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Prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in association with the Fairness Project by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: [email protected]
In-Depth Issue:
Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant - Paul McGeough
When Dr. Mohammed Frah - director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons - was asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, he answered: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna."
Is Abu Nidal Really Dead? -
Ed Blanche
It might be prudent - and admittedly somewhat fanciful - to note that Abu Nidal's organization has in the past faked the deaths of its operatives and given them new identities to mislead intelligence services on their trail.
Useful Reference:
Progress Report on Palestinian Security, Economic, and Political Reforms (AIPAC)
What have the Palestinians done since Bush's speech?
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News Resources - USA and Europe:
U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney told a gathering of Korean War veterans on Thursday: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors - confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth. We are, after all, dealing with the same dictator who shoots at American and British pilots in the no-fly zone on a regular basis; the same dictator who dispatched a team of assassins to murder former President Bush as he traveled abroad; the same dictator who invaded Iran and Kuwait, and has fired ballistic missiles at Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel; the same dictator who has been on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism for nearly two decades. What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness. We must not simply look away, hope for the best, and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve. As President Bush has said, time is not on our side. Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action. (White House) The government is building criminal cases against sympathizers on U.S. soil suspected of providing material support to terror groups as diverse as Hamas and al-Qaida, according to documents and U.S. officials. "The evidence that is being developed suggests that America has been a piggy bank for certain terror organizations to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,'' said a senior law enforcement official directly involved in the investigation. One of the biggest efforts to stop Americans from supporting overseas terrorists is called Operation Green Quest, a joint effort of the Customs Service, several Treasury Department agencies, and the FBI that was begun last fall after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to documents and interviews, the operation has seized more than $23 million from suspected terrorist supporters, executed 78 search warrants, and resulted in 42 arrests and 27 indictments. (Associated Press) The Danish presidency of the European Union is working on a new Mideast peace plan to be presented to EU foreign ministers at their weekend meeting, the Berlingske Tidende newspaper reported on Wednesday. The first phase calls for a security agreement to be concluded between Israel and the Palestinians to end the violence ahead of Palestinian elections in January. The second phase calls for Palestinian reforms including the drafting of a constitution and setting up an independent judiciary. Finally, negotiations should take place to define Israel's borders, set up a new Palestinian state, and settle the status of Jerusalem. (Times of India) While the Israeli public focuses on a missile attack from Iraq, Israeli security and terrorism experts quietly worry about a more sinister prospect: that Saddam could equip Palestinian militants with deadly biological pathogens that, if disbursed clandestinely, could go undetected until scores of people fall ill. Today Saddam has a strategic asset that wasn't available during the Gulf War: a militant Palestinian population willing, even eager, to die in the fight against the Jewish state. (New Republic) Three Syrian dissidents who expressed their views in private meetings were convicted of incitement and sentenced to prison terms of between two and five years. The three dissidents - a lawyer, a doctor, and a professor of economics - were the last of 10 government opponents arrested in September 2001 during a crackdown on "salons," political discussion groups held in private homes. The salons sprang up after President Bashar Assad took office in 2000 and began to ease the totalitarian rule of his late father, Hafez Assad. The best-known of the salon dissidents are the MPs Riyadh Seif and Mamoun Homsi, who were stripped of their parliamentary immunity and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. (Business Day - South Africa) See also Release Syrian Prisoners of Conscience (Amnesty International) The Washington-based Israel on Campus Coalition has been created by Hillel and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation to act as an information-sharing and planning agency for more than 20 Jewish organizations on campus, and as a central clearinghouse for students and professionals. Wayne Firestone, former director of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League, is its director. Efforts to "take back the campus" will seek to influence public opinion through lectures, the Internet, and coalitions. (JTA) An irate Jackie Mason defended himself Wednesday over allegations that he demanded a local comic of Palestinian descent be removed as his opening act at Zanies comedy club this week because of ethnicity. "It never involved me," said Mason at a news conference. Mason repeatedly said he didn't care about Hanania's ethnicity or that Hanania has only been performing comedy for nine months. "I have no problem with the fact that he's a Palestinian," Mason said. Zanies general manager Linda Moses made the decision to drop Hanania from Mason's performances. She said there were several phone calls, some threatening, about Mason and Hanania's pairing. Mason said he was livid that Hanania called the media about the firing and implied that Mason was directly involved. "He knew how to keep my name alive in the situation even though it didn't belong there," Mason said. "And he didn't care about what the implications are to me. How it would hurt me or affect me." (Chicago Tribune)
News Resources - Israel and Mideast:
Three soldiers were wounded, one seriously, when Hizballah fired 80 anti-tank missiles and mortars at two IDF positions on Mount Dov on the Lebanese border Thursday. The IDF responded with artillery fire and planes. (Jerusalem Post) Three IDF soldiers were wounded by Palestinian gunfire in Jenin Friday morning while searching for weapons and terrorists. (Yediot Ahronot) Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad, said in Baghdad that his country would not allow its soil to be used as a launch pad for a U.S. strike on Iraq. Qatar is home to three bases used by U.S. forces, including Al-Udeid Air Base, which military officers have touted as a likely hub for an attack on Iraq. (Daily Star - Lebanon) Some 150 security and rescue service personnel from Israel and the United States met in Washington this week for a joint professional conference. The Americans sought to learn from Israel's experience on coping with suicide terrorism and the Israelis saw several new American technological devices. (Ha'aretz) UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote to Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Lau: "For the past two years I have consistently supported Israel and made its case in the British media." "I deeply regret that sensationalist headlines have been used to portray me as a critic of Israel. I am not. Israel's case is a moral case....It is my role to make our case - Israel's case - to the widest possible audience." (Ha'aretz)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis
(Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
In December 2000, Iraqi troops invaded the Kurdish safe haven of Ba'adre. The United States went right at the invading force. And when American warplanes flew low over the Iraqi lines, 138 Iraqi soldiers threw down their weapons and surrendered without a shot being fired; the rest quickly withdrew. The lesson wasn't complicated: Not many Iraqis want to die for Saddam. Egypt's former Chief of Staff General Salah Halaby said earlier this month: "The Iraqi army has no chance whatsoever to stand steadfast and will fall like a castle of sand." (New Republic) If the administration is serious about bringing democracy to the Middle East, it shouldn't be thinking in terms of a battle that lasts six months or a year, but of one that requires a decade or more. In that sense, this conflict is the equivalent of the Cold War: a careful, patient struggle rather than a quick firefight. Make human rights an issue in every meeting the U.S. and European nations have with each Arab state. That's the kind of slow and steady pressure that produced the Sakharovs and Sharanskys who transformed the Soviet Union. (Washington Post) In the annals of tyranny and on the scale of capricious savagery, Saddam ranks somewhere between Caligula and Mao. There's not much percentage in counting on the rationality of such gentlemen. Imagine that Israel had not destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. What would have happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait? With a nuclear arsenal at Saddam's disposal, would the U.S. have attacked? As it was, war against a nonnuclear Iraq was authorized by the U.S. Senate by a mere five votes. Had Saddam had nukes in 1991, he would probably today be king of all Arabia. Nukes do not have to explode to be useful. Their value lies in mere possession. Possession creates an umbrella of inviolability. And there is nothing more dangerous than an inviolable aggressor. The threat of just a few nuclear weapons, delivered by missile or terrorist to, say, New York City or San Francisco, would allow an aggressor to commit whatever depredations he fancied, calculating that America would be deterred from intervening with its otherwise overwhelming conventional power. (Time) The peace movements in Israel have been silenced in the past year. Many of the most prominent peace activists, silent and disillusioned, have retired to the seclusion of their homes. Many on the left have moved to the center. The peace movements and organizations were tired long before the Camp David fiasco. They failed to attract the younger, middle-class, high-tech generation to their ranks. This failure contrasted strongly with the dynamic activism of the right-wing and West Bank settler movements that have successfully won the hearts and minds of a second, and even third, generation of activists. Israeli right-wing ideology has constantly been renewed (New York Times) Few Americans today understand the enormous force, both moral and political, that a security council resolution authorizing military intervention carries in the rest of the world. Such a resolution mobilizes international opinion, forces concerted action, and can mute much criticism. If achieved, it greatly strengthens America's hand. (Guardian - UK) Talking Points: You Have to Fight for Your Life - IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon (Ha'aretz)
In 1978, Ya'alon commanded the paratroop reconnaissance unit, and then the General Staff reconnaissance unit. In 1995, Ya'alon was appointed director of Military Intelligence and in 1998 he became head of Central Command, where he prepared the command's units for the violent confrontation with the Palestinians that he foresaw. He took over as Chief of Staff on July 9, 2002.
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