PALESTINIAN TERROR, AMERICAN BLOOD
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe

Sunday, October 19, 2003

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/292/oped/Palestinian_terrorism_American_bl
ood+.shtml

Three Americans -- John Branchizio, Mark Parson, and John Martin Linde -- were murdered last Wednesday when Arab terrorists in Gaza bombed the diplomatic convoy they were riding in. News accounts immediately described the attack as a first -- "an unprecedented deadly attack on a US target in the Palestinian territories," to quote the Associated Press. But Branchizio, Parson, and Linde were not the first Americans to be murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists. They were the 49th, 50th, and 51st in the past 10 years alone.

A few hours after their deaths, the White House condemned "the vicious act of terrorism" that had killed them, extended "heartfelt condolences to the families," and promised "to bring the terrorists to justice." The families of the many previous US victims of Palestinian terror might reasonably wonder why there was no such presidential concern when *their* loved ones were massacred.

The president did not vow to see justice done, for example, when Dr. David Applebaum and his daughter Nava died, on the eve of what was to be Nava's wedding day, in the bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel last month. Or when Cleveland native Alan Beer was killed in a Palestinian bus bombing in June. Or when four Americans -- Marla Bennett of California, David Gritz of Massachusetts, Benjamin Blutstein of Pennsylvania, and Janis Coulter of New York -- lost their lives in the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria last year. Or when Shoshana Greenbaum, a New Jersey tourist, was among the 15 innocents slaughtered in the horrific Sbarro pizzeria attack of August 2001. Or when, three months earlier, 14-year-old Kobe Mandell of Silver Spring, Md., was one of two boys stoned to death in the cave where Palestinian terrorists found them hiking. Or in April 1995, when Brandeis University student Alisa Flatow was murdered in a Gaza terror attack.

Americans have been dying at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists for decades, yet the US government and media rarely if ever portray Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants as avowed enemies of the United States. The State Department does not demand the extradition of Palestinian killers of Americans, not even when the killers' identities and whereabouts are known. President Bush has never given the Palestinian Authority the same ultimatum he gave the Taliban in Afghanistan: Hand over the terrorists or be destroyed.

Instead he issues incoherent declarations like the one he made on Wednesday -- blasting the Palestinian Authority for refusing "to fight terror in all its forms," while assuring Americans that the US is "working closely with the appropriate officials" -- i.e., the selfsame Palestinian Authority -- to find and prosecute the terrorists responsible for the latest butchery. As if it isn't those very officials who have been aiding and abetting such butchery all along.

To hear Bush tell it, the deeper tragedy of terrorist acts like Wednesday's is that they are "an obstacle to achieving the Palestinian people's dream of statehood." What kind of state does Bush imagine would be created by the people who danced for joy on Sept. 11? How long is he going to keep up the pretense that terrorism represents a failure, rather than a core element, of Palestinian governance?

Arafat and the Palestinian Authority were quick to distance themselves from the murder of the three Americans. But violence against Americans is routinely celebrated by the PA. "During the war in Iraq," notes Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, "the PA actively endorsed the killing of Americans, and even produced a music video celebrating the deaths of US soldiers that was broadcast repeatedly on official PA TV." (An extensive compendium of anti-American hatred in the Palestinian media is posted at www.pmw.org.il.)

For years, sermons preached in Palestinian mosques and aired on Palestinian radio and television have rhapsodized about inflicting pain on the United States. "Oh, Allah, destroy America, for she is ruled by Zionist Jews," proclaimed Sheik Ikrima Sabri, the Arafat-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, in one such sermon. "O God, destroy the Jews and their supporters . . . destroy the United States and its allies," implored Sheik Ibrahim al-Mudayris in another. And from a third, Sheik Ahmed Abu Halabiya: "Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. . . . Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them."

A few months ago, Palestinian officials renamed the central square in Jenin after Ali Jafar al-Na'amani, the Iraqi suicide bomber who killed four US Marines at a checkpoint in Najaf on March 29. *That* is what Arafat and the Palestinian Authority think of spilled American blood.

There is only one rational response to the murder of Branchizio, Parson, and Linde last week: the destruction of the Palestinian Authority, a network of killers masquerading as a government. If that doesn't happen, this much is sure: the 49th, 50th, and 51st Americans to lose their lives to Palestinian terror will not be the last.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)


The only thing I have to add is that the three Americans killed were part of a security detail for a group in Gaza to interview Palestinians for Fulbright scholarships. Nothing speaks more to the values (or lack of them) of the Palestinians that they not only bomb a group trying to lift them out of the gutter, but celebrate the attack, and try to hamper the investigation to find the perpetrators. Enough with the assertions that it is only the terrorists that feel this way about America and the Jews; the time for the argument that to speak out is to be killed is past. Until a Palestinian starts to take that risk and say that the Palestinians do not support terror, and are willing to risk their life to tell the world that the people are looking for peace, then I say that it is an unsupported claim, and that ALL Palestinians support terror, killing the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and the demonization of the West and America. If there are any Palestinians who think otherwise, I don't hear them, therefore, what they think is meaningless.
Even in Iraq, it is clear that even if the people didn't like Saddam, they like us even less. Clearly, this is partly due to our complete lack of planning for post-war Iraq, but it also has to do with an apparently permanent and all-encompassing cultural hatred of the West.
How can we expect peace, or even negotiate for it, with someone with that attitude on the other side of the table?

I'm not saying you shouldn't be an animal advocate, but please, use your friggin head!
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20031007_2334.html
Bears are dangerous things! Wild animals! They are NOT CUTE AND FUZZY! All they know is survival! They will attack you if you are stupid! Sheesh...Survival of the fittest, let me tell you...

I have decided that all relgious arguments cannot be based on texts. It is too easy for texts to be fabricated, embellished, mistranslated...there are too many interpretations, there are too many questions, there are just too many ways for the text to be twisted. Instead, we should be debating the merits of religion based on our own concept of God, then finding the religion that matches that concept. The texts should be nothing more than a guide on paper for what any particular religion believes.
I say this because the Campus Crusade people came to me, wanting to know what I thought of Psalm 22, a text that if mistranslated can be held up as evidence for Jesus as the Messiah. I realized that I might think their version was a mistranslation, but who was really to tell them they were wrong? Maybe my translation was wrong. But that didn't change the fact that I was fundamentally opposed to what Christianity stood for, and no text was going to make me accept Christianity any more for myself. I can appreciate why the religion works for others, but it doesn't work for me.
So lets do away with the Bible and the Koran and everything else as PROOF that we are right. There is no proof. Proof for one might be a test for another. There is no way to know.

So Israel has now attacked Syria, or more accurately, a militant base inside Syria. I will stand with Israel until the day it ceases to exist, and while I believe Israel is still exercising enormous restraint, I do not think they are exercising enough restraint. I think the best thing they could do would be to cease all retalitory attacks all together. No longer would the terrorists be able to claim that they were making their own retalitory attacks. It would become clear that the terrorists are interested in nothing but the destruction of the state. Pressure would mount on the Palestininan leadership to stop baseless attacks. Take down the checkpoints, remove the military from "Palestinian" territories. Give the PA full control of its areas. If it was clear Israel was doing nothing to provoke the attacks except exist, how could the international community continue to let them get away with it? That's walking out on a limb, in that the international community might let the terrorists get away with it simply because it is Israel, whom no one actually gives a damn about, just like they don't give a damn about the Jews, but there's a chance conscience would catch up with them. I have said Israel should carry out such a policy for maybe three months, but now that I think about it, if they could take unlimited suicide attacks for a year, the result would be absolutely incredible. The IDF would practically have carte blanche to do what it would with the terrorists. And that could be a very interesting proposition. Imagine if at the end of that year, Israel made a proclamation: Any Palestinian who wishes to stay where they are and live, put out a white flag on your door, and accept Israeli sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza, because the past year has proven a Palestinian State is not warranted or deserved at this time. If there is no white flag when we arrive, leave, or die. Certainly more extreme than what would happen in the real world, and certainly not what I recommend, but something to think about.