IRIS Blog

by Jeff Jacoby

'PAKISTAN on Saturday welcomed an offer of earthquake assistance from Israel," the Associated Press reported on Oct. 15, ''but said it would have to be channeled through the United Nations, the Red Cross, or donated to a relief fund."

On the surface, an unremarkable detail amid the devastation in Kashmir. But this is a story worth pausing over. For between the lines, it speaks volumes about the real stakes in the war between the civilized world and radical Islam.

From the Jerusalem Post

Tens of thousands of joyous Iraqis crowded Baghdad's Liberation Square 37 years ago to watch Haviva Hanuka's brother, Naim, being hanged. He and 13 others - 9 of them Jewish - had been found guilty of treason and spying for Israel and the U.S. On Wednesday, Hanuka watched the man who put her brother to death as he sat in a cage, facing the death penalty for mass murder. "It's as if he is now on trial for my brother's murder," she said.

Accused Syrian General: "We Are Going to Send Him on a Trip - Bye, Bye Hariri"

Syrian Opposition Groups Unite to Demand Reform

Beirut Wants Palestinian Bases Out

Next Year in Damascus - Syrian Democracy Is Thriving - in Exile

5,000 Christians Show Solidarity in Sukkot Jerusalem March

Rare Israeli Video Shows Immense Construction Occuring on Temple Mount

5 Times More US Anti-Semitic Incidents than Anti-Islamic

Foreign Fighters Captured in Iraq Come From 27, Mostly Arab, Lands

Police Say Islamist Terrorists Are Targeting Netherlands' Ruling Elite

Russia's Islamic Revolt Is Spreading

The Cure for the Wahhabi Virus

Details and Lies - The Systematic Mendacity of a Palestinian Atlas, by Benny Morris

Damaging Report Could Topple Assad, by Ze'ev Schiff
UN: Syria, Lebanon Involved in Slaying of Hariri

Morgenthau Gains A Plea of Guilty In U.N. Scandal

Black Studies Professor: "Exterminate White People"

Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer Found Dead

Forgotten at the White House, a must-read by Michael Freund:

Who said terrorists can't kill Americans and get away with it?

This past Saturday, October 15, marked precisely two years since Palestinian terrorists blew up a US diplomatic convoy in Gaza, killing three Americans and injuring one.

In the intervening period, the Palestinian Authority, first under Yasser Arafat and now with Mahmoud Abbas at the helm, has repeatedly refused to punish the perpetrators, preferring instead to allow those who killed Americans to roam free.

But that doesn't seem to bother George W. Bush all that much. Rather than using the second anniversary of the attack to berate the Palestinians for harboring terrorists, Bush chose instead to hand them a diplomatic gift....To really appreciate how absurd and offensive the Bush Administration's current stance on this issue is, it's worth recalling just how brazen the convoy attack was.

This was not a case of the terrorists hitting the "wrong" target. Reports at the time indicated that the perpetrators used a remote-controlled explosive device, activating it only once the Americans were in range.

The vehicles targeted all had diplomatic license plates, and were traveling on a road that was closed to Israeli traffic, so it was obvious the attackers knew whom they were hitting, and that it was a methodical and intentional assault.

Moreover, in the weeks leading up to the incident, the Palestinian media were rife with vitriolic anti-American incitement and rhetoric.

Holy War Against Danish Newspaper

France Says Extremists Are Enlisting Its Citizens to Attack Paris

From YNetNews:

Expect more incitement in PA-controlled media.

"The Canaanite," a new television series broadcast on Palestinian television over the holy month of Ramadan, is filled with biased scenes illustrating the brutal behavior of Israeli security officials against Palestinian prisoners.

One scene depicts an IDF soldier happily shooting and killing a Palestinian bride.

The presentation of IDF soldiers as blood-thirsty murderers is only a backdrop to the claim that Israelis "are willing to fight us (the Palestinians) with AIDS."

An excellent reminder from the real world of economics via Best of the Web Today:

Several readers wrote to ask why, in an item yesterday, we dismissed George Packer's call for "energy independence" as an "utterly pointless dispute." Packer, who was urging a new Democratic agenda, didn't really explain what he meant by "energy independence," but our understanding of the liberal conception of it is as follows:

-The government should establish policies aimed at reducing the use of oil (fuel-economy standards, higher gasoline taxes, incentives or coercive measures to encourage use of public transit, etc.).

-This in turn would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, helping to starve the Arabs and thus reduce terrorism.

For the sake of argument, let's take the first part of this argument--that the government could reduce oil consumption, effectively a reduction in demand--as a given. Basic economics tells us that a reduction in the demand for a commodity will lower the price.

What happens when the price of oil goes down? High-cost oil production becomes uneconomical, which means that low-cost producers end up accounting for a greater share of the market. The lowest-cost producer of all is our friends the Saudis. Thus "energy independence," if effective at all, would actually make America more dependent on "foreign" (Arab) oil.

Any lowering of U.S. demand would temporarily depress prices, which would cause a global increase in consumption which would at least partially undermine any initial cost reductions. There are, however, some worthwhile steps that can be taken to lower the amount of petrodollars funnelled into terrorism:

1. Continue the Bush Arab Democracy project. A democratic Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to fund the export of Wahabism as aggressively.

2. Threaten the Saudis with regime change over the export of Wahabism issue.

3. Increase basic research funding for radical alternatives such as nuclear energy. Any shift in the supply curve would have a permanent benefit.

4. Fund increased oil exploration. Like #3, this would shift the supply curve.

5. Stop funding the Palestinians. As this blog has thoroughly documented, the Palestinian Authority has become one of the leading terror incubators, with billions in funding from the West.

Rich, Poor See Poverty Very Differently

Health Tip: Don't Leave Your Infant Alone

40% of Turkish Women Support Practice of "Honor Killing"

Palestinian Authority Has No Intention of Disarming Terror Groups

Lebanon Clamps Down on Palestinian Weapons

Palestinian Gunmen Abduct 2, Make Threats

Annan: Israel Must Allow Hamas to Run in PA Elections

Training Our Enemies

Last month, NBC News correspondent Lisa Myers tracked down Jihad Jaara, a veteran Palestinian militant who currently resides in Ireland.

As a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Jaara supervised and planned dozens of assassinations and bombings against a wide-range of American and Israeli targets while simultaneously serving as an officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service.

When asked what single factor had most contributed to his transformation into a successful terrorist, Jaara immediately replied: small-arms training supervised by officers of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

For two years (1996-98), Palestinian units were brought to the U.S. for advanced small-arms training on firing ranges normally used by the U.S. Army and special forces units.

More than half of the class of 18 Palestinians brought to a top-secret location near CIA headquarters in 1998 went on to become fighters in the Al-Aqsa Brigades.

From UPI:

Five high-ranking Syrian officers are to be named by UN investigator Detlev Mehlis in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, including Bashar Assad's brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, currently head of Syrian military intelligence, and Gen. Roustom Ghazale, head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, Germany's Stern magazine says. A senior Stern editor said $20 million was discovered in Ghazale's bank account.

IRIS will be shutting down until Wednesday night in celebration of the holiday of Sukkot. For anyone curious about the holiday, here is a short must-read from Rabbi David Aaron:

Making Every Moment Momentous

On Sukkos we celebrate transience. We embrace transience when we embrace our perishable four species and we immerse ourselves in transience when we leave our permanent home and dwell in a temporary hut covered by perishables. Sukkos teaches us that happiness is not based on what you have nor what you can hold on to but who you are by virtue of your relationship to G-d.

Here's a long must-read from Eitan Dor-Shav on a widespread misunderstanding of the central word in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which is read on Sukkot and is its theme. The author presents the thesis as novel, but it was actually first presented by the Medieval rabbinic scholar Nachmanides.

Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and Timeless

Everything but wisdom is transient, teaches the king, and history has proven him right. Neither Solomon?s riches, nor his power, nor even his monumental temple in Jerusalem survived under the sun. What has indeed lasted, however, is the legacy of his wisdom, embodied in the book of Ecclesiastes. This belief in knowledge as the highest form of spirituality has served as the Jewish torch throughout the ages. And no small measure of that light is reflected in the understanding that only ideas can defy time, transforming the world.

Beginning on September 9, I brought examples of a number of anti-Israel outrages by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), an organization funded by the European Union and a number of left-wing groups such as Oxfam and the Ford Foundation. One of the items was an expose of how they regularly falsify news stories. Here is another example--they claim the IDF "could have easily detained Nehad [Khaled Abu Ghanem] without being exposed to any danger" but instead committed an "extra-judicial assassination" because of "their premeditated intent to kill."

The PCHR's story is contradicted by the Palestinian Authority itself, who relates that Ghanem fired his pistol at the IDF troops.

This story, fromrom Rediff India, sounds a little too good to be true:

Intelligence sources have confirmed that over 3,000 terrorists who were waiting for an opportunity to cross into India from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir were killed in the October 8 earthquake.

A top intelligence officer told rediff.com that while hundreds of terrorists were killed because of the huge buildings crumbling, most others were killed due to massive explosions that took place because of fire breaking out in their ammunition dumps.

"This was nature's way of closing down terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," the officer said.

According to him, the figure of 3,000 was tentative and the number of militants killed could be much more.

Update (Oct. 19): Here are two earlier stories that tend to confirm this report. (Hat tip: Captain Marlowe)

Latest intelligence reports, collated almost a week after the killer earthquake hit Pakistan, hold that as many as 1,500 cadres of militant outfits in Pakistan perished in the disaster.
Though most militant outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) , Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) , Al-Badr and Tehrik-e-Mujahideen took a hit, Hizbul Mujahideen alone lost around 400 men.
At least a third of the 1,500 killed were hardcore jehadis, say intelligence officials, basing their assessment on a combination of human and electronic intelligence obtained from across the border.

Two hardcore militant outfits Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) have suffered major losses in the October 8 killer earthquake in terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir but militancy has continued in Jammu and Kashmir with the Army today saying it has killed 29 militants in the last one week.