Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Palestinian Hoax -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2613)	9/19/2002 7:26:06 PM
From: David Alon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3467

Another reason to totally destroy the pa, Shin Bet foils plan to poison Jerusalem hospital's water By Amos Harel The Shin Bet security service recently foiled a plan by some Gazan Islamic Jihad activists to poison the drinking water at one of Jerusalem's hospitals, a charge sheet filed at the Erez Junction military court reveals. The poisoner allegedly obtained an Israeli pass to enter the country for a medical examination at the hospital with the unwitting help of an Israeli Arab Knesset member. According to the charge sheet, Iyad Hassan Mohammed Salame, 18, from the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, had been involved in various attempted terror activities during the last two years. A few weeks before his arrest, he joined Islamic Jihad, whereupon he was immediately drafted to help with the poisoning mission by someone identified only as "Abu Mohammed" on the charge sheet. The plan called for Salame to go to Jerusalem for treatment at the hospital's ophthalmology department. He was then supposed to drop the poison, made from a combination of baking powder and an unnamed liquid poison, into the hospital's drinking water reservoirs. In return, he would be paid NIS 300. According to the charge sheet, Hadash MK Issam Makhoul helped Salame get the pass for his medical treatment. But the army says the MK acted out of humanitarian motives, having no idea of the alleged poisoning plot. When Salame went to pick up the pass, the Shin Bet arrested him, foiling the plan. This is not the first time Palestinian terror groups have apparently targeted a hospital: Last week, Ha'aretz reported that a Hamas cell from Jenin planned a suicide bombing at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. The bombers were driven to the Green Line, allegedly by a Jenin doctor, but the plan was aborted when the cell encountered a heavy military presence in the area. A security source said that Palestinian terrorist groups are also showing increasing interest in the use of chemicals and poisons in their attacks. He cited the Cafe Rimon affair, in which three Arabs from East Jerusalem were arrested for plotting to poison the food in the popular Jerusalem restaurant. But other security sources said the Rimon affair has been blown out of proportion. As a result of the extensive media reports, they added, Israeli restaurant owners are now afraid to hire Israeli Arabs - ignoring the fact that the Rimon workers were East Jerusalem residents, who are not Israeli citizens, rather than Israeli Arabs.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2613)	9/19/2002 9:02:13 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3467

The German Problem nytimes.com The German Problem By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON — At a meeting in the Axel Springer building in Hamburg on Aug. 27 with about 30 American friends of Germany, the defense minister who had been recently booted out of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's cabinet for financial irregularities was asked why Germany was so loudly opposed to President Bush's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein. Rudolf Scharping reported that he had answered that very question in a Schröder cabinet meeting: it was all about the Jews. Bush was motivated to overthrow Saddam by his need to curry favor with what Scharping called "a powerful — perhaps overly powerful — Jewish lobby" in the coming U.S. elections. Jeb Bush needed their votes in Florida as George Pataki did in New York, and Congressional redistricting made Jewish votes central to control of Congress. Germany, the discredited minister said proudly to his discomfited audience, had rejected such pandering. That bigoted political analysis is typical of the way Germany is undermining its Atlantic alliance. Today, Schröder — campaigning for re-election Sunday — seems eager to be more pro-Arab than the Arab League. Not even if the U.N.'s Kofi Annan himself grabbed a rifle and led the charge would his Germany send one soldier to depose Saddam. The dismaying fact is that poll-driven German politicians are certain that such thumbing noses at the U.S. is the key to political victory. Schröder is using it to distract voters from 10 percent unemployment, 0.5 percent growth and a dispute about his hair color. His semi-conservative opponent, Edmund Stoiber, tut-tuts about anti-Americanism but is afraid to take a stand against the Hitler of the Persian Gulf. No matter who wins, the German-American relationship loses. Our response cannot be to mutter "how sharper than a serpent's tooth" and demand a refund of the Marshall Plan. It should be to reassess the need for our troop presence in Europe, which a half-century ago was "to keep Russia out, Germany down and America in." With Russia in and Germany up, should America get out? Of 120,000 U.S. military in Europe, over 70,000 are in Germany (including those in heavy tanks and other outmoded equipment confronting a Red Army that isn't there). An equal number of dependents are in Europe with them, spending U.S. dollars. Why? Defense officials tell me in classic Pentagonese that we are already "reconfiguring our footprint" — that is, reviewing deployment of our troops globally to make us capable of applying mobile force anywhere rather than to sit in place to meet any specific threat. That's part of the "lily pad concept," on the analogy of frogs hopping around a number of forward bases, "and no slur intended to the French." But is Germany any longer an American forward base? If the Russian bear growls, can't the German eagle shriek? On Oct. 1, our European Command will be extended south all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps there are lily pads on which to station troops and position supplies closer to flash points where action may be needed. And in the coming reconfiguration, what about our overseas armed forces' freedom of action? The Saudis have long threatened restriction of our use of bases there, which caused us to build a Qatar lily pad. Would Germany, turned militantly anti-military, also prove unreliable as a jumping-off point in a crisis? I can understand why Germans, having chosen welfare over defense, bridle at superpower hegemony. I bridle at German book-publishing hegemony. Few Americans realize that two huge German Gesellschaften are gaining a stranglehold on U.S. books. Bertelsmann owns Random House, which means Alfred Knopf, Anchor, Ballantine, Crown, Doubleday, Bantam, Dell, Dial, Fawcett, and the combined Book of the Month Club and Literary Guild. The von Holtzbrinck Group owns Farrar, Straus; Henry Holt (including half of Times Books); and St. Martin's Press. You can bet a German-owned publisher is going to get "Mein Kampf Over Inspection" by Saddam Hussein. Do I resent this unilateral cultural imperialism by literary tycoons in the Fatherland? Every red-blooded American author does. But I also see it driven by a laudable profit motive, not by any need of Germany to pander to its Muslim lobby. The rise of anti-Americanism in Germany is a minor problem for Americans, who can pull up stakes. It is a big problem for Germans.