A TIME TO SPEAK (Ecclesiastes 3:7)
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Volume II:6 (No. 18)
15 June 2002 - 5 Tammuz 5762


THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."
 -- William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

"Israelis don't deserve to live." - Sister of PLO bomb-murderer.

The blood-letting by Arabs against Jews is a habit of long-standing, even within the Land of Israel. Now a new tactic is catching special attention, as it was meant to do: The murderers kill themselves along with their victims.

This innovation, instituted only after the PLO was given control of territory and population, is quite unnecessary to perpetrate the crimes. There have been many bombings of targets in Israel and around the world that cause massive death and injury and destruction without harm to the bomber.
It does however serve, and thus far serve well, at least two other purposes:

1] It whips up an impressionable population to a homicidal frenzy. Today, the majority of the population in the areas ruled by the PLO approve suicide-bombing as a tactic, and the goal the total destruction of Israel and seizure of its land.

2] It stirs sympathy for the bomb-murderers in the na?ve assumption that they are driven by hopelessness and despair. In fact, as will be shown, they are driven by hopes of glory and rewards of bliss in paradise.

A father at a demonstration in a European city carries a little daughter dressed up in bomber costume with toy bombs. A mother in Gaza dresses her 10-year-old son in bomber costume with mask and toy bombs, and the child solemnly declares his intent at the age of 14 or 15 to "explode myself". This is not hopelessness and despair, but bizarre hope and ambition.

Many who find this incomprehensible argue for "root causes": oppression, occupation, deprivaton, poverty, humiliation. These arguments, discussed below, do not address the question of why peoples all over the world suffer all these and worse without becoming homicidal maniacs.
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"Western civilization has no concepts such as self-sacrifice and honor, which is why Americans fail to understand that the suicide-bomber experiences the height of ecstasy and happiness"
-- Dr. Professor Adel-Sadeq, Head, Department of Psychiatry Al-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
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After a recent Arab terror-bombing of Israelis, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department admonished the PLO that such doings do not "advance their aspirations". Quite the contrary, the aspiration is to kill Israelis, and their successes mount almost daily.

The locale of the State Department is known in Washington, D.C. as "Foggy Bottom", and that has become all too apt a symbol for its persistently murky perceptions. A current egregious example is its annual report on worldwide terrorism, exposed in "State's Terror Untruths" by Daniel Pipes,
New York Post, May 28, 2002:

"Each spring, the State Department issues 'Patterns of Global Terrorism,' its major report on the problem it defines as 'premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.' It's always been a highly politicized document, reflecting the Washington debate and diplomatic imperatives, but this year it has veered into unreliability and even falsehood. It's a dangerous document likely to harm the war on terrorism. Its problems include:

"Methodology: The State Department uses methods which create the misleading impression that the Middle East is marginal to terrorism. It does this by counting damage to property the same as damage to people: So of the 346 terrorist incidents logged in 2001, 178 (slightly over half) involved attacks on a multinational oil pipeline in Colombia, suggesting that South America is the overwhelming source of terrorism.

"But as the Middle East Quarterly's Martin Kramer puts it, 'Obviously, Latin America is not the world's terrorism epicenter, and it is not why you have to take off your shoes at airport departure gates.'

"It also logs incidents by location, not perpetrator. Thus, Sept. 11 counts as North American terrorism, not Middle Eastern. By this reckoning, a mere 29 incidents took place in the Middle East, compared to 33 in Africa, 68 in Asia, and a whopping 194 in Latin America (remember that pipeline). Of 3,547 deaths last year, a mere 60 lost their lives in the Middle East, compared to 90 in Africa, 180 in Asia, and 3,235 in North America.

"Denial: The overwhelmingly most important sources of terrorism are militant Islam and Palestinian nationalism. (It's noteworthy that in addition to the 3,235 people killed on 9/11, all but one of the other eight Americans who lost their lives in terrorist incidents in the course of 2001 - one each in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, five in Israel - were murdered by adherents of militant Islam.)

"But the report's only allusions to militant Islam are to deny its importance: 'The war on terrorism is not a war against Islam.' 'Adverse mention in this report of individual members of any political, social, ethnic, religious, or national group is not meant to imply that all members of that group are terrorists.' And it includes this quote from a Muslim figure: 'Our tolerant Islamic religion highly prizes the sanctity of human life.' End of discussion. [. . . . ]

"Whitewashing Palestinian violence: Ever intent on enhancing Yasser Arafat's reputation, State hides his responsibility for terrorism. President Bush may have has accused Arafat of "enhancing terrorism" but State's bureaucrats suppress every piece of the voluminous evidence pointing to this connection.

Worse, State pretends the vast majority of Palestinian terrorist incidents simply did not happen. It defines 'significant international terrorist incidents' as ones involving major property damage, abduction or kidnapping, loss of life or serious injury, or the foiled attempt at any of these, and in 2001 it found 123 incidents worldwide that meet this criteria. Of those, a mere 11 concerned violence against Israelis. But when the Independent Media Review and Analysis applied State's criteria to anti-Israel violence, its scrupulous research found 97 attacks on Israel that fit this definition.

"The U.S. government asserts that Palestinian atrocities against Israel made up just 9 percent of the world's serious terrorist incidents in 2001, but in fact they constituted 46 percent of them.

"In all, this document reflects a mentality in Washington of reluctance to confront unpleasant realities. The danger is clear: He who fools himself about his enemy in time of war is likely to lose that war."

The obfuscation from Foggy Bottom is analyzed on Capitol Hill in "Congress Urged To Issue Separate Terror Report", from MENL (Middle East News Line): "Congress has been urged to issue its own study in the wake of criticism of the State Department's latest report on international terrorism.

"A House Armed Services subcommittee was told on Thursday that the State Department report was the most politicized document since a CIA missile estimate in 1995. The Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism subcommittee was told that the State Department report ignored many acts of terrorism in its
refusal to cite terrorist sponsorship by the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia.

"'I would suggest that not since the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate on missile threats to the United States, a blatantly politicized document, has the Congress been served such a distorted and, frankly, fraudulent document as that the State Department has just rendered describing Palestinian compliance with its obligations and other terrorist threats,' Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said.

Gaffney, regarded as a Republican close to the Bush administration, said the State Department refused to acknowledge Israeli-supplied evidence that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was involved in financing suicide bombings and buying rockets to attack Israeli cities. Gaffney cited the Israeli capture of the Karine-A freighter in January, condemned by President George Bush and later acknowledged by Arafat himself."

The State Department recently delegated to CIA Director George Tenet the task of helping Arafat restore his "security services" that have never been used for security, but only for terrorism and the suppression of dissent.
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The State Department's protection of Saudi Arabia is supplemented by the Saudi royal house's engaging high-priced US advertising and public relations companies to for a campaign to make the public aware of its beneficence. Among items probably not included in this ad campaign are the
orations of Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, a prominent government cleric, television host and royal protege.

A tape-recording of one of his recent addresses was supplied by the Saudi Information Service and cited by National Review Online, April 26, 2002:
"[. . . . ] People should know that Jews are backed by the Christians, and the battle that we are going through is not with Jews only [. . . .] I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment; I am against America even if the stone liquefies My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse. She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth. Who else implanted the tyrants in our land, who else nurtured oppression? Oh Muslim Ummah don't take the Jews and
Christians as allies.

"[. . . . ] Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. . . . . Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them?"
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"We believe our sons go to heaven when they are martyred . . . . When [Jewish] sons die
 they go to hell"   -- Naima al-Obeid, mother of a late terrorist
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A Tale of Two Mothers
Recent targets for PLO terror include Rishon LeTzion (First to Zion) and Petah Tikvah (Gate of Hope), two towns founded early in the Jewish resettlement of Israel and well before the later influx of Arabs west of the Jordan River. Ruti Peled, age 56, was buying an ice cream cone for her granddaughter Sinai Keinon, age 15 months, when they were murdered by a terror-bomber.

The broadcasting network CNN, not usually interested in Israeli casualties, on this occasion proposed to broadcast an interview with Hen Keinan, the young woman who lost her mother and her baby together. It was conducted in the hospital where she and her husband Lior Keinon were being treated for their own injuries.

As reported by Yedioth Aharonot, 3 June 2001 (translated frm the Hebrew by Israel News Today):
"The parents of the infant Sinai Keinan, who was murdered last week in the terror attack in Petah Tikva, were interviewed last week on CNN, and tearfully told the story of their loss. When they later viewed the program, they said they were alarmed to see that instead of their story, only the mother of the terrorist who carried out the terror attack appeared on the program.

"Last Friday Hen Keinan and her husband Lior were asked to be interviewed on the CNN program called "International Hour". This is a program that is broadcast in many countries all over the world. They were asked to talk about their feelings following the murder of their 14 month old infant daughter, Sinai, and Hen's mother, Ruti Peled, 56, who was also killed in the terror attack.

"Hen, who speaks English well, and her husband Lior, already prepared at the hospital, very carefully, the message they wished to convey to the world, and "especially to the Europeans who give legitimacy to terror."Before the taped interview began, Hen was asked to speak, in a live broadcast, to an American broadcast of the network, and among other things, she said: "We love you. Help us as much as you can".

"Afterwards the two went for a special interview. The journalist who interviewed them, asked Hen, among other things: "How do you feel"? And she responded with a question: "Do you have a mother? Do you have children"? "Close your eyes for a minute and imagine that they were murdered in front
of your eyes. Only then will you know in what hell I live". Her husband, Lior, showed the journalist the broken parts of Sinai's baby carriage, andall the members of the broadcast team shed tears.

"'That same evening', related Hen painfully, 'We sat down to watch the special interview with us, and instead, to our amazement, we got only the interview with the mother of the terrorist who carried out the terror attack in which my daughter and mother were murdered'.

"The terrorist's mother related during the interview, among other things, that before he left on his mission, she gave him her blessings.

"'Only the day after were portions of my interview broadcast, in another program, with my statements having been edited', related Hen last night on the Israeli TV show, Documedia. She said that the special interview with her was not even broadcast. She expressed anger about the 'unfair and unprofessional' treatment by CNN. [. . . . ]"

The mother of another terrorist also had her chance to take pride in the accomplishment of a son who murdered five teen-aged yeshiva students while they were playing basketball. This interview was published in Saudi Arabia - a kingdom that gives each bereaved Terror-Parent a grant of $25,000.

As reported by Smadar Peri, Israel Resource Review, 5 June 2002: "Um-Nidal, the mother of Mohammed Farahat, 17, who perpetrated the suicide attack in Atzmona in which five yeshiva students were murdered, encouraged her son to perpetrate the terror attacks, was party to planning the attack
and had her picture taken with her son as a memento before she said goodbye to him one last time.

"'I'm proud of my four sons who were all raised to carry out terror attacks against the Israelis,' said Um-Nidal, a resident of Gaza, who is named for her eldest son Nidal, 31, who is on Israel's wanted list. Her second son, Ahmed, also went to perpetrate a terror attack, but was caught, tried and
sentenced to 11 years in an Israeli prison. Her third son, Muamin, is seen regularly with the leader of the Hamas movement, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

"The Saudi daily, A-Shark al-Awsat, which yesterday published the chilling testimony of the Palestinian mother who encouraged her son to perpetrate a suicide attack, stressed that this is the first time in the history of terror attacks in the Arab world that the parents of a suicide bomber are involved in planning that terror attack in all its details, and are photographed together with the shahid as a memento, before his death.

"The mother recounted, 'My young son Mohammed joined Izzadin Kassam, the Hamas movement's military branch, when he was seven. He was very close to the organization's leader, Imad Akel, who lived in our home, and was assassinated by the Israelis seven years ago. From a young age Mohammed was a party to planning the terror attacks, and I encouraged him to commit suicide.'

"When Mohammed left to perpetrate that terror attack in Atzmona, his mother took a video camera and a regular camera, and had her picture taken with him as a memento. 'It was clear to me that these pictures would be a memento, and I was proud of him and his bravery. I knew the timetable of the planned terror attack, and as the time drew near, I sat at the entrance to the house and waited for the news of his death. When I heard the number of casualties the Israelis suffered I knew I should be proud. His friends reported his death to me and I was very happy."
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To most of the world news media the victims of terrorist attacks are rarely more than anonymous statistics of killed and wounded. The dead are quickly buried, the wounded as quickly forgotten. The medical aftermath is explained in this report by Mandi Steele, WorldNetDaily, 30 May 30, 2002:

"Suicide bomber kills 3," the headline reports. It's become an all-too-familiar story in urban settings in Israel, as terrorists wage a war of attrition against beleaguered civilians surrounded by a sea of hostility.

"But the rising death toll from such atrocities is only half the story, says a radiologist from Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois. The other, untold part is the horrors the survivors of such gruesome attacks must endure - sometimes for the rest of their lives.

"X-rays taken from victims of suicide bombings reveal pieces of metallic fragments embedded in their skin, muscles, organs and bones, says Dr. Michael Messing, who visited the victims of suicide bombings while at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Suicide bombers pack their bombs with nails
and other objects so even survivors of suicide bombings will suffer from the bomb's effects.

"'They're trying to maximize the number of people they kill and injure,' said Messing of the terrorists. These bombs, which Messing says are sometimes funded by Palestinian authorities including Yasser Arafat, are packed with spikes, nails, screws, nuts, bullets, mortar, ball bearings and even rat poison.

"'What were originally created for constructive purposes have been transformed by Arab terrorists into cruel, deadly, destructive projectiles,' said Messing. 'The nails fly like bullets, head first, penetrating skin, flesh and bone. The unprecedented wave of suicide bombings has presented a whole new set of medical challenges.'

"Rabbi Immanuel Yosef Legomsky is a neurotherapist at Jerusalem's Menucha v'Simcha Neurofeedback Clinic. He said treating Israeli victims of Palestinian terror 'is the major mental and physical health problem here today. [The Palestinians'] goal is to do as much damage as possible and
destroy functional life where they fail to actually kill. Their result is that often those who live and their relatives suffer much more than those who die,' he said.

"Reports of people being injured in suicide bombings are not rare. Since September 2000, 498 Israelis have been killed and 4,021 injured in acts of Palestinian violence. In suicide bombings alone, 208 Israelis have died. On Monday, there were several reports on the suicide bomber who killed an 18-month-old baby girl and her grandmother and left 27 people injured. The reports, however, rarely go into the medical details to explain just what is meant by 'injured'."

Sara Levinsky Rigler, in The Aish HaTorah bulletin "Israel Update" (No. 41) follows up on the aftermath for some victims. Their names are changed to protect their privacy:

"Leah and Yitzhak Klein, both in their mid-twenties, had just finished their pre-Shabbat shopping at Jerusalem's farmers' market. Their tote bags were laden with vegetables to prepare for chicken soup and potato kugel. Like many low-income young couples, pensioners, and Russian immigrants, the Kleins chose to shop on late Friday afternoons because the prices hit rock bottom a couple hours before the market closed for Shabbat.

"[. . . . ] suddenly Leah heard a thunderous blast, what she would later describe as 'a noise from another world.' Two meters in front of them, an Arab female terrorist had blown herself up.  Leah, her face and hands burning, flew through the air. When she landed, she turned her head frantically to find her husband amidst the smoke and dust which filled the air. Yitzhak, whose hands and neck had been burned, had landed on the opposite side of the street. He ran and grabbed Leah and started to pull her toward Bikur Holim hospital, several blocks away. A taxi pulled up next to them, told them to jump in, and sped them to the hospital. There they were admitted and pronounced 'lightly injured'.

"[. . . . ] Yitzhak . . . was discharged after two days. Leah spent ten days in the hospital, her face grotesquely swollen. When her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, came to visit Leah, she could not recognize her own granddaughter. She approached Leah's bed and asked, 'Excuse me, Miss, where
is room number 7?' Leah cried, 'Look, Bubbie, it's me!' Her grandmother sobbed, 'That I should survive Auschwitz and come to live in a Jewish state, only to have to see my granddaughter attacked by Jew-haters, right here, right in Jerusalem!'

"[. . . . ] The ritual in [the author's house in Jerusalem] is mirrored in homes throughout Israel: First we hear from the radio of a terrorist attack. (If the attack is in Jerusalem, we first hear the sirens.) Someone
calls out, 'Pegua' (terrorist attack) and everyone in the family grabs a Book of Psalms and takes up positions in the living room. Together we fervently recite four psalms for the complete recovery of the seriously wounded victims, those who, between one radio report and the next, could move from the list of seriously wounded to the list of dead. Then we sit by the radio and listen as the reports come in: How many dead, how many seriously wounded, how many moderately wounded, and how many lightly wounded.

"[. . . . ] But what does 'lightly injured' mean? According to Professor Shmuel Shapira, Deputy Director General of Hadassah University Hospitals, 'lightly injured' is slang rather than a scientific definition. It generally means that there is no danger to life or to any organ of the patient's body. [. . . . ] Professor Shapira points out that the term is a misnomer because the effects on the patient's life can be far from light. The physical wounds may require weeks of hospitalization, repeated surgeries, months of rehabilitation, and frequent visits to the outpatient clinic for a year or longer. The psychological trauma may be even more devastating, leading in the worst cases to chronic unemployment, divorce, and sometimes suicide. 'His family life may be ruined altogether,' observes Professor Shapira, 'and he may be mentally handicapped for life.'

"The symptoms of acute stress disorder experienced by terror victims include: trouble concentrating, recurrent and obtrusive thoughts (which may adversely affect professional productivity), nightmares, re-experiencing of the traumatic event, insomnia, headaches, loss of appetite, numbing, social problems, dizziness, stomach aches, heart palpitations, depression, survivor guilt, and hyper-vigilance.

"[. . . .] Since September, 2000, the beginning of what many in Israel call The Oslo War, the two branches of Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem's largest medical facility, have treated 1,700 terror victims. Most of these were 'lightly injured,' including those suffering shock who were sent home after a few hours.

"Yeshara Gold, Founder and International Director of Kids for Kids, http://www.kidsforkids.net   an organization dedicated to the recovery of young victims of terrorism, believes that the problem of Post Traumatic Stress is far more widespread than the numbers of those actually injured in terrorist attacks. Kids for Kids services what they call the kids who fall between the stretchers." These include the child who lives next door to the child who was killed, the teenager who daily rides on the bus line which was targeted by a terrorist attack, the kid who witnessed a suicide bombing, the classmates of terror victims, etc.

"For example, a young man named Koby was killed a year ago in a terrorist attack, had a sister who is the single mother of a seven-year-old boy Motti. He used to visit his sister and Motty every morning before school and every evening. After Koby was killed . . . . Motty  suffered an acute case of trauma, including nightmares, acting out in school, and constant fears. Fortunately, Kids for Kids was able to help him with a recovery support team trained in play therapy, therapeutic art work, and trauma counseling. [. . . . ]

"'I believe the whole country is suffering some level of Post Traumatic Stress,' asserts [trauma specialist Dr. Batya Ludman]. 'In addition to those injured or present at a terrorist attack, there is a whole subset of people who "should have been there," such as the person who planned to have lunch at S'barro's but got held up in traffic, or the person who works in that shopping center but by some quirk wasn't there when the bomb exploded, or the person who was in that shoe store a couple hours before the attack. These people feel they had a narrow escape, and they may suffer many of the symptoms of acute trauma.'

"[. . . . ]  This is, after all, the goal of terrorism: to make the entire population feel terrorized, vulnerable, unsafe in their restaurants, basketball courts, Bat Mitzvah halls, malls, bus stops, and, in the case of small communities, even in their own homes. [. . . .] We are on what Dr. Ludman calls, 'a terror roller-coaster. We live our lives between terror attacks. [. . . . ]  We are all normal people responding normally to an abnormal situation,' Dr. Ludman emphasizes.

"[. . . . ] In addition to whatever we as a nation do militarily or politically, spiritual activism is a vital response to our collective trauma. Visit a hospital, support victims of terror, learn Torah. While we may be vulnerable, we are not helpless."
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"He who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind." - Ethics of the Fathers

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In 1991, during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, the United States officially pledged to Israel:  
"In accordance with the United States traditional policy, we do not support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. [. . . .] Moreover, it is not the United States' aim to bring the PLO into the process or to make Israel enter a dialogue or negotiations with the PLO."

A decade later, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the creation of just such a state has "long been a vision of U.S. policy". This would be a state invented where none every existed, for a nationality invented no earlier than 1967, carved out of the remnant of The Jewish National Home.

In the interval between that pledge of 1991 and the abandonment of the pledge in 2001, came the Oslo Accords that set up a PLO authority with control over land and population. The record of that regime is one of broken agreements, violated promises, corruption, suppression, violence and terrorism; a record deemed worthy of the reward of a state of its own.

The record is explained, in effect excused, by: "denial of national rights" "occupation" "oppression" and the condition of being, in recent words of the U.S. President, "poor, isolated and humiliated". The questions of national rights of Arabs west of the Jordan River, and whether they have claim to any land occupied by Israel have been covered in previous issues of A Time to Speak. [See especially, Numbers 2, 6, 8 and 9].

In any case, more than 95 percent of the Arabs in the contested area between Israel and Jordan now live under the rule of the PLO and not the administration of Israel. Those who grew up during the administration of Israel so far being forced into uprising by oppression, learned that they could carry out their uprisings without fear that Israel would brutally crush them as any Arab government would do.