."[90] Bronfman functioned as Ronald Reagan's 'Jewish diplomat' whenever the US president chose to attack Israel. Moreover, Bronfman was vociferously calling for a Palestinian state (see 1981, 1982 sections). How interesting, then, that Peres should choose precisely this man to be an agent for secret and treasonous negotiations with the Soviets concerning Israeli withdrawal from strategic high ground. And how interesting that Bronfman's trip should have been with the blessings of the US government. All of this suggests that Shimon Peres is a US agent, carrying out US policy hostile to Israel. There is no need to speculate, however. Shimon Peres was in fact directly coordinating his Soviet diplomacy with the US government: "Talks on the possibilities for improving Israeli-Soviet ties are expected to figure in Mr. Peres's meetings in the United States with President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz this week. The Israelis are keenly aware of next month's summit between Mr. Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev."[91] Is the picture getting clearer? Shimon Peres' attack on Israel was an American attack. If any doubts remain on this point, they are dispelled by looking at the other half of Peres' treasonous diplomacy, which had to do with trying to jump-start a peace process with the Arabs that would involve the PLO. Guess who got that ball rolling? The United States. Peres sent his private diplomats to Amman and Jordan in September. But it was the United States that had earlier laid the groundwork for this. In late May, King Hussein of Jordan made a trip to the US, and a week later the US announced that it would "soon hold talks with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation on ways to renew the peace process in the Middle East..."[92] This led to an uproar in Shimon Peres' divided cabinet: "Some ministers fear this will lead to back door recognition of the PLO by the U.S. and have demanded that Jerusalem immediately inform Washington that Israel opposes this development. Speaking after the Cabinet meeting yesterday Mr David Levy, a deputy premier and Housing Minister, said 'It is de facto back door recognition of the PLO.' He demanded an immediate reply by Israel rejecting what he called the contradictory position taken by the U.S."[93] The foreign minister, Yitzhak Shamir, was also strongly opposed. But the prime minister, Shimon Peres, did his best to tamp down opposition to the US initiative within Israel. A bit later, in September, Peres would carry out the second stage by sending his private diplomats to the same King Hussein, and to president Mubarak in Egypt. 2. Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti commit suicide for the PLO _________________ Another American attack, with the aim of producing a 'peace' process leading to a PLO state, took place in parallel, from Italy. I shall begin by explaining what Craxi and Andreotti did, and then I will show that the US was behind this as well. On December 6, 1984, "[Italian prime minister Bettino] Craxi held an unannounced meeting with Arafat in Tunisia." Why? "[to get] the 10 [European] Common Market nations behind a Middle East peace initiative when Italy takes over the presidency of the organization in January. His plan calls for the PLO to join in the negotiations..."[94] Craxi's next door neighbor, Pope John Paul II, had received Yasser Arafat in 1982 (the same year that the PLO got chased out of Lebanon for murdering Israeli civilians!), and ever since the Pope had been agitating vocally in the PLO's favor.[95] (It is worth noting that the Pope does not usually meet publicly with terrorists; his public efforts are on behalf of those who kill Jews.) All of Rome’s power spoke with one voice: a state for the PLO in the West Bank. On December 8th, two days after meeting with the terrorist, the Italian prime minister, Bettino Craxi, vouched for Yasser Arafat in the strongest terms: "Mr Bettino Craxi, endorsed King Hussein's call... for a joint approach by Jordan and the PLO toward a Middle East peace settlement ...[and]... added that the PLO chairman, Mr Yasser Arafat, whom he met during his visit, had shown an 'unequivocal desire for peace and negotiations.'"[96] Mark the word "unequivocal." Then, in March 1985, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak met with Ronald Reagan and returned to Cairo saying "he had not been disappointed in his talks with Reagan." This means Reagan had lent a sympathetic ear to what Mubarak had told him. And what was that? "[Mubarak had] suggested that the United States hold talks with a delegation from Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization to explore the agreement that King Hussein of Jordan and Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, reached Feb. 11." Although the Americans stopped short of giving this plan a public blessing, "The initiative won more support in Europe. Prime Minister Bettino Craxi of Italy gave the plan a boost tonight after talks with Mr. Mubarak."[97] Craxi, in other words, was racing to and fro, working overtime as a PLO diplomat, and he was doing this with bravado, even gusto. Consider only that when, on October 1st 1985, "Israeli jet fighters... flew 1,500 miles to blast the PLO headquarters in Tunis...in retaliation for the Yom Kippur slaying of three Israelis aboard a yacht in Cyprus,"[104] this was the Italian prime minister's response: "...Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi condemned Israel for conducting 'terrorist violence,' and sent a message to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat offering condolences for the victims of the raid."[105] Incredible, but not unusual: the rest of the world also condemned Israel for defending itself from terrorists, and the United States, in particular, voted for a "ringing condemnation of the Israeli action by the U.N. Security Council."[106] (Naturally, because having deposited the PLO safely in Tunis, after saving it from utter destruction in Lebanon [see 1982 section], the US was keen to protect its pet.) But Craxi's passionate pro-PLO diplomacy did not go down well with all Italians. "Craxi [from the Socialist Party] and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti [from the Christian Democratic Party] triggered a major political row [in Italy]... because of the vehemence of their reaction to the Israeli bombing... [in] Tunisia."[107] In fact, according to the Washington Post, "The sharpest criticism of their statements - except for that from the Israeli government - was by Defense Minister Spadolini [of the small Republican Party]."[108] The political passions were stirred further when in the midst of Craxi's passionate defense of the PLO terrorists, on October 7th, these terrorists seized (of all things!) an Italian ship: the Achille Lauro.[98] Ouch! It was not supposed to be that way - the over-eager PLO terrorists had apparently strayed from the original plan. "The four Palestinians aboard the Achille Lauro intended to stay aboard as passengers until the cruise liner reached Ashdod, Israel, and then planned either to shoot up the harbor or take Israelis hostage... The Israelis were to be held to bargain for the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli jails... [But] the four members of the group aborted their plans and seized the ship when their weapons were discovered by the crew after the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria [Egypt]."[99] Yasser Arafat tried to help his friend Bettino Craxi save face by claiming that the Palestinian hijackers were not PLO men.[100] And Italian foreign minister Giulio Andreotti went out of his way to agree with Arafat in public![101] But who were they kidding? Yes, the PLF, which had seized the Achille Lauro, had earlier splintered into three groups, and two of them claimed to be anti-Arafat. But the third faction, headed by Abul Abbas, was openly loyal to the PLO leader.[102] Unfortunately for Arafat's and Andreotti's denials, it was precisely this faction led by Abul Abbas, and which was loyal to Yasser Arafat, that had seized the Italian ship.[103] So in the end Yasser Arafat had to call his terrorists off: "[W]hen relations between the P.L.O. and Italy seemed jeopardized by the seizure of the [Italian] ship... Mr. Arafat and Abul Abbas ordered the hijackers to return to Port Said [Egypt] and surrender."[109] If you still needed evidence that you are living in an absurd world, it was just provided by the fact that it is possible for the media to write that, after the PLO terrorists attacked an Italian ship, relations between Italy and the PLO "seemed jeopardized." No wonder people have trouble thinking about the world. Not to be outdone, the US would add its own absurdities to this mix. After the hijackers turned themselves in to the Egyptian authorities, it was revealed that they had murdered an American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, Jewish. "The circumstances of the killing of Klinghoffer, who relatives said was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a stroke five years ago, were unclear. An officer of the ship told ABC that one of the hijackers, with blood on his trousers, 'said he had killed him and thrown him overboard.' Klinghoffer apparently was killed, the ship's captain, Gerardo de Rosa, told CBS by ship-to-shore radio, because the hijackers could not get authorities to negotiate with them. They threatened to kill more, de Rosa said, speaking in broken English, 'but they kill just Mr. Klinghoffer.'"[110] The US expressed 'outrage' at this. "…when U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Nicholas Veliotes visited the ship off Port Said tonight to check details of the situation and discovered that Leon Klinghoffer had been murdered, he demanded by radio phone that the Egyptians prosecute 'those sons of bitches.'"[111] Instead, Egypt sent them on a plane to their master, Yasser Arafat, in Tunis. This suggests that Egypt did not think that the US was serious, because if it had thought that, it is quite unlikely that it would have risked the wrath of the superpower over a couple of men. Another possibility is that the US and Egypt had an arrangement to keep appearances but to let the terrorists go free. Here's what happened. First, the US decided to make a big show of bravery by diverting the Egyptian plane carrying the PLO terrorists to a joint US-Italian base. The official story is that they didn't know that Abul Abbas, the mastermind, and another senior PLO official were on board. But when this became public, the US did not proceed to "prosecute those sons of bitches," who after all were now in US custody; instead the US made a big public show of insisting that Italy put these two men, the bosses of the operation, on trial. But the only person murdered was an American citizen... Of course, the Italian prime minister was Bettino Craxi, who sang love songs for the PLO. So when Egypt voiced its public opposition to the US's public demand that Italy try the terrorists, Bettino Craxi, of course, found the Egyptian argument persuasive and let the terrorists go.[112] Having thus once again taken a refreshing and exhilarating plunge into total insanity, Bettino Craxi met with his equally eager advisors to see if they could predict what the consequences of their latest stunt might be. "Prime Minister Bettino Craxi met with senior aides tonight to discuss the possible consequences of a decision by his Government to allow two key members of the Palestine Liberation Organization [to] leave Italy."[113] Four days later, this was the consequence: "Oct. 17: Italian government of Bettino Craxi resigns over Achille Lauro affair."[114] Spectacular. Bettino Craxi had shown himself to be a passionate PLO nationalist, willing to sacrifice the post of prime minister of a major world power for the sake of making amorous expressions to the PLO in the most inconceivably absurd of circumstances, releasing - too boot - the specific PLO terrorists who had masterminded an attack against his own country back into the care of Yasser Arafat, their lord and paymaster. But what did this achieve? Doesn't extraordinary behavior such as this call for a powerful reason? It does. This entire maneuver was a tremendous blow to the international prestige of Israel, because it showed that even when the moral facts on the ground could not be more clearly on its side, the Jewish state received the world's condemnation. Even the prime minister of a country whose ship was held by the PLO preferred these terrorists to Israel. Using the world as theater, a message was sent to the intimate subconscious of people everywhere, awakening the giant that slumbers there (if he was not already awake). We are speaking of antisemitism. So was the US behind all this? Let us consider first the obvious oddities in the behavior of the US. To begin with, the only person killed aboard the Achille Lauro was US citizen Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. The US had diverted the Egyptian plane carrying the people who had masterminded Klinghoffer's murder to a joint US-Italian base. In other words, the US had custody of the murderers of an American citizen. But the US did not try these individuals. Instead the US handed the PLO masterminds over to Italy and then (of course) expressed public 'outrage' when Italy - as could be expected from Bettino Craxi - let them go. This all makes perfect sense if the US ruling elite does not care about Jewish lives, even be they American ones. It also makes sense if the US ruling elite cares deeply about protecting its prized pet: the PLO. Under any other hypothesis, however, it is truly difficult to make sense of what the US government did. Especially when you consider that the US has considered just one American citizen killed sufficient to launch the invasion of a country (Panama). "[On December 16 1989] Panamanian soldiers killed an unarmed U.S. Marine officer dressed in civilian clothes. Retaliation by the United States was quick and decisive. On December 17, U.S. President George Bush ordered troops to Panama, with the subsequently announced aims of seizing Noriega to face drug charges in the United States, protecting American lives and property, and restoring Panamanian liberties."[115] So one US soldier killed was enough to justify the US invasion of a foreign country, and the seizure of that country's leader to be tried in the United States. But the PLO murderers of one American Jew, already in US custody, were released to the passionately pro-PLO Italian prime-minister, Betinno Craxi, whose foreign minister, Giulio Andreotti, was equally pro-PLO. Predictably, these men returned the murderers of an American Jew, in health, to the PLO. To put this all in its proper context, we must briefly consider US covert penetration of Italy in the post-war. Once this is properly appreciated, we will have all the pieces of the puzzle because Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti are products of this US penetration. Immediately after World War II, Italy had the strongest leftist movement in Europe, and the US ruling elite was not happy about that. "Papers released over the years in the United States under the Freedom of Information Act have established that the US would consider military intervention if the Communists came to power [in Italy]."[117] Mind you, the US was not saying it would send its troops if there was a communist armed takeover, but that it would do so if the Italian Communists - very popular - won freely at the polls because the Italian people wanted them in power. In the event, the US decided not to wait and see what happened at the polls. Instead, it carried out an extensive covert penetration of the Italian Establishment, using fascists, in order to destroy the Italian left and make sure that it lost the election. (And the US was doing similar things in Germany).[116a] Many things still aren't known about this, but the research of historian Christopher Simpson has shown us at least the tip of the iceberg (Simpson, C. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson). Simpson writes: “Not all the clandestine containment programs were aimed at the USSR and its satellites. Some of the most important early applications of these tactics began in Western Europe. The Italian elections of 1948 marked another important milestone in the development of US covert operations and in high-level support for the use of former Nazi collaborators.” (p.89) The Vatican played a prominent role in this. As is now well known, Pope Pious XII assisted Hitler’s domestic policy by ordering the German Catholic party not to oppose the German Nazi leader. But this Pope did much else for the Nazis, as documented by historian Peter Cornwell.[116b] Especially shocking is the Vatican's direct assistance to Adolf Hitler's extermination program in Croatia, which was there led by the German-allied Croatian Ustashe. These camps were run by Franciscan priests under the authority of Archbishop Stepinac, who greeted Ante Pavelic, the Croatian ‘poglavnik’ (i.e. ‘fuhrer’) as an emissary of God.[116bb] After the war, the Vatican used one of its many infamous ‘rat-lines’ to spirit almost the entire Ustashe (Croatian Nazi) organization to safety, including Ante Pavelic (who was given last rites by the Pope himself when he died in Spain).[116c] What historian Christopher Simpson documented, which is that the Vatican eagerly helped the CIA deploy its covert fascists in Italy in the post-war period, is entirely consistent with the Vatican's behavior during the war. “the CIA established much deeper and broader ties with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome than had previously been the case. This not only had a powerful impact on the Italian political scene but also...laid the foundation for the agency’s relationship with Intermarium, an influential Catholic lay organization made up primarily of Eastern European exiles that operated under the protection of the Vatican. At least half a dozen senior leaders of Intermarium can be readily identified as Nazi collaborators.” -- Christopher Simpson, Blowback (p.89) This is the same Intermarium that, in cooperation with US intelligence, set up several rat lines to get Nazi war criminals out of Europe after the war. Many to the US (to read about the secret US absorption of thousands of Nazi war criminals, after the war, see 1945 section). “Cardinal Spellman of New York served as a crucial go-between in CIA-Vatican negotiations... The US government, the cardinal said, had secretly ‘released large sums in ‘black currency’ in Italy to the Catholic Church.’ This “black currency” did not come from American taxpayers. Rather, a substantial part of the funding for clandestine activities in Italy came from captured Nazi German assets, including money and gold that the Nazis had looted from the Jews... The CIA withdrew about $10 million from the fund in late 1947, laundered it through a myriad of bank accounts, then used that money to finance sensitive Italian operations. This was the ‘black currency’ that Cardinal Spellman asserted was given to the Vatican for anti-Communist agitation. Much of the CIA’s $10 million Italian war chest was delivered through clandestine campaign contributions to Christian Democratic candidates... [and] many of the remnants of the Fascists’ wartime ruling apparatus, as well as most of the police, had joined Christian Democratic ranks after 1945...” -- Christopher Simpson, Blowback (p.91-92) Since the Christian Democratic parties were set up by the CIA-Vatican alliance to be fronts for the fascists, it matters that Gulio Andreotti, Bettino Crazi's foreign minister, was a Christian Democrat. Both prime minister Craxi and foreign minister Andreotti are now known to have been involved with an extensive CIA terrorist operation in Italy that had murdered leaders of the Italian left. This was all uncovered during the early 90s when a few brave Italian magistrates risked their lives to investigate this and make their findings public, producing a scandal that shook Italian society to the core. When this scandal broke, the British daily The Independent wrote that: "The main loser seems to be the Socialist leader, Bettino Craxi. He said that when he was prime minister he never knew about it. Then a letter was produced with his signature saying he had been informed."[117] What the same article reports about Craxi's foreign minister, Giulio Andreotti, makes it clear that the latter was even more clearly implicated in this terrorist business, and also that he was apparently a secret tool of NATO. I hate to be redundant but this really must be said again: Andreotti's Christian Democratic party, dominant in Italy in the post war, was "[b]acked by the Vatican and at one time by CIA money."[118] The violence sponsored by these people was no laughing matter. "Historically, there is the grim record of seven, unresolved terrorist-type attacks between 1969 and 1984 in which 150 people died: the 1980 Bologna train station massacre of 85 people was the most infamous. It has long seemed probable that those attacks were the work of right-wing sympathizers, well positioned within the Italian state, whose major concern was to push Italian public opinion to the right and halt the advance of an Italian Communist Party which touched 34 per cent at the 1976 general election. Despite years of trials and retrials, and traces of wrongdoing involving Italian Secret Services, the CIA, the Masonic lodge P2 and the Mafia in all seven investigations, only a handful of minor figures have been sentenced, while no organization has been held responsible. Put simply, most of these attacks appear to have been 'covered up'.[119] The above is from an article in the Irish Times that was using the occasion of another terrorist bombing in Italy, this one in Florence, in 1993, to look back. The Irish Times added: "On the day before the Florence bomb, the former prime minister, Senator Giulio Andreotti, was answering questions about the murder of a journalist. Mr Andreotti is currently being investigated on both murder and Mafia collusion charges. Just one week ago, the former Socialist prime minister, Mr Bettino Craxi, predicted a new season of bombs." You can't make this stuff up. It seems, therefore, that Craxi and Andreotti were American stooges in what was (is?) a rather deep and extensive covert penetration by US intelligence of the Italian Establishment. From this point of view, it is now easier to explain Craxi's and Andreotti's entirely absurd behavior in the Achille Lauro affair: they only appeared to be Italian politicians. In reality, they were paid US agents, and they had a job to do: make the PLO a player, offend Israel, and teach the whole world that antisemitism was the name of the game - again. 3. Ronald Reagan denies the Holocaust __________________________________ Ronald Reagan was famous for delegating authority. But the task of offending Jews he took firmly into his own hands, launching yet a third simultaneous attack on Israel in this busy year of 1985. "President Reagan, who earlier declined to visit the site of a Nazi concentration camp during his visit to Germany next month because he said it would be 'out of line,' has decided to lay a wreath at a German war cemetery where many Nazi soldiers were buried after the Battle of the Bulge, the White House announced today."[120] This naturally created an uproar. You may wonder, how is it possible for the president of a country that fought the German Nazis to do something like this? Well, but did the US fight the German Nazis? The US Establishment, remember, helped fund the rise of the Nazi party, and the government under Roosevelt energetically cooperated with Hitler's Final Solution (see sections on 1930s and 1939-45). After the war, the US illegally and in secret absorbed the entire Nazi war criminal organization in order to create the CIA (see 1945 section). It is hard to argue, therefore, that America's belated entry into the World War stems from the US Establishment's in-principle objection to Nazi ideology. Isn't it more reasonable to suppose that the US invaded Europe because the Soviets were on their way to the Atlantic? That the US had no objection to Nazis can be seen from the fact that, as soon as the Nazis were whipped into obedience again in 1945, the US immediately redeployed them. From this perspective it is hardly surprising that Reagan should have sought a) to re-normalize German Nazism, and b) to re-normalize antisemitism with a high-profile spitting session on the Jews. And that's what this was. The US president was very careful to insult the Jews. In the uproar that followed the proposed itinerary of his visit to Germany (made public well in advance, so as to guarantee the uproar), prominent Jewish leaders such as Elie Wiesel explained publicly to the American president that "there could be no trade-off by combining visits to a camp and to the cemetery. 'A visit to this particular cemetery is to us unacceptable,' he said."[121] The way a master dismisses a nagging slave, Ronald Reagan replied that maybe he would add a visit to a Nazi concentration camp site, but that in any case "no thought was being given to eliminating a visit to the Bitburg [Nazi] cemetery."[122] I emphasize: this was all carefully premeditated and deliberate. German chancellor Helmut Kohl had actually "proposed that Reagan join him...in visiting both a World War II cemetery and a concentration camp site, [and yet] Reagan's advance men accepted the first, but declined the second."[123] I am not trying to make Helmut Kohl look good - to include the Nazi cemetery was an outrage anyway, and in fact Kohl was apologizing for the Nazis in public.[124] My point is that the American president went out of his way to out-Nazi the German chancellor and make known his intentions to lay a wreath to honor the Nazis and to simultaneously disrespect the victims of the Shoah. In fact, Reagan announced this a whole month in advance of his trip, guaranteeing an extended pandemonium that carried the news all around the world. And to make sure nobody thought there had been a mistake, when the protests began he did not give an inch. Then he "unleashed a new wave of Jewish fury... by claiming that German soldiers buried [in that cemetery] were 'victims' of the Nazis 'just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.'"[125] But some might think this was Reagan's idiosyncrasy, or his administration's. To dispel any such notion, powerful members of the American Establishment, such as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, added their voices, calling on president Reagan not to cancel his visit to the Nazi cemetery.[126] Amazing, because even in Germany many were confused and disturbed by this, so Reagan could have taken the easy way out by calling it all a 'mistake.' No. In the end he laid his wreath. On the graves of Nazis. If worldwide Jewish pressure could not get Reagan to do the slightest of symbolic retreats on such an obvious moral issue, with the whole world watching in amazement, what was the ulterior meaning? Simple: this was 'the leader of the free world' doing Holocaust denial via diplomacy-speech. That's what this was. US president Ronald Reagan, the most important man in the world, took the loudest megaphone in history, the Western mass media, and screamed at the top of his voice, for a whole month, that antisemitism was normal again. The Jews, who continue to think (whether approving or disapproving) that the US establishment is pro-Jewish and pro-Israel, were deaf to how this reverberated on the walls of everybody else's subconscious. 4. Who was in charge of US covert operations in 1985? _______________________________________________ Given so much US overt and also covert activity to attack Israel, you may wonder, who was in charge of US intelligence operations during the year of 1985? That was Vincent Cannistraro, "Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987" where he was responsible for "coordinating intelligence programs throughout the [Reagan] administration."[127] Cannistraro was the man in charge. You may recall that it was Cannistraro who explained the love-affair between the US and the PLO, revealing that American diplomats in Beirut relied on the PLO terrorists for their security. This is before the Israelis prepared a knockout blow against the PLO that brought the Americans sweeping in to save these terrorists from destruction (see 1982 section). It is also Cannistraro who first helped the CIA train the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and then directed the Contra program from his new perch at Reagan's National Security Council.[128] Simultaneously, the US was illegally sending arms to the antisemitic Islamists in Iran (and notice the cynicism: the US made Israel deliver the weapons).[128a] Two massive government conspiracies running at the same time, which, as you may recall, became one of the biggest scandals in US history (though nobody served jail time and many of them are back in power in Bush Jr.'s administration). At the end of the year, the Associated Press carried the headline "Wave Of Terrorism Voted Top Story Of 1985."^[130] Cannistraro, a trainer of terrorists, and responsible for "coordinating intelligence programs throughout the [Reagan] administration" oversaw a great deal of this - including, of course, the activities of that prized US pet: the PLO. Now that nobody seems to remember the Iran-Contra double mega-scandal of the 1980s, Cannistraro has resurfaced as a major opponent of Israel, and he parades himself as "ABC News intelligence analyst Vincent Cannistraro."[128] He is presented by the Orwellian media as a counter-terrorist.[129] To learn more about Vincent Cannistraro, anti-Israeli propagandist, and creator of the Nicaraguan Contra terrorist force, read: The mainstream Western media loves Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA agents and anti-Israeli propagandists; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot2.htm Should you believe ‘former CIA officials’ such as Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro?; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot3.htm How the mass media covers for Vincent Cannistraro, terrorist, and creator of the Nicaraguan Contras”; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot4.htm It is also worth pointing out that the CIA director in 1985 was William Casey, who was appointed to that post by Ronald Reagan after Casey ran his presidential campaign. Who is William Casey? Well, in the section on 1945, it was explained that the US absorbed almost the entire Nazi war criminal organization and out of that created the CIA. "Frank Wisner, a dashing young Wall Street lawyer who had distinguished himself in underground OSS intrigues [the OSS is the precursor to the CIA] in Istanbul and Bucharest, headed the coordinating team." This coordinating team was tasked with the job of absorption of the Nazi war criminal infrastructure [my emphasis, below]. "Frank Wisner's Special Intelligence Branch staff, which was engaged in work with [Nazi war criminal Reinhart] Gehlen [who was the most important Nazi asset], had more than its share of brilliant operatives who were to leave their marks on the history of US espionage. They included Richard Helms, for example, later to become CIA deputy director for clandestine operations and eventually agency director under Presidents Johnson and Nixon; William Casey, CIA director under President Reagan; Harry Rositzke, soon to become chief of CIA clandestine operations inside the USSR and later CIA chief of station in India; and, of course, Wisner himself, soon to be chief of all American clandestine warfare operations worldwide."[131] That US president Ronald Reagan should have sought to normalize the Nazis, and to re-normalize antisemitism, is surprising only to those who do not know this history. ____________________________________________________________ 1987-1988 [ negative ] The 'First Intifada' was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed 'underdogs' ____________________________________________________________ Late in 1987, commercial strikes, rock-throwing riots, and other disturbances began taking place in the West Bank and Gaza. By early 1988, this was being called the 'intifada.' The interpretation in the mass media was that this was a 'spontaneous uprising' in reaction to supposed Israeli oppression. For example, on 12 January 1988, the British daily The Guardian produced the following headline: "An uprising that took the Israelis by surprise: How Jerusalem misjudged the spontaneous unrest in the occupied territories."[131a] The Guardian also reported that, "In yesterday's leaflets the Arabic word intifada (root: shake, convulse, tremble) - and roughly but unsatisfactorily translated as 'uprising' - recurred again and again." I shall demonstrate that the intifada was not spontaneous in the least, but rather was a planned strategy of the terrorist PLO. But first things first. I will address the following questions in sequence. 1) Does a confrontation between well-armed soldiers and rock-throwing boys demonstrate that the first oppress the second? 2) What was the broader context of pro-PLO diplomacy at the UN in which the 'intifada' took place? Once the above two questions have been answered, I will address a third question. 3) Was the PLO directly behind the 'intifada'? Put together, my argument will be the following. The impression that the rock-throwing Palestinian Arabs were 'underdogs' and therefore the 'good guys' is a facile and mistaken one. But this impression was carefully constructed to coincide with the effort at the UN to create a diplomatic process leading to a PLO state. Not coincidentally, it was the PLO that produced the intifada as a ploy to assist this process. Finally, I will argue that, 4) The United States was behind it all. 1. Does a confrontation between well-armed soldiers and rock-throwing boys demonstrate that the first oppress the second? ________ The main images of the 'intifada' were rock-throwing Palestinian Arab boys in confrontation with fully armed Israeli soldiers. With images like that, just a little bit of editorializing would produce an impression of supposed Israeli oppression of the Palestinian Arabs. The media editorialized it precisely like that, with gusto. And the PLO milked that for all it was worth. However, it is important to understand that who the good guys are is not directly established by who is holding a rock and who is holding a gun. Consider the following, from the very beginning of the unrest: "Khalil al Wazir, the senior military aide to Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, has said that disturbances in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip are certain to continue as long as Israeli troops continue their present tactics. Al Wazir, better known by his codename Abu Jihad, spoke in an interview with the BBC correspondent in Tunis, blaming the recent wave of violence on what he called savage behavior by Israeli soldiers. In the latest incident, Israeli soldiers Monday shot and killed a Palestinian mother of five and wounded five others during protests in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 10 miles north of Jerusalem. The soldiers fired into the air and then at the legs of the protesters as they rushed to the scene after an Israeli woman motorist was injured by a rock thrown at her car, said the spokesman. A military source said the Arab woman killed in the clash, identified by the hospital as Amayat Hindi, 35, was apparently a passerby and not among the protesters. The army was investigating the shooting, added the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Four of the wounded were treated in nearby Ramallah hospital, while a fifth, who was slightly injured, was treated briefly at the scene and released, the military added."[134b] So the PLO blamed the unrest on supposedly "savage behavior by Israeli soldiers." What savage behavior? We hear of a "Palestinian mother of five" killed by the Israelis, by name Amayat Hindi. The PLO implies that she was willfully killed; the Israelis claim that she was an accidental casualty. According to the Israelis, the soldiers were not trying to kill anybody, and so had fired into the air and then at people's legs. But they did have to do something because an "Israeli woman motorist" was in danger of being killed by the rock throwers. Who's right? A UPI wire of the same day, reporting on the same event, had more detail about this. There are some discrepancies with the above. For example, the woman's name is not given as Amayat Hindi but as Inayad Hindi, and in the UPI wire she is not a mother of five but of eight. However, UPI concurs that she was 35 years old, that the number of people wounded in the same incident was five, and that the trouble started when the rock-throwers injured an Israeli motorist. Why did Inayad Hindi die? UPI explains: "Cornered Israeli troops shot and killed a mother of eight and wounded five people during a general strike by Arabs protesting an attempt by Jews to pray at one of Islam's holiest sites. (...) Inayad Hindi, 35, a school teacher and a mother of eight, was hit by gunfire from Israeli troops who were trapped by a mob in the center of Ramallah, about 9 miles north of Jerusalem, Israeli military sources said."[134c] If the Israeli troops had been "cornered" and "trapped" by the rock-throwing mob, then, since rocks can maim and kill, and since there were quite a few rock throwers, the soldiers had an obligation to defend themselves, and moreover to defend the Israeli motorist. But they obviously did not shoot to kill, otherwise a lot of people would have died. Only one person died, and it appears to have been an accident, because it is unlikely that a schoolteacher and mother of eight was throwing rocks. And the Arab and Israeli sides agree about this because, as the same wire explains, "A spokesman at Ramallah Government Hospital, where Hindi was pronounced dead on arrival, said she was shopping when she was shot." We also learn above that the Arab rock throwers were not protesting Israeli oppression - they were upset that a few Jews wanted to worship, so they started throwing rocks, because that Jews should pray was very offensive to them. In the words of one Palestinian interviewed by UPI, "'They're all so mad about the Jews who want to go to the mosque to pray,' said Omar Said, 32, who kept his brassware shop open." Of course, Omar was putting it a bit tendentiously. It is false that the Jews wanted to go pray at the mosque, obviously, because Jews do not pray at mosques. What Omar leaves out is that the site of the mosque is also the site of Solomon's Temple. The Jews were few and they were not going there to drive the Arabs out; they just wanted to pray too. So what emerges is that what the PLO calls "savage behavior by Israeli soldiers" was in fact perfectly decent behavior by Israeli soldiers, who, with minimum harm to their attackers, did their best to protect an Israeli civilian and then their own selves from a rock-throwing mob that had enraged itself merely because a few Jews wanted to pray. But this information is in the wires, which almost nobody reads except for a few journalists. What people read is what appears in newspapers, and newspapers (and other mass media) tended to adopt the PLO interpretation of the unrest. To give you a taste for what usually happens in the major papers, consider what the three newspapers that covered this particular incident said. First, the highly regarded Christian Science Monitor wrote: "Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian mother of five and wounded five other people yesterday during protests that swept the occupied territories, an Army spokesman and witnesses said. Troops opened fire in Ramallah to disperse about 500 Palestinian students who marched in the main square, the spokesman said."[134e] That's it. The entire context is missing, and it makes the Israelis look very bad. The soldiers fired "to disperse about 500 Palestinian students"? Well yes, but what happened to the fact that these students were throwing rocks and had endangered the life of one innocent Israeli citizen? What about the fact that these students had "cornered" and "trapped" the soldiers? These facts are not mentioned. The Toronto Star ran the headline, "Palestinians riot as mom shot by Israelis." But, of course, the only way to write a correct title with those words is to put them like so: "Mom accidentally shot by Israelis as Palestinians riot." What the Toronto Star wrote suggests that the riots were caused by the death of Inayad Hindi, something that is not true. The body of that article 'reported' as follows: "Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian mother of five and wounded five other people yesterday in demonstrations that quickly spread in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip... The demonstrations had several causes but participants told reporters they were mainly to protest Israeli police action near Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem Sunday."[134f] The explanation is of course false. The Palestinian Arabs were not protesting "police action." They themselves explained how they were upset that a few Jews wanted to pray. And nothing is said about the fact that the rock throwers had attacked an Israeli civilian whom the soldiers rushed to protect. Finally, The Herald ran the headline "Mother Killed." Not "Arab intolerance reaches rock-throwing pitch as Arabs riot to protest Jewish prayer," or "Protecting a civilian, Israeli soldiers trapped by enraged Arab mob." No, what you must remember is that the Jews killed a mom. Monsters. Underneath the "Mother Killed" title, The Herald writes simply "Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian mother of five who was searching for her children today, during a violent protest by about 500 Arab students."[134g] Nothing more. Of course, this is only one incident, but it is instructive. The main lessons are three. a) It is possible for the 'bad guys' to be the ones throwing rocks at fully armed soldiers, and therefore if Palestinian Arabs throw rocks at Israeli soldiers we cannot rush to conclude that they are responding to supposed Israeli oppression. b) Since the PLO tried to claim that the obviously correct and compassionate behavior of the Israeli soldiers in this case was supposedly "savage," it follows that we need to examine PLO accusations of supposed Israeli brutality during the intifada with the utmost skepticism. c) We cannot trust the mass media which people consume to report things accurately. There is a very strong bias to distort the truth in order to make the Israelis look like oppressors, and to make the Palestinian Arabs look like victims. One final point, here: it is important to remember that rock-throwing is not 'non-violence.' And yet there was a big push in the mainstream Western media to represent the Palestinian 'intifada' as supposedly non-violent. For example, an article that appeared in the Financial Times towards the beginning of the intifada went so far as to compare the PLO terrorist George Habash (who "remains an influential and durable figure in the PLO") to Mahatma Ghandi. "Dr George Habash, leader of the revolutionary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, seems an unlikely advocate of a Gandhi-style campaign of civil disobedience in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."[134h] But Ghandi's followers were not throwing rocks; they were non-violent. Therefore, a rock-throwing campaign cannot be called "Ghandi-style." Moreover, Ghandi never in his life advocated terrorism. By contrast, as the same Financial Times article explains, "Dr Habash's PFLP was behind a series of spectacular terrorist actions carried out in the early 1970s by an organization calling itself 'Black September.' These included the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre of Israeli athletes which outraged world opinion. He said the 'methods and means' practiced by the PFLP in the early 1970s had been discontinued because 'it made us lose the support of international opinion.' But he added that his organization 'had the right' to use all legitimate means, including armed struggle, to achieve its aims." Habash was making it clear that he had no philosophical commitment to rock-throwing (which is very different from non-violence), and that the present strategy had been adopted merely because it was better at building sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs. He reserved the right to return to outright terrorism (that's the kind of "armed struggle" that the PFLP waged) when he saw fit. And I must also point out that the intifada did not limit itself to throwing rocks. A year after the intifada started, the New York Times wrote the following: "...after 12 months...the stone throwing, hurling of firebombs, painting of graffiti slogans on walls and other longstanding tactics of the uprising 'have become institutionalized, a way of life,' Mr. Barghouti [a Palestinian newspaper editor in East Jerusalem] said."[134i] Notice the phrase, "Hurling of firebombs...". And this sort of thing was one of the "longstanding tactics" that had been "institutionalized" in the intifada. There can be no argument here: firebombs are not merely weapons (as rocks also are), they are explosive weapons. So it should be obvious that the intifada was quite violent. The image of supposedly non-violent "civil disobedience" defended by the media rested merely on the force asymmetry: the Israeli soldiers had bigger weapons. But a force asymmetry - as the example of the incident in which Inayad Hindi accidentally died demonstrates - is insufficient to establish who has the moral high ground. 2. What was happening at the UN while the intifada raged in the West Bank and Gaza? ______________________ The so-called 'intifada' was the backdrop to a simultaneous effort in the UN, also beginning in late 1987, to produce a Middle East ‘Peace’ Conference. This was under Kurt Waldheim's successor Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who managed to get practically every country in the world to declare its support for including the PLO in the proposed talks. The point of this, no different from the Nazi Kurt Waldheim's own pro-PLO moves at the UN (see 1974, 1975, and 1977 sections), was to legitimize the PLO as a political player, and the accusations of supposed Israeli oppression provided every government with political cover for supporting the terrorist PLO. This all had an impact on ordinary people, who are usually innocent pawns in the media machinations of the world's ruling classes. Thus, by January 1998, when the supposedly spontaneous riots in the West Bank and Gaza were being baptized 'intifada', a poll estimated that 78% of all Americans favored such a ‘peace’ conference. Of those, 74% supported PLO participation in it.[132] The United States government officially pretended to be the lonely opponent to PLO participation in the proposed 'peace' conference (this is the sort of thing that convinces Israelis that the US is their 'only friend'). And Yasser Arafat pretended to believe the US's official declarations. “Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat today praised the Soviet Union for its efforts toward a Middle East peace settlement, but...he said that the major obstacles to an international conference on the middle east - to be attended by the five permanent members of the UN security council, plus all sides involved in the middle east conflict, including the PLO - were the US administration and Israel.”[133] But was the US an obstacle? In fact, no. As the same wire explained, “The PLO leader said that Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and his supporters favor such a conference.” What does this mean? We already saw that the US had a policy of going radically out of its way to protect the PLO terrorists from the Israelis (see 1982 section), and also that Shimon Peres, taking direct instruction from the US, had a policy of radically going out of his way to do the US’s bidding in order to betray Israel and assist the US’s pro-PLO policy (see 1985 section). It therefore follows that if Shimon Peres was for including the PLO in the Middle East ‘peace’ conference, then so was the US, regardless of what American officials said in public. But what American officials said in public actually confirms this analysis, because the US official position was that “Washington will not recognize or negotiate with the PLO until it endorses U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 - which imply recognition of Israel’s right to exist - and renounces violence and ‘terrorism.’”[134] This was a sly maneuver: presented as a defense of Israel, it was in fact the most vicious attack. As you may recall, UN Resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it had conquered in 1967 after being attacked by the surrounding Arab states. The goal of Israel’s Arab attackers had been genocide (see 1964-67 section), and they were promising other such attacks. Concluding the obvious, a US Defense Department study done immediately after the 1967 Six Day War stated that if Israel withdrew from the conquered territories it would be committing suicide (see 1967 section). And yet, despite this, the US immediately adopted the official position that Israel should withdraw, and even conducted some rather aggressive diplomacy to try to implement UN Resolution 242 (see 1969 section). So, during the intifada, the US position was that it would not “recognize or negotiate with the PLO” unless the PLO accepted a resolution that laid the groundwork for a PLO state. Nice trick. What this makes clear is that the US was merely biding its time, waiting for the moment when it could appear to yield to international pressure to include the PLO in the talks, thus lessening the appearance of having an anti-Israel policy. It remains to be shown that the 'first intifada' (so-called to distinguish it from the more recent 'Al-Aqsa intifada') was not a spontaneous reaction to Israeli oppression, but a deliberate strategy of the PLO meant to produce the appearance of Israeli oppression. I turn to that next. 3. Was the PLO directly behind the 'intifada'? _______________________________________ In the context of the rock-throwing riot "by about 500 Arab students" in which Inayad Hindi was accidentally killed, on 15 October 1987 UPI identified one Layai Shatt as "head of [Bir Zeit] university's student council and a key Palestinian activist." UPI reported: "'If [US Secretary of State George] Shultz is here to find out the point of view of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, we could tell him that our people's uprising in the last few days is the answer,' Shatt said, speaking from a stage draped with the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization flag. Unrest in the occupied territories and tensions between Arabs and Jews have risen in recent weeks. Security sources say supporters of the PLO might have incited some of the unrest to show Shultz the extent of its support."[134a] So the people organizing the unrest were draping themselves in the PLO flag, and Israeli security was saying that the PLO was behind it. Was the PLO behind it? Well, consider what another UPI wire, from the same day, 15 October 1987, reported: "A security crackdown that netted at least 40 suspected Arab guerrillas in the Gaza Strip has dealt a 'substantial' blow to a major terrorist ring operating in the Israeli-occupied territory, a senior Israeli security official said Thursday. Evidence turned up after a shoot-out last week between Israeli soldiers and four suspected members of the Islamic Jihad guerrilla organization also led authorities to several arms caches hidden in houses in Gaza City, said the official, who requested anonymity... ...Members of the Gaza group are Sunni Moslems with ties to the Fatah wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Israeli official said. There is growing concern in Israel about the spreading influence of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank... In what appears to have been its first overt political act in Gaza, the group last week called for a three-day commercial strike in Gaza City to protest the Oct. 6 slayings of the four alleged guerrillas by Israeli troops... Authorities said the four were on their way to carry out a major terrorist attack inside Israel when they were surprised by security forces. The discovery of the alleged guerrilla network in Gaza was ''one of the consequences'' of the clash, the security official said.[134d] What we learn above is that Islamic Jihad, a component of Yasser Arafat's own organization, Fatah, the biggest and most important wing of the PLO, was operating in the West Bank and Gaza at the very start of the intifada, and there was "growing concern in Israel about the spreading influence of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank." Some of these Fatah operatives were attempting a terrorist attack in Israel when they got caught. In addition, "In what appears to have been its first overt political act in Gaza, the group last week called for a three-day commercial strike in Gaza City." I remind you that this is at the very start of the intifada, and the central characteristic of the intifada was, precisely, commercial strikes and rock-throwing riots (and "hurling of firebombs"). This would seem unequivocally to establish PLO leadership in the supposedly 'spontaneous' intifada. But if there were any doubts about that, all anybody had to do was listen to Yasser Arafat and other senior members of the PLO. A couple of months later, after practically every country in the world lined up, one by one, to demand that the PLO terrorists be included in a Middle East ‘peace’ conference, the PLO, which apparently prefers prime numbers to round ones, celebrated its 23rd anniversary by ordering violence all over the West Bank and Gaza. It is right at this time that the violence got baptized 'intifada'. “New Year’s Day [January 1st, 1988] was the 23rd anniversary of the founding of Al-Fatah. The Palestine Liberation Organization had called on Arabs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank to demonstrate in commemoration of Fatah Day, as the day is known.”[135] Towards the end of January, a UPI wire with the headline "Senior offiical says PLO is behind Palestinian unrest" reported: “The Palestine Liberation Organization is inciting the 6-week-old campaign of unrest in the Israeli-occupied territories, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official said in an interview published Monday. ‘The PLO is the Palestinian revolution and its leader. The Palestinian leadership inside the territories is part of the leadership in the outside,’ Salah Khalaf said…”[136] The wire explained that Khalaf was nothing less than "second in command to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat." And Khalaf was not kidding. As we already saw above, Islamic Jihad, a component of Fatah, was active in the West Bank and Gaza and responsible for organizing strikes and riots (in addition to preparing terrorist attacks). But this information is in the wires. The major newspapers apparently did not want ordinary people to know what was being reported in the wires, nor did they want their audiences, apparently, to believe that Yasser Arafat had anything to do with the intifada. This is what the British daily The Guardian wrote: "The conventional, and probably correct, wisdom is that the trouble erupted spontaneously in Gaza on December 9 after four Palestinians were killed in a road accident involving an Israeli vehicle. The initial force of the disturbances seemed to surprise both sides: even the PLO leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, who has no interest in diminishing his own importance, has conceded that his organisation was taken aback by the dimensions of the unrest."[131a] Did Arafat "concede" that? Not when he was talking to Arabs, in Arabic, at a rally held in an Arab country: Kuwait. And that information was in the wires. For example, this one, from the Chinese service Xinhua: “Addressing a rally here on Saturday night to mark the 23rd anniversary of the creation of the Fatah guerrilla organization, Arafat said that the PLO is directly responsible for the current uprising in the occupied lands. He added that he made a decision on December 8 to refrain from using any weapons during the Palestinian struggle. During their demonstrations, Palestinian teenagers and youths, with persistence and determination, only threw stones at Israeli soldiers, Arafat said.”[137] Notice that Arafat's decision of December 8 was one day before December 9, and it is on December 9 that, according to The Guardian, the intifada "erupted spontaneously." What was The Guardian's excuse for getting this wrong? Who knows, because what Arafat said at that rally in Kuwait was reported on 3 January 1988, and The Guardian was writing on 12 January 1988. And yet, for those who paid attention, it was not impossible to find, even in the pages of a major Western newspaper, PLO leaders explaining that they had planned the whole intifada. The same Financial Times article examined above, in which PLO leader George Habash explained the point of the rock-throwing strategy, also contains this: "Dr Habash insisted that, despite claims to the contrary, the traditional leadership of the PLO was helping to direct the rebellion in the occupied territories. 'The uprising was planned,' he said."[134h] Why did Habash have to clarify this? Who was making "claims to the contrary"? That would be the mainstream Western media, which was pushing what The Guardian calls "The conventional, and probably correct, wisdom": namely, "that the trouble erupted spontaneously." And what was the point of Arafat's and Habash's rock-throwing strategy? Obviously to produce TV images and photographs of fully armed Israeli soldiers in confrontation with “Palestinian teenagers and youths” - boys - armed only with rocks: David vs. Goliath, with the Israeli army in the role of Goliath. Everybody loves an underdog. The media obliged, and the PLO milked it for all it was worth, alleging that Israel was using excessive force. “The central committee and the revolutionary council of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) called today on the Palestinian people to close their ranks under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to carry on the uprising in the occupied territories. This was contained in a statement published here today by the Fatah, the mainstream of the PLO… The statement…also condemned the US and Israel for trying to use every means to crack down on the Palestinian uprising.”[138] So the PLO condemned Israel for supposedly using excessive force against the “Palestinian uprising.” David vs. Goliath. The problem with that interpretation, of course, is that the PLO had ordered the violence in the West Bank and Gaza; the Israelis had not started anything. Moreover, as we can see above, the PLO was calling for the violence to continue. To keep appearances, as we also see above, the PLO added a condemnation of the US. But that was absurd because the US had already joined the rest of the world with condemnations of supposed Israeli ‘brutality.’ “The State Department today defended the U.S. vote against Israel in the U.N. Security Council… [S]pokesman Charles E. Redman…insist[ed] on the U.S. right to vote against human rights violations committed by friend or foe. He said the vote against Israel’s threat to deport Palestinians fomenting violence was in line with longstanding U.S. criticism of human rights violations. ‘Our position, the firmness we attach to it, has been evident from the beginning,’ Redman said.”[139] And the PLO had rejoiced publicly: “Arafat described the US vote against Israel as ‘a step forward.’”[140] Now, consider. The US position was that if Palestinian Arabs fomented violence this was not a human rights violation. But should Israel make a threat “to deport Palestinians fomenting violence” - not kill them, not incarcerate them, but just deport them - in an attempt to protect law-abiding people on both sides, that would be a human rights violation. It is hard to imagine a more extreme anti-Israel stance. Especially when you consider that the terrorist PLO leaders had themselves explained that they were the ones inciting the violence because they were in a celebratory mood. And worse even when you consider that Yasser Arafat himself made clear, for anybody listening, that the rock-throwing image was just a ploy (or "a phase"), and that more serious forms of violence would be used. “At a Kuwait rally Sunday commemorating the PLO’s 23rd anniversary, Arafat described the recent unrest in the occupied territories as a phase, saying ‘other weapons will be used in future battles at the appropriate time.’ He did not elaborate.”[141] “Other weapons…” Yes, for example, “The Fatah movement, mainstream of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has claimed responsibility for the commando operation which was carried out at dawn today south of the Kiryat Shmuna settlement, northern Israel. Lebanese radio today quoted a spokesman for the Fatah movement as saying here that one of its groups clashed with Israeli troops 700 meters south of the Kiryat Shmuna settlement, inflicting several casualties on Israeli troops while one of the three-member Fatah group died… According to a Jerusalem report, a squad of Palestinian guerrillas ‘infiltrated’ into northern Israel after midnight Wednesday… A Palestinian commando group flying on a glider from south Lebanon raided an Israeli army camp in the same region on November 25 last year, killing six Israeli soldiers.”[142] That was in the same month of January 1988, and it was a terrorist attack. The only reason no Israeli civilians died in this incident is that the Israeli soldiers spotted the PLO terrorists and prevented them from attacking Kiryat Shmuna (they were only 700 meters away from the civilians in the settlement when they were stopped). 4. The United States was behind it all ________________________________ To better understand the US role, here, let us go back to Shimon Peres. As stated above, the images of Palestinian Arabs as besieged underdogs, produced by the rock-throwing riots, were timed to coincide with the ongoing diplomatic push for a Middle East ‘peace’ conference that would include the PLO terrorists and would lay the groundwork for a PLO state in the West Bank. The US was pretending to oppose PLO participation but, as we have seen, Shimon Peres, US agent, was acting as a PLO diplomat, thus giving the US cover for the moment when Washington decided it was now convenient to change its official stance and call for including the PLO in the Middle East talks. “Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres says negotiations with Israel’s Arab foes could end the violent crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and lead to a long-term regional accord. Peres, who has expressed conditional support for an international conference, on Sunday renewed his call for discussions to solve the unrest that has disrupted 20 years of mostly peaceful occupation of the region… The foreign minister has given his conditional endorsement to an international conference attended by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China - Israel and its Arab opponents, including the Palestine Liberation Organization… Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, however, opposes any international conference and has vowed that the recent Palestinian rioting in the occupied territories would not push Israel toward talks.”[143] Shimon Peres’ statement that “the unrest…has disrupted 20 years of mostly peaceful occupation of the region” was correct. The Palestinian Arabs had never had it better than under Israeli ‘occupation.’[144] But if the Israelis had ruled the Palestinian Arabs benignly, and if the riots had been started by the PLO not in reaction to Israeli oppression, but in order to create the appearance of such, then Peres' support for rewarding the PLO for this violence by including it in a Middle East ‘peace’ conference was…treason. The point of Shimon Peres’ public stance was to make it possible for the US to begin relaxing its public pretense of opposition to PLO participation. After all, Shimon Peres was the Israeli foreign minister, so if he was pro-PLO then the US could afford to push the PLO as well. In late January, just one week after the PLO terrorist incursion into northern Israel (see above), “[US Secretary of State George] Shultz…held an unusual 20-minute session with two Palestinians. They proposed establishment of a Palestinian state on land now held by Israel. It would be controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization.”[145] The wire does not say who these two Palestinians were, but as you will see below, it was probably two prominent members of the PLO, Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughd. Not content with that, as the same wire explains, the Reagan administration was also seeking to sell missiles to Jordan. And that was not all. In addition, “The Reagan administration is also considering a request from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is meeting today with President Reagan, that the United States build an M1 tank factory in Egypt. The tanks that would be produced would be sold by Egypt to Iraq and other countries.” Later, Shultz met with two PLO members, and these were apparently the same two people referred to above as “two Palestinians” seeking US support for a PLO state. Meeting with these two prominent PLO members was no different from meeting with Yasser Arafat, and the PLO itself made this clear when, in the context of this meeting, it publicly approved of it and authorized future such meetings.[146] The Egyptians celebrated all this in the open. “Egyptian foreign minister Esmat Abdel-Meguid today described US Secretary of State George Shultz’s meeting with two Palestinian professors Saturday in Washington as a constructive and positive step in the right direction. …The two Palestinian professors, Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughd, are members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) legislative body - the Palestinian National Council. …Egypt welcomes Shultz’s mideast tour which begins next week, and hopes that the tour will give impetus to the peace process…”[147] By contrast, “Benjamin Netanyahu today said he resigned as Israel’s United Nations ambassador so he could speak out against Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s meeting with two Arab-Americans linked to the PLO.”[148] There was also some opposition - or in any event a show of opposition - in the US Congress. “A group of 21 senators is writing Secretary of State George Shultz asking him to refrain from meeting with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization during his upcoming trip to the Middle East... Defending the meeting, Shultz said he wanted to hear the views of Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod about Palestinian representation in Mideast talks.”[149] A few days after Shultz’s first meeting with the two prominent PLO members, the US vetoed UN sponsored ‘peace’ talks but only because it was pursuing its own initiative behind closed doors, a strategy it was putting together with Egypt.[150] Naturally, this was against Israel’s interests, and not long after Shultz announced that the US and Egypt had put together a really good deal, a headline announced: “Shamir cheered [in Israel] for opposing U.S. peace initiative.”[151] The US was going out of its way, as usual, to attack Israel. Long story short, by the end of 1988, as Ronald Reagan got ready to hand over power to his successor, George Bush Sr., a UPI article with the headline “Reagan lays foreign policy groundwork for Bush” could state the following: “Reagan has crossed the bridge and decided that the U.S. can carry on a dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Reagan said PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had met the U.S. conditions for such negotiations…”[152] The US had come out of the closet and was now officially doing what it had been doing all along: supporting the PLO. Since US Intelligence had always been cozy with the PLO, it was fitting that “Bush,” as the same wire observed, “will be the first president to have headed the CIA.” The next year, a US Defense Department study would put its seal on the new official stance towards the PLO, and that brings us to 1989. ____________________________________________________________ 1989 [ negative ] With Dick Cheney, the US began supporting a PLO state in the open as the 'only solution' to the Arab-Israeli conflict. ____________________________________________________________ I recommend reading the following: In 1989 U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney Pushed to Create a PLO State! Article from the Washington Times with introduction by Jared Israel http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/fuller.htm It is a reprint of an article, with a Jared Israel introduction, from The Washington Times with the following title: "Rand study urges birth of West Bank state" (November 8, 1989; Wednesday, Final Edition; Section: Part A; WORLD; Pg. A7; Byline: James M. Dorsey). About this Washington Times article, it is important not to be distracted by the word "Rand", in the title, which identifies this study as having been done by the Rand Corporation, a supposedly private think tank. In fact, Rand might as well be a government department. Just one example: Donald Rumsfeld, who was Secretary of Defense in the Ford administration, and now once again in George Bush Jr.'s administration, was chairman of Rand from 1981 to 1986. Simultaneously, during the years 1983-84, he was Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East (and, by the way, Reagan carried out a consistently and radically antisemitic policy in the Middle East, for which see the 1981, 1982-83, 1985 and 1987-88 sections).[153] About the particular Rand study that is our focus, the Washington Times article explains, "Entitled 'The West Bank of Israel: Point of No Return?' and requested by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the study was compiled by Graham Fuller, senior Middle East analyst for the CIA during the Reagan administration." But the study was not merely requested by the Secretary of Defense and done by a CIA operative, it was also "sponsored by the Defense Department." One guesses, therefore, that this study concluded what its sponsors wanted it to conclude. And what was that? The study "concluded that the Israeli-Arab conflict can only be resolved by creating a West Bank Palestinian state." And who is the Secretary of Defense who requested and sponsored this study? That would be Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, leader of the supposedly pro-Israel "neo-cons", and now vice-president in Bush Jr.'s administration. Keep that in mind. Keep in mind also that, in 1967 (see 1967 section) a different study, done in-house at the same Defense Department, concluded that if Israel withdrew from the West Bank (a condition for creating a "West Bank Palestinian state"), Israel would be destroyed. Is this a contradiction? The 1967 Defense Department study concluded that if Israel did not hold on to the West Bank it was in mortal danger, and the 1989 Defense Department study concluded that "the Israeli-Arab conflict can only be resolved by creating a West Bank Palestinian state." But despite the appearance this is not necessarily a contradiction, because the quoted sentence from the 1989 study does not say "peacefully resolved." The extermination of the Israeli Jews by the Arabs is one way to "resolve" the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now, consider the Israeli reaction to this. The Washington Times article states: "Released shortly before the expected mid-November arrival in Washington of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the Rand Corp. report is certain to fuel already widespread Israeli fears that the Bush administration is attempting to lure Israel into talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization... Israel charges that discussion of Palestinian independence would constitute a mortal threat to the Jewish state." The Israelis thought that the American push for a Palestinian state was synonymous with a state run by the PLO, and in their opinion this would "constitute a mortal threat to the Jewish state." Now, even if the Americans really thought that the Israeli assessment of the situation was in error, there was no question that this is how the Israelis felt about it. So the question is: Would an ally of Israel pursue a policy that Israel thought would lead to its destruction? Is that how an ally behaves? Of course not. An ally would respect Israel's wishes. And a neutral country would stay out of it. It takes an enemy to go out of one's way to do things that Israel considers a mortal threat. After all, this had nothing to do with US "national security." But was the Israeli assessment of the situation - which agrees with the explicit conclusion of the 1967 US Defense Department study - unreasonable? No. Given that Palestinian Arab independence is synonymous with the Palestinian Arabs being ruled by the PLO, Israel was right about the threat posed by such independence. For you see, the PLO is not merely a terrorist organization, but one descended from Adolf Hitler's Final Solution, the purpose of which was to kill every last living Jew. This Nazi heritage of the PLO is documented here: "How did the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US." by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm Naturally, US Intelligence knows all about this, so when Graham Fuller from the CIA produced a report that "concluded that the Israeli-Arab conflict can only be resolved by creating a West Bank Palestinian state," it cannot have had a peaceful resolution in mind, because what the US wanted was a PLO state. The Washington Times says, "'...with the establishment of direct talks between the United States and the PLO, Israel now has, whether it wants them or not, indirect negotiations with the PLO,' the study said. ...Mr. Fuller [author of the report] argued that '...the ultimate emergence of a Palestinian state on the West Bank [is] inevitable. . . No other solution any longer seems viable.'" So the US established direct talks with the PLO, following which it concluded that it should give the worst antisemitic terrorists in the world their own state right next to Israel. Subsequently, the US would apply the strongest pressure on Israel to accept a 'peace' process leading to this outcome, as we shall see. Is this the behavior of an ally? ____________________________________________________________ 1991 [ negative ] Bush Sr.'s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza. ____________________________________________________________ On 6 December 2001, the US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel C. Kurtzer, gave a talk at the BESA Center, Bar Ilan University, entitled "The American Role in the Oslo Process." Remarkably, given that title, the US ambassador began by denying that the US had played a role in the Oslo process: "In dissecting the American role in Oslo, I think the title of my talk should be "The American Perspective on Oslo," since the Oslo process took place largely outside the direct purview of the United States."[153a] I shall now review the facts that refute this duplicitous presentation of the American role in the Oslo process. The catalyst for the Oslo process, as we shall see, were the October 1991 Madrid talks, without which the Oslo process wouldn't have happened. So it is significant that the US forced the Israelis to go to Madrid. On April 19, 1991, The Independent wrote this: "FATIH JABAR [An otherwise unidentified Arab whom they interviewed] had some advice for James Baker, the US Secretary of State, who flew to Israel last night to continue his peace-making efforts. ''Stop financial aid to Israel for six months, and order the Israelis to pull out from the occupied territories,'' he urged, sipping coffee in the cool lounge of his home in this quiet village south-west of Nablus. 'They'll have no choice but to comply.' ...While Mr Shamir continues to indicate support for a regional conference, there is no hint of a new willingness on his part to make meaningful concessions at the negotiating table. If Mr Baker is to shift the Israeli prime minister, it seems he might have to take Mr Jabar's advice and hit Mr Shamir in the pocket, conceivably by withholding the $10bn (pounds 5.6bn) in housing loan guarantees Israel needs to build homes for Soviet immigrants. For if there is one issue that concerns the prime minister as much as his commitment to the retention of the territories, it is the absorption of Soviet Jews. Only if this process is threatened, might he consider what is, for him, almost the unthinkable - an eventual pullout from parts of the occupied territories."[155] And take Jabar's advice they did. The Independent was prophetic. This is what the Times of London wrote only a few days later: "...American officials, including William Brown, the ambassador to Israel, and Senator Robert Dole, have warned Israel that it will not receive a sympathetic hearing in Washington if it does not co-operate with the administration's peace plans for the region following the Gulf war."[156] Specifically, the US threat against Israel became the following: "The message to the Shamir government is clear enough: Unless the Israelis agree to a freeze on settlement activity in the occupied territories before and during the ["peace"] conference, there will be no U.S. loan guarantees to help finance the resettlement of Russian immigrants. Implicit in the warning are two further threats: If Israel remains obdurate, hold the conference without it and let the political chips fall where they may; and further down the line, diminish or cut off the annual U.S. grants and loans to the Jewish state. Whether one thinks the Bush-Baker preconditions are justified or not, and given a visible decline in pro-Israel sentiment in Congress and the country, it is obvious...that the president can make the loan guarantee warning stick."[156a] In other words, the American message to the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was: go to Madrid, or else no money for resettlement of Russian immigrants, and no further grants or loans to the Jewish state: we will choke you off. Moreover, if you don't go, said the US to Shamir, we will hold the conference anyway, and "let the political chips fall where they may." The US had threatened to decide the future of Israel without Israel "if Israel remain[ed] obdurate." There can be no question on this point: the US was passionately interested in making the Madrid talks happen, and flexed all its muscle. Some American observers simply could not understand why this was going on. Here is Charles Krauthammer scratching his head on the pages of the Washington Post: [Quote from Charles Krauthammer starts here] "It is a rule in the Middle East: Israel wins every war, and the great powers step in to save the Arabs from the consequences of defeat. Regardless of whose side you think justice is on, one thing is indisputable: The result of such rescues is more war. The losers are given the chance to continue the fight. In 1956, for example, Israel won the Sinai from Egypt. Eisenhower forced Israel to give it back. Ten years later Egypt broke the agreement under which Sinai had been returned, blockaded Israel and started the Six-Day War. In the 1982 Lebanon war, Yasser Arafat and the PLO were cornered in Beirut. The U.S. and other Western countries intervened to save them [see 1982-83 section]. Saved, they later returned to Lebanon to fight another day. The Palestinians have just lost another war, and the United States is preparing another rescue. The Palestinian intifada, the uprising against Israel, is dead. The Palestinians, exhausted and defeated, are demoralized, having nothing to show for three years of strikes and stone throwing. Worse, in a replay of the Arab uprising of 1936-1939, the intifada has turned most monstrously on itself. Far more Palestinians are dying at the hands of brother Palestinians than at the hands of Israelis. "Everyone remains terrified when he hears a knock on his door at night," writes the Palestinian newspaper Al Fajr. "This fear multiplies when he discovers that the knocker is not a[n Israeli] soldier but rather a masked [Palestinian] man, swathed completely in black from head to toe, armed with an ax or a sword, who requests that his host, or his son or daughter, come out 'for only five or ten minutes!' The next day, we hear on Israeli radio or television that a bound and disfigured body with signs of torture and stab wounds has been discovered." This is how the uprising ends. Moreover, the Palestinians have not just lost the intifada. They managed to lose a second war this year, the gulf war, their proxy war against Israel and the West. They staked their political and diplomatic capital on Saddam and lost again. In the normal course of events, a people having undone themselves yet again with their extremism, having so exhausted the patience of their friends and sponsors, having maneuvered themselves into political marginality, would have to make their own peace overtures to their enemies or fade away. Instead, James Baker and the U.S. administration come riding in to rescue the cause at its weakest, to keep the grievance alive and to advance its demands in an international forum. Shouting "land for peace," they single-handedly revive a cause for which, as the Palestinians will tell you, no Arab state - not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, certainly not Syria - really cares. And they demand that Israel, the only organic American ally in the region (meaning a country that no coup could ever shake from its friendship with the United States), gamble its existence at a conference at which that slogan is to be the centerpiece. Why? In part, as a reward - "linkage" - for the Arabs who allowed us to go to war to save them from Saddam. This reasoning is even crazier than it sounds because the Saudis and gulf Arabs, after the Palestinians lined up with Saddam, have lost all enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause."[157] [Quote from Charles Krauthammer ends here] Krauthammer cannot be right that the Arab states were utterly reluctant to push for a PLO state, given that the idea of a PLO state was theirs long before the PLO itself signed on (see 1977 section). However, it is significant that Krauthammer got the distinct impression that the Arab states didn't want a PLO state more badly than the US did! The upshot of US Secretary of State James Baker's strong-arming of the Israelis - with economic threats - was to force them to accept a "peace" process in Madrid. "The Madrid Invitation, inviting Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to an opening conference jointly sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union on October 30, 1991, represented the result of US Secretary of State James Baker's shuttle diplomacy in the eight months following the Gulf War. The Madrid peace conference was a watershed event. For the first time, Israel entered into direct, face-to-face negotiations with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians. In order to make this possible, since Israel would not negotiate with the terrorist PLO, the Palestinians were represented by individuals from the West Bank and Gaza who were not associated with the PLO. This was a sham, as everyone knew, and PLO figures were in the hotels guiding the Palestinian delegation throughout the proceedings. ...Madrid was also the catalyst for the 1993 series of non-public talks in Norway between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs that launched what became known as the Oslo peace process. Once the Oslo process began, the Madrid structure of talks faded away."[158] In other words, the Madrid talks, to which the US practically forced Israel to go, were the engine that set in motion the Oslo 'peace' process, the purpose of which was to bring the PLO, a defeated organization, out of exile in Tunis and into the West Bank, where it would become the government, in preparation for getting a West Bank state - courtesy of the United States. From this position, the PLO was able once again - and better than ever, in fact - to kill innocent Israeli civilians. Does this make sense in terms of the idea that the US is a friend of Israel? Hardly. I will also point out that, if the US was officially outside of the Oslo process - after forcing Israel to participate in it - this does not mean they didn't call all the shots every step of the way. To see how Norwegian "peacemaking" efforts really work, and just how independent they are of the NATO powers, consult: The Oslo War Process http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/oslo-intro.htm Norwegians are the diplomatic 'advance guard' of the US-European empire. They helped destroy Yugoslavia. They set Israel on the path to destruction. Now they will finish destroying Sri Lanka. Next: India. ____________________________________________________________ 1994 [ negative ] Yasser Arafat was given a Nobel Peace Prize, and the CIA trained the PLO, even though Arafat's henchmen were saying in public, this very year, that they would use their training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews. ____________________________________________________________ On October 15 1994, the St. Louis Post Dispatch wrote that: “Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on Friday for their roles in forging the historic Israeli-Palestinian peace pact.”[160] In defending their stunning decision to give the world’s top peace prize to the most famous antisemitic terrorist, which decision caused controversy in Oslo and led to the furious resignation of Kare Kristiansen from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Francis Sejersted, the Nobel committee chairman, explained as follows: “‘We are not evaluating the life work of our recipients,’ Sejersted said. He said the prize honored the ‘specific act’ of the Israel-PLO peace pact, signed on Sept. 13, 1993, that led to Palestinian autonomy.” In other words, Arafat had been given a Nobel Peace Prize because, in exchange for getting authority over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs, he had written a letter to the Israeli government in which he stated that: “…the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.”[161] This was an obvious move. The Israeli public would never have allowed the PLO to become the government in the West Bank and Gaza unless  the PLO promised an end to the killing of innocent Jews. Implicit in the above promise was the PLO commitment to “prevent violations” by other terrorist groups as well, because the Israeli government, which was ceding its authority in the territories, would no longer be in a position to do so. But it is truly remarkable that Yasser Arafat got the Nobel Prize for making this promise, because he got this prize in October 1994, and already in May of that year he had made clear to his Muslim followers in a Johannesburg mosque that this promise was a lie, as reported in the London paper the Evening Standard: “A tape-recording has surfaced of PLO leader Yasser Arafat speaking to Moslem followers in a Johannesburg mosque… Mr Arafat was exhorting his followers to prosecute a ‘jihad ... to liberate Jerusalem’. Mr Arafat does not deny the tape’s authenticity, but now says he meant ‘jihad’ in a metaphorical sense. A verbal jihad. A jihad of ideas. Nothing to do with violence. Mr Arafat’s effrontery adds insult to injury. In 1980, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia gave a clear definition: ‘What is meant by jihad is a united, comprehensive, integrated Arab-Islamic confrontation in which we place all our resources and our spiritual, cultural, political, material and military potential in a long and untiring ‘Holy War’ against Israel, of course, who else?’ So even if Mr Arafat really did mean ‘jihad’ in this novel, non-violent sense, his legions of followers would not have picked up the sophisticated nuance. They would have taken it to mean that the peace process was just a stratagem: a Trojan Horse which should now be exploited with maximum violence. At best, Mr Arafat was irresponsible. At worst, deeply dishonest.”[162] It certainly does not appear from the above that Arafat had any real intention of keeping his Oslo promises. On the contrary, as the Evening Standard points out, Arafat’s language is consistent with a plan to use the Oslo process as a ‘Trojan Horse’: talk peace, use that talk to get an Arab proto-state on the West Bank, and then use that proto-state (and eventually a bona-fide state) to kill Israelis. This was to be expected from an organization created by a leader of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, whose constitution calls for the extermination of the Israeli Jews.[162a] But what was the matter with the Nobel Peace Prize Committee? They weren’t reading the Evening Standard? They didn’t have to. The same article (above) in which we read about how the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Yasser Arafat, as it was being given, reports that “…the [Nobel] winners had little time to savor the award. They spent the day struggling with a worsening crisis over the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Islamic radicals. Later, in a rescue attempt Friday night in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the kidnapped soldier was killed, along with three of his captors and an Israeli commando taking part in the raid.” Arafat's official position on the kidnapping of that Israeli soldier - by Hamas - was as follows: "Arafat condemned the kidnapping but had previously refrained from confronting the fundamentalists, fearing that any attempt to disarm them or arrest their leaders would result in a civil war."[162b] That was the official position. And it was bad enough: I don't like the killings of Jews, Arafat said, but I am going to let them continue. In reality, however, Arafat was quite happy with the kidnapping, and the reason he didn't interfere with Hamas is that he was coordinating with Hamas the killing of Israelis (as we shall see below), and meant to use the Oslo process as a ‘Trojan Horse’ precisely to that end (as we already saw him explain above). Years later, Faisal Husseini, Arafat’s second-in-command until he died, would confirm in declarations to the Arab press that there was never any intention to stop the killing of innocent Israelis, choosing himself the expression ‘Trojan Horse’ to characterize the Oslo process, as reported in the Baltimore Sun: “…Faisal Husseini, the top PLO official in Jerusalem…[was] quoted as likening the Oslo accords to a ‘Trojan horse.’…the weekly Al-Arabi quotes Husseini as calling the Oslo accords ‘just a temporary procedure, or just a step towards something bigger…the liberation of all historical Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.’”[163] That was in 2001. But let us go back to 1994, the focus of this section, to examine more closely the PLO’s intentions at the very start of the Oslo accords. Is there any question that they always meant for Oslo to function as a Trojan Horse to destroy Israel? The man supposedly in charge of keeping the PLO’s promises to go after the terrorists was Jibril Rajoub, because he was the head of the PLO’s security service. But would he do it? From the beginning, Jibril Rajoub made it perfectly clear -- in public, in English, to the Western press -- that he wouldn’t. You see, Jibril Rajoub has a brother, “Nayef Rajoub, [who] is a 35-year-old prayer leader aligned with the militant Islamic Hamas organization.”[164] That quotation comes from a 1994 Associated Press wire entitled “Brothers Swear Off Violence.” Were the brothers jointly swearing off violence against Israel? Not at all. They were swearing off violence against each other. “Nayef Rajoub said he would be willing to cooperate with the Palestinian authority his brother represents, if Hamas is permitted to act as an opposition. He wants to stage demonstrations against the autonomy agreement, to hold rallies and make mosque speeches, and to continue to fight against Israelis, including with violence.” The words "including with violence" carry an obvious specific meaning. Nayef Rajoub, with Hamas, was explaining to the Associated Press that he didn’t expect his brother’s PLO security service to get any trouble from Hamas so long as the PLO allowed Hamas to go on killing innocent Israeli civilians. The same AP wire reported that: “His brother [Jibril Rajoub] said his forces will not fire at Islamic activists… ‘To think that Palestinians will attack Palestinians is a rotten idea,’ Jibril Rajoub said. ‘We are not outsiders.’” Given that his brother Nayef Rajoub is a leader of "Islamic activists," why doubt Jibril Rajoub's sincerity that he means no harm to "Islamic activists"? But what is the likelihood that Jibril Rajoub is sincere when he says, in his capacity as a top PLO official, that the idea “that Palestinians will attack Palestinians is a rotten idea”? To help answer that question, consider this news item from 1992, immediately before the Oslo Process gave formal authority to the PLO over the lives of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza: “On Tuesday the body of a 30-year-old [Arab] mother of seven was dumped outside her home in Rafah refugee camp [in Gaza]. She gave birth to twins two months ago. PLO ‘Black Panthers’ claimed responsibility. On June 7, after a wave of protests over the slaughter of dozens of alleged [Palestinian Arab] collaborators, supporters of HAMAS and the main PLO faction Fatah distributed in Gaza the text of a ‘charter of honor.’ A key element of the accord was a call to regulate the killing of collaborators through reference to the highest levels of the Palestinian leadership in the territories. The murder of innocents was condemned. The [Israeli] army says more than 85 Palestinians on the Gaza Strip have been murdered as collaborators so far this year [this is in June] - adding that most were not collaborators.”[165] The degree of cooperation between Hamas and the PLO, the supposed rivals, when it comes to extra-judicial murders directed against ordinary Palestinian Arabs is striking: they wanted “to regulate the killing of collaborators through reference to the highest levels of the Palestinian leadership in the territories.” What the PLO and Hamas mean by “collaborators” is of course people who want to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors, and who assist the Israeli government in their efforts to defeat organizations devoted to the killing of innocent Jewish men, women, and children, the same organizations that destroy innocent Palestinian Arab children by using them as human bombs. Of course, the PLO and Hamas also kill anybody who disagrees with them in any way, for any reason, which is consistent with the Israeli claim that “most [of those killed] were not collaborators.” Are the Israelis right? Well, consider that there was “a wave of protests over the slaughter of dozens of alleged collaborators.” That was Palestinian Arabs protesting. Consider also that, according to a 1993 report by the human rights organization B’tselem, “between 750 and 950 Palestinians ‘suspected of collaboration’ with Israeli authorities have been killed by Palestinian activists since the beginning of the intifada” and that “less than 50 percent of those killed for suspicion of collaborating with Israel were actually working with Israeli authorities.”[166] Did things change in 1994, when the PLO became the official government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs? To answer that question, consider the following UPI wire from 1994. It is reporting on the PLO's policy towards PLO terrorists who were being released from Israeli prisons as part of the madness that is the Oslo process. [Quote from UPI wire begins here] The Palestinian police force in the Gaza Strip will issue personal weapons to a select number of former prisoners released from Israeli jails so that they can protect themselves from revenge killings, a senior local Palestine Liberation Organization leader said Wednesday. The former inmates, along with others who were deported by Israel and later allowed to return, were arrested for killing Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. The police force says they remain targets for the family members of those they executed while Israel still occupied Gaza. ''We want to arm prisoners and returnees, to allow them to protect themselves against any revenge taken by families of Palestinians killed for collaborating with Israel,'' said Rasheed Abu Shbak, a senior leader of the PLO's mainstream Fatah faction in Gaza, and a member of the ''preventive security'' unit of the police force. Already, Mohammed Ajour, 27, who had been serving three consecutive life sentences for killing three collaborators and was released last week, received a Kalashnikov sub-machine gun from the police. Abu Shbak said about 50 others would also receive guns. The Israeli government has released approximately 3,400 Palestinan prisoners since signing the Cairo agreement with the PLO on May 4, which implemented self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho. During the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, more than 600 Palestinians from Gaza suspected of being collaborators with Israel were killed by armed members of different PLO and Islamic factions. Palestinian security forces said that the phenomenon of families killing recently released prisoners is continuing and is considered serious.[167] [Quote from UPI wire ends here] The first thing that must sink in is that everything you have read, you have read correctly. It was Israel that had arrested the killers of innocent Palestinian Arabs; the PLO’s “preventive security,” by contrast, armed these killers with sub-machine weapons the minute the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process required the madness that they be released from prison. To the extent that the families of the murdered Palestinians really wanted to seek revenge against these murderers (and who can doubt it?), what this situation suggests is seething hatred by a good number of Palestinian Arabs against the PLO (certainly if the PLO considered that the problem “is continuing and is considered serious”). But this had already been established, because if significant numbers of Palestinian Arabs did not hate the PLO, the PLO would not be going around murdering so-called “collaborators” in the first place. Now let’s get back to Jibril Rajoub. Recall that in 1994, as the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process got under way, Rajoub said that “to think that Palestinians will attack Palestinians is a rotten idea.” Since in the same year of 1994 the PLO was arming the murderers of Palestinian Arabs, Rajoub cannot have meant that literally. What he meant was, as he also explained, that “his forces will not fire at Islamic activists,” which is to say (at least) that Jubril Rajoub's PLO policemen would not be firing on the Hamas terrorists, led by his brother Nayef Rajoub. Did Jibril Rajoub say that his PLO security service would act against anybody? As a matter of fact he did, and also in 1994: “The West Bank’s tough new security chief said Monday he’d permit dissidents to express their views but would come down hard on militants seeking to topple PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s new government. ‘Those who are violent, we will deal with them with violence,’ said Jibril Rajoub, 41, a confidant of Arafat who took over the PLO’s security apparatus here after returning from six years in exile Sunday.”[168] The Hamas terrorists are certainly violent, but Jibril Rajoub had already explained that he would not mess with them. So what emerges from the above declarations is that the point of Jibril Rajoub’s ‘policemen’ would be to keep Arafat in power: same old same-old. This was further clarified in a Xinhua wire the next day: “Jibril Rajoub, palestinian security chief, told the East Jerusalem Arabic daily Al-Quds Friday that there were three categories of weapon owners, namely, ‘fighters against occupation, collaborators and personal security.’ He said the last type should be registered and the second confiscated. He did not say what should be done with the ‘fighter’ group.[169] “Collaborators” - that is, opponents of the PLO - would have their weapons confiscated. Rajoub does not say that “fighters against occupation” - which is to say terrorists who kill innocent Israeli men, women, and children - would have their weapons confiscated because, of course, they wouldn’t. So there is little question that, from the start, the PLO had no intention of keeping its Oslo promises to fight terrorism. But here is the most amazing thing: Rajoub’s explanations of how he would oppress the Palestinian Arabs and allow terrorism against Israeli civilians to go on are all from May 1994. I remind you that Arafat’s declarations in a Johannesburg mosque that he would use the Oslo Process as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to destroy Israel, reported for all to see in the London's Evening Standard, are also from May 1994. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee therefore had to know what it was doing when it gave Arafat the peace prize several months later in October 1994. We have seen that the US twisted Israel’s arm to participate in the sham Oslo process that brought unrepentant terrorists dedicated to kill innocent Israelis to become the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs (see 1991 section). But what we now want to know is this: Could it be that the US was directly behind this man, Jibril Rajoub? Could it be that the US itself saw to Rajoub’s training, a man who attacks innocent Palestinian Arabs, and cooperates with anybody dedicated to murdering innocent Jews? Sad to say, but it appears that it could. Two years later, the Associated Press reported the following: [AP quote starts here] “The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency trained Palestinian security chiefs in anti-terrorist warfare, Israel TV reported Monday. The TV said Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, two of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s top security lieutenants, were trained ‘in the United States in methods of fighting terrorism.’ The report said the CIA ‘on an ongoing basis’ is trying to help Palestinian authorities in their battle against Islamic fundamentalist militants who have been trying to wreck the peace process with deadly bombings in Israel. The TV report could not be immediately confirmed. Rajoub is head of the Palestinian Preventive Security in the West Bank and Dahlan is his counterpart in the Gaza Strip.”[170] [AP quote ends here] The AP was speaking in the past tense: "Yasser Arafat's top security lieutenants were trained 'in the United States.'" Since we are told that they were supposedly trained "in methods of fighting terrorism," it is clear that the US was claiming to have trained them so that the PLO could carry out its Oslo promises, which in turn probably means they must have been trained as early as 1994, or earlier. Although the AP says that “The [Israel] TV report could not be immediately confirmed,” in fact the AP had no good reason to doubt it, because only a few days earlier the AP had reported that: [AP quote starts here] Arafat met Saturday with a delegation of senior CIA officials who arrived in Gaza to boost security measures against Muslim militants. ...Arafat was seeking logistical back-up from the CIA for his battle against the Hamas. The hour-long, secretive meeting with the CIA, at which Palestinian security leaders also were present, was held at Arafat’s vacation home in Beit Hanoun near the Erez checkpoint, the border of the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. The American delegation was headed by the deputy CIA director, George J. Tenet, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said Arafat presented the group with a list of security requests such as equipment, specially trained dogs, funds and expertise to discover explosives, as well as training in counter-terrorism for the Palestinian police.[171] [AP quote ends here] So there has apparently been a close relationship between the PLO and the CIA. In fact, a wire from 1998 explains that the Wye River agreement between Israel and the PLO made the CIA officially responsible for the PLO! [Inter-Press Service quote starts here] “One of the more remarkable features of the recent Wye River Memorandum, signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is the role assigned to the United States' own Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Under Wye, Washington's secret agents have been charged with ensuring that the PLO comply with clauses requiring action against "terrorist" opposition. (…) The CIA began training Palestinian security personnel at the PSS's counter-intelligence center in Jericho run by Major Jibril Rajoub. In September 1996 the Paris-based al-Watan al-Arabi newspaper disclosed that the CIA was training Palestinian security officers in the United States.”[172] [Inter-Press Service quote ends here] Now, of course, officially, the PLO and the CIA were required to say that all this cooperation between them was meant to fight terrorism. The Associated Press says that “Arafat was seeking logistical back-up from the CIA for his battle against the Hamas.” And Inter-Press Service puts it this way: “Washington's secret agents have been charged with ensuring that the PLO comply with clauses requiring action against 'terrorist' opposition.” This makes it clear that it is supposed to be the CIA's job to make sure that the PLO combats terrorism. So, given that Jibril Rajoub, Arafat's top policeman, was explaining in public, in the English-language wires, that he would use his training to keep Arafat in power against any opponents, and to murder innocent Arab Palestinians who in any way interfered with terrorism against the Israelis, the question is this: Why did the CIA train him? Is it because the CIA didn't know that Rajoub had explained what he would do? That's impossible. Whatever else the CIA does, it has to be reading the news. And since the CIA had officially pledged itself to making sure that the PLO would combat terrorism, it had officially pledged itself to determine what kind of person the PLO's top policeman, Jibril Rajoub, was, and what his intentions might be. So the hypothesis that the CIA made one of its infamous and supposedly endless 'mistakes' is dead on arrival. But you don't know, yet, just how dead on arrival the 'CIA mistake hypothesis' is. In addition to all the above, the PLO made it clear that it would not interfere with the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad. As if that were not enough, Rajoub left no doubt that he and his men would use their own training to attack Israel themselves. And he made all of this clear in 1994. I turn to this next. The “militant Islamic Jihad faction,” reported an Associated Press wire from 16 November 1994, “calls itself the ‘body bag gang,’” according to a proud member “who wore a white satin robe and hood reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan outfits.” This character also explained that Islamid Jihad “has recruited more than 50 volunteers to carry out suicide attacks ‘in any place in which there are Jews.’” He said, “Every...school or hospital inside Israel, any place in which there are Jews, is a target for a suicide action.” We also read that “An Islamic Jihad follower last week bicycled into an army post in the Gaza Strip and set off 10 kilos of explosives, killing himself and three Israeli officers.”[172a] The reaction of the PLO police? As explained in the same Associated Press wire, “On Wednesday, 45 Islamic Jihad followers were released from a Gaza City jail after Palestinian police said they were not linked to the group's military wing and Friday's suicide bombing.” How likely is it that the PLO’s “Palestinian police” had sincerely established the innocence of these “Islamic Jihad followers”? For starters, I remind you that earlier we learned the following: “the Islamic Jihad guerrilla organization ...[has] ties to the Fatah wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]” (see 1987 section). But aside from that, the “Palestinian police” that vouched for the innocence of the “Islamic Jihad followers” in its custody was composed of criminals wanted for killing Palestinians opposed to terrorism, and these same policemen were chanting for the destruction of Israel at their graduation ceremony from Jibril Rajoub's training regime. This remarkable news is reported in the same wire mentioned above: [AP quote begins here] “Meanwhile, Israeli officials sharply criticized the Palestinian self-rule government over a graduation ceremony held Tuesday for 60 recruits for the Palestinian security service in the autonomous West Bank town of Jericho. Israeli media said 10 of the graduates were fugitives wanted by Israel, most of them for killing suspected Palestinian collaborators. During the ceremony, the commander of the recruits, Abu Fahed, said that ‘the struggle will continue until Jerusalem, Haifa and Beisan (Beit Shean) are liberated.’ All three are towns in Israel. Other speakers called for ‘armed struggle’ against Israel.”[172a] [AP quote ends here] This didn’t make those in the Israeli government who had sold the Oslo process to their compatriots as a strategy for peace look any good. After all, the PLO had been in exile, in Tunis, before the Oslo process had brought them in to become the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs (see 1982-83 section). So the proper reaction for these Israeli leaders would have been to apologize, declare the Oslo process null and void, send the Israeli troops back in, and put the PLO infrastructure in jail. Instead, these Israeli leaders merely stomped their foot, weakly, and did nothing, to which the PLO's Jibril Rajoub replied, “get used to it,” as explained in the same wire: [AP quote begins here] “Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Sept. 13, 1994 Israel-PLO accord, said the remarks were grave and could not be ignored. ‘This is definitely not in keeping with our agreement and we must warn about this and hold in-depth discussions with the Palestinian authority,’ Beilin told Israel army radio. But Jibril Rajoub, the West Bank's Palestinian security chief, said it was time to let go of the past. He said all graduates were members of Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction. ‘All Fatah people were fugitives (at one time) and now we are starting a new page,’ he told Israel radio.”[172a] [AP quote ends here] What "new page"? The Islamic Jihad people who were promising murder against innocent Israeli civilians have "ties to the Fatah wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization," which Rajoub calls "Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction." And other members of "Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction" were being recruited as "Palestinian police" and being told by their commander, at their graduation ceremony, that they had been trained to attack Israel! As if that were not enough, many of the new recruits were murderers of innocent Palestinian Arabs. I have to emphasize: this was all reported in the wires. So the CIA had to know that Jibril Rajoub would use his CIA training to attack Israel and to oppress the Palestinian Arabs rather than to fight the Hamas, led in part by his own brother. Neither would he fight Islamic Jihad, his own boys. And the CIA cannot argue that anything had changed in this regard by 1996, when two wires (quoted above) reported on how the CIA had been training the PLO security services. The following headline-plus-summary, which appeared in The Guardian, is from 1996: The Guardian (London), July 6, 1996, THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 16, 3147 words, YASSER ARAFAT'S TOOLS OF REPRESSION; The Palestinian Authority stands accused of corruption, extortion and the intimidation of its people. The proliferation of largely unaccountable security forces seems to be out of control and oppression is rife: David Hirst in Gaza reports on a state in the making apparently immune to criticism, David Hirst. So the CIA knowingly helped create the terrorist henchmen of “a state in the making apparently immune to criticism,” which is to say, a PLO gangster state - dedicated, by the way, to the destruction of Israel. This is certainly consistent with the fact that the United States went quite out of its way to twist Israel's arm with threats in order to force the Jewish state to accept the PLO as the government in the West Bank and Gaza. (see 1991 section). And I note that the PLO oppression of the Palestinian Arabs never stopped. An Associated Press wire from 2004 explains that “the [PLO’s] Gaza Security and Protections unit [has been] nicknamed the ‘death squad’ by Palestinians” because it goes around killing the very Palestinians it supposedly protects.[173] This shows that the United States' support for the PLO can have absolutely nothing to do with a concern for ordinary Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. What, then, can be the US's goal be? Certainly not 'helping the Israeli Jews.' ____________________________________________________________ 1996-1997 [ negative ] The United States exerted such strong pressure on the Netanyahu government (including threats) that, even though Netanyahu had been elected on an anti-Oslo platform, he had the necessary cover to betray the Israeli public that had elected him. ____________________________________________________________ The following is taken from: Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (pp.393-411) “The most significant for Netanyahu of the pressures to resume negotiations despite PA [Palestinian Authority -- i.e. PLO] non-compliance [i.e. despite PLO sponsorship of terror attacks against innocent Israelis] were those coming from domestic sources and from the Clinton Administration. ...Netanyahu had measures available to him to try and counter both. He could potentially have used his exceptional oratorical skills to go over the heads of political foes and even a hostile Israeli media and effectively present the merits of his positions directly to the Israeli public. In addition, his insistence on PA compliance enjoyed extensive support in the American Congress... But...on August 14, 1996, he reentered negotiations with [PLO leader Yasser] Arafat without having made any headway on the compliance issue. ...[In late 1996] Arafat issued an urgent call to his people to defend the holy sites on the [Temple] Mount [which were in absolutely no danger], and he succeeded in triggering widespread rioting, initially in Jerusalem and then elsewhere as well. In addition, he unleashed his armed forces, including snipers, to attack Israeli soldiers in what became known in Israel as the ‘Checkpoint War.’ In the ensuing four days, fifteen Israeli soldiers were shot dead by Palestinian police and about sixty Palestinians were killed. In the public relations war that accompanied the battles on the ground, Arafat again bested Netanyahu as he had done vis-à-vis the resumption of negotiations. The Israeli left attacked Netanyahu for allegedly having acted provocatively by opening the tunnel exit [to an excavation near the Temple Mount] and having thereby triggered the violence. The Israeli media echoed this view. Most foreign governments and foreign media took the same stance, with many in the media claiming that Israel had dug a tunnel under the Temple Mount. Again, as any of their correspondents in Jerusalem could have ascertained for themselves, Israel had not dug a tunnel nor was the existing tunnel under the Temple Mount. The Checkpoint War demonstrated once more Arafat’s continued commitment to using violence and terror as weapons against Israel. But most observers outside the country, and indeed half of Israel, chose to ignore this and to continue perceiving Arafat as Israel’s ‘peace partner.’ ...Netanyahu, failing to counter effectively the increased pressure on him mounted in the wake of events around the tunnel opening, responded to the pressure by reentering negotiations with the PA, briefly terminated in the context of the fighting, and by agreeing in the ensuing weeks to terms of withdrawal from Hebron. He did so despite his still not having secured any reversal of the PA’s pattern of noncompliance with its Oslo obligations. ...The Israeli army completed its withdrawal from the ceded areas of Hebron within hours of the Knesset approval of the agreement on January 16. Almost immediately, the PA initiated harassment of the Jewish enclave in Hebron, with rioting, stone throwing, firebombing, and gunfire. This continued on and off thereafter. The [Israeli] government added the events in Hebron to its list of talking points on the Palestinian Authority’s violations of its Oslo commitments and frequently reiterated its demand for reciprocity. But it nevertheless went ahead and offered on March 7 to hand over another 9.1 percent of West Bank territory to the Palestinians as the first of those ‘further deployments’ called for in the Interim Agreement. ...Also during this time, additional incidents of violence, in many instances perpetrated by Palestinian ‘police,’ including terrorist attacks initiated by Palestinian armed forces, added further to the violations invoked by the Netanyahu government in its demands for Palestinian compliance. Among such incidents were the murder of another thirty-eight Israelis, injury of hundreds more, many aborted terrorist attacks, and myriad stonings, firebombings, and acts of arson. ...In January, 1998, the Cabinet unanimously passed a resolution linking further redeployment [i.e. further handing of territory to the PLO’s PA] to PA fulfillment of commitments made or reiterated as part of the Hebron agreement. But...Israel’s political opposition and media continued to urge [Netanyahu’s] government to move forward with territorial concessions, to advance the ‘process,’ and the [so-called] Peace Movement held rallies protesting the government’s alleged foot-dragging. To the degree that the government’s arguments regarding Palestinian non-compliance and the importance of reciprocity were noted at all, they were characterized as ploys being used by Netanyahu to obstruct ‘progress.’ …the Clinton Administration...effectively rejected Netanyahu’s demands for reciprocity. Indeed, it not only pushed Israel to proceed with territorial concessions without Palestinian compliance but insisted that the next round of territorial concessions exceed the dimensions proposed by the Israelis in March, 1997. Early in 1998, the State Department came up with the figure of 13 percent as the proper size of the next West Bank withdrawal, based not on any consideration of Israel’s strategic position and defense needs but simply on the fact that an additional 13 percent would place the nice round number of 40 percent of the West Bank under Arafat’s control. In effect, the administration reneged both on its formal endorsement of the reciprocity principle in the ‘Note for the Record’ and on its acknowledgment at the time of the Hebron accord that Israel had the right to determine the dimensions of the further interim redeployments. Once more, there appear to have been steps that Netanyahu could have taken to counter both domestic and American circles that were undermining his stance on Palestinian noncompliance. At home, he could have done more to go over the heads of the opposition parties, the media, and even elements of his fractious coalition who did not fully share his jaundiced views of Oslo. he could have addressed the Israeli public [which public, after all, had elected him to office on an anti-Oslo platform] more directly and more forcefully on the dangers posed by Palestinian policies and evasions. ...When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in the spring of 1998, imperiously, and with veiled threats, summoned Netanyahu to Washington to finalize a 13 percent withdrawal plan, Netanyahu chose to remain at home. In response to this confrontation, many members of Congress publicly and forcefully sided with Netanyahu... ...But [Netanyahu] failed in both the domestic and American arenas to utilize effectively the resources available to him. Domestically, the pressures for more unilateral Israeli concessions persisted unchecked. With the United States, Netanyahu simply yielded and acceded in October, 1998, to attending a summit with Arafat and Clinton at Wye Plantation in order to hammer out a redeployment agreement that was obviously to be based on the American proposals of Israel ceding, an additional 13 percent of the West Bank. ...[Netanyahu ] capitulated, and in doing so not only failed to make effective use of congressional backing but undercut those in Congress who most firmly supported him and had most vociferously argued, with Netanyahu, that a withdrawal of the dimensions prescribed by the administration, at least under current circumstances, posed too great a threat to Israel.” ____________________________________________________________ 2005 [ negative ] Mahmoud Abbas, who will soon have total control over Gaza, is the one who invented the strategy of talking 'peace' the better to slaughter Israelis. The US ruling elite loves Mahmoud Abbas. ( written before Gaza was turned over to the PLO ) ____________________________________________________________ Below I analyze various excerpts from an article by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which provides the invaluable service of translating into English much of what is published in the Arab press. The piece I will quote from discusses MEMRI’s translation of an article in Al Sharq Al-Awsat where the Arab author explains to his Arab audience what PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s ideology is. And it is this: to talk ‘peace’ in order to soften, divide, and confuse the Israelis, the better to prepare them for slaughter. MEMRI writes: In an article in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds on July 4, 1999, the journalist Saleh Qallab discusses the importance of the polarization of Israeli society - which was evident in the last general elections. The author’s analysis focuses on the political thought of PLO Executive Committee Secretary General, Mahmoud Abbas, aka “Abu Mazen,” who was the first to claim that the fragmentation of Israeli society is relevant to the Arab strategy in the peace process.[174] The ‘peace’ process, for Mahmoud Abbas, is a tool for destroying Israel. Does this makes sense? Yes: the PLO Charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and Mahmoud Abbas has always been a high official in the PLO (see above quote). So it makes sense that for Mahmoud Abbas the 'peace' strategy is a good one only if it turns out to help divide the Israelis, making them more vulnerable. The MEMRI article continues: “The Arab interest in the Israeli elections focused on political aspects,” writes Qallab, “but neglected one important issue: the unprecedented racial and religious polarization that showed Israel as a mosaic of different races and groups... Israel was seen [in the last elections] as it was never seen before - divided, flooded with internal feuds, and composed of people who have nothing to do with one another.” “Most Arabs failed to notice this phenomenon, with the exception of the PLO Abu Mazen, who [recently] wrote a 73 page study of the racial and religious polarization in Israel... Abu Mazen was the first to focus on the mosaic-nature of the Israeli society and one of his studies on this topic earned him a Ph.D. from a Soviet university.” Qallab recalls that Abu Mazen was the first to attribute importance to the fragmentation of Israeli society - 20 years ago: “Abu Mazen lectured at length on this issue in Tehran to a group of Palestinian and Arab journalists, accompanying Palestinian President Arafat, when he went to congratulate Khomeini for the triumph of the Iranian revolution. It was in February 1979, a week after Khomeini's return from exile in France.” So 'Abu Mazen' (whose real name is Mahmoud Abbas), according to this Arabic article in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, is a specialist on how to use the talk of ‘peace’ to create divisions in Israeli society, the better to exploit those divisions with a view towards the eventual destruction of the Jewish state. In fact, since, according to Qallab, Abbas inaugurated this kind of thinking as far back as 1979, long before the Oslo strategy took hold, it would appear that Mahmoud Abbas is the intellectual author of the Oslo strategy. Back to MEMRI: Qallab states that Abu Mazen is a pioneer of the realistic school, which, in his opinion, included former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, “who…told some PLO leaders, including Yasser Arafat, Abu Iyad, and Khaled Al-Hassan, that it was necessary to bring the Israelis down from their tanks to the ground and cause them a sense of security and peace, to allow their social maladies to appear and to prevent their unification in the face of a[n external] danger.” There is no question that this strategy has worked. Qallab writes: “It is clear that the racial and religious polarization, which was in the forefront of the last elections in Israel, did not develop in a vacuum but rather was the accumulated result of a [process] that started with the Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, continued with the Oslo Accords and later the peace treaty with Jordan...” “...In the introduction to his book Racial and Religious Polarization in Israel, Abu Mazen poses a question: ‘What may better increase and escalate the conflicts and racial and religious contrasts in the Israeli society: a state of war or a state of peace?’…” Abu Mazen’s purpose is clear. If it weren't, Saleh Qallab, the author of the translated article, makes sure that the reader understands, pointing out that all-out war has been abandoned only as a strategic necessity, and only in the short-term: “…There is no doubt that the war [with Israel] was essential and that it might be essential [again] in the future. However, since the current stage is the stage of peace, this process must be exhausted and there should be an advantage gained from all these current conflicts, including the deep dispersal in the composition of Israeli society.” “…All that is required from us is to bring the Israelis to the absolute conviction that we Arabs really want peace, because such conviction will deepen the dispute in Israeli society and bring the Israelis down from their tanks and out of their fortresses.” Soften and divide the Israelis with talk of peace, then kill them - this is the strategy. What is the remaining obstacle? “…This mission is not easy, because the Israeli right knows the truth… The Arabs, however, must give this phase a chance. They must convince the majority of Israelis that they… want a just peace based on what can be referred to as a historic settlement, on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.” This is more than clever. UN Resolution 242 is in fact a radical attack against Israel, designed to strip it of territory that the Pentagon, in 1967, determined was essential to the defense of Israel, and without which it could not survive (see 1967 section). So even the overt posture of ‘peace’ is in fact an attack in its specific proposals. ‘Peace’ only makes its appearance, in the Arab strategy, when the word ‘peace’ is pronounced in public for the purposes of duping well-meaning Jews. Of course, the danger in this strategy lies in the possibility that those well-meaning Jews will be made aware of what is really going on. Therefore, Saleh Qallab recommends: “…This issue should not even be discussed at this stage while the peace process is still underway…” So the strategy is designed to fool well-meaning Jews into believing that the Palestinian Arab leadership really wants peace. This strategy produced the Oslo Process, which is how come the PLO, a terrorist organization that was living in exile, got to become the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs, from which position it has been killing lots of innocent Israelis: the Second Intifada. Mahmoud Abbas invented this strategy. I point out that although Arafat posed for the cameras, the guy putting his signature on the Oslo agreement was Mahmoud Abbas: “…at 11 a.m., before some 3,000 guests on the South Lawn, including former presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush, [Shimon] Peres and PLO Executive Committee member Mahmoud Abbas are to sign an agreement between Israel and the PLO conferring limited self-rule on the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.”[175] Did the Palestinian Arab terrorists always understand that, once Mahmoud Abbas replaced Yasser Arafat, he intended to continue the policy of tricking the Israelis with talk of ‘peace’ the better to murder them? But of course. To begin with, Mahmoud Abbas explained to them early on what he would do. Consider this remark by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen immediately after Arafat died: “In Israel/Palestine, we wait upon repercussions from another re-election of an old regime: Arafat [is] definitively gone…, but Mahmoud Abbas pledged to continue Arafat's irredentist policies. Throughout the West, we seem to be assuming that Mr. Abbas is a lot more pragmatic than his words would suggest, if they were taken at face value.”[176] And why was the press, “throughout the West, ...assuming that Mr. Abbas is a lot more pragmatic than his words would suggest”? Why did the Western press apologize for a terrorist when this terrorist was not even saying that he wanted peace? If Abbas was saying that he would “continue Arafat's irredentist policies,” then, indeed, why not take him “at face value”? Now, of course, to make it a bit easier for the Western press, Abbas did at one point begin talking ‘peace’ as he prepared to take power. But the Fatah terrorists certainly didn’t think he meant it. “…in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,000 Palestinians - including scores of armed, masked militants affiliated with Fatah - demonstrated for the continuation of the uprising. The demonstrators also declared their support for Mahmoud Abbas [a.k.a. Abu Mazen], the new head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah’s candidate in Jan. 9 presidential elections.”[177] The words "the uprising", above, are a reference to the terrorist Second Intifada. This is what the "militants affiliated with Fatah" - meaning the Fatah terrorists - wanted to continue. But if the "militants affiliated with Fatah" who burst onto the streets to chant their support for more murders of innocent Israelis thought that Mahmoud Abbas was serious with his talk of ‘peace,’ why then would these lusty terrorists support him? And notice that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade branch of Fatah was particularly passionate about Abbas, taking his side vociferously when it seemed like Marwan Barghouti, another Fatah leader, might seek the post: “Abbas already has been nominated as Fatah's presidential candidate, so Barghouti must run as an independent. But as a leading Fatah member, he would likely undermine Abbas' prospects… Zakaria Zubeidi, the 29-year-old West Bank leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group linked to Fatah, said he would back Abbas. "Barghouti ... should resign from Fatah," he told The Associated Press.”[178] The Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, as Newsday once explained, is “the deadliest Palestinian militia,”[179] so what we see above is that the most extreme Palestinian Arab terrorists are also the most enthusiastic supporters of Mahmoud Abbas. They must be quite aware, then, that when Abbas says ‘peace’ he is just doing this to soften and divide the Israelis; that Abbas is trying “to bring the Israelis to the absolute conviction that we Arabs really want peace, because such conviction will deepen the dispute in Israeli society and bring the Israelis down from their tanks and out of their fortresses.” It turns out, in support of this analysis, that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade quickly claimed responsibility for the February 25 suicide bombing that broke the Sharm El Sheikh cease-fire between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority,[180] something that was subsequently confirmed when “The Israeli army…identified the Tel Aviv suicide bomber as a young Palestinian university student…[by name] Abdullah Badran, 21… Badran was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed wing of the Palestinian mainstream Fatah Movement...”[181] So, as I have argued elsewhere, Mahmoud Abbas himself gave the order for the terrorist attack on 25 February, 2005.[182] How do I know this? Because Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority, and the structure of Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority is utterly authoritarian, so it is inconceivable that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is part of Fatah, carried out a suicide bombing on 25 February without Mahmoud Abbas giving the order. If it had, and if Mahmoud Abbas disagreed with such actions, then he naturally would have castigated the Brigades publicly. Instead, Abbas’s Palestinian Authority pretended that the Lebanese Hezbollah - a terrorist group that was denying responsibility - was responsible.[183] Therefore, Mahmoud Abbas broke the cease-fire. And he has kept at it. This is from 15 July 2005: “Terrorists, including those from the PA’s Fatah party military arm, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, recently have attacked Jewish communities in the western Negev and Gaza with almost 100 shells and rockets every week.”[184] None of this should really be surprising because Mahmoud Abbas is a committed antisemitic terrorist whose PhD thesis is an exercise in Holocaust denial.[185] Why then did anybody end up convinced that Abbas wanted peace? Well, partly because the press kept saying that Abbas was a peacemaker. For example, Thomas L. Friedman, who has a long career attacking Israel in the pages of the New York Times, wrote the following in February 2004: “…in the past two years, Mr. Sharon has crushed Mr. Arafat's corrupt Palestinian Authority, but failed to lift a finger to empower more responsible Palestinians - like Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammad Dahlan.”[186] How credible is Friedman when he vouches for Mahmoud Abbas? Well, consider that Friedman also vouches for Muhammad Dahlan who, along with Jibril Rajoub, was the top cop in Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. These two, as you may recall, were openly explaining that they would use their policemen to kill Arabs who opposed the murder of Jews, and to murder Jews, even as the CIA was training both Rajoub and Dahlan, all of which was reported in the wires (see 1994 section). Friedman is therefore hardly a credible character witness for Abbas. Is Friedman a bad journalist or a liar? Well, a journalist who doesn't even read the wires is a very bad journalist. Would a journalist who was that bad have a high-profile perch at the New York Times? On the other hand, a liar would be disregarding - rather than failing to read - the wires. Could a liar be working for the New York Times? That depends on what you think the New York Times really is. The problem, in any case, is that people who write for the New York Times do not typically have their credibility examined. On the contrary, Friedman was given the National Book Award for nonfiction for his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, which is a long string of slanderous accusations against Israel but which is nevertheless "still considered the definitive work on the Middle East."[186a] That said, Friedman's anti-Israel attacks are certainly not the only reason why many people have believed that Mahmoud Abbas is supposedly a relative moderate and peacemaker. Another reason can be gleaned from the following excerpt: [Quote from Jerusalem Post begins here] When Abbas started his term [as Palestinian ‘prime minister’] over a year ago, he looked forward to working on a peace agreement with US President George Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but…Abbas said that he quit because he felt that Sharon made no concessions, Bush was reluctant to help, and he was attacked by his Palestinian colleagues. When asked what kind of attacks, Abbas replied, ‘Incitement.’ When pressed on what kind of incitement, he said…‘I felt that someone was going to kill me, or cause bloodshed within Fatah itself.’ Asked if Arafat investigated the matter, he answered, ‘I don’t want to mention anyone by name. But I’ll give you something to understand: I don’t have any relationship with Arafat from the resignation to this day. I live in Ramallah and he’s 100 meters away. I don’t go to him, I don’t meet with him, I don’t have any relations with him.’[187] [Quote from Jerusalem Post ends here] Since almost any other Palestinian Arab who disagreed in this manner with Arafat was as good as dead, it is striking that Abbas went out of his way to name Arafat specifically (though he wasn’t naming any names!) as the person who wanted him dead, and yet managed not only to stay alive but to succeed Arafat when the PLO leader died. And Mahmoud Abbas won by unanimous vote in the PLO executive committee, no less![188] Perhaps this is because Abbas is skilled at staying alive and maneuvering for political gain. But it is also possible, is it not, that the fight between Arafat and Abbas was staged. After all, Mahmoud Abbas is the author of the idea that lying to the Israelis with talk of ‘peace’ is the way to defeat them. Why not also lie to the Israelis with a staged fight between him and Arafat meant to position Abbas as the guy whose life was in danger because he wanted ‘peace’ so badly? Wouldn’t this be perfect for Mahmoud Abbas’s strategy? It would. (Anybody who has watched pro-wrestling in the US will have a perfect model for what I am talking about, provided we assume that the audience is genuinely naive.) Certainly, if the Abbas-Arafat ‘fight’ was staged, we can easily explain why the worst among the Palestinian Arab terrorists were keen for Abbas to succeed Arafat (as we saw above). They could certainly be confident that, with Abbas, they would go right on killing Jews, because Abbas had invented the Oslo strategy. This is precisely the strategy that, over the past decade, had allowed an exiled terrorist group, the PLO, to become the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs, from which position it could once again kill lots of Jews. But then, given that it was the United States ruling elite that forced the Israelis to participate in the Oslo process (see 1991 section), and that the CIA trained the PLO police forces created by Oslo to attack the Israelis (see 1994 section), one expects that perhaps the US ruling elite and Mahmoud Abbas will turn out to be closely aligned. After all, when the US forced the Israelis to participate in the Oslo process, it was implementing Mahmoud Abbas’s preferred strategy. It is not exactly a surprise to find, then, that “Mr Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, is a favorite of the Americans,” as the Guardian explained when Arafat was taken to Paris to die.[189] And perhaps it is not a coincidence that the whole ‘fight’ between Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, which positioned Abbas ideally to take the Oslo strategy one deadly step further, took place at the instigation of the US president. As the Glasgow Herald explained, “[Abbas] served as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after George Bush made clear Mr. Arafat had to relinquish some of his powers.”[190] (Obviously, tiny terrorist groups don't get to call the shots; superpowers call the shots.) And as soon as Mahmoud Abbas was made prime minister, he and George Bush started singing in unison: “Mr Bush… - with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Prime Minister standing beside him - called the [security] fence (more properly a wall) a ‘problem’ that did not help the road-map peace plan being pushed by the United States and other big powers for an overall Middle East settlement by the end of 2005.”[191] Some might argue that the fence is a solution to a problem, the problem being the murders of innocent Israelis. Certainly an ally of Israel would tend towards that interpretation, which is the obvious one. But no, to Mr. Bush the problem was the fence. (Because it made the murders of innocent Israelis more difficult?) And notice that the plan was for “an overall Middle East settlement by the end of 2005.” That’s code for a PLO state. As I write, in July 2005, everything is running right on schedule, as the Israelis living in Gaza will soon be cleansed out of there, by the Israeli government, so that the PLO can have total control over this territory. US president George Bush has been pushing hard for this: “Anxious to maintain the momentum towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, President George Bush has pointedly urged Ariel Sharon to halt an expansion of a key Jewish settlement on the West Bank, bitterly opposed by the Palestinians. Hosting the Israeli Prime Minister at his Texas ranch, Mr. Bush backed Mr. Sharon’s plan to dismantle the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza. But, in an unmistakable reference to the Maale Adumim settlement, close to Jerusalem where Israel plans to build 3,650 homes, the President told reporters that he asked Mr. Sharon “not to undertake any activity that contravenes the road map or prejudices final status obligations.”[192] So Bush is happy that Sharon will cleanse Gaza of its Israeli citizens to give this territory to the PLO, but he made clear this was not enough. In addition, existing settlements in the West Bank should not be expanded, and no further Jewish housing should be built in Jerusalem. This was in April 2005, right at the same time that Palestinian terrorists were firing on Israeli civilians, as explained in the same article: “Mr Sharon’s first visit to the President’s ranch in Texas came at an especially delicate moment, amid renewed violence in Gaza that threatens a two-month ceasefire.” Things have not changed since April 2005. The following is from July 18, 2005. “...Israeli troops and tanks remain massed along the Gaza Strip borders, poised for a major military intervention, if the Palestinian leadership does not stop militant attacks. During the past week, six Israelis have died - five in a suicide bombing in the coastal city, Netanya, and another in a rocket attack by Palestinian militants from Gaza. ...Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is...expected in the region, this week, to ensure Israel's disengagement from Gaza stays on track for mid August.”[193] I established earlier that the US is not concerned in the least for the Palestinian Arabs (see 1994 section). What we now see amply demonstrated is that the US government cannot be worried that innocent Israelis are being murdered by the PLO. Why? Because the US wants, very badly, for the PLO to have total control over Gaza, from which strategic Israeli territory the Israelis Jews, the US is quite convinced, must be cleansed. The only thing the US is worried about is the possibility that the current violence against Israeli Jews may have become so extreme that it could yet prevent the PLO terrorists from getting Gaza by mid-August, as originally scheduled. So the Secretary of State of the most powerful country in the world is speedily sent to this speck of the Earth “to ensure Israel's disengagement from Gaza stays on track for mid August.” I'll ask again: Is the US an ally of Israel? More to come (soon)... ____________________________________________________________ Footnotes and Further Reading ____________________________________________________________ [63] The Associated Press, November 13, 1981, Friday, AM cycle, International News, 368 words, UNITED NATIONS: "The U.N. General Assembly, with Israel and the United States casting 'no' votes, voted 109-2 Friday to condemn the Israel for its June 7 raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor and asked the Security Council to order sanctions against it. Thirty-four nations abstained. It was the third U.N. vote on the issue. The U.N. Security Council voted June 19 to "strongly condemn" the raid. On Wednesday, the General Assembly voted to tack an anti-Israeli amendment onto a resolution praising the International Atomic Energy Agency. The amendment branded the attack a serious threat to development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes...." [64] United Press International, December 17, 1981, Thursday, AM cycle, International, 378 words, By R.M. SORGE, UNITED NATIONS: "The U.N. Security Council unanimously declared the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights as ''null and void'' Thursday night and told the Jewish state to rescind its decision. The United States supported the moderately worded resolution, which does not condemn Israel nor threaten to impose sanctions in case of non-compliance as had been requested by Syria. It was adopted by a 15-0 vote after hours of backroom diplomatic bickering over its final text. The United States asked for minor changes in the text of the provisional resolution but finally agreed to its text. The resolution asks the U.N. Secretary-General to report on the implementation of the resolution within two weeks, and declares the Council would meet before Jan. 5 in case of non-compliance ''to consider the necessary measures in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.'' The United States, however, has made clear that it would still oppose any attempt to impose sanctions against the Jewish state in line with the resolution. U.S. Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, speaking directly after the vote, reiterated that the United States would not accept the unilateral Israeli decision, though..." [65] The New York Times, December 23, 1981, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 3, Column 4; Foreign Desk, 724 words, WALDHEIM SEES HOPE IN U.S.-ISRAEL STRIFE, By BERNARD D. NOSSITER, Special to the New York Times, UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Dec. 22 "Secretary General Kurt Waldheim said today that the strained Israeli-American relations reflected 'an objective reassessment' by the United States of its interests in the Middle East. The American support for Security Council resolutions rebuking Israel, he said, demonstrates that the United States 'wants good relations with both sides,' Arab and Israeli. 'I think this is a positive element,' he said, 'an objective attitude toward problems in the world.' Mr. Waldheim spoke in an interview as he was about to leave office. His term expires Dec. 31 but he plans to stay on at the Secretary General's Sutton Place mansion through January. Then he intends to consult Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in Vienna about a possible diplomatic assignment from Austria. He is also considering offers to teach here and what he called an avalanche of requests to speak. Mr. Waldheim said he was surprised by the vehemence of Prime Minister Menachem Begin's attack on the United States. 'I have seldom heard words expressed as the ones used by Israel to the U.S.,' he said. A Display of Tension After Israel annexed the Golan Heights, and Washington suspended talks to carry out the strategic cooperation agreement with Israel, Mr. Begin accused Washington of treating his nation like a 'vassal state' and a 'banana republic.' This language, Mr. Waldheim said, 'represents the tension in the area and between the two countries.' American support for resolutions declaring the annexation illegal and condemning Israel's raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in June are an effort by Washington 'to create confidence' in its Middle East policy, Mr. Waldheim said. He regards the talks between Egypt and Israel on Palestinian autonomy as fruitless. 'These talks cannot produce a solution,' he said. 'Israel wants to give administrative autonomy and stop there.' 'If we accept the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, this can't be achieved by the autonomy talks under the Israeli interpretation,' he said. Mr. Waldheim said the Palestinians should be given the right of self-determination and this could not exclude an independent, sovereign state. Israel strenuously rejects any such plan." [66] "President Reagan, in a meeting with 32 Jewish supporters, sought today to calm their concerns over possible anti-Semitism in his approach to a Middle East peace settlement and the U.S. sale of military equipment to Saudi Arabia. Jacob Stein, White House liaison with the Jewish community, said 'there was a very full, respectful but extremely candid give and take' during the session. Later in the day, the president was to meet with the presidents of 34 Jewish organizations. Stein said the participants expressed 'the depth of feeling in the Jewish community, the great concern over perceptions of anti-Semitism, of anti-Jewish attitudes.' Stein quoted Reagan as saying his administration 'will not condone anti-Semitism and will attack it wherever it surfaces.' Those who attended the meeting with Reagan refused to talk to reporters as they left the White House. Stein said the president assured his audience the administration will not deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel and accepts U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and acceptance of Israel's right to exist. The White House adviser also said Reagan assured his Jewish supporters that 'the only path to peace we're following is the Camp David process,' and not either peace initiatives proposed by Saudi Arabia or Europeans. Reagan had raised some Jewish concerns by praising what he called implicit recognition of Israel in the plan advanced by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi plan calls for establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and peace between countries in the region. The plan never mentions Israel. The Europeans have questioned whether any settlement can be reached without active PLO participation. Stein said discussions soon between administration officials and Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon would demonstrate 'the true nature of the validity and sincerity of the commitment of the president to Israel's security.'" -- The Associated Press, November 19, 1981, Thursday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 345 words, Reagan Seeks to Reassure Jewish Supporters, By DONALD M. ROTHBERG, AP Political Writer, WASHINGTON [67] http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/campdavid/accords.phtml [68] The New York Times, October 17, 1981, Saturday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Page 23, Column 1; Editorial Desk, 927 words, BE BOLD, MR. BEGIN, By Edgar M. Bronfman [69] Jewish leader OKs Reagan peace plan, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), September 23, 1982, Thursday, Midwestern Edition, Pg. 12, 428 words, By Daniel Southerland, Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, Washington [70] The Washington Post, September 6, 1982, Monday, Final Edition, First Section; World News; A1, 807 words, Israel Rebuffs Reagan, Approves 3 Settlements, By Edward Walsh, Washington Post Foreign Service, JERUSALEM, Sept. 5, 1982 [71] See above footnote. [72] "Palestine Liberation Organization." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003.  Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Nov, 2003  <http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=59547>. [73] http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~fjgil/fatahpalestinians.htm [74] The Washington Post, December 26, 1982, Sunday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 2354 words, Arafat's PLO Once Again Rides Crest of Defeat, By Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Foreign Service, BEIRUT [75] See  above footnote. [76] Who is Vincent Cannistraro? "Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA's investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103..." This information, and the PBS interview from which the quote in the text was taken, may be found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/ [77] The New York Times, September 22, 1982, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 16, Column 1; Foreign Desk, 922 words, CONGRESS SHOCKED AT REFUSAL OF ISRAEL TO HAVE AN INQUIRY, By HEDRICK SMITH, Special to the New York Times, WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 "The Israeli Cabinet's decision against a special inquiry into the Beirut massacre came as a new shock here today, fueling Congressional criticism of the Begin Government and dimming prospects for proposed aid increases. The appearance of what one member of Congress called 'a Government whitewash' added to a sequence of Israeli actions in Lebanon that have produced growing disillusionment with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, eroded political support for Israel and stiffened Congressional backing for President Reagan's tough stance toward the Israeli Government. (...) Both President Reagan's decision to join in a multinational force and his Sept. 1 proposals for an Arab-Israeli settlement were endorsed today by Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, who said his position reflected a survey of all 67 international affiliates of his group. Mr. Bronfman, who met with Vice President Bush today, put out a statement that also called on the Israeli Government to authorize an immediate inquiry into the Beirut killings." [78] [78a] Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), November 15, 1983, Tuesday, Pg. 1, 899 words, The Mideast's undrawn daggers, By Ned Temko, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, Jerusalem [78b] The New York Times, January 29, 1983, Saturday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Page 1, Column 2; Foreign Desk, 816 words, LEBANON CAR-BLAST KILLS 14 AT CENTER FOR ARAFAT P.L.O. WING, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to the New York Times, BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 28 [78c] The Washington Post, December 14, 1983, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 999 words, U.S. Ships Attack Syrian Posts East of Beirut, By Herbert H. Denton, Washington Post Foreign Service, BEIRUT, Dec. 13, 1983 [78d] The New York Times, December 20, 1983, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 6; Foreign Desk, 867 words, U.S. 'EXPECTS' ISRAEL TO STOP HINDERING ARAFAT EVACUATION, By BERNARD GWERTZMAN, Special to the New York Times, WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 [78e] Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), January 4, 1984, Wednesday, National; Pg. 1, 851 words, Heat on Reagan for Mideast policy review, By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, Washington [78f] The New York Times, March 8, 1984, Thursday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 1; Foreign Desk, 940 words, NEW U.S. STRATEGY ON MIDEAST BEGUN, By LESLIE H. GELB, Special to the New York Times, WASHINGTON, March 7 [79] The Guardian (London), September 20, 1985, 818 words, Third World Column: Israel's many tongues abroad / Representation and activisim in the Jewish Diaspora, By DAVID LANDAU [80] The Toronto Star, September 16, 1985, Monday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. A2, 195 words, Bronfman's Moscow trip is revealed, AP, NEW YORK FULL TEXT: "NEW YORK (AP) - A quiet milestone was marked last week when Edgar Bronfman, 59, became the first president of the World Jewish Congress to meet with Kremlin officials in Moscow. But his departure for the Soviet Union a week ago Sunday was not announced; the Soviets did not publicly acknowledge his visit on Monday and Tuesday; and his return to New York on Thursday went unreported. The trip was made public only when Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir criticized it in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. Shamir said Bronfman is 'not authorized to negotiate on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.' When plans for the visit were disclosed in January, Bronfman said he hoped to discuss the imprisonment of Jewish dissidents and curbs on Jewish emigration. He also said he would meet with trade officials to discuss business in his capacity as head of the Seagram liquor empire. The Post also reported Bronfman took a message from Prime Minister Shimon Peres to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev calling on the Soviet Union to resume diplomatic relations with Israel. 'I can confirm nothing,' said a Bronfman spokesman, Bob Kasmire." [81] The Guardian (London), September 20, 1985, 818 words, Third World Column: Israel's many tongues abroad / Representation and activisim in the Jewish Diaspora, By DAVID LANDAU [82] The Guardian (London), July 22, 1985, 556 words, Peres sends positive signals to Soviet leader / Israeli Premier reportedly hoping for reestablishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, From IAN BLACK, JERUSALEM "The Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, has reportedly sent a message to the Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, expressing the hope that the two countries can solve the problems preventing them from reestablishing diplomatic relations after a break of 18 years. According to Israel radio, Mr Peres conveyed the message verbally through Mr Edgar Bronfman, President of the World Jewish Congress, who is to visit Moscow shortly. The message reortedly stresses that Israel is not hostile towards the Soviet Union, and expresses the hope that a strong leader like Mr Gorbachev will be able to settle the bilateral issue between the two countries. The message follows the embarrassment in Jerusalem caused by last Friday's leak about a secret meeting between the Israeli and Soviet ambassadors to France. Israel confirmed that the meeting had taken place, but refused to give details. Tass news agency denied what it called a 'fabrication.' According to Israel Radio, the two envoys discussed the possibility of easing restrictions on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, stopping anti-Soviet propaganda, Israeli agreement with Syria over the future of the occupied Golan Heights, and reestablishing diplomatic relations between Moscow and Jerusalem, severed by the Soviet Union after the 1967 war." [83] > Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), October 16, 1985, Wednesday, International; Pg. 7, 1274 words, Israel tries to renew relations with Soviets, By Mary Curtius, Special to The Christian Science Monitor, Jerusalem "* Last July, news leaked of a meeting in Paris between the Israeli and Soviet ambassadors to France. According to a cable leaked to Israel Radio's diplomatic correspondent, the Soviet ambassador said in the meeting that Moscow was willing to renew relations with Israel and permit unrestricted emigration of Soviet Jews if Israel would at least partially withdraw from the Golan Heights it captured from Syria in 1967. The leak caused a tremendous outcry in Israeli political circles, and the Soviets soon after seemed to take pains to reiterate their stance that Moscow would restore ties with Israel only after Israel withdrew from all the occupied territories and made peace with its neighbors. * At this week's regular Cabinet session, Peres felt compelled to issue a communique stating that he did not send a plan to withdraw from the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights to the Soviets via World Jewish Congress President Edgar Bronfman. Mr. Bronfman recently visited Moscow, and carried with him a message for Mr. Gorbachev from Peres. One Israeli newspaper also reported that Bronfman carried a position paper on a phased Israeli withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights." > The Times (London), November 10 1985, Sunday, Issue 8414., 586 words, Will Third-World wars start the third world war? / Middle East, ROY ISACOWITZ "In a secret message delivered to the Kremlin by World Jewish Council chairman Edgar Bronfman in September, Peres reportedly declared Israel's willingness to relinquish parts of the Golan Heights, which were captured from Syria in 1967." [84] The Guardian (London), September 20, 1985, 818 words, Third World Column: Israel's many tongues abroad / Representation and activisim in the Jewish Diaspora, By DAVID LANDAU [Quote From The Guardian Starts Here] Bronfman went to Moscow not only to talk business, but, in his capacity as President of the World Jewish Congress... Bronfman hoped to meet Mr Gorbachev. He carried a letter from the Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, but was very soon back in New York, refusing to disclose whom he met and what, if anything, he had achieved... In Amman, meanwhile, leaders of the American Jewish Congress have just met King Hussein, Crown Prince Hassan and senior Jordanian Ministers. Earlier, they were received in Cairo by President Mubarak. On Wednesday they crossed the Jordan to report to Mr Peres. 'We believe,' they announced, 'that King Hussein and President Mubarak now wish to widen the peace between Egypt and Israel to include other Arab countries. They believe in the urgency of doing so now, before forces of political and religious extremism make the task impossible ..We expressed to Egyptian and Jordanian officials our strong view that at this time the Prime Minister of Israel is prepared to go as far as any Israeli head of government can in moving towards peace.' The message they brought to Mr Peres, from both Mubarak and Hussein, was: put the PLO to the test, and allow it some role in the diplomatic process. But this, of course, is anathema to the Likud half of the government, led by Mr Yitzhak Shamir. His response has been not merely to reject the substance of the talks in Amman, but to blast the American Jewish figures for presuming to speak on these matters. The 'American Jewish Congress is a peanut-sized organisation,' he said, in a bitter interview. 'It has allowed itself to be used by the Arabs . who seek to drive a wedge between the Diaspora and Israel ..' Mr Shamir, who is also foreign minister, extended the same logic to attack Edgar Bronfman. 'What does he understand about international relations?' he demanded. 'The World Jewish Congress should confine itself to work within philanthropic frameworks. Du Pont's drilling expertise gave Brongman no right to speak for Jewish issues.' There was an issue of principle involved here; 'The world must know that Israel represents the Jewish people on Jewish problems.' [Quote From The Guardian Ends Here] [85] Financial Times (London,England), July 23, 1985, Tuesday, SECTION I; European News; Pg. 2, 656 words, Moscow denies plan to restore Israeli links, BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN MOSCOW "[Israeli foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir] criticised his own Premier for sending a goodwill message to Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, through Mr Edgar Bronfman, the president of the World Jewish Congress who is due to visit the Soviet Union soon. Israel can talk directly to the Soviet Union, the minister said, it does not need intermediaries." [86] The Guardian (London), September 20, 1985, 818 words, Third World Column: Israel's many tongues abroad / Representation and activisim in the Jewish Diaspora, By DAVID LANDAU [Quote From The Guardian Starts Here] Bronfman went to Moscow not only to talk business, but, in his capacity as President of the World Jewish Congress... Bronfman hoped to meet Mr Gorbachev. He carried a letter from the Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, but was very soon back in New York, refusing to disclose whom he met and what, if anything, he had achieved... In Amman, meanwhile, leaders of the American Jewish Congress have just met King Hussein, Crown Prince Hassan and senior Jordanian Ministers. Earlier, they were received in Cairo by President Mubarak. On Wednesday they crossed the Jordan to report to Mr Peres. 'We believe,' they announced, 'that King Hussein and President Mubarak now wish to widen the peace between Egypt and Israel to include other Arab countries. They believe in the urgency of doing so now, before forces of political and religious extremism make the task impossible ..We expressed to Egyptian and Jordanian officials our strong view that at this time the Prime Minister of Israel is prepared to go as far as any Israeli head of government can in moving towards peace.' The message they brought to Mr Peres, from both Mubarak and Hussein, was: put the PLO to the test, and allow it some role in the diplomatic process. But this, of course, is anathema to the Likud half of the government, led by Mr Yitzhak Shamir. His response has been not merely to reject the substance of the talks in Amman, but to blast the American Jewish figures for presuming to speak on these matters. The 'American Jewish Congress is a peanut-sized organisation,' he said, in a bitter interview. 'It has allowed itself to be used by the Arabs . who seek to drive a wedge between the Diaspora and Israel ..' Mr Shamir, who is also foreign minister, extended the same logic to attack Edgar Bronfman. 'What does he understand about international relations?' he demanded. 'The World Jewish Congress should confine itself to work within philanthropic frameworks. Du Pont's drilling expertise gave Brongman no right to speak for Jewish issues.' There was an issue of principle involved here; 'The world must know that Israel represents the Jewish people on Jewish problems.' [Quote From The Guardian Ends Here] [87] The Times (London), November 14 1985, Thursday, Issue 62295., 948 words, Israel on brink as Peres seeks to dismiss Sharon / Coalition government threatened as Premier demands apology from Trade and Industry Minister, From IAN MURRAY, JERUSALEM [88] February 18, 1985, Monday, AM cycle, International News, 672 words, Peres and Craxi Oppose International Peace Conference on Mideast, By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer, ROME [89] January 5, 1985, Saturday, AM cycle, International News, 555 words, Mubarak, Andreotti Depart After Meetings With Hussein, By JOHN RICE, Associated Press Writer, AMMAN, Jordan [90] The Washington Post, March 16, 1985, Saturday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 913 words, Shultz Sees Hope For Better Relations, By Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post Staff Writer [91] Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), October 16, 1985, Wednesday, International; Pg. 7, 1274 words, Israel tries to renew relations with Soviets, By Mary Curtius, Special to The Christian Science Monitor, Jerusalem [92] Financial Times (London,England), June 3, 1985, Monday, SECTION I; Pg. 2, 314 words, U.S. move on Mideast divides Israeli Cabinet, BY DAVID LENNON IN TEL AVIV FULL TEXT: "THE possibility that the U.S. may soon hold talks with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation on ways to renew the pease process in the Middle East has divided the Israeli Cabinet. Some ministers fear this will lead to back door recognition of the PLO by the U.S. and have demanded that Jerusalem immediately informs Washington that Israel opposes this development. Speaking after the Cabinet meeting yesterday Mr David Levy, a deputy premier and Housing Minister, said 'It is de facto back door recognition of the PLO.' He demanded an immediate reply by Israel rejecting what he called the contradictory position taken by the U.S. But in an effort to prevent an open rift within the national unity government Mr Shimon Peres, the Prime Minister, urged restraint until it is known which Palestinians will participate in the talks. The moves by the U.S. emerged in a message which Mr Peres received on Saturday from Mr George Schultz, the U.S. Secretary of State. In the message he said that Washington will move in the coming weeks to hold preliminary discussions with such a delegation. This follows the visit to the U.S. last week by King Hussein of Jordan, whose declaration about his willingness to enter into peace talks was described in the Schultz message as a step forward in the peace process. Mr Yitzak Shamir, the vice premier and Foreign Minister, said yesterday that he does not consider anything positive came out of King Hussein's visit to the U.S. Mr Shamir said King Hussein has only added obstacles to peace negotiations by calling for an international conference. He also rejected American suggestions that Israel should take part in negotiation with members of the Palestine National Council, who are not members of the PLO. Mr Shamir stressed that the PNC is a part of the PLO and that the leadership of the PLO is elected by the PNC." [93] See preceding footnote. [94] December 18, 1984, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 552 words, Libya claims France violates Chad withdrawal agreement, By KEVIN COSTELLOE, Associated Press Writer, ROME, Libya-France [95] February 18, 1985, Monday, PM cycle, International News, 607 words, By KEVIN COSTELLOE, Associated Press Writer, ROME "Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel arrived in Rome today for talks with Pope John Paul II and Premier Bettino Craxi of Italy, both of whom have angered Jewish leaders by meeting with PLO chief Yasser Arafat. Peres' plane from Tel Aviv landed at Rome's Ciampino military airport. He was greeted by Craxi, and the two men left immediately for a meeting at the premier's office. John Paul infuriated Israelis by meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization leader in September 1982. The pope, immediately after the meeting, called for a dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians. Menachem Begin, who was Israel's prime minister at the time, said the Roman Catholic church leader's meeting with Arafat had aroused 'disgust,' while other political leaders said the talks were insulting. Israel refuses to negotiate with the PLO, calling it a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state." December 18, 1984, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 552 words, Libya claims France violates Chad withdrawal agreement, By KEVIN COSTELLOE, Associated Press Writer, ROME, Libya-France "Jalloud is the second in command in Libya's radical government headed by Col. Moammar Khadafy. At his news conference, he also said Libya had been hurt by the lower demand for oil and praised Italian Premier Bettino Craxi for meeting with Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. ...Craxi held an unannounced meeting with Arafat in Tunisia earlier this month and Jallou said, 'We think that the meeting with Arafat was a step in the right direction and we think that it's a courageous step on the part of Italy's democratic forces.' Craxi, a socialist, hopes to rally the 10 Common Market nations behind a Middle East peace initiative when Italy takes over the presidency of the organization in January. His plan calls for the PLO to join in the negotiations, a stand rejected by Israel. Jalloud, who met with Craxi, President Sandro Pertini and Pope John Paul II, said he had invited Craxi to visit Libya early next year." [96] The Guardian (London), December 8, 1984, 448 words, Middle East peace hopes / New initiative expected, By our Foreign Staff [97] The New York Times, March 17, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Part 1; Page 12, Column 6; Foreign Desk, 225 words, Mubarak Maintains Position on Mideast, Reuters, CAIRO, March 16 [98] The Washington Post, October 8, 1985, Tuesday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 656 words, Italian Cruise Ship Seized off Egypt With 450 Aboard; Release of 50 Palestinians Asked; 28 Americans Cited as Passengers, By Christopher Dickey, Washington Post Foreign Service, CAIRO, Oct. 7, 1985 [99] The New York Times, October 11, 1985, Friday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1802 words, PORT OF ISRAEL DESCRIBED AS TARGET OF TERRORISTS WHO SEIZED VESSEL, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to the New York Times, JERUSALEM, Oct. 10 "The four Palestinians aboard the Achille Lauro intended to stay aboard as passengers until the cruise liner reached Ashdod, Israel, and then planned either to shoot up the harbor or take Israelis hostage, according to Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab informants. The Israelis were to be held to bargain for the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The leader of the faction that ordered the operation, Mohammed Abbas, also known as Abul Abbas, is a close associate of Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was reportedly sent by Mr. Arafat to deal with the hijackers after their original plan to infiltrate Israel at Ashdod had gone awry. Crew Discovered Arms Cache According to the informants, the four members of the group aborted their plans and seized the ship when their weapons were discovered by the crew after the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria on Monday. The informants say the original plan and the hijacking were part of a bungled attempt to exact revenge for Israel's raid last week on the P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis. When relations between the P.L.O. and Italy seemed jeopardized by the seizure of the ship and an American passenger was killed by the apparently panicked hijackers, Mr. Arafat and Abul Abbas ordered the hijackers to return to Port Said and surrender. This picture was pieced together from information provided by Israeli Foreign Ministry and military officials, Arab analysts in Beirut and a statement issued today in Nicosia, Cyprus, by a spokesman of Abul Abbas's faction in the Palestine Liberation Front, one of the guerrilla groups in the Palestine Liberation Organization." [100] "In a telephone interview from Algiers, a senior aide to the P.L.O. leader, Yasir Arafat, said that members of his P.L.O. faction were not involved and that the gunmen belonged to a new, small guerrilla band composed of residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee districts of Beirut." Source: The New York Times, October 8, 1985, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 6; Foreign Desk, 1378 words, SHIP CARRYING 400 SEIZED; HIJACKERS DEMAND RELEASE OF 50 PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL, By JOHN TAGLIABUE, Special to the New York Times, ROME, Tuesday, Oct. 8 [101] The New York Times, October 9, 1985, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 6; Foreign Desk, 1925 words, HIJACKERS OF SHIP VOW AGAIN TO KILL 400 HELD HOSTAGE, By JOHN TAGLIABUE, Special to the New York Times, ROME, Oct. 8 "Uncertainty remained about the identity and number of the hijackers aboard the vessel. But Foreign Minister Andreotti said they seemed to be members of 'a dissident group' within the Palestinian movement 'of an anti-Arafat tendency.'" [102] * Facts on File World News Digest, October 11, 1985, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Pg. 753 A1, 2234 words, Palestinians Seize Cruise Ship, Surrender in Egypt; U.S. Intercepts Jet with Hijackers, Diverts It to Italy; Gunmen Held Killing U.S. Man: "The hijackers demanded that Israel free 50 jailed Palestinians. The only prisoner named was Samir al-Qantari, a PLF terrorist imprisoned in 1979 after carrying out an attack on the Israeli town of Nahariya in which four Israelis died. [See 1979, p. 296F2] (The PLF, which broke off from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in the 1970s, was a small group best known for having launched an unsuccessful series of hang-glider and hot-air balloon attacks against Israel in 1981. The PLF itself splintered in 1983 into an Iraqi-based pro-Arafat faction, a Syrian-backed anti-Arafat faction and a tiny Libyan-backed faction.)" * October 8, 1985, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 436 words, Smallest PLO Faction Known for Eccentric Attacks, By MONA ZIADE, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon "The Palestine Liberation Front believes in escalating the armed struggle against Israel rather than seeking a negotiated settlement to the 37-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict. It is one of the eight guerrilla groups that comprise the Palestine Liberation Organization, but it split into three factions during the 1983 revolt inside the PLO against Chairman Yasser Arafat. One faction, headed by PLF founder Mohammed Abbas, is backed by Iraq and remains loyal to Arafat. The other two factions oppose Arafat and are backed by Libya and Syria. The hijackers of the Italian ship have not said which faction they belong to, but Arafat aides said the attack was not carried out by their followers. Abbas, who uses the code name Abul Abbas, founded the Marxist-oriented PLF in 1976 during the Lebanese civil war when he broke away from another PLO group, the Libyan-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command." [103] "On Oct. 7, 1985, members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a small faction within the PLO headed by Abul Abbas, hijacked an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro." Source: "Palestine, History of." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003.  Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 07 Dec, 2003  <http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=115041>. [104] The Toronto Star, October 1, 1985, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. A1, 751 words, Israelis bomb PLO base in Tunisia, Reuter-AP, TUNIS [105] The Washington Post, October 9, 1985, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A29, 788 words, Israel: No Deal With Hijackers; 'Willing to Cooperate' in Ending Cruise Ship Crisis, Says Official, By William Claiborne, Washington Post Foreign Service, JERUSALEM, Oct. 8, 1985 [106] The Toronto Star, October 9, 1985, Wednesday, ME3, INSIGHT; Pg. A17, 898 words, Israel talks tough for Italy but keeps low profile on hijack, By David Landau Special to The Star, JERUSALEM [107] See next footnote. [108] The Washington Post, October 9, 1985, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A29, 790 words, Italy Discounts Armed Action; Military Alerted; Criticism Of Israel Divides Cabinet, By Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Foreign Service, ROME, Oct. 8, 1985 "Craxi [from the Socialist Party] and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti [from the Christian Democratic Party] triggered a major political row here last week because of the vehemence of their reaction to the Israeli bombing of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia. Both men denounced the Israeli raid in the strongest terms, equating it with the very terrorism that Israel said it sought stamp out. The sharpest criticism of their statements - except for that from the Israeli government - was by Defense Minister Spadolini [of the small Republican Party]. ...the newspaper of Spadolini's party attacked the government's request last night for help from Arafat to end the hijacking. While acknowledging that Arafat and his wing of the PLO had disavowed the hijacking, the newspaper editorialized that either he was being disingenuous and actually had a part in it or, if not, had no power to resolve the hijacking. Either way, the newspaper said, "it was unacceptable that the government asked the head of a terrorist organization for help and established almost a state-to-state relationship with it." "Either way," the Republican paper said, "the terrorist attack on the Italian liner was the most crude refutation of a faulty policy." The daily of Craxi's Socialists, Avanti, termed the Republican attacks "inadmissible on their merits" and "even more irresponsible and treacherous having been inspired by the minister -- responsible for defense -- at a time when the whole government is obliged to excercise, with the maximum efficiency in an emergency, its duty to save lives in danger." [109] The New York Times, October 11, 1985, Friday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1802 words, PORT OF ISRAEL DESCRIBED AS TARGET OF TERRORISTS WHO SEIZED VESSEL, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to the New York Times, JERUSALEM, Oct. 10 [110] The Washington Post, October 10, 1985, Thursday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 1822 words, Pirates Surrender Ship; 1 American Killed; Outraged U.S. Demands Egypt Prosecute Hijackers, By Christopher Dickey, Washington Post Foreign Service; special correspondent Jeffrey Bartholet in Cairo contributed to this report., PORT SAID, Egypt, Oct. 9, 1985 [111] see above footnote. [112] The New York Times, October 13, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Part 1, Page 20, Column 1; Foreign Desk, 791 words, ITALY WEIGHS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF RELEASING 2 P.L.O. MEMBERS, By JOHN TAGLIABUE, Special to the New York Times, ROME, Oct. 12 Government officials said Mohammed Abbas, also known as Abul Abbas, a close associate of the P.L.O. leader Yasir Arafat, left Italy together with a second P.L.O official from Leonardo da Vinci Airport..." [113] Reference in the above footnote. [114] Associated Press, January 1, 1986, Wednesday, Domestic News, 636 words [115] Source: Panama. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 22, 2003, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8420/eb/article?eu=118740 [116] See next footnote. [116a]  "The CIA'S neo-Nazis: Strange bedfellows boost extreme right in Germany"; The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Extra; Reality Bites; March 19 2001; By Martin A. Lee http://www.sfbg.com/reality/20.html Excerpts: ...The purported goal of the NPD [the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party], according to a recent German intelligence report, is to "build a new Germany out of the rubble of liberal capitalism." Brandishing slogans such as "Work for Germans first" and "Big capital destroys jobs," the NPD has staged "pro-worker" demonstrations in several German cities. Last year in Berlin the star speaker at the NPD's May Day rally was Friedhelm Busse, age 71. Mahler's newfound political comrade roused the crowd with antiforeigner and anti-American vitriol that elicited loud cheers from shaved-head teenagers and twentysomethings who waived illegal imperial German black-and-white flags. Violence erupted after Busse ended his pep talk with a line from an old Nazi song: "We're marching for Hitler day and night because of the need for freedom and bread." A veteran neo-Nazi agitator, Busse is especially proud of the fact that he was one of the youngest members of the Hitler Youth during the Third Reich. His current status as an elder statesman among hard-core neo-Nazis in Germany is all the more troubling given that his checkered past includes a controversial stint with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Back in the early 1950s Busse joined the Bund Deutscher Jugend, an elite, CIA-trained paramilitary organization composed largely of ex-Hitler Youth, Wehrmacht, and SS personnel in West Germany. Busse's group was primed to go underground and engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. But instead of focusing on foreign enemies, Busse's "stay behind" unit proceeded to draw up a death list that included future Chancellor Willi Brandt and other leading Social Democrats (then West Germany's main opposition party), who were marked for liquidation in case of an ill-defined national security emergency. The Bund's cover was blown in October 1952, when the West German press got wind that U.S. intelligence was backing a neo-Nazi death squad. Norris Chapman, a West German-based State Department official, acknowledged in a once-classified State Department report that the scandal had resulted in "a serious loss of U.S. prestige." West German "stay behind" forces quickly regrouped with a helping hand from the CIA, which recruited thousands of ex-Nazis and fascists to serve as cold war espionage assets. "It was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anti-Communist. The eagerness to enlist collaborators meant that you didn't look at their credentials too closely," explained Harry Rostizke, ex-head of the CIA's Soviet desk. The key player on the West German end of this unholy espionage alliance was General Reinhard Gehlen, who served as Adolf Hitler's chief anti-Soviet spy. During World War II Gehlen was in charge of German military-intelligence operations on the eastern front. (...) With a mandate to continue spying on the East just as he had been doing before, Gehlen reestablished his espionage network at the behest of U.S. intelligence. Incorporated into the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1940s, the Gehlen "Org," as it was called, became the CIA's main eyes and ears in central Europe -- an arrangement that many CIA officials would later regret. ...Gehlen rolled out the welcome mat for thousands of Gestapo, Wehrmacht, and SS veterans. Some of the worst war criminals imaginable -- including cold-blooded bureaucrats who oversaw the administrative apparatus of the Holocaust -- found employment in the Gehlen Org, according to author Christopher Simpson. Simpson is a member of the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which was established by President Clinton to review governments documents related to Nazi activity. While dispensing spy data to his avid American patrons, Gehlen operatives helped thousands of fascist fugitives escape to safe havens abroad. Third Reich expatriates subsequently served as "security advisors" to repressive regimes in Latin America and the Middle East... Busse went on to direct several ultra-right-wing groups in Germany, while another Gehlen protégé, Gerhard Frey, also emerged as a mover and shaker in the post-cold war neo-Nazi scene. A wealthy publisher, Frey currently bankrolls and runs the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), which U.S. army intelligence described as "a neo-Nazi party." During the late 1990s the DVU scored double-digit vote totals in state elections in economically depressed eastern Germany. (...) EC NOTE: The US absorbed almost the entire Nazi war criminal infrastructure in order to create the CIA. As mentioned above, at the core of this effort was Nazi war criminal Reinhard Gehlen's Organization. In 1956, the Gehlen Org, as it was called, was given over to West Germany, where it became the BND, Germany's equivalent to the CIA! To read about all this, see the 1945 section. [116b] Cornwell, J. 1999. Hitler's pope: The secret history of Pius XII. New York: Viking http://emperors-clothes.com/vatican/hitlers.htm [116bb] "The Pictures Tell the Tale: The Vatican and Nazism in Germany and Croatia"; Emperor's Clothes; 23 April 2005; Photo montage, with text by Jared Israel http://emperors-clothes.com/vatican/cpix.htm [116c] To read about this, visit: http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/talk.htm#APPENDIX [117] The Independent (London), November 16, 1990, Friday, FOREIGN NEWS PAGE; Page 11 , 1199 words, 'Gladio' dominates Italy's political arena; Operation Gladio was set up to go underground in the Cold War. Was it later used for dirty tricks against the Left? Charles Richards in Rome and Simon Jones in London report, From CHARLES RICHARDS in Rome and SIMON JONES in London FULL TEXT: ITS CODENAME - Gladio, derived from the word gladium, the short, double-edged sword with which Roman gladiators dispatched their victims - could have been conjured up by a public relations firm. But behind the name lurked a secret ''stay-behind'' army established by Nato and the CIA in the 1950s to wage a guerrilla war in case Italy was invaded by Warsaw Pact forces. There is nothing special about such an operation, given the fears of the Cold War. But the revelation that it is still operating after the collapse of the Berlin Wall comes as a surprise. For Italy the key question is whether Gladio was subverted by the security services or right-wing terrorist groups to fight the Communist threat internally. In which case, when, how, and on whose orders? This aspect has been dominating Italian political debate for the past weeks. The fullest description of Gladio's structure and organisation was given to parliament by the Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti. Set up to engage in clandestine, non-conventional resistance in the event of invasion, 622 people were recruited and trained by American and British intelligence at the Capo Marrargiu base on the northern tip of Sardinia. They were organised in 40 independent cells. Six were responsible for intelligence-gathering, 10 for sabotage, six for codes and radio communications, six for running escape routes, and 12 for guerrilla warfare. Five of the guerrilla units were named after flowers such as azalea, rhododendron and broom. Gladio established 139 arms caches, mostly in north-east Italy near the Gorizia gap, through which any Soviet invasion was expected to come. Since then 127 have been recovered, 10 more have been built over, but the last two, storing light arms, vanished. The authorities said they were probably found by private citizens, but the suspicion remains they were used by right-wing terrorists. To understand the impact of the Gladio revelations, it is necessary to recall the prevailing atmosphere in Italy. Before the Gladio story broke, a large number of copies of papers written by Aldo Moro, kidnapped and murdered when prime minister in 1978, were uncovered behind a double wall in a Milan safe house used by the Red Brigades. Most were written answers to questions put by his captors about his political philosophy, Nato, the Christian Democrat party and so on. One line which may come back to haunt today's political leaders was: Beware of Andreotti. He's too close to Nato. The revelations helped to reopen wounds scarcely healed in Italy about the handling of the kidnapping and murder. It was traumatic and painful, and led to much soul-searching. The secret services were once more blamed for deliberately not doing enough to follow up every lead. As the conspiracy theorists would have it, Mr Moro was allowed to be killed either with the acquiescence of people high in Italy's political establishment, or at their instigation, because of the historic compromise he had made with the Communist Party, Western Europe's largest, which brought them closer to power than ever before. At the time of the killing, little was known about the activities of P2, the Masonic lodge which had penetrated every part of the establishment. P2 was not to be uncovered until 1981. Later, it was found that every member of the crisis committee set up by Francesco Cossiga, then interior minister, now President of the Republic, was a member of P2. What was mysterious was the timing and nature of the revelations. After all, this safe house had been thoroughly searched at the time by Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the head of counter-terrorism. How is it that the papers had not been revealed before? These were photocopies. Where were the originals? In whose interest were the papers disclosed now? At the same time there was another scandal. It was revealed by the Czechoslovak authorities that Ruggero Orfei, an academic and foreign policy adviser to Ciriaco De Mita when he was prime minister, had been spying for Czechoslovakia. Again, it was the way the revelations were made, rather than their substance, that caused the stir. It led to a public row between Admiral Fulvio Martini, head of the security service Sismi, and Mr Andreotti, who blamed Sismi for passing the papers to the prosecution. Sismi retorted it was a political decision. The result: Admiral Martini is not being re-appointed. This was the atmosphere in which the revelations made about Gladio first struck a stunned Italian public. The catalyst for the revelations was the inquiry being made by a young investigating magistrate in Venice, Felice Casson, into the deaths in a car bomb in 1972 of three carabinieri in the Veneto village of Petreano, for which two neo-fascists were convicted. The explosives used were found to have come from a secret Nato arms dump. In January he applied for permission to examine the files of Sismi. In July, Mr Andreotti granted him permission. There he found evidence of a covert infrastructure. It turned out to have a codename: Gladio. Over the years, Mr Andreotti gave three versions. In 1978 he told parliament that no such secret organisation had ever existed. In August this year he said it had existed, but did not any longer. And this month he admitted that Gladio still existed, but said Italy was asking Nato to wind it up. Conspiracy theorists also ask why he made his revelations not to the parliamentary commission on the secret services, but to the one on terrorism. Did this indicate that Gladio was indeed linked to right-wing terrorism in Italy? The revelations have given a field day to the press, led by the Communist papers and the anti-establishment La Repubblica, to rake up unsolved crimes. They have brought up the Solo plan, under which the carabinieri would round up hundreds of Communists and trade union activists. There have been frenzied calls for Mr Andreotti's resignation. The Communists see Gladio as tying up the loose ends between right-wing terrorism, the ruling Christian Democrats, and the ''strategy of tension'' - designed to block the Communists from coming to power. The paranoia of the left is understandable. Papers released over the years in the United States under the Freedom of Information Act have established that the US would consider military intervention if the Communists came to power. General Giovanni De Lorenzo, head of Sifar (Italian military intelligence) joined the US in drawing up a plan in case of a Communist takeover, without telling his own government. Links have also been proven between the CIA and P2, and between P2 and right-wing terrorism. What has not yet been conclusively shown is what direct links there might have been between the CIA and right-wing terrorism. Many issues are not resolved. How much political control was there over this operation? Some ex-ministers of defence said they knew about it. Others denied it. The main loser seems to be the Socialist leader, Bettino Craxi. He said that when he was prime minister he never knew about it. Then a letter was produced with his signature saying he had been informed. It appears he had been told broad details, but chose not to inquire further. [118] The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec), March 16, 1993, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS; Pg. D12, 825 words, Revolution against corruption to change Italy profoundly; It's a nation that is about to transform itself into a modern Western democracy, RAY MOSELEY; CHICAGO TRIBUNE; REUTER, ROME [119] The Irish Times, June 01, 1993, CITY EDITION, WORLD NEWS; ROME LETTER; Pg. 9, 881 words, Many question explanation for Florence bomb, By PADDY AGNEW [120] The Washington Post, April 12, 1985, Friday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 642 words, Reagan to Go To German War Cemetery, By David Hoffman, Washington Post Staff Writer; Staff writer Juan Williams and staff researcher James Schwartz contributed to this report., SANTA BARBARA, Calif., April 11, 1985 [121] see  above footnote [122] "The New York Times, April 16, 1985, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 1, Column 4; Foreign Desk, 785 words, REAGAN WEIGHS VISIT TO CONCENTRATION CAMP, By GERALD M. BOYD , Special to the New York Times, WASHINGTON, April 15" "White House officials said today that President Reagan was considering a stop at a Nazi concentration camp site in addition to a visit to a military cemetery in West Germany next month. The statement came amid criticism from Jewish and veterans' groups of Mr. Reagan's plans to lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery, where members of the SS, the Nazi elite guard, are among the dead. In New York, Elie Wiesel, the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, said there could be no trade-off by combining visits to a camp and to the cemetery. 'A visit to this particular cemetery is to us unacceptable,' he said. 'This is not just a cemetery of soldiers. This is tombstones of the SS, which is beyond what we can imagine. These are and were criminals.' Mr. Wiesel said the council had sent a telegram requesting a meeting between himself and Mr. Reagan. (Page A5.) President Reagan's spokesman, Larry Speakes, said Donald T. Regan, the White House chief of staff, had ordered Michael K. Deaver, deputy chief of staff, to leave for Bonn 'to look at additional possibilities' for Mr. Reagan's itinerary. A White House official said this involved the consideration of several former concentration camps where Jews and other victims were tortured and killed. Earlier the White House had ruled out a visit to the Dachau camp. The official said no thought was being given to eliminating a visit to the Bitburg cemetery." [123] Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), April 22, 1985, Monday, International; Pg. 9, 906 words, West German leader trapped in no-win situation, By Elizabeth Pond, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, Bonn [124] "In Bonn, Kohl said in a speech to Parliament that many Nazi troops had 'no chance to escape conscription into the Waffen-SS.' Kohl said he regrets that Reagan has run into protests over the planned visit but added that the trip will go ahead as scheduled next month." Source: The Washington Post, April 26, 1985, Friday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 1487 words, Aides Hope To Smother Trip Furor; Reagan Will Honor Anti-Nazi Effort While in Germany, By David Hoffman, Washington Post Staff Writer. [125] Financial Times (London,England), April 20, 1985, Saturday, SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 2, 422 words, Fury grows over Reagan's German war graves visit, BY REGINALD DALE, U.S. EDITOR IN WASHINGTON [126] The Washington Post, April 29, 1985, Monday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 805 words, President Supported On Trip; Nixon and Kissinger Back Cemetery Visit, By David Hoffman, Washington Post Staff Writer "Former president Richard M. Nixon privately urged President Reagan last week not to back down from plans to visit the German military cemetery at Bitburg where 49 Nazi SS soldiers are buried, according to informed administration sources. Nixon, whose views were solicited by senior White House officials, is reported to have said the planned cemetery visit had caused 'substantial domestic political damage' but urged Reagan not to bow to protests from groups representing Jews, veterans and others to cancel the appearance. White House sources also said that former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger had urged Reagan to go ahead with the planned visit May 5, citing the importance of relations with West Germany. Nixon's advice came as 257 House members wrote West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week urging him to withdraw the invitation and 82 senators urged Reagan in a resolution to reassess the Bitburg visit. The White House has been searching for ways to dampen the controversy. Chief of staff Donald T. Regan said yesterday the Bitburg cemetery visit is now scheduled to last only 10 to 15 minutes, while the president will spend 'over an hour or even longer' at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp earlier the same day." [127] See next footnote. [128] NOTE: this footnote contains several references, marked alphabetically (a), (b), (c), ... The source documentation that such letters indicate is at the end of this note #128. When the illegal involvement of practically the entire US intelligence establishment with the Contra terrorists was discovered and made public, it was known as the Iran-Contra scandal (because the same people were also funding Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamist revolutionary forces). Before 1984, Vincent Cannistraro was a "CIA agent in Central America" (a) where he was "a member of the CIA's clandestine service" (b). What is the CIA's clandestine service? "[The] Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine service..., manages the agency's counterterrorism center, espionage and paramilitary operations" (c). The emphasis is on "paramilitary operations," which is a euphemism for terrorist forces used to destabilize other countries. So Cannistraro was illegally training "paramilitaries" - i.e. terrorists - in Central America before 1984. Then he became "Director of NSC [National Security Council] Intelligence from 1984 to 1987" (d) where he was responsible for "coordinating intelligence programs throughout the [Reagan] administration" (a). This is not a coincidence: 1984 is also when President Reagan "transferred the Contra program from the CIA to the NSC after congressional authorization for the CIA's Contra program expired in mid 1984" (e). So, 1)  before 1984, Vincent Cannistraro was in the field, in Central America, helping the CIA turn ex-Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza's thugs into the ultra-right-wing Contra terrorist force; and then 2)  in 1984 he was brought over to direct the Contra program (and everything else, as he was the man in charge of all covert activity in the Reagan administration) from his new perch at the National Security Council, when Reagan had the Contra program moved there. You might think that, after the explosion in the headlines of the Iran-Contra scandal, Cannistraro would be shunned by the American Establishment. You would be wrong. These days, he is "ABC News intelligence analyst Vincent Cannistraro" (f). [Local footnotes below] (a) United Press International, June 15, 1987, Monday, AM cycle, Washington News, 519 words, Walsh draws testimony from NSC officials, By LORI SANTOS, WASHINGTON: "Vincent Cannistraro, 41, the NSC director for intelligence programs, appeared before the federal grand jury in the morning, following Friday's testimony by another former top NSC official -- Ray Burghardt, who served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Latin American affairs. Both men, once tapped by former national security adviser John Poindexter to take over Contra matters from North, left the NSC when Frank Carlucci took over Jan. 2 in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal. Cannistraro, a former CIA agent in Central America, was assigned last summer to work with North on Contra affairs, and in his role of coordinating intelligence programs throughout the administration, he headed several inter-agency meetings on aid for the rebels. Contra sources have told United Press International they were introduced in the summer of 1986 by North to Cannistraro as someone they would be working with. Cannistraro declined to comment." (b) "Vince Cannistraro, a former member of the CIA's clandestine service and one-time director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council." -- Associated Press, March 2, 1997, Sunday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 788 words, CIA cuts off more than 1,000 informants, many for criminality, By JOHN DIAMOND, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON (c) "the Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine service, which manages the agency's counterterrorism center, espionage and paramilitary operations." -- The Washington Post,  August 09, 2002, Friday, Final Edition,  A SECTION; Pg. A01,  2035 words,  The Slowly Changing Face of the CIA Spy; Recruits Eager to Fight Terror Are Flooding In, but Few Look the Part, Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer (d) "Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA's investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103..." -- From a PBS interview that may be read here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/ (e) Kornbluh, P., and M. Byrne. 1993. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The declassified history. New York: The New Press. (p.xviii): President Reagan "transferred the Contra program from the CIA to the NSC after congressional authorization for the CIA's Contra program expired in mid 1984." (f) ABC News, World News Now (2:00 AM ET) - ABC, January 15, 2002 Tuesday, 1056 words, Excerpt from "Nightline" discusses the elusiveness and the possibilities of where Osama bin Laden might be, ALISON STEWART; DEREK McGINTY, MICHEL MARTIN [128a]  Why the First Gulf War? To Protect Iranian Islamism Little-known facts make it clear that this was the real purpose of Bush senior's war Francisco Gil-White; Emperor's Clothes; 8 August 2003. http://www.tenc.net/gilwhite/gulfwar1.htm [129] The New York Times, December 3, 2001, Monday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 19; Column 2; Editorial Desk , 646 words, Keep the Focus on Al Qaeda, By Vincent M. Cannistraro;  Vincent M. Cannistraro was chief of counterterrorism operations at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1988 to 1990 and director of intelligence programs for the National Security Council in the Reagan administration., MCLEAN, Va. [130] December 30, 1985, Monday, PM cycle, Domestic News, 2171 words, Wave Of Terrorism Voted Top Story Of 1985, By JOHN BARBOUR, AP Newsfeatures Writer. [131] Both quotes from: Simpson, Christopher, 1988, "Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War." New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. (p.43 and footnote at bottom of page). [131a] The Guardian (London), January 12, 1988, 971 words, An uprising that took the Israelis by surprise: How Jerusalem misjudged the spontaneous unrest in the occupied territories, By IAN BLACK, RAMALLAH [132] Source: Public Opinion Online, 81 words, MIDEAST, ISRAEL, RUSSIA, DIPLOMACY, January 1988, MIDEAST SURVEY; LENGTH: 81 words; ACCESSION NUMBER: 0303009; QUESTION NUMBER: 038; QUESTION: (Do you favor or oppose convening an international peace conference comprised of Israel, Arab nations, representatives of the Palestinians, the US (United States) and the Soviet Union to try to resolve the problems in the Middle East?) Should the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) be invited to that conference or should they not be invited?; RESULTS: Yes - 74%, No  - 24, Don't know -  2; ORGANIZATION CONDUCTING SURVEY: PENN & SCHOEN ASSOCIATES; POPULATION: National adult; NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 810; INTERVIEW METHOD: Telephone; SURVEY SPONSOR: Anti-Defamation League; QUESTION NOTES: Asked of those who favor an international peace conference to resolve problems in the Middle East (78%); BEGINNING DATE: January 1988; ENDING DATE: January 1988; SOURCE DOCUMENT: MIDEAST SURVEY; DATE OF RELEASE OF SOURCE DOCUMENT: January 1988; QUESTION ID: USPENN.88MIDE, R38; LOAD-DATE: July 10, 1998 [133] Xinhua General News Service, NOVEMBER 6, 1987, FRIDAY, 280 words, arafat praises moscow, raps washington, moscow, november 6; ITEM NO: 1106007 [134] IPS-Inter Press Service, April 1, 1988, Friday, 679 words, MIDEAST: SHULTZ TO PRESS AHEAD DESPITE PLAN'S UNPOPULARITY, WASHINGTON, April 1 [134a] United Press International, October 15, 1987, Thursday, PM cycle, International, 660 words, Palestinians threaten protests during Shultz visit, By WILLIAM B. RIES, JERUSALEM [134b] Japan Economic Newswire, OCTOBER 13, 1987, TUESDAY, 214 words, ABU JIHAD PREDICTS ARAB UNREST WILL CONTINUE, PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (PLO), BEIRUT, OCT. 13 [134c] United Press International, October 13, 1987, Tuesday, PM cycle, International, 652 words, Israeli troops kill woman, wound five during general strike, By WILLIAM B. RIES, RAMALLAH, Israeli-occupied West Bank FULL TEXT: Cornered Israeli troops shot and killed a mother of eight and wounded five people during a general strike by Arabs protesting an attempt by Jews to pray at one of Islam's holiest sites. The unrest Monday in the occupied territories followed nearly two weeks of clashes and mounting tensions between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Most shops in Arab East Jerusalem, the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Nablus, and Omar El Muchtar in the Gaza Strip were closed by strikes Monday. The shooting came during a demonstration by Arabs protesting efforts Sunday by a small group of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. Moslems believe the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven from the Temple Mount The site also is holy to Jews, who claim the Temple Mount is the site of King Solomon's Temple. Inayad Hindi, 35, a school teacher and a mother of eight, was hit by gunfire from Israeli troops who were trapped by a mob in the center of Ramallah, about 9 miles north of Jerusalem, Israeli millitary sources said. ''There is no reason to assume that woman who was hit and killed participated in the riot. To our dismay, she was caught in the area,'' an unidentified Israeli commander told Army Radio. ''When forces open fire to disperse a crowd, sometimes there are additional casualties.'' A spokesman at Ramallah Government Hospital, where Hindi was pronounced dead on arrival, said she was shopping when she was shot. Five other people, ranging in age from 16 to 68, suffered gunshot wounds. Four were admitted in fair condition, and the fifth was treated and released, the spokesman said. The 68-year-old man also was not taking part in the disturbance, the military sources said. The incident began when several dozen people threw rocks at an Israeli vehicle, smashing the windshield and slightly injuring one passenger. Border police and two soldiers opened fire on the crowd when they became trapped by the demonstrators, military sources said. After the shooting, Israeli troops patrolled the streets and rooftops of the city. Broken glass and stones were scattered on the streets in the center of Ramallah. The hospital spokesman said the demonstrators were mostly young people angry about the tear-gassing of several hundred Moslems Sunday on the Temple Mount and Jews attempting to visit the holy site at the same time. Israeli troops fired tear gas to quell a riot by several hundred Moslems near the gold-topped Mosque of Omar, also known as the Dome of the Rock. Police said the Moslems began rioting when a tear-gas cannister accidentally exploded. Jews in the years since Mosque of Omar and the silver-domed Al-Aqsa Mosque were built in the 6th and 7th centuries have been forbidden from visiting the 36-acre Temple Mount platform. Instead, they have made pilgrimages to the Wailing Wall, the last visible remnant of the Second Temple Period. Since Israel captured the Old City in the 1967 war, Jews have been allowed on the platform, but only in small numbers. Other disturbances broke out in Arab East Jerusalem Monday, but there were no reports of injuries, Jerusalem police spokesman Rafi Levi said. In the Gaza Strip, stones were thrown at a passing Israeli car, slightly injuring two passengers. Many merchants in Arab East Jerusalem and the other three towns closed their shops to observe the general strike. ''They're all so mad about the Jews who want to go to the mosque to pray,'' said Omar Said, 32, who kept his brassware shop open. Monday's unrest came after nearly two weeks of Arab-Jewish clashes and disturbances in Jerusalem and the occupied territories seized in the 1967 Six Day War. Israeli troops in the occupied Gaza Strip have killed seven alleged Arab guerrillas in shootouts this month. The slayings have sparked major disturbances in the area. [134d] United Press International, October 15, 1987, Thursday, AM cycle, International, 592 words, Suspected Arab guerrillas arrested, By LOUIS TOSCANO, JERUSALEM [134e] Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), October 13, 1987, Tuesday, News in Brief; Pg. 2, 83 words, Israeli soldiers kill one, injure five in unrest, Ramallah, occupied West Bank. [134f] The Toronto Star, October 13, 1987, Tuesday, ME2, NEWS; Pg. A8, 450 words, Palestinians riot as mom shot by Israelis, (REUTER), RAMALLAH, West Bank [134g] Herald, October 13, 1987 Tuesday, 525 words, MOTHER KILLED [134h] Financial Times (London,England), February 26, 1988, Friday, SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 3, 933 words, 'After The Violence Comes Civil Disobedience', Tony Walker, Damascus [134i] The New York Times, December 9, 1988, Friday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 10, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1685 words, After a Year, Palestinians Call Uprising Stagnant, By JOEL BRINKLEY, Special to the New York Times, RAMALLAH, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Dec. 8 [135] The Associated Press, January 2, 1988, Saturday, PM cycle, International News, 647 words, Army Says Tough Tactics Thwarted Violence on PLO Anniversary, By JOCELYN NOVECK, Associated Press Writer, JERUSALEM, Israel-Violence [136] United Press International, January 25, 1988, Monday, BC cycle, International, 348 words, Senior offiical says PLO is behind Palestinian unrest, BEIRUT, Lebanon [137] Xinhua General News Service, JANUARY 3, 1988, SUNDAY, 296 words, plo leader vows to continue struggle in occupied lands, kuwait, january 3; ITEM NO: 0103055 [138] Xinhua General News Service, FEBRUARY 5, 1988, FRIDAY, 129 words, fatah calls for reinforcing uprising in occupied lands, tunis, february 5; ITEM NO: 0205004 [139] The Associated Press, January 6, 1988, Wednesday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 453 words, U.S. Stands Ground Against Israeli Criticism, By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer, WASHINGTON, U.S.-Israel [140] Xinhua General News Service, JANUARY 16, 1988, SATURDAY, 226 words, arafat on palestinian uprising in occupied lands, beirut, january 16; ITEM NO: 0116062 [141] United Press International, January 7, 1988, Thursday, AM cycle, International, 409 words, Speculation on Palestinian government-in-exile intensifies, BY MAGDA ABU-FADIL, NICOSIA, Cyprus [142] Xinhua General News Service, JANUARY 20, 1988, WEDNESDAY, 179 words, palestinian commando operation in northern israel, beirut, january 20; ITEM NO: 0120158 [143] The Associated Press, January 4, 1988, Monday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 547 words, Peres Says Talks Could End West Bank Violence and Resolve Longterm Conflict, By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON, Israel-Peres [144] See footnote 41. [145] The Associated Press, January 28, 1988, Thursday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 794 words, U.S. Weighs Reopening Peace Talks; May Seek Missiles For Jordan, By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer, WASHINGTON, U.S.-Mideast [146] “The PLO issued two declarations this week, one via a PLO representative in Cairo and the other from its headquarters in Tunis, approving Palestinian attendance at a meeting with Shultz next week, Kenaan said.” SOURCE: The Associated Press, March 29, 1988, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 532 words, Palestinian Says PLO Okayed Meeting With Shultz, JERUSALEM, Israel-PLO [147] Xinhua General News Service, MARCH 27, 1988, SUNDAY, 192 words, egypt applauds shultz's meeting with palestinian professors, cairo, march 27; ITEM NO: 0327117 [148] The Associated Press, March 31, 1988, Thursday, PM cycle, International News, 526 words, Netanyahu Resigned To Protest Shultz Meeting, By MASHA HAMILTON, Associated Press Writer, JERUSALEM, Israel-PLO [149] The Associated Press, April 1, 1988, Friday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline, 395 words, Senators Urge Shultz Not to Meet with PLO, By RUTH SINAI, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON, Congress-Mideast [150] “The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution Monday calling for U.N.-sponsored peace talks on the Middle East, saying it would interfere with a U.S. diplomatic initiative. The vote was 14-1.” SOURCE: The Associated Press, February 1, 1988, Monday, AM cycle, International News, 632 words, U.S. Vetoes Resolution On Israeli-Occupied Territories, By CANDICE HUGHES, Associated Press Writer, UNITED NATIONS, U.N.-Israel. “Secretary of State George Shultz, after visiting Israel and three Arab countries, said Sunday he believes the United States and Egypt have a ''package that is promising'' for breaking the stalemate in Middle East peace efforts.” SOURCE: United Press International, February 28, 1988, Sunday, AM cycle, International, 590 words, Shultz finds ''promising'' peace package in Egypt, By JIM ANDERSON, CAIRO, Egypt [151] United Press International, March 22, 1988, Tuesday, PM cycle, International, 557 words, Shamir cheered for opposing U.S. peace initiative, By LOUIS TOSCANO, JERUSALEM [152] United Press International, December 30, 1988, Friday, BC cycle, Commentary, 703 words, Washington Window Reagan lays foreign policy groundwork for Bush, By HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter, WASHINGTON [153] A bulleted list of Donald Rumsfeld's career: http://usgovinfo.about.com/blrumsfeld.htm [153a] American Embassy Tel Aviv - Press Section; U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer; "The American Role in the Oslo Process"; BESA Center, Bar Ilan University; December 6, 2001 http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/mission/amb/120601.html [155] The Independent (London), April 19, 1991, Friday, FOREIGN NEWS PAGE; Page 12 , 667 words, Baker visit angers Israeli settlers, From DAVID HOROVITZ in Kifl Harith, West Bank. [156] The Times, May 14, 1991, Tuesday, Overseas news, 302 words, Shamir faces US cash squeeze, From Richard Beeston in Jerusalem [156a] A PRECARIOUS PEACE CONFERENCE THOUGH THE HARD WORK IS FINISHED, MIDEAST TALKS; COULD FALL APART AT ANY MOMENT, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), October 3, 1991, THURSDAY, FIVE STAR Edition, EDITORIAL; Pg. 3C, 915 words, Victor T. Le Vine. [157] The Washington Post, August 2, 1991, Friday, Final Edition, EDITORIAL; PAGE A25, 923 words, Road to Nowhere, Charles Krauthammer [158] "ISRAEL 1991 TO PRESENT; MADRID 1991"; Palestine Facts. http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_madrid_desc.php [160] ARAFAT SHARES PEACE PRIZE WITH TWO ISRAELI LEADERS, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), October 15, 1994, SATURDAY, FIVE STAR Edition, NEWS; Pg. 1A, 687 words, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL [161] “What were the details of the Oslo Accords?”; Palestine Facts. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_oslo_accords.php [162] Evening Standard (London) May 19, 1994; SECTION: Pg. 9; LENGTH: 907 words; HEADLINE: A NEW KIND OF JIHAD [162a] You will find the most complete documentation on the history and ideology of the PLO here: “HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm Some of this material was originally published here: “Anti-Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership”; Israel National News; May 26, '03 / 24 Iyar 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2405 [162b] Israel-Palestinian Peace Process Threatened by Kidnapping of Soldier, The Associated Press, October 11, 1994, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 723 words, By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer, JERUSALEM [163] The Baltimore Sun,  July 11, 2001 Wednesday,  FINAL EDITION,  Pg. 1A,  1574 words,  Israelis taking darker view of Palestinian intentions; Many see existence of Jewish state at risk,  Mark Matthews. [164] The Associated Press, May 19, 1994, Thursday, AM cycle, International News, 629 words, Brothers Swear Off Violence - For Now, By SAID GHAZALI, Associated Press Writer, DURA, West Bank [165] Agence France Presse -- English, June 16, 1992, News, 854 words, War on collaborators flares up, GAZA CITY [166] Rights group says up to 950 Palestinian collaborators killed, United Press International, January 9, 1994, Sunday, BC cycle, International, 430 words, JERUSALEM An Israeli human rights organization said Sunday between 750 and 950 Palestinians ''suspected of collaboration'' with Israeli authorities have been killed by Palestinian activists since the beginning of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising. The B'tselem organization issued the first detailed study of human rights violations against Palestinians by other Palestinians under Israeli occupation. B'tselem officials said in addition to those killed on suspicion of collaboration, thousands more were tortured. (…) The new report said the tortures and killings of collaborators ''constitute gross violations of basic human rights.'' It said less than 50 percent of those killed for suspicion of collaborating with Israel were actually working with Israeli authorities. Many ''collaborators'' were in fact executed for being ''moral offenders,'' such as homosexuals, drug dealers and criminals whose behavior was unacceptable to Palestinian activist groups. B'tselem found the fundamentalist Hamas group overtly supported the killings, while Palestine Liberation Organization leaders spoke out publicly against the killings but did not take the necessary measures to prevent them. [167] Palestinians arm some former prisoners, United Press International, June 22, 1994, Wednesday, BC cycle, International, 478 words, BY SAUD ABU RAMADAN, GAZA CITY, June 22 [168] The Associated Press, May 23, 1994, Monday, AM cycle, International News, 496 words, PLO Security Chief Warns He'll Meet Violence With Violence, By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer, JERICHO, West Bank [169] Xinhua News Agency, MAY 24, 1994, TUESDAY, 357 words, weapons to be registered in gaza, jericho, jerusalem, may 24; ITEM NO: 0524096 [170] Associated Press Worldstream, May 20, 1996; Monday, International news, 122 words, JERUSALEM [171] Associated Press Worldstream, March 09, 1996; Saturday, International news, 864 words, RON KAMPEAS , JERUSALEM. [172] IPS-Inter Press Service, December 2, 1998, Wednesday, 918 words, POLITICS-MIDDLE EAST: SECRET SERVICES IN THE NAME OF PEACE?, By Dilip Hiro, LONDON, Dec. 2 [172a] Islamic Jihad: We Have 50 Willing To Die In Suicide Attacks, Associated Press Worldstream, November 16, 1994; Wednesday, International news, 513 words, JERUSALEM [173] Associated Press Online, November 27, 2004 Saturday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 991 words, Palestinian Security Unit to Be Disbanded, IBRAHIM BARZAK; Associated Press Writer, GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip [174] “Arab Peace Strategy and the Fragmentation of Israeli Society”; MEMRI; July 21, 1999; No.40. http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP4099 [175] Old Foes Meet Today At Israel-PLO Signing; White House Ceremony to Open New Era, The Washington Post, September 13, 1993, Monday, Final Edition, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1, 1289 words, Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post Staff Writer [176] Much is on hold as we await George Bush's second term,  Ottawa Citizen, January 15, 2005 Saturday,  Final Edition, NEWS; David Warren; Pg. B6, 730 words, David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen. [177] Associated Press Online, November 27, 2004 Saturday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 991 words, Palestinian Security Unit to Be Disbanded, IBRAHIM BARZAK; Associated Press Writer, GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip. [178] Barghouti Seeking Palestinian Presidency, Associated Press Online, December 1, 2004 Wednesday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 836 words, MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH; Associated Press Writer, RAMALLAH, West Bank [179] Newsday (New York, NY),  September 8, 2002 Sunday,  NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION,  Pg. A05,  1333 words,  WEST BANK; Inside the Crucible; An occasional series on te Israel-Palestine conflict; Militia Goes More Quietly; Al-Aqsa changes tactics after losses,  By Matthew McAllester. MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT [180] “The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades…claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP.” Source: Palestinians denounce Tel Aviv suicide attack,  Agence France Presse -- English, February 25, 2005 Friday,  11:03 PM GMT, 123 words, GAZA Feb 25 [181] Tel Aviv suicide bomber identified,  Xinhua General News Service, February 26, 2005 Saturday,  5:00 AM EST, WORLD NEWS; Political, 196 words, RAMALLAH [182] "Can Israel survive if it does not defend itself?: The Jewish people must come to grips with their radical opposition to self-defense"; Historical and Investigative Research, last revised 13 September 2005; by Francisco Gil-White http://www.hirhome.com/israel/defense.htm [183] “A Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity said preliminary inquiries pointed to the involvement of Hezbollah in the attack, although the radical Lebanese Shiite group denied any involvement.” SOURCE: Palestinian bomber told mother: 'I won't be home for dinner',  Agence France Presse -- English, February 26, 2005 Saturday,  2:25 PM GMT, 487 words, DEIR AL-GHUSSUN, West Bank Feb 26 [184] “IDF Widens Attacks to Samaria; 7 Terrorists Killed”; Israel National News; 17:53 Jul 15, '05 / 8 Tammuz 5765; by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=85883 [185]  The following are excerpts from the following article: “A Holocaust-Denier as Prime Minister of “Palestine?”; by Dr. Rafael Medoff; March 2003. http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2003-03-denier.php [Excerpt begins here] While European Union officials praised Yasir Arafat’s decision to appoint his first-ever prime minister, historians of the Holocaust winced at the news  that a leading candidate for the job is the author of a book denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews. The candidate is Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), Arafat’s second in command, and his book, published (in Arabic) in 1983, is titled ‘The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement.’ It was originally his doctoral dissertation, completed at Moscow Oriental College, in the Soviet Union. According to a translation of the text provided by the Simon Wiesenthal  Center, Abbas’s book repeatedly attempts to cast doubt on the fact that the Nazis slaughtered six million Jews. He writes: “Following the war, word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews ... The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller--below one million.” Abbas denies that the gas chambers were used to murder Jews, quoting a “scientific study” to that effect by French Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson. Abbas then asserts: “The historian and author, Raoul Hilberg, thinks that the figure does not exceed 890,000.” This is, of course, utterly false. Professor Hilberg, a distinguished historian and author of the classic study ‘The Destruction of the European Jews’, has never said or written any such thing. Abbas believes the number six million is the product of a Zionist conspiracy: “It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure so that their gains will be greater,” he writes. “This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions--fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand.” Another falsehood. In fact, no serious scholar proposes such a figure. After reducing the magnitude of the Nazi slaughter so that it no longer seems to have been a full-scale Holocaust, Abbas seeks to absolve the Nazis by blaming the Zionist leadership for whatever killings did take place. According to Abbas, “a partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement ... [the Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.” In addition to encouraging the persecution of Jews so they would emigrate to the Holy Land, the Zionist leaders actually *wanted* Jews to be murdered, because --in Abbas’s words--”having more victims meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiation table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over. However, since Zionism was not a fighting partner--suffering victims in a battle--it had no escape but to offer up human beings, under any name, to raise the number of victims, which they could then boast of at the moment of accounting.” (…) Yet some in the media have treated Abbas with kid gloves, to say the least.  The official BCC News Profile of Abbas reports: “A highly intellectual man,  Abbas studied law in Egypt before doing a Ph.D. in Moscow. He is the author of several books.” The New York Times recently characterized Abbas as “a lawyer and  historian ... He holds a doctorate in history from the Moscow Oriental  College; his topic was Zionism.” Neither the BBC nor the Times have offered any  further explanation as to the contents of Abbas’s writings. Bestowing the title “historian” upon Mahmoud Abbas awards his writings a stature they do not deserve, and deals a grievous insult to every genuine historian. (…) [Excerpt ends here] [186] A Rude Awakening ,  The New York Times, February 5, 2004 Thursday,  Late Edition - Final , Section A; Column 5; Editorial Desk; Pg. 31, 756 words,  By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN [186a] From the jacket to Friedman's latest book: The World is Flat (2005), New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. [187] Abbas: Death threats forced me to quit,  The Jerusalem Post, June 15, 2004, Tuesday, NEWS; Pg. 5, 270 words, Daniel Farber [188] “Mahmoud Abbas, 69, also known as Abu Mazen. In pole position, given he has just taken over Mr Arafat's role as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation following a unanimous vote of its executive committee.” SOURCE: Key players line up for Palestinian starring role, The Herald (Glasgow), November 12, 2004, Pg. 6, 599 words, Michael Settle And Robbie Dinwoodie [189] Arafat illness: Sharon's strategy frustrated by demise of enemy: Gaza plan PM loses key justification, The Guardian (London) - Final Edition, November 6, 2004, Guardian Home Pages, Pg. 4, 874 words, Chris McGreal [190] Key players line up for Palestinian starring role, The Herald (Glasgow), November 12, 2004, Pg. 6, 599 words, Michael Settle And Robbie Dinwoodie [191] SHARON REJECTS BUSH'S CALL TO TAKE DOWN SECURITY' FENCE, The Independent (London), July 30, 2003, Wednesday, FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 12, 541 words, RUPERT CORNWELL IN WASHINGTON International activists try to cut through the fence dividing the West Bank from Israel Saif Dahlah/AFP [192] BUSH CALLS FOR HALT TO NEW SETTLEMENTS AS SHARON WARNS OF ‘CIVIL WAR’ IN ISRAEL, The Independent (London), April 12, 2005, Tuesday, Final Edition; FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 28,29, 674 words, BY RUPERT CORNWELL IN WASHINGTON [193] Disengagement Opponents Vow to March on Gaza Despite Police Ban, Voice of America News, July 18, 2005, VOA ENGLISH SERVICE, 437 words www.hirhome.com