From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, April 25, 2002 2:07 P.M. EDT

Blast in Manhattan
An explosion late this morning in the Chelsea district of Manhattan injured at least 50 people and caused the partial collapse of a building housing a sign company. Early reports suggest it was an accident, not an act of terrorism.

Our Friends the Saudis
President Bush meets today in Texas with Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler. If a presummit account in today's New York Times is accurate, Abdullah is itching to make official his country's membership in the axis of evil:

"It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive," the person close to the crown prince said, "and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship [with America] to our people." . . .

The person close to the prince said that if the summit talks went badly, Abdullah might not complete his stay in Texas. Instead, he might return directly to Riyadh and call for a summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to report to its 44 leaders, who represent 1.2 billion Muslims.

"He wants to say, 'I looked the president of the U.S. in the eye and have to report that I failed,' " this person said. His message to the Arabs will be, "Take the responsibility in your own hands, my conscience is clear, before history, God, religion, country and friends."

Ostensibly at issue is America's support for Israel's war on Arab terrorists. But the Jewish state has always been a convenient scapegoat for Arab dictators desperate to maintain their hold on power, and with America likely to establish a foothold in Iraq soon, the situation of other Arab dictators has never been more desperate.

The Strategy Page, without singling out the Saudis, adds this intriguing observation:

There are astronomical implications to American occupation of Iraq. The intelligence haul will be incredible just from documents and computer files, plus we'll scoop up a lot of people who will tell us everything rather than be put out on the street wearing "I Luv Saddam" t-shirts. Embarrassing information in Iraqi files might be among the reasons certain governments are so opposed to our attacking Iraq.

It doesn't sound as though the Bush administration is planning to stand still for Abdullah's abuse. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, are also in Texas to brief Abdullah on America's war successes so far. "The idea was, if he thought we were strong in Desert Storm, we're 10 times as strong today," an unnamed U.S. official tells the Times. "This was to give him some idea what Afghanistan demonstrated about our capabilities."

'A Free and Open Society'
MSNBC correspondent Bob Arnot tells of his experience trying to cover Saudi Arabia:

"Film anything you want. We are a free and open society," said an official at the information ministry in Jeddah. The ministry, along with the Arab News newspaper, helped set up interviews. Too good to be true? You bet.

I left Jeddah on a Saudi Arabian Airways flight headed for the city of Riyadh and then on to Dubai. During a stopover in Riyadh, a Saudi official asked me to step off the airplane to talk with security.

He told me I would be arrested if I did not comply.

Arnot was met by some 40 men who demanded to see the video he had shot. They detained him in the airport for five hours. When he called the Information Ministry, he was told: "This is being handled at a much higher level than mine":

One official said the government wanted to avoid adverse publicity during Crown Prince Abdullah's visit with President Bush in Texas this week. Since I was apparently the only American TV journalist in Saudi Arabia at the time, taking my tapes apparently was the best solution.

In addition to his videotapes, the Saudis seized his laptop computer.

The Palestinian Conscience
Arabs in Gaza are shocked, shocked to find suicide attacks going on. On Tuesday, Ha'aretz reports, three boys--two 13-year-olds and a 15-year-old--"left farewell letters to their parents, and took some makeshift explosives made from firecrackers and knives and headed for Netzarim [a Jewish town], where they were killed on its outskirts by soldiers defending the settlement." One source says they were sent by Islamic Jihad.

Finally, it turns out, we have stumbled upon something too despicable even for some Palestinian terrorists:

Parents yesterday expressed shock over such attempts and protested to Islamic activists. Hamas issued a statement and spoke directly to children, asking them to cease such activities and to wait until they have grown up and have been trained. It also called on teachers and preachers to make clear that children should be taught not to go to their deaths on the settlements' fences, "but to grow up and study, so that one day they can fulfill their roles properly."

But the Hamas campaign against child fighters also took pains "not to harm the spirit of jihad and resistance in the children."

In a way, the Gaza suicide boys were normal adolescents. Who at age 13 or 15 doesn't want to do grown-up things? In a society that glorifies "jihad and resistance"--meaning mass murder, including of children--teens blowing themselves up is exactly what you'd expect. And if they're not yet "trained," perhaps they'll do less damage.

The Massacre That Wasn't--V
MSNBC host Alan Keyes confronted Hasan Abdul Rahman, the Palestine Liberation Organizations chief representative to the U.S., with an Egyptian newspaper report (we noted it last week) that confirms Palestinians in Jenin were booby-trapping houses:

Keyes: I also found in an Egyptian newspaper where folks who referred to . . . themselves as engineers, are quoted as saying that they had actually--and I quote the article:

"We had made more than 50 booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings, and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel, because we knew the soldiers would search for them. We cut off lengths of main water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four meters apart throughout the houses in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."

It would seem to me that if the Palestinian fighters were using this kind of tactic, wouldn't that also result in a lot of devastation to the buildings?

Rahman: That's Israel's propaganda.

More of "Israel's propaganda" can be found elsewhere in the Arab media, translated to English by the indispensable Middle East Media and Research Institute (you may need to scroll down to report IA#90). "Today, one of the children came to me with his school bag," Abu Jandal, Jenin's Islamic Jihad commander, told al-Jazeera. "I asked him what he wanted, and he replied, 'Instead of books, I want an explosive device, in order to attack.' "

Memri says there were contradictory reports about the role of civilians in the fighting. "Even the youths had a significant role in the uprising," Sheikh Ab Al-Hija tells the Web site palestine-info.info. "It was necessary for some of the women to remain [in the camp] to provide services for the fighters." But in an al-Jazeera interview, Jamal Abd Al-Salam, a Hamas commander, "said that the women, children, and elderly had left the camp, and that the fighters intended to fight to the last drop of blood." Either way it seems clear few true civilians were present.

The Jerusalem Post quotes Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, as saying that, in the Post's words, "Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's current game plan is to provoke a massive Israeli retaliation against Palestinian population centers and garner international support for his cause":

"About two months ago, he [Arafat] told a friend of mine who visits him quite often that Ariel Sharon is intent on killing every Palestinian one by one, so it is better to bring on Sabra and Shatilla now," said Indyk, referring to a 1982 massacre by Christian militiamen at two Palestinian refugee camps near Beirut that caused an international outcry against then-defense minister Ariel Sharon.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Is This Legal?
Texas Automotive Export, a car-parts dealer in the Austin suburb of Dripping Springs, is boycotting Israel, Arutz Sheva reports. An Israeli customer received a fax saying "that the company is unwilling to sell him the parts he was seeking for his Isuzu jeep because at present, they are not dealing with Israelis. The fax stated the response was a decision taken due to Israel's actions vis-à-vis the PA. The fax was signed by company representative John Harris, who called on Udiz to pressure his country to 'stop the offensive on the Palestinian people,' adding that 'your country has lost the respect of the civilized world.' "

There's actually a law against American companies boycotting Israel; the Commerce Department has an Office of Antiboycott Compliance to enforce it. We hope it'll look into the actions of Texas Automotive Export.

Palestinian Justice
A "court" in Yasser Arafat's compound has "tried" and "sentenced" four men on charges of assassinating Rehavam Zeevi, Israeli's tourism minister. "The four Palestinians were sentenced to jail terms ranging from one to 18 years," the Jerusalem Post reports. By contrast, the Palestinian sentence for "collaborating" with Israel is death. That's also the sentence Palestinians routinely mete out for the "crime" of being Jewish.

Indecent Proposal
Egypt's prime minister says his country will go to war with Israel--if other Arabs pony up, Ha'aretz reports:

"If you want to take action, if you are ready to rise to the challenge, you must send $100 billion," the prime minister told Al Itiihad when asked why Egypt, which is "the largest Arab state," had not responded to Israel's offensive against the Palestinians.

"I told you that we wanted $100 billion," he told the paper when asked if Egypt could at least "expel the Israeli ambassador" from Cairo.

"The Arab world must allocate $100 billion from Arab coffers deposited around the world. It must say to Egypt: 'This is the national budget. This budget is at your disposal, start the confrontation'."

Egypt had a gross domestic product estimated at $247 billion in 2000. That year the GDP of all other Arab states combined was about $951 billion. The GDP of the Palestinian territories was a paltry $1.11 billion. Spending $100 billion in a probably futile attempt to "liberate" is probably a slightly worse investment than buying Enron at its peak.

You Don't Say
"State Department officials say Secretary of State Colin Powell believes the Tenet and Mitchell plans 'could go poof' if 'substantial political progress' is not made soon in crafting a solution to the last 19 months of nonstop Mideast violence," CNN reports.

Cracking the Nazi Codes
We received well over 88 e-mails (actually, more than 200) from users answering our query yesterday about the significance of the number 88 among neo-Nazi wackos. The answer, it turns out, is on the Anti-Defamation League's Web site:

The eighth letter of the alphabet is "H." Eight two times signifies "HH," shorthand for the Nazi greeting, "Heil Hitler." 88 is often found on hate group flyers, in both the greetings and closing comments of letters written by neo-Nazis, and in e-mail addresses.

This is a pretty poor excuse for a secret code, and if it's the best the Nazis can do, it's a wonder they didn't lose the war until 1945. (Today's Germans do have access to more sophisticated encryption schemes, such as rot-13.)

It turns out contemporary white supremacists are quite fascinated with numbers. Another one that occurs frequently is 14, the number of words in a neo-Nazi battle cry: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The ADL also reports that 4/20, Hitler's birthday, is "used as a tattoo by racists and neo-Nazis, to affirm their belief in the ideals of National Socialism."

Reading all this about eights and dates got us to thinking: Aug. 8, 1988 (8-8-88), must have been a special day for neo-Nazis. And indeed, an essay called "Overview of Nazi Triggers" (link in PDF format) written by "Ainakhil of the OwlClan" and published in the journal Survivorship last year, explains (see second page):

Dates with repeating numbers were very important to the Nazis. For example, 08-08 (August 8); 09-09 (September 9); 8-8-88 is even more important because the year follows the pattern.

Unfortunately for the Nazis, there will not be another day like it till Aug. 8, 2088.

An update on the Microsoft- and Yahoo-hosted white-supremacist sites we noted yesterday: Nothing has happened. Microsoft still hosts both Aryan Skinheads United and Gathering place For white Nationalists and skins, and Yahoo hosts loads of viciously racist stuff, including the East Coast White Pride group, and the profiles of users aryan_queen88 (whose hobbies include "lynching") and whiteprideworldwide_14_88 (who informs us that "our government has been hi-jacked by Jews and Blacks"). We'll have more on this topic in due course. In the meantime, stop-the-hate.org has lots of links to racist Web sites as well as advice for readers who want to contact the Internet providers that host them.

France's Pat Buchanan
No, it's not far-right presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen but Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, a Socialist. The Jerusalem Post reports Vedrine has opined that American Jews are too "intransigent" in their support of Israel. "The Jewish organizations," diplomatic officials quote Vedrine as saying, "have not made the switch toward peace."

'Reparations' or Shakedown?
"With a landmark state study on slave-era insurance policies about to be released, Gov. Gray Davis addressed the issue of possible reparations to California minorities yesterday," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "Clearly," Davis said, "we want to right any wrongs and do justice to people who were taken advantage of."

California was never a slave state. But Jesse Jackson gives the whole game away:

Jackson, in an editorial board meeting at The Chronicle this week, said he would not expect reparations to be paid to individuals but to nonprofit groups, educational programs, arts facilities or other groups that help minorities.

In other words, "reparations" is simply a pretext for giving more tax money to organizations claiming to represent minorities--organizations like the ones Jesse Jackson runs.

Hitler Defense Fails
A Cambridge, Mass., jury has convicted Michael "Mucko" McDermott, who murdered seven co-workers in a December 2000 shooting spree. For some reason the jurors didn't buy Mucko's defense: that he had gone back in time to 1940 and the people he killed were Hitler and his henchmen.

Patently Silly
On Sept. 25, 2001, Joe W. Armstrong of Lenoir, Tenn., was awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,293,874 for "as amusement apparatus including a user-operated and controlled apparatus for self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user's buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms bearing flexible extensions that rotate under the user's control. . . . As the user rotates the crank, the user's buttocks are paddled by flexible shoes located on each outboard end of the elongated arms to provide amusement to the user and viewers of the paddling."

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to C.E. Dobkin, Marie Bourgeois, Dave Simon, Robert LeChevalier, Michiel Visser, Moshe Rockove, Jeffrey Shapiro, Michael Segal, Elliot Ganz, Napoleon Cole, Jerome Marcus, Erik Fortune, Raghu Desikan, Yehuda Hilewitz, Jacob Sasson, Roger McKinney, Doug Levene, Randy Schwartz, Natalie Cohen, Aaron Gross, Irene Margolin-Katz, Philip Rosen, Jonathan Sperling, Jose Guardia, Darren Gold, Nathan Wirtschafter, Jason Marlow, Robert Schwartz, T. Kehler, Charles Johnson, Gordon Kaplan, David Burkhart, Christian Peck, Hazen Dempster, Paul Music, Chana Lajcher, Martin Himmelfarb, Jim Orheim, Zalman Shmotkin, George Sabatino, Ben Gibbons, Brian O'Rourke, Jay Brinker, David Merrill and Jim Wakely. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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