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The Palestinian Authority – A Study in Corruption: Where’s the Money?
Rachel Ehrenfeld
The
PLO was classified as a terrorist organization from its inception in
1964 until the Oslo Accords in 1993. Yet, throughout this entire time,
it continued to receive financial and political support from the Soviet
Union and its satellites in Europe, Latin America and Africa, and from
members of the Arab League, as well as other Third World countries. This
legitimization, and the accompanying financial backing, allowed the PLO
not only to continue its terrorism and criminal activities with
impunity, but also allowed the organization to fund a world-wide
propaganda campaign, win great popularity and increase its influence.
The
PLO used drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering and
counterfeiting to amass a fortune estimated by the British National
Criminal Intelligence Services (in 1993 and 1994) at about $10 billion.
Its connections with international criminal organizations, drug cartels,
other terrorists groups and every rogue state, from Libya, Iran and
Iraq, to North Korea and the Sudan, set the pattern for others to
follow. The PLO’s transformation into the Palestinian Authority (PA) in
1993, as a result of the Oslo Accords, did not impede the organization’s
illegal activities. On the contrary, it enhanced them. As the whole
world gave the PA legitimacy, it abused this status to expand its
illegal activities.
With
the current intifada, the PA has undergone another change,
incorporating religion into its political rhetoric and adding jihad
to its agenda. As a result, the PA gained even more support financially
and politically within the Arab/Muslim world, much as al Qa`idah
did later. According to a soon to be published report, in 2001, the
first year of the current intifada, the amount of money
officially donated to the PA jumped 80%, from US $555 million to US
$1,002 billion.
The
following is an examination of how the PA, led by Yasser Arafat, has
systemically and systematically used corruption and crime, and diverted
funds donated for the development of the Palestinian state, to fund
terrorism and to enrich its leadership.
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Euthanasia for
the Demarcation of a Residence Zone
Itzhak Bam
Not a
few times did the Israeli High Court of Justice frustrate government
policy and openly annul its decisions. When the decision to demarcate
the residence zone (to deport to Gaza) two family members of a terrorist
was approved, the public was relieved, and it seemed the Supreme Court
put a kosher seal on the government’s new policy in its fight against
terrorism, and that deportation to Gaza of terrorists’ family members as
a deterrent action would be made possible. But a more thorough reading
of the decision of the High Court of Justice in the Ajuri case (that was
made unanimously by a seat of nine judges) reveals a completely
different picture.
The
High Court of Justice, through President Barak, decided to approve the
decision of deportation but affixed to it restrictions and preventive
measures. The main restriction is that this measure can be taken only if
future danger from the person is foreseen. That is, it is not enough
that this person was involved in or aided terrorist action in the past,
but it has to be proved that he or she might continue helping terrorism
if not deported. This restriction practically frustrates the demarcation
of residence zone as a deterrent action, since most of the terrorist’s
family members, who knew about his or her intent and even helped him,
are not up to the strict criterion set by President Barak.
In my
view, President Barak’s opinion is erroneous in two respects. Firstly,
it is based on an erroneous interpretation of article 78 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention that regulates the means a military force can use
regarding a civilian population. Secondly, there was no reason to apply
article 78 of the Convention to the facts of the case (actual help of
family members to terrorists), but because of the real involvement of
family members in terrorist activity, article 5 of the Geneva Convention
could have been applied to them, which enables an administration to
deny people engaged in terrorism part of the privileges and protection
granted by the Convention to the civilian population as a whole.
Moreover, the demand to establish a future danger from the candidate for
deportation falls in line with his interpretation of article 5, not
with his interpretation of article 78 of the Convention. That is,
President Barak was mistaken in granting the protections of the
Convention to people involved in terrorist activities.
In my
humble opinion, article 78 of the Geneva Convention, which regulates the
demarcation of residence zone of a civilian in an area under military
rule, does not necessarily require the existence of future danger, but
finds sufficient the existence of “a need for reasons of security
necessity.” Though this measure has to be interpreted in such a way as
to minimize damage to the civilian population, it will also fit the
security needs of the involved state. In relation to demarcation of
residence zone (which is a lighter measure than administrative detention
that is regulated in the same article), it seems this measure may be
activated against family members who knew about the activity of their
relative but did nothing to prevent it.
The
interpretation of President Barak of the Geneva Convention is not
anchored in the terms and purpose of the Convention; it might reduce the
incentive of the combating sides to obey the Convention. Moreover, such
an interpretation of the Convention would demand a dear price from the
civilian population in Israel, since according to it, those who
associate with terrorism receive similar protection to those relatives
of innocent Arab civilians. Actually, by his interpretive tools,
President Barak ties the hands of Israeli democracy in its war against
terrorism.
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The Shaping of Jerusalem’s Landscape – The Hills and the Desert
– by the Israelites in Biblical Times
Menashe Har-El
The Jewish people living in
Eretz Israel were the first in the history of this land and in the
ancient Near East to determine the shape and use of the mountainous and
desert landscapes and embark on an intensive settlement in these
regions. This accomplishment, on an international scale, brought about
construction in the heart of the Judean mountains and in Jerusalem, the
capital city, the Temple of worship, and an array of fortifications, all
being the most magnificent in the ancient world.
Since the mountainous and desert
regions took up almost two thirds of the land area, the Israelites
developed ingenious and pioneering technologies that were handed down to
other nations:
1. the culture of terrace
agriculture,
2. the storage and transportation
of water,
3. wood, stone and metal
industries,
4. the architecture of grand
buildings,
5. road engineering.
In this
way, the mountain and desert regions turned from isolated and sparsely
settled areas in the time of the Caananites, into preferred and
populated areas in the times of the Israelites, as stated in the
prophecy of Isaiah: “...And I will bring forth a seed of Yaakov, and out
of Yehuda an inheritor of my mountains, and my chosen ones shall inherit
it, and my servants shall dwell there.” (Isaiah 65:9)
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Ancient Brigandage, Jewish-Pagan Relations, and the Contest over the Land of
Israel
David Rokéah
Brigandage was rife in the
Hellenistic and Roman periods. There were notorious gangs of pirates
based in Cilicia, who not only stole merchandise but also kidnapped
people in the Mediterranean and then sold them into slavery or held them
for ransom. This situation was reflected in Talmudic sources, which
described the Ishmaelites as following in the footsteps of their
robber-ancestors.
The Sages first adopted the hostile
attitude of the Torah, formed in the wake of the religious-ethnic
conflict of the Israelites with the peoples that inhabited the “Land of
Canaan”. Therefore, they permitted discriminating against the Gentiles,
defined as the Canaanites. However, following Roman intervention, and
because of their fear of possible retaliation and abuse of the name of
the God of Israel, the Sages prohibited anti-Gentile discrimination.
Daily contact with non-Jews, especially in the cities having mixed
populations, brought the Sages to foster friendly behavior towards the
Gentiles, even to providing them with economic aid directly – with the
condition that this did not involve recognition or support of idolatry.
The same policies and practices are exhibited by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Just as the Sages modified their
stand, so we – in this age of globalization – must act so as to ensure
the well-being of our fellow Jews abroad, remembering that “all Jews are
responsible for one another.”
* * *
The rebellion of the Maccabees
against the Seleucid kingdom in the 2nd century BCE,
following which the Maccabees conquered many Greco-Syrian cities on the
sea coast, in Samaria, in Galilee, and elsewhere, increased the
hostility of the native population. This hostility was expressed in
libellous and anti-Semitic treatises (see my “Tacitus and Ancient
Anti-Semitism”, Revue des etudes juives 154 [1995]: 281-294).
When confronted by Antiochus VII
Sidetes’ demand that he evacuate the coastal areas, Shimeon the Maccabee
retorted that this land was inherited from the Jews’ forefathers, and
that its enemies occupied it unlawfully. Echoes of this dispute are
found in the writings of John of Antioch and of Procopius, two Christian
historians of the 5th and 6th centuries
respectively. Their writings state that, after leaving Egypt, the
brigand, Joshua son of Nun, led the Hebrews into Palestine, conquering
the land of the Girgashites, the Jebusites, and the Canaanites. As a
result, they said, these inhabitants had to flee to Africa.
This tradition is corroborated by
several midrashim, in which “sons of Africa”, Canaanites, and
Ishmaelites, claim that the Land of Israel was theirs and that the
Israelite robbers had stolen it. These Gentiles’ claim, based on
Biblical verses, was refuted by other Biblical verses cited in the
midrashim.
Nowadays,
the Palestinians – dissatisfied with their identification with Ishmael
the son of Abraham – assert that they are the descendants of the
Canaanites and the Jebusites, who preceded the Israelites in the Holy
Land. Thus, they fabricate a “history” for themselves, while
obliterating all evidence of the continuous Jewish historical bonds with
the Land.
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Amos Oz: A
Story of Love and Darkness
Yosef Oren
Only after 50 years of silence
on the subject, did Amos Oz begin to face his life’s pain: being
orphaned from his mother, Fania, who committed suicide when he was
12 1/2 years old. At first he wrote about it in an implied
manner in “That Sea” (1999) and now openly at length in the
autobiography Story about Love and Darkness. The name of the book
promised a composition built as a diptych, whose first part talks about
the love he received from his mother during her life and the second part
talks about the darkness that prevailed in his life after her suicide.
But instead of being satisfied with the moving, intimate story of the
promised diptych, with the description of the way as a child he
perceived the relationship between his parents and how he dealt with his
mother’s suicide, soon after the tragedy and during the course of the
following years, Oz included in the volume five other compositions:
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A family tree that amply explores
the history of the Klauzner and Mussman families, his parents’
families, with details and descriptions he gathered from relatives and
other people’s memoirs.
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A satirical composition on his
father’s uncle, Prof. Joseph Klauzner, and the family circle, academic
and literary, which clustered around him and worshiped him and his
nationalistic opinions.
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A compilation of independent
stories that, had they been assembled from their distribution
throughout the autobiography, could have made another volume of
fiction. Most outstanding among them are the stories about his
experiences as a boy in mandatory Jerusalem and during the War of
Independence, the story about Grandma Shulamit’s zealousness for
cleanliness and the story about his first sexual experience with a
promiscuous woman who was engaged by Kibbutz Hulda as a hired
kindergarten teacher.
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A volume somewhat slimmer than
the former ones with chapters designated to educate readers,
especially literary critics among them, how to read literature in
general and his works in particular.
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Another slim yet clearly
political volume, in which Amos Oz relates how he turned from being “a
nationalistic boy” in the captivity of the fanatics in his family
(Prof. Klauzner, his grandfather Alexander and his father) into one of
the distinguished thinkers of the Left in Israeli society. In it, Oz
delineated his well-known doctrine, in which Israel is defined as the
occupier of Palestinian territories and is exhorted to withdraw to the
borders it had until 1967, borders that, as we know, were not
respected by Arab countries even before the Six Day War.
In fact,
Oz combined in the autobiography five additional books that weakened the
intensity of the chapters of the promised central story and eventually
produced a volume that contains 600 pages instead of a modest, compact
volume of about 200 pages of the story about love and darkness.
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Scoop!
Jesus Christ Arrested by
Belgian Prosecutors!
Dow Jones News Service
(Feb 13, 2003)
Steven Plaut
Incredible as it may sound, we have
just learned that Jesus Christ himself was just arrested by Belgium for
his role in the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla in 1982.
It seems Jesus had returned to earth a few years back and was quietly
checking out the situation of Christendom, especially in Europe. When he
came for a fact-finding visit to Brussels, he was arrested at the train
station by the Belgian gendarmes and thrown into jail.
When asked about this, the Justice
Minister of Belgium explained that Jesus was arrested because – as a
Jewish colonist and occupier of Palestinian lands – he clearly had a
role in the Sabra and Shatilla affair that was at least as serious as
that of Ariel Sharon, whom the Belgians are also seeking to prosecute.
Besides, at Sabra and Shatilla, Lebanese Christians killed Palestinians,
the Minister pointed out. Belgium believes Ariel Sharon should have had
the prescience to know the massacres would take place before they
actually did, even though no one in Belgium foresaw them coming. They
also claim Jesus himself should have been even more capable of
foreseeing the consequences of the entrance of the Lebanese Falangist
forces into those camps. Besides, those Falangists were without
exception followers of the teachings of Jesus, and so Belgium believes
this makes Jesus far more culpable than Ariel Sharon.
The Belgians also insist that Jesus
is guilty of oppressing Palestinians. After all, he was born in
Bethlehem, when it was illegally occupied by Jewish settlers. Then his
parents took him to Nazareth, where Jews do not belong because it is an
Arab city. Jesus’ family were part of the racist campaign to “Judaize”
the Galilee.
When arrested, Jesus refused even
to dignify the Belgian charges against him and turned the other cheek.
All he said was that Brussels looked like the ugliest capital in all of
Europe, and he had seen mangers nicer than it. Once in his cell, he
requested a hot kosher meal.
The trial
is expected to commence in a Belgian court within 4 months.
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