Thursday, October 8, 2009

Suicide Bombing as Worship - Part II

by Denis MacEoin

2^nd part of 2

Religion in the Jihad against Israel

Suicide bombers from Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cannot be understood as creatures of Palestinian nationalism, as the spawn of the Palestine Liberation Organization or Black September. The religious war against Israel best explains the deep impulses that propel so many young Muslims to choose death for this cause. No other conflict engages international Islamic opinion like this one. "Palestine" has become a rallying cry for Muslims everywhere.

Benny Morris, a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, correctly argues that it was religion rather than nationalism that inspired the 1948 invasion of Israel. He considers it a mistake to ignore the religious rhetoric that accompanied the 1948 assault by Arab armies. "The 1948 War, from the Arabs' perspective," he writes, "was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory."[22] The Muslim Brotherhood, the mufti of Egypt, [23] Egypt's King Farouk, King 'Abdullah of Transjordan, and many others spoke of a holy war, a jihad against the Jews. It was not a purely nationalist struggle then, nor is it today. The "[violence] did not emerge only from 'modern' nationalist passions; it also drew on powerful religious wellsprings. Nothing, it seemed, could mobilize the Palestinian Arab masses for action more readily than Muslim religious rhetoric and symbols."[24]

Little has changed since the 1940s. With the rise of radical Islam and the expansion of violent recourse, Arab irredentism has continued to have a religious focus, sometimes on "Palestine" and sometimes on the umma, the abstract nation of all Muslims. And it is as Muslims more than as Arabs (or Iranians or Afghans) that today's leading enemies of Israel view the conflict.

Palestinian violence against Israelis is one of the earliest expressions of Islamic rage against modernity. Its most recent manifestation, Hamas, is, according to its 1988 Covenant, "an Islamic resistance movement."[25] Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, still one of the leading forces of Islamic radicalism on the planet. Article one of the covenant starts as follows: "The Movement's program is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgment in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps." [26]

Female Suicide Bombers

In hard-line versions of the Islamic faith, unrelated men and women never meet, never so much as exchange glances. Islamic society is patriarchal and, like other patriarchal societies, it diminishes the energies and abilities of its women. Palestinian society links the repression of women to a male need for honor. The "core of gender inequality in [Palestinian] society resides in patriarchal control and repression of female sexuality. … The control of female sexuality maintains male power, privileges and prerogatives. … Control of women is the most important, if not the only, component of the honor code left to men."[27] Sexuality and the honor code have played a major part in the recruitment of suicide bombers; but it is the emergence of the female bomber that is most intriguing, given that such women represent a challenge to conventional Islamic notions of female inferiority and Arab cultural demands for women to be restricted to their homes or dressed by Islamic standards.

A tiny number of women took part in jihad in the early years of Islam, but this practice seems to have been abandoned by the second generation or so. Nevertheless, some hadith do permit it, and Shari'a law rules that women may engage in jihad when, for example, the Muslim state comes under attack. In recent years, women have volunteered for membership in a range of terrorist outfits from the "black widow" bombers of Chechnya[28] to Kurdish rebels [29] to the "martyrs" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.[30]

Every suicide attack by women from 1985 to 2000 was motivated by secular goals. Since 2000, however, as Hamas has grown in importance, religiously-motivated female terrorists have carried out more than two-thirds of the suicide attacks by women.[31]

The religious leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, had originally restricted or denied women the right to take part in jihad operations:

In our Palestinian society, there is a flow of women towards jihad and martyrdom, exactly like the young men. But the woman has uniqueness. Islam sets some restrictions for her, and if she goes out to wage Jihad and fight, she must be accompanied by a male chaperon. We have no need for suicide operations by women now because preserving the nation's survival is more important.[32]

By 2004, however, Yasin had reversed his theological understanding of the matter, and stated: "Exactly when there is an invasion to the holy land, a Muslim woman is permitted to wage jihad and struggle against the enemy ... the Prophet would draw lots among the women who wanted to go out with him to make jihad. The Prophet always emphasized the woman's right to wage jihad."[33]

Yasin was, in part, motivated by existing notions of honor and shame, according to which a woman who is deemed to have done something shameful (in the sexual sense) may be killed by members of her family in order to expunge that shame.[34] Even though issues of shame and honor may have their roots in communal psychology rather than faith, it is a constant justification of "honor" killings and related crimes that the Qur'an and Shari'a legislation already demand punishments such as flogging or stoning for sexual crimes. At some point it seems to have dawned on Yasin that a dishonored woman might be cleansed of her "wrongdoing" and at the same time be employed as a living bomb capable of passing unsearched through male-controlled checkpoints in order to detonate herself in the midst of as many Jews as possible. According to Mira Tzoreff, a Middle East history specialist at Tel Aviv University:

An intensification of the shahidat [female martyrs] phenomenon is represented by the [2004] suicide of Rim Riashi at the Erez check post, not only as the married mother of two small children, but also because of the sanction she received by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Indeed, it was not long before it became clear that Rim Riashi had requested Yassin's sanction only after her relationship with a lover had … become a known matter. Thus, the act of istishhad [dying as a martyr] was the only way to remove the stain of dishonor from both herself and her family.[35]

How was the "stain of dishonor" manipulated to wear a religious stamp through the expiation of martyrdom?

Shame, Honor, and Martyrdom

Religious idealism cannot fully explain this desperation, this intense craving for a martyr's death among so many young Palestinians. But without a religious framework, it is highly unlikely that any of these women would seek to kill others through their own deaths. There might be "honor" killings and beatings, and some women would run away from their families, but there would be no suicide bombings. There seems to be an affinity here with two related drives in the Arab psyche that not only puts female suicide bombers into perspective but demonstrates important links between them and their male equivalents. One of these drives is the acute awareness of shame mentioned above, an emotion sharply contrasted with honor. Muslim societies are shame societies. This is noticeable in Arab countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and several other places where honor resides in the family above all, and, in particular, in the women of the family or, more accurately, their sexual probity.

This is not to say that men do not suffer dishonor, but for them this is projected outwards, towards rivals or enemies and, of course, towards the women and sometimes towards the men they believe have compromised their honor.[36] The honor/shame dichotomy is responsible for the widespread practice of "honor" killings, something found in many parts of the Islamic world from Morocco to Pakistan, and always committed against women. Though these killings form no part of Islamic law and are not exclusive to the Muslim world, the vast majority do take place in Muslim countries where killers are seldom prosecuted.[37] That the Islamic clergy rarely condemn these practices as anti-Islamic provides them with a religious cover. Should a girl become pregnant outside marriage, or a wife commit adultery, or a daughter refuse an arranged marriage or even be seen outdoors with an unrelated boy, it becomes the inescapable duty of her father, husband, brothers, or cousins to kill her in order to restore the family's honor in the eyes of the local community. According to UNICEF, in 1999 more than two-thirds of all murders in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were "honor" killings.[38]

By transcending ordinary emotional ties and by putting on a cloak of religiosity, the female suicide bomber sets out to expunge the shame she feels on behalf of family, community, or nation, both by accepting death as a martyr and by inflicting death on others as a holy warrior. The bomber's victims may be non-Muslims who, by definition, have been "brought low" by Islam yet who persist in their arrogance by asserting equal status with Muslims or who surpass Muslims in one way or another. This humiliates the Muslim community, making it imperative that the non-Muslims be put back in their place or extinguished. In the past, this was done in conventional ways, through imprisonment, flogging, or decapitation. Similar punishments were used on deviant Muslims, apostates, and those who transgressed Shari'a law. But the use of suicide killing as a means of control is less easy to explain.

The idealization of sexual honor and sexual shame carries heavy symbolic weight outside the sphere of family relations. Jehoeda Sofer, author of Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies, quotes a Palestinian Arab as follows: "If the Arabs would have had war with the Israelis using [their] ***s, we would have defeated them easily. The Israelis are a bunch of feminine males who want to be and should be *** by the Arabs."[39]

Several years ago, Malise Ruthven, a British authority on Islam, pointed out that much Muslim outrage about The Satanic Verses was expressed in sexual language. Zaki Badawi, the late principal of the Muslim College and a moderate British Muslim, for example, wrote: "What [Rushdie] has written is far worse to Muslims than if he had raped one's own daughter. … It's like a knife being dug into you—or being raped yourself."[40] Ruthven suggests that Rushdie's crime was to enter the sacral space occupied by the Prophet: "That entry is perceived as a violation, as a kind of rape."[41]

When first the Christians and later the Jews ventured to turn their status as protected but inferior peoples upside-down, Muslim societies felt shame at their own weakness, at the possibility that the old world had disintegrated, never to return. It is a shame akin to what is felt when a woman "gets above herself" and rejects the "protection" of father, husband, or brother. Beyond that, it is a shame akin to being raped, in this case by Jews and Christians, deemed "women" in relation to "masculine" Islam. In all cases, the only restitution is death.

The suicide bomber enters this sphere of shame like a rapist and in doing so invades sacral territory. The Jews, as protected people, constitute a sphere that should be inviolate to Muslims; instead, the fida'i goes directly into Jewish space and there commits an ultimate act of rape, thereby restoring the masculinity of Muslim people. Even the female martyr, by throwing off her inferiority as a weak-bodied woman and exercising the courage of a man, rapes the Jews she slaughters.

Conclusion

Since the Qur'an commends violence and the Hadith literature is steeped in the blood of martyrs, killing and dying violently are not breaches of the moral code or infringements of divine law. They are, on the contrary, regarded as some of the highest achievements of Islamic spirituality. Asked who was the best of people, Muhammad replied, the "believer who fights in the path of God with his self and his property."[42] The martyr enjoys double the pleasure of paradise and dwells there in an abode superior to its other denizens.[43]

What can be done about this? For most Western countries, the Israeli option, to build a defensive barrier between us and the homes of the bombers, will not work. We can profile; we can infiltrate; we can discover and share intelligence; we can carry out targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders, trainers, and motivators; we can pinpoint and destroy terrorist training camps. Like the Israeli fence, constant vigilance will reduce the numbers of bombers, sometimes dramatically. But engaging the problem at the grassroots level is clearly more difficult because the phenomenon is so deeply entrenched in the cultures that produce the bombers, in the religious values, the sexual practices, and the shame and honor systems they inculcate. If we are to modify those cultures in a positive way, perhaps we have to introduce sanctions that punish countries dependent on Western aid every time a terrorist or suicide bomber from that country is identified. We have to make suicide bombing an affront to religion and a matter of great dishonor. Set beside a system of rewards for identifiable counterterrorism initiatives, above all, education programs designed to reject religious and social propaganda, this may set in motion new ways of altering the suicide mindset. But until such measures begin to bite and societies prone to this malaise start to shift toward moderation across the board, it is the intelligence and security services who will have to shoulder the burden of defense. There are no quick fixes, but there are long-term goals that we need to plan for now.

Denis MacEoin is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.

[1] "Children in the Service of Terror," Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch 2455, July 2009.
[2] The New York Times, Mar. 20, 2006.
[3] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, 2001.
[4] Vamik D. Volkan, "Suicide Bombers," Virginia University, accessed July 17, 2009.
[5] "Committing Suicide Is Not a Way Out," Islam Online, June 24, 2002.
[6] Daniel Pipes, "The [Suicide] Jihad Menace," The Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2001.
[7] Michael Bonner, "Martyrdom," Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Woodstock Publishers, 2006), chap 5.
[8] Ibid., chap. 7.
[9] Sheikh Gibril Fouad Haddad, "Inghimas In 'Suicide' Warfare," citing Mansur al-Buhuti, Kashshaf al-Qina, 2007, p. 1.
[10] Ibid., p. 3.
[11] Ibid., p. 12.
[12] Ibid., pp. 12-3.
[13] Abu Ja'far Muhammad al-Tabari, G. H. A. Juynboll, trans., The History of al-Tabari: The Conquest of Iraq, Southwestern Persia, and Egypt, vol. 2, p. 554.
[14] "The Highest Ranking Palestinian Authority Cleric: In Praise of Martyrdom Operations," Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch, no. 226, June 11, 2001.
[15] Marvin Hier, Abraham Cooper, and Leo Adler, "Waving the Flag of Hatred," Calgary (Can.) Herald, Aug. 16, 2006.
[16] Steven Stalinsky, "Dealing in Death," National Review Online, May 24, 2004.
[17] Daniel Pipes, "Can Infidels Be Innocents?" Daniel Pipes Blog, Aug. 7, 2005.
[18] "What Does the Religion of Peace Teach about … Violence," accessed July 17, 2009; Bonner, "The Quran and Arabia," Jihad in Islamic History, chap. 2.
[19] See, for example, Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume, trans. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad "al-Waqidi," ed., Kitab al-ta'rikh wa 'l-maghazi (London: Marsden Jones, 1966).
[20] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Misri, n.d.), chap. 41, hadith 4681.
[21] Benjamin Blaney, "The Berserker: His Origin and Development in Old Norse Literature," Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1972.
[22] Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 394.
[23] Ibid., pp. 394-5.
[24] Ibid., p. 12.
[25] The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Aug. 18, 1988, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, accessed July 6, 2009.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Cheryl Rubenberg, Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), p. 253.
[28] Lorenzo Vidino, "How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, pp. 57-66.
[29] EU-Digest, July 17, 2005.
[30] Debra D. Zedalis, "Female Suicide Bombers," Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, June 2004; Yoram Schweitzer, "Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?" Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, 2006.
[31] Paige Whaley Eager, From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence (Aldershot, U.K. and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), p. 172.
[32] Maria Alvanou, "Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers: The Interplaying Effects of Islam, Nationalism and Culture," Strategic Research and Policy Center, National Defense College, Israel Defense Forces, Working Papers Series, paper no. 3, May 2007, pp. 26-7.
[33] Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers (Emmaeus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2003), p. 113.
[34] James Brandon and Salam Hafez, Crimes of the Community: Honor-based Violence in the UK (London: Centre for Social Cohesion, 2008), p. 41; Phyllis Chesler, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 61-9.
[35] Mira Tzoreff, "The Palestinian Shahida," in Schweitzer, Female Suicide Bombers, p. 21.
[36] Daniel Pipes, "'Honor Killings' of Muslim Males in the West," Daniel Pipes Blog, updated July 25, 2009.
[37] "Case Study: 'Honour Killings' and Blood Feuds," Gendercide Watch, accessed July 17, 2009; Chesler, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?"
[38] "UNICEF Executive Director targets violence against women," Information Newsline, Mar. 7, 2000.
[39] Arno Schmidt and Jehoeda Sofer, eds., Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies (Binghampton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1992), p. 109.
[40] Malise Ruthven, A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam (London: The Hogarth Press, 1991), p. 29.
[41] Ibid., p. 31.
[42] Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), hadith 2578; Al-Islam.com, Mawsu'a al-hadith ash-sharif, accessed July 17, 2009.
[43] Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, book 52, hadith 48.

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Iran – The Israeli Challenge.

by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

The options of deterrence and retaliation are not available in face of the Iranian terror regime, which sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its people during the 1980-88 war against Iraq. The only option available is that of prevention and preemption.

The Jewish state cannot rely on the US to prevent Iran's nuclearization, especially not on a US, which opposes the military option and embraces the options of engagement and sanctions, which have played into the hands of Iran during the last seven years.

In 1981, the heads of Israel's Mossad and military intelligence, then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Opposition Head Shimon Peres lobbied Prime Minister Menachem Begin against the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. They contended that the chance of success was negligible and that the prospect of watching the pilots dragged beheaded in the streets of Baghdad was higher than welcoming the pilots back in Israel. They warned that the operation would cause a deep rift between Israel and the US with devastating political, economic and social consequences. They projected the collapse of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, an all out Muslim war on Israel – without US support – and a significant deterioration of the personal security of Jews around the globe. However, Prime Minister Begin demonstrated a pre-requisite to leadership, asserting that the cost of inaction (a nuclear Iraq) would dwarf the cost of action. He sacrificed short-term convenience on the altar of long-term national security.

In 1981, the US did not fully appreciate the severity of Iraq's nuclear threat. In 2009, the US is fully aware of Iran's nuclear threat. Would Prime Minister Netanyahu follow in the footsteps of Begin, or Peres, in face of a clear and present lethal, nuclear danger?

An Iranian nuclear cloud, hovering above Israel, would not require the launching a nuclear bomb, in order to wreck domestic and external confidence in the future of the Jewish state. Aliya (immigration of Jews) would come to a halt, emigration would surge dramatically, Israel's credit rating and growth projection would collapse, oversea investors would stay away, causing economic, social and security devastation. Therefore, the Jewish state cannot await a smoking nuclear gun in the hand of Teheran; the Jewish state must prevent the nuclear gun from reaching Teheran's hand.

In 2009, Iran's nuclear infrastructure benefits from defensive means, which are superior to Iraq's 1981 defense capabilities: proliferation throughout Iran, deep and heavily fortified facilities and most-advanced Russian air defense systems. But, in 2009, Israel's offensive capabilities have improved geometrically, compared with 1981: destruction, precision, penetration and the capability to launch missiles away from the range of enemy radar. In 1981, Israel had only one-time offensive option, which was based on untested modifications of the F-15 and F-16. In 2009, Israel benefits from a number of offensive options, which are based on proved military systems and on superior human and satellite intelligence.

In 2009, the destruction of a few critical nuclear installations would paralyze, or substantially delay, Iran's nuclear effort.

In 1981, the American public and Congress shared the relative-indifference of the Free World toward Iraq's nuclear threat. In 2009, the American public and Congress are fully cognizant of Iran's nuclear threat to US soldiers in the Gulf and in the Indian Ocean, to the US mainland and to Israel. They push President Obama to adopt a more hawkish policy on Iran and they identify with Israel's right of self-defense. Would Israel leverage such attitude by the American public and its representatives in both chambers of Congress, their traditional solid support of the Jewish state and the power of Congress to initiate and stop the supply of sophisticated military systems, in order to enhance Israeli capabilities to prevent the nuclearization of Iran?

A unilateral military Israeli action in 1967 (Six Day War) and in 1981 (bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor) triggered painful short-term condemnations and sanctions, but accorded the Jewish state with long-term strategic respect. The destruction of Egypt's pan-Arab clout and Iraq's nuclear capabilities reduced Middle East turbulence, dealt a blow to the USSR, bolstered the stability of Saudi Arabia and other pro-US vulnerable regimes, advanced US interests and upgraded Israel's posture of deterrence.

The elimination of Iran's nuclear threat would trigger similar results, in addition to a possible shower of Iranian, Hizballah and Hamas missiles on Israeli population centers, accompanied by reinforced PLO terrorism. As severe as the cost of a military offensive would be, it would be dwarfed by the cost of avoiding military offensive: A nuclear attack on the Jewish state.

The Iranian nuclear challenge constitutes – for Israel's Prime Minister, Cabinet and Knesset Members - the ultimate test of leadership. Will they follow pragmatism, driven by tenacity and the long-term survival interest of the Jewish state, or will they demonstrate "pragmatism," driven by vacillation and short-term needs, which has characterized all Israeli governments since 1992, thus eroding the foundation of the Jewish state.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Hamas Set to Win Election in Palestinian Authority.

by Khaled Abu Toameh

If the U.S. and its allies want to avoid another Hamas victory, they should reconsider their demand that the Palestinians hold another free election. Otherwise they will be repeating the same mistake they made in 2006.

Backed by the U.S., the Egyptians are now pushing the Palestinians toward holding new elections for president and parliament. By doing so, Cairo and Washington are taking a big risk: There is no guarantee that a majority of Palestinians would not vote for Hamas again.

Palestinians went to the polls three times in the past fives years to vote - - Twice they voted for Hamas.

Hamas candidates scored major victories in the municipal and parliamentary elections.

Hamas boycotted the presidential election that was held in January 2005, and which brought Mahmoud Abbas to power. Had Hamas participated in the presidential election, some Palestinians argue that its chances of winning that vote too would have been good.

Prior to the January 2006 parliamentary election, the US, Israel and many Western countries ignored warnings that Hamas was headed toward victory. Hamas won that vote largely because of the Palestinian public's disenchantment with Fatah's corruption, mismanagement and abuse of power.

Such was the degree of contempt for Fatah and its representatives that even Christians and secular Palestinians cast their ballots for the radical Islamic movement.

Fatah itself was even so aware of its poor performance and blunders that it dispatched some of its representatives to the US in a bid to persuade the Bush Administration to abandon its plan to hold free elections in the Palestinian territories.

Today Fatah is not in a better situation and its chances of winning in the planned elections next year do not appear to be high.

Fatah's dwindling popularity is mainly attributed to the faction's failure to draw conclusions from its defeat to Hamas in the 2006 election - Fatah's failure to reform itself and get rid of icons of financial corruption and thugs who continue to call the shots in the faction.

The feeling among many Palestinians is that Fatah, the largest faction of the PLO, is continuing to march backward ever since it lost one of its founders and symbols, Yasser Arafat.

In the past few weeks, Fatah's credibility suffered one blow after another.

First, Fatah's Sixth General Assembly, which was held in Bethlehem for the first time in 20 years, failed to inject new and fresh blood into the faction. Instead, Fatah saw the return of most of Arafat's former cronies who were responsible for abuse of human rights, mismanagement and financial corruption.

Second, Fatah's open affiliation and cooperation with Israel and the US is causing tremendous damage to its credibility among Palestinians. This, of course, plays into the hands of Hamas. The next election will be presented as a contest between "collaborators with Israel and America" (Fatah), and Muslim candidates who reject any form of affiliation with the West.

Third, the recent summit in New York, where the US literally forced Abbas to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has made Fatah appear as if it is incapable of taking independent decisions. For months, Abbas had vowed not to meet with Netanyahu or resume peace talks with Israel unless construction in the settlements was completely halted.

Fourth, Abbas's decision to withdraw a proposal to the UN Human Rights Council regarding the report of Justice Richard Goldstone on the Gaza war has also undermined his credibility among many Palestinians. Abbas and Fatah are now being accused of "helping Israel bury its war crimes."

Meanwhile, Hamas appears to be increasing its power. A prisoner-exchange agreement with Israel, which would see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jail in return for IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, will undoubtedly boost Hamas's popularity.

Despite its failure to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and its responsibility for the ongoing suffering there, Hamas is still admired by many because of its continued defiance and refusal to bow to US, Israeli and Arab pressure.

Barring last-minute obstacles, Hamas and Fatah are expected to sign a "reconciliation" accord on October 22 in the Egyptian capital of Cairo.

The Egyptian-brokered agreement calls, among other things, for holding presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories sometime during the first half of 2010.

Under such circumstances, it is easy to see why Hamas could win the next election.

Khaled Abu Toameh
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A License to Kill.

by Moshe Arens

While the Goldstone report is being eagerly read in Israel and in capitals around the world, it is also being intensively studied by terrorists bent on destroying the State of Israel - and they must be breathing a sigh of relief.

This is not only because the Hamas terrorists in Gaza are in effect getting off scot-free in the report - they, in any case, did not have to be concerned about being brought before the International Court of Justice.

They can also interpret the report as international approbation for carrying out military operations from civilian population centers - schools, hospitals, refugee camps, etc. - as they did in the years when they were launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages in the south of Israel, and as they continued to do during the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

From the report it is clear to them that establishing military units and rocket launchers in civilian population centers will from now on be an effective military tactic that they can hope to apply with impunity, enjoying at least partial immunity from an Israeli response. That response is likely to be withheld out of concern that it will lead to Israel being charged with committing a war crime.

The report is in effect a license to kill - for Hamas, for Hezbollah, and for terrorists all over the world. No less.

"The bastards have changed the rules," Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president, supposedly said when his wrong-doings caught up with him. He resigned on October 10, 1973. That was 36 years ago, during the Yom Kippur War, a conventional battlefield war, tanks against tanks and soldiers against soldiers, with no civilians in the vicinity. And also no war crime inquiries.

But since that Israeli victory, things have changed. Faced by the overpowering force of the Israel Defense Forces, terror attacks against civilians have become the weapon of choice for Israel's enemies. And here the Goldstone report is changing the rules of warfare so as to favor the terrorists. As long as they operate in civilian surroundings, they should have nothing to worry about.

Hezbollah pioneered this tactic in Southern Lebanon, and put it into practice very effectively during the Second Lebanon War. Hamas in Gaza, tutored by Hezbollah, followed suit. And the Goldstone report has now enshrined it with international legalese, which may very well serve as a precedent in future encounters with terrorists.

This will have far-reaching effects on the war against terror, wherever it is being waged, and it will empower the terrorists, whether Justice Richard Goldstone realizes it or not. It will be especially damaging for Israel, whose civilians are under almost constant threat from terrorists.

During Operation Defensive Shield the IDF showed that the commonly held wisdom that terrorism could not be defeated by military means was dead wrong.

Whereas Palestinian terrorism could not be deterred, it could be physically eliminated by military means. The terrorists could be pursued into their lairs and destroyed, or brought to justice. Since then, terrorism from Judea and Samaria against Israeli civilians has essentially ceased. Now, after the Goldstone report, that kind of operation is going to be difficult to repeat.

The report is a blow to the war on terror everywhere and for all nations engaged in fighting terrorism. Hopefully, the nations of the world will have the strength and political will to reject the report, and make it clear to all that terror operations carried out from civilian areas are the war crime, and not the attempt to eliminate these attacks. That using civilians as a shield is a war crime.

If that does not happen, we can expect that areas densely populated by civilians will become the base for terrorist activities in many parts of the world - with the expectation that "international law" will provide them with immunity from counterattacks.

Israel, knowing that its existence is at stake, will find a way to defend itself even under these changed circumstances. But the peace process is bound to be set back. This will not be the time to take big risks.

Thank you Justice Goldstone. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Moshe Arens
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why this man is laughing fit to explode.

by Melanie Phillips

There are clearly no lengths to which the world will not go to facilitate Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Consider. A couple of weeks ago, the world was stunned to discover that Iran had a second uranium processing plant at Qom, thus proving beyond doubt that its pursuit of nuclear technology was to make not nuclear energy but a bomb.

Actually it wasn't stunned at all, since this information was known to Barack Obama before he was even elected President. But anyway. This coup de théâtre was revealed, it seemed, to strengthen the world's hand in dealing with Iran. After all, this autumn is the deadline set by the Obama administration for Iran to halt its nuclear weapons programme, after which the US said it was finally going to get really tough with Iran and do ... oooh, really tough things like sanctions.

So what happened when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany met Iran (its chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jali, pictured above)? A deal was reached which has been described as a 'breakthrough' and caused the IAEA head Mohammed al Baradei to pronounce himself 'delighted with progress'. Unfortunately, it was Iran that made yet more progress in its path to the bomb.