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 : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (10993)	10/6/2003 4:07:25 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793801

It often dramatically alters copy after it's posted - This is turning out to be a major editing difference between print and the Internet. The "Times" Internet Editor went into it at "Bloggercon." They will change the "NY Times" Internet wording without a thought. Any print changes have to go through their vetting process. It's a really big deal.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (10993)	10/7/2003 9:36:09 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793801

Neither Safe Nor a Haven Israel strikes at terror — in Syria. James S Robbins WSJ.com One of the blind spots in the global war on terrorism is the unwillingness of the United States to integrate the Palestinian terrorist organizations into the matrix of groups with which we are at war. This is explained by way of definition — the conflict we are engaged in with our Coalition partners is against the global terrorist network. The cluster of terror groups targeting Israel — Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) among others — are not globally networked. They are a local or regional problem, and not part of the fundamentalist threat aimed at the United States. Thus, they are not on the radar screen. So goes the explanation. This reasoning is a fig leaf at best — and I direct readers to Michael Ledeen's invaluable The War Against the Terror Masters for a full explanation why. Some of these groups have active networks that reach every continent, and into the United States. And almost all of them receive support in one fashion or another from Syria and Iran. In fact, they have for decades. And while the United States may choose not to involve itself overtly in cutting these strands of the international terrorism web, the recent suicide bombing in Haifa, which killed and wounded around 70 people, demonstrates that this is a threat Israel cannot afford to ignore. The Israeli attack on the Ayn al-Sahib terrorist training camp in Syria was the first of what the Israeli government has called "expanded military operations" against terrorism. Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said that Israel "will take whatever measure is necessary to defend our citizens regardless of the geographic location of these training camps," including strikes in Syria and Iran. Syrian officials claimed that the Ayn al-Sahib camp had been previously used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) but had been abandoned for the last seven years. The Associated Press reported that "for the past decades the valley of olive and fig groves has only been used by picnickers and walkers." (It is strange that the Mossad, which is blamed for masterminding every event in the Mideast, if not the world, cannot figure out the difference between a terrorist base and an olive garden.) Most press reports are marking the location of the terrorist camp as "deep within Syria." The tone would be much different if the stories described the camp as being close to the Syrian border with Lebanon, along the main access road between Damascus and the Bekka Valley. A 1997 report described Ayn al-Sahib as "the most important base of [the PFLP] and ranks as one of the preeminent training camps where it houses extreme fundamentalists from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Algeria. The training is run by officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They are instructed in street fighting, plane hijacking, hostage taking, and blowing up specific targets — Israeli, American, European, and other targets in certain Arab countries." Clearly, this was no place for a picnic. But let's say the PFLP had closed down that facility. Their spokesmen seemed to know immediately exactly how much damage had been done in the attack, but that aside. The Israeli strike was aimed at the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group that carried out the Haifa bombing. The PIJ is rumored to be planning to relocate their headquarters operations out of the Palestinian Authority, in response to the very effective Israeli tactic of targeting their leadership in retaliation for attacks on Israeli civilians. The PIJ may recently have set up new quarters in Ayn al-Saheb, and this was Israel's way of telling them they can run but they cannot hide. Whether any PIJ members died in the attack has yet to be revealed. The attack was also a message to Syria, and to other countries who use terrorism as an instrument in executing their international strategy. The old paradigm of state sovereignty will not deter military or other action taken in pursuit of violent non-state actors. Terrorists can no longer exploit the rules of the international system established to govern relations between states. In this, Israel is following the U.S. lead. Syrian sovereignty is not worth any more than Taliban Afghan or Hussein Iraqi sovereignty was when those regimes chose to facilitate international terrorism. Any other state pondering whether to allow Islamic Jihad or other terror groups to find safe haven must know that it will neither be safe nor a haven. Israel's new policy — called "escalation" by some, but "expansion" is a more accurate term — places countries that harbor terrorists in a position either to deplore the presence of terrorists on their soil and thank Israel for helping out; to acknowledge their support for terrorism; or to pretend that the problem doesn't exist, complain to the U.N., and keep on supporting violence against innocents, which seems to be the Syrian approach. On a related note: When the Israelis bombed the French-built Iraqi "Osirak" nuclear reactor in 1981, the U.S. official response was critical but privately there was a sense of relief. Had Israel not taken that farsighted action, the "imminent threat" that the president's critics believe is required before decisive action can be taken against rogue states would have been well evident even by 1991. And rather than reviewing evidence of Saddam's WMD program last week, Congress might be looking at the results of a WMD strike, and asking, Why didn't somebody do something before the threat was imminent? Rogue states and terrorists don't play by the rules. The international system was set up to maintain the peace, not facilitate terror, and no civilized country under siege should feel constrained by the norms its deadly enemies despise. nationalreview.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (10993)	10/7/2003 3:30:04 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793801

"The New Republic has another Online Debate going, this one on the Israel/Pal conflict. I will post it daily. Money Quote: "The reason there is no peace in the Middle East isn't because of Israel's policies but Israel's existence." _______________________________________________ ONLINE DEBATE The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Yossi Klein Halevi & Leon Wieseltier Only at TNR Online Post date: 10.07.03 Tuesday Yossi Klein Halevi Tuesday Yossi Klein Halevi 10.07.03, 1:00 p.m. Leon, This has been a week of Israeli milestones, with observances of two traumatic anniversaries. The first was the 30th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Since then, every Yom Kippur has been about that Yom Kippur, and this year even more so. Newspaper supplements and television documentaries and docudramas are recreating the moment when Israel, surprised by invading Egyptian and Syrian armies, lost confidence in its leaders and in even its own justness. For many Israelis, the real trauma of the war was that it happened at all. Had we paid attention to Anwar Sadat's peace signals in the early 1970s, the left argued, Egypt would never have been forced to go to war in the first place. (Never mind that the left also argued that Sadat was emboldened to make peace four years later because his initial military victory in the early days of the war restored Arab self-respect.) Over the following decades, a majority of Israelis came to believe that one reason peace eludes Israel is because Israel doesn't vigorously pursue peace. That was a classic Zionist way of thinking: Jewish fate depends on Jewish initiative. If you will peace, it is no dream. But that assumption has been overturned by the other anniversary that Israel marked this week--the third anniversary of the current terrorist war, which continues to produce new levels of horror, like Saturday's bombing in Haifa that killed three generations of two families. Israeli resolve has been, in large measure, a result of our ability to overcome the Yom Kippur guilt syndrome. Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan and the other discredited leaders of the hawkish Labor Party turned out to be right after all: The reason there is no peace in the Middle East isn't because of Israel's policies but Israel's existence. Rather than terrorism being a frustrated response to occupation, the opposite has become true: The occupation now persists because of terrorism. The post-Yom Kippur War mood despised the status quo--the old Labor policy of sitting tight in the territories and waiting for an Arab peace initiative. Yet the status quo is precisely what most Israelis today accept as the only relatively safe policy. Most Israelis agree that renewing the peace process is impossible so long as Yasir Arafat controls the Palestinian Authority, a point reinforced by Abu Mazen's downfall. And unilateral withdrawal, however appealing, will only reinforce the message of Israel's Lebanon withdrawal that Israel is on the run--a message which encouraged the current Palestinian terror offensive. With the status quo, however painful, Israel continues to fight terrorism, with impressive daily successes, while avoiding drastic action like expelling Arafat, which could destroy America's efforts to stabilize Iraq. Israel's recent attack against a terrorist base in Syria, though, is a long-overdo recognition that the terrorist infrastructure is hardly confined to the Palestinian territories but extends from Iran to Saudi Arabia. The message of Israel's air strike to the Arab world is that we consider blowing up our buses and restaurants to be acts of aggression for which we hold responsible all those who actively support terror. Meanwhile, construction of the fence sends a message to the Palestinians that with the absence of a willingness to negotiate a compromise, settlement will eventually result in a unilaterally imposed border that will be less advantageous to the Palestinians than the offer they rejected at Camp David. The combined effect of military pressure and the fence could further weaken Palestinian resolve. The recent statement by Mohammed Dahlan--that the Palestinians failed after September 11 to realize that the ground rules had changed and that terrorism would no longer work--is one more indication that waiting for the Palestinians to break remains a realistic strategy. Still, Israeli resolve shouldn't be taken for granted, either. While most Israelis agree that this war isn't our fault and the left remains leaderless and demoralized, there are some worrying signs. According to one poll, 43 percent of Israelis say they are in despair about the country, and 73 percent don't see a positive future for the younger generation. (Oddly, though, another poll shows most Israelis to be personally content.) And then there's the letter by the 27 pilots opposed to flying missions in the territories. True, only nine of the signatories serve in the active reserves, and one of them has just retracted. Nor do they have much support: If most Israelis are angry at the air force, it's for dropping a half-ton rather than a full ton bomb on Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. Still, the refusal letter, coming from the military elite, is unprecedented, and proof that the Yom Kippur syndrome isn't dead after all. Yossi Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor at TNR. Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of TNR. tnr.com