The Government has been playing an extremely irresponsible game of Head-In-The-Sand in regards to the threat, or has been doing a damm fine job of pretending to. Watch the Northern border folks, and don't trust anyone just because they're a Canadian.
Everybody Loves Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa
Comedy. Poor Amr! All he wants to do is build Arab opinion into a cohesive and dynamic force, but his meddling parents and oafish brother keep dropping in to annoy him.
Survivor
Reality Drama. A group of people endure an unending series of threats and challenges. Starring the entire population of Israel.
The Ul-Haq Factor
Current Events. Feisty host Bill Ul-Haq takes no prisoners in his daily political talk show. Tonight's Talking Points Memo: Where is Usama? Why Haven't We Found Him? Where Has Usama Gone? Caution: you're about to enter a No Bin Zone.
Just Shoot Me!
Reality Drama. British celebrity journalist Robert Fisk begs the inhabitants of a Pakistan refugee camp to attack him.
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Comedy. George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice struggle to maintain a consistent approach towards the Middle East.
Sesame Arab Street
For children. Join lovable Grover, Big Bird, Elmo, Bert and Ernie as they sing songs, learn the alphabet, and offer hateful tirades against America and Israel's latest political and military plans.
Semtex in the City
Drama. Three young Palestinian women discuss dating, romance, and bomb concealment techniques.
Politically Correct
Talk. A panel of guests from CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post congratulate each other on their analysis of current world events. Tonight's topic: We All Think That Israel Is Wrong.
Law & Order
Educational. Each week, a different Western leader attempts to explain the concepts of "law" and "order" to Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.Three hrs.
From Instapundit, no link given, so I'm going to reproduce the entire thing.
Mr. Riviera, if you would take your hostility down a notch and actually listen to other people instead of your own echo-chamber of leftists, you might find that most people in America (most of the people I know, anyways, and I'm quite conservative) were and are quite concerned about the plight of oppressed people around the world. The problem is that when we propose solutions people like YOU scream bloody murder and accuse us of racism, or imperialism or colonialism or what-have-you...all because our proposals differ from yours.
We want to help, but not just throw money at the problem. We want to help, but we understand that might mean expecting some cultures to help themselves while we help them. We want to help people be free. But any time anyone who offers a solution that doesn't toe the leftist-ideological line, that person or group gets shouted down as being racist, colonialist, imperialist, or what-have-you. To our discredit, those of us being yelled at by the likes of you, have closed our mouths. But that doesn't take away from the fact that people like you CREATED the silence you noticed before 9/11. You and your disrespectful, foul-mouthed, Leninist tactics.
So, before you go calling someone a "f-ing" anything, look at yourself and close your mouth - for a change.
This is required reading for every person living in the west. This is the battle that Israel is fighting in the West Bank. Not against a helpless civillian population, but against urban terrorists who are dug in, prepared, use women and children as cover and prepare traps for the enemy. The "engineer" at no point mentions any massacre of hundreds of Palestinians.
Just in case Al-Ahram yanks the page, here's the text.
The 'engineer'
An engineer of the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the invasion of the West Bank spoke to Jonathan Cook about the days of defiance in Jenin
Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. To the Israelis he is the most lethal, and wanted, of terrorists. The poison from the Cobra's head.
We meet late last Thursday, hours after he escaped from the camp as Israeli soldiers took control of the area. We are still close enough to Jenin that we can see the constant stream of illumination flares, three launched by the army at a time, that light up the soldiers' dark work in the city below.
But Omar will not be staying here long. He is going to ground deeper in the West Bank before regrouping with his comrades from Jenin.
There may not be too many. Even according to Israeli army sources, at least a hundred fighters were killed and hundreds more wounded and captured during the eight days of savage fighting.
Omar will not give his name or age. He is slim, in his mid-20s, with a closely cropped beard. He is a member of Islamic Jihad, but says in Jenin all the factions were loyal to only one cause: liberation or death.
Visible beneath a blue bomber jacket is the tightly bandaged stump of his right arm, the end of which he rubs distractedly.
Won't give his name or age. Understandable security precaution. Not like he has any identifying marks, is it?
How did he lose it? During the previous invasion of Jenin by the Israeli army several weeks ago, he says. He was hiding with only his arm visible as he tried to throw a 'kwa' -- a home-made pipe bomb -- at a tank. Shrapnel from a shell severed it, he says.
But as a bomb-maker, one of the most highly respected positions in the Palestinian resistance, he could equally have lost the arm in less glorious circumstances: in one of the explosions that are a professional hazard of his job.
Known as "scoring your own goal", so I hear. Omar admits he is one of only a few dozen fighters not to emerge either dead or in plastic handcuffs from the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the Israeli army's invasion of the West Bank.
Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.
Remember, the Israeli offensive was futile and achieved nothing except to inflame the Arab street.
"Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month."
Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.
"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.
"We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses -- in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."
The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men.
Connected by wires, the bombs were set off remotely, triggered by the current from a car battery.
According to Omar, everyone in the camp, including the children, knew where the explosives were located so that there was no danger of civilians being injured. It was the one weakness in the plan.
"We were betrayed by the spies among us," he says. The wires to more than a third of the bombs were cut by soldiers accompanied by collaborators. "If it hadn't been for the spies, the soldiers would never have been able to enter the camp. Once they penetrated the camp, it was much harder to defend."
These are the people that will rise to build a palestinian society in Peace, once Arafat and his kind are extirpated.
And what about the explosion and ambush last Tuesday which killed 13 soldiers?
"They were lured there," he says. "We all stopped shooting and the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving." The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby- trapped area.
"When the senior officers realised what had happened, they shouted through megaphones that they wanted an immediate cease-fire. We let them approach to retrieve the men and then opened fire.
"Some of the soldiers were so shocked and frightened that they mistakenly ran towards us."
On Wednesday, after the fighters ran out of ammunition, he says, armoured vehicles roamed the streets calling out to them in Arabic: "You are finished and can't win against us. We are more powerful than you. Surrender."
He saw one fighter who went down to the street with his hands in the air shot dead by snipers. He chose to flee the camp, although he will not say how.
Using his left arm, Omar shot a revolver during the gun battles.
With a new intensity on his face, he leans forward to ask a question. Do I think the doctors will be able to give him a strong new artificial arm with fingers he can operate. I don't know, I say. Why?
Can anything possibly better demonstrate how badly deluded this man is? The only doctors who would be able to do anything like that who live in the area are of the people and nation he is dedicated to exterminating. "Because I want to be able to hold a heavy rifle again. That way I can kill more Israeli soldiers. It's that or become a suicide bomber." (Emphasis added)
What's this? A man who makes bombs, reluctant to become a suicide bomber? How interesting. perhaps since he makes the bombs he has a slightly better appreciation of exactly what self immolation means.
I've started forwarding this to whoever in the media might actually give a damm. So far, the National Post, Bob Macdonald at the Toronto Sun, Paul Jackson at the Calgary Sun, and the Best of the Web. I'll keep further track in the comments section.
Given that no other nation in the world truly supports Israel, this is a matter of life and death for the Israeli state. If the terrorist threat is allowed to continue on a neverending terrorism process, Israel will one day stand completely alone.
His contributors for 2000 include many firms that have had business dealings with Mr. Jackson in the past. Viacom, Bell Atlantic and GTE all gave to Mr. Jackson in 2000, and all have been threatened with boycotts or other sanctions by him.
Blaylock & Partners, which received a $750,000 account from AT&T at Mr. Jackson's behest, donated $30,000 to the education fund in 2000. AT&T contributed $425,000. SBC Communications, which solicited and received the support of Mr. Jackson for its merger with Ameritech, contributed $500,000. The New York Stock Exchange, which Mr. Jackson has accused of "redlining" minorities, donated $194,634. Mr. Jackson's office did not return repeated phone calls. Targets of Jackson boycott threats such as Toyota and SBC Communications have denied any quid pro quo in their subsequent donations.
Because nothing is sufficient for those unwilling to see.
That sums up my personal frustration with the Europeans and many of the people who surround me and are incapable of mentioning "Israel" without the word "but" coming withing five word of it. Those who are incapable of applying any moral principles whatsoever to the current crisis. Those who would maintain that a man's hunger would justify killing another man to get some of his bread if his demands were refused. Those who will justify, deny, ignore and evade the evidence of what is happening in Israel simply because it is in Israel and not to them.
This is insanity and it is evil. And if you think future generations won't see it that way, you are fooling yourself or you are a fool or you are deeply, deeply pessimistic about the future of humanity. This death cult is so blatantly obvious for any who are not too enamored with such romantic notions as "wars of national liberation" or "anti-imperialism" that it honestly baffles me when people cannot see it. (emphasis added)
He's right. We look at the European elites' appeasement of Hitler and we think "What fools, wasn't it obvious that that man would never be stopped by appeasement?" Well here we are seventy years later, seeing elites justify attacks on Israel based on the mistreatment of palestinians. The elites justified Hitler's threats and sabre rattling in demanding Czechloslovakia and other territory as a perfectly understandable response to how the Versailles treaty had gutted Germany. The elites tried to appease his threats. Here we are in 2002 watching elites trying to appease not just threats but outright racist violence which will bloom into full blown genocide given the chance to do so.
Yes, history is not going to be kind to the Europeans or our intellectual elite of the day. Assuming that we in the west are the ones who will write it.
