In Outpost, from the time the idea was first bruited, we have said it was folly to think a "wall" would secure Israel from Arab terror. In the June 2002 issue, we quoted Ariel Sharon himself on a 1995 Labor government proposal to build such a wall: "Won't these fences be sabotaged? Won't they be penetrated? It is difficult to fathom such silliness." Now that Sharon has adopted "such silliness" as his own, and the staggeringly expensive Wall has been constructed in many areas, its absurdity is being proven on the ground. The terrorist who murdered seven year old Noam Leibovitch on June 17 had dug a small trench under the Wall and moved through it into "Green line" Israel to kill the little girl.
The government's reaction is to bury its head further in the sand. David Bedein of the Israel Resource News Agency reports that the government-influenced electronic media (Israel Government Radio News, Israel Government Channel One TV News, Israel Commercial Channel Two News, Israel Commercial Channel Ten News, Israel Armed Forces Radio News) all stubbornly refused to report on how the Palestinian Authority's official Voice of Palestine Radio described the murder of this little girl -- "the death by shooting of a female Israeli settler" without a hint of condemnation or disapproval.
Jordan's Islamists have scored a striking success in elections for Jordan's Parliament (they had boycotted the 1997 elections). The Islamic Action Front won all seven seats they contested in Amman, Jordan's capital, and a number of seats elsewhere. They will certainly not be a majority -- analysts doubt they will even capture a quarter of Parliamentary seats -- but that is largely because the electoral system sharply overweights smaller rural and Bedouin constituencies. The Front has already vowed: "Our deputies in parliament will do their utmost to end the normal ties with the Zionist enemy and to stop the government from yielding to American pressure." The Front said it would consider joining the cabinet only if the peace treaty with Israel "is annulled."
King Abdullah is quoted as hoping that the election will bolster the country's democratic credentials with the United States: "We are excited, this is a new page and a new beginning," he told Reuters TV. But what this underscores is how foolish it is to expect elections in the Arab world to produce the liberal, tolerant-of-diversity regimes the administration seems to assume will be forthcoming.
Indeed, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found Jordanians more hostile to the United States than any other population. An incredible 99% had a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion; Jordanians even beat out the Palestinian Authority, where a mere 98% were hostile to the U.S.
Those readers of the New York Times infuriated by the moral equivalence it bestows on terrorists and their victims in Israel, may take cold comfort from learning that Israel is not alone. Here is how the Times (June 13) describes the seizure of white farms (the so-called "land reform" program of President Mugabe in Zimbabwe): "The program has been marked by violent clashes between white farmers and the independence war veterans and other Mugabe supporters who sought to take land by force."
Clashes? Encouraged by Mugabe, the so-called war veterans (most of them in their twenties or teenagers not yet born when Mugabe led his revolution against the white dominated government of Ian Smith) illegally invaded white-owned commercial farms, threatening, beating, sometimes hacking to death farmers, their families and even their black workers. Rarely, cornered when a murderous gang knocked down his locked doors, a farmer vainly tried to defend himself and his family against his attackers. "Clashes" have occurred only in the imagination of the New York Times, still fighting colonial wars on behalf of the "oppressed."
In the last Outpost, Elyakim Haetzni noted that the Road Map set up an outrageous equivalence between settlements and terror: we already see the impact of this as Sharon dismantles settlement "outposts" even as Abu Mazen is open that he will do nothing to impede the terrorist infrastructure, but rather plans to incorporate the terror groups into his government.
Remarkably, Sharon, despite his many protestations that he would do nothing until terror stops, has zealously dismantled Israeli "outposts" and released terrorist murderers even as terror incidents have escalated.
Outpost - 2 - July-August 2003