From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Muslim
Snuff Film
"Enemies of the United States are spreading on the Internet a gruesome
piece of propaganda," CBS News reports. "It is a videotape of Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered earlier
this year in Pakistan. And it is being used by terrorists to recruit new soldiers
for the cause." The video includes Arabic subtitles:
"The translation is in Arabic because the audience is Arabic," says Ali al-Ahmed, a dissident Saudi Arabian journalist, who found it on the Web a few days ago. "The audience for this Web site are young Saudis, college students, high school students and unemployed Saudis," he says. . . .
What is perhaps most shocking is that some viewers do not find it repulsive. "The first place where they had it on most of the people who commented on the tape, they said, 'I wish I was there. I wish I had done it,' " says al-Ahmed.
This is shocking but not altogether surprising. It's the latest manifestation of the cult of death that is becoming all too widespread in the Muslim world. In The Atlantic Monthly, David Brooks observes:
Suicide bombing is the crack cocaine of warfare. It doesn't just inflict death and terror on its victims; it intoxicates the people who sponsor it. It unleashes the deepest and most addictive human passions--the thirst for vengeance, the desire for religious purity, the longing for earthly glory and eternal salvation. Suicide bombing isn't just a tactic in a larger war; it overwhelms the political goals it is meant to serve. It creates its own logic and transforms the culture of those who employ it.
"Snuff films"--movies depicting an actual murder for the purpose of entertainment--have long been rumored to exist. But according to the urban myth-busters at Snopes.com, "Not so much as one snuff film has been found. Time and again, what is originally decried in the press as a film of a murder turns out, upon further investigation, to be a fake." (The Associated Press reports that in Pakistan, where Pearl's alleged killers are on trial, the judge admitted the death video as evidence over defense objections that it was phony.)
Muslim fundamentalists often boast of their own piety and complain about the "moral decay" of the West; this Arab News article lamenting the influence of MTV on young Saudis is an example. Now it appears their coreligionists have generated a cultural product so obscene that it has no precedent in the purportedly depraved West.
Early
Warning?--II
Two weeks ago we
noted that a pre-Sept. 11 memo had surfaced in which Arizona-based FBI agents
had warned of Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons. Today's New York Times
adds that the memo "cited Osama bin Laden by name and suggested that his
followers could use the schools to train for terror operations."
Ferment
in Palestine
Yet more evidence against the conventional wisdom about Yasser Arafat (Newsweek's
Fareed Zakaria:
"Undermining him can work only as a long-term strategy--especially now
that Sharon's invasion has more than doubled Arafat's approval ratings").
He of the soaring approval ratings gave a speech to the unelected Palestinian
Parliament (its members' terms expired in 1999), in which, the Associated Press
reports, he "acknowledged . . . that he has made mistakes and
promised to restructure his government and hold elections."
Arafat's sky-high approval ratings were not in evidence in Parliament, the AP reports: "Legislators listened in silence, his words only acknowledged from time to time with a smattering of applause." Arafat "called for 'speedy preparations' to hold elections and restructure the Palestinian Authority to 'fulfill the principle of a separation of powers.' " CNN also reports that "Arafat signed a law Tuesday establishing the independence of the court system. The bill had been sitting on his desk untouched for more than a year."
The Palestinian panjandrum also "reiterated his opposition to attacks on Israeli civilians," though, as Ha'aretz notes, it was not exactly a ringing moral denunciation: "Palestinian and Arab public opinion have now become convinced that these [terrorist] operations will not serve our interests and goals and yet they antagonize large segments of the international community," he said.
According to UPI, Arafat also now claims that he supported President Clinton's Camp David peace proposal: "Arafat said it was the Israelis--not the Palestinians--who ultimately rejected the deal at the time, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported." For this to be true, President Clinton would have to be a liar; Newsweek reported last month that Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of negotiations: "When Arafat bid farewell to Clinton in a phone call in January 2001, three days before the president left office, he told him, 'You are a great man.' 'The hell I am,' Clinton said he responded. 'I'm a colossal failure, and you made me one.' "
Clinton's peace mediator Dennis Ross, quoted by the Associated Press, suggests one reason for the change in Arafat's tone:
He said Saudi Arabia and Egyptian leaders were pressuring Arafat to halt terrorist attacks against Israel. . . . "They don't want Arafat being able to continue to keep the whole region in a state of anger and rage. As long as there's Palestinian terror there's going to be a strong Israeli response and those responses contribute to anger and rage among their publics."
Arafat's promises of peace and reform can't be taken at face value; dictators often say such things in times of weakness, with no intention of following through. But it seems clear that there is widespread dissatisfaction with Arafat in the Palestinian territories, and if Ross is right, the Saudi and Egyptian rulers have concluded that Palestinian terrorism now threatens, rather than strengthens, their hold on power.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Israel appears to be winning the war quite handily.
The
Desecrators
Remember Carolyn Cole? Neither did we, but Andrew Breitbart, writing in National
Review Online reminds us that she's the Los Angeles Times photographer who was
arrested in Miami during the Elian Gonzalez battle after police said she threw
rocks at them, "apparently," according to Breitbart, "in an effort
to stir up her subjects and thereby generate 'better' news."
Cole, still working for the L.A. Times, joined a group of "peace activists" who sneaked into Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity while it was still under siege to show solidarity with the terrorists inside. She didn't disappoint them, penning a sympathetic profile that concluded:
The Palestinians in the church are a family of sorts. Some are already planning a reunion--same time, next year. There was a wake recently when one man learned that his father had died. As the days drag on, many of them hold hands and stand with their arms around one another's shoulders. And they pace together along the sanctuary floor, fingering their prayer beads, hoping for a way out.
Cole makes no distinction between the terrorists and the hostages they were holding. But today's Washington Times has details on her "family of sorts":
The Palestinian gunmen . . . seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol. . . .
A church helper, who gave his name as Milad, said the quantity of food consumed by the gunmen in the first 15 days should have lasted for six months. As they feasted and boozed, Palestinian civilians subsisted on a meager diet, with barely enough for a single meal a day.
The Orthodox priests and a number of civilians have said the gunmen created a regime of fear. "Their word was law," said one civilian, "and they told us civilians who left the church would either be shot by the Israelis or dealt with later by the gunmen's comrades."
There also seems to be a feud developing between Orthodox and Catholic clergymen at the church. The Times quotes a Greek cleric, Archbishop Ironius: "All the media concentrated on the Franciscan [Catholic] quarter, where little damage was done. Why? The Franciscans actually let the gunmen in, then guided the gunmen to our rooms."
The
Palestinian Infrastructure
The Israeli Defense Forces have discovered "a sophisticated tunnel used
by Palestinians to smuggle arms from Egypt," the Jerusalem Post reports.
"The tunnel was 10 meters [33 feet] deep and contained an electrical and
a telephone system."
'Look
at These Jews'
The New York Times' Thomas Friedman waxes perceptive on European attitudes toward
the Mideast war:
Yes, yes, many Europeans really do just want an end to the Israeli occupation, but the anti-Semitism coming out of Europe today suggests that deep down some Europeans want a lot more: They want Mr. Sharon to commit a massacre against Palestinians, or they want to describe what he did in Jenin as a massacre, so that the Europeans can finally get the guilt of the Holocaust off their backs and be able to shout: "Look at these Jews, they're worse than we were!"
I just attended an Arab media conference and was on a panel with Eric Rouleau, the Middle East correspondent of Le Monde, who said he had recently spoken to some French generals who told him that what Israel did in Jenin was worse than anything France did during the Algerian war. One million Algerians were killed in that war and two million were made homeless. So far 60 bodies have been recovered in Jenin, many of them fighters. You do the math.
Two
Cheers for Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, whom we criticized
yesterday, partly redeemed himself in his speech on Cuban television last
night (the text is here).
USA Today reports:
"Cuba has adopted a socialist government where one political party dominates, and people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements," Carter said.
He told Cubans about a proposed referendum project that could put government reforms to a vote, a right guaranteed in their constitution.
"When Cubans exercise this freedom to change laws peacefully by a direct vote, the world will see that Cubans, and not foreigners, will decide the future of this country," he said.
Echoing a Wall Street Journal editorial, Carter also called for an end to the U.S. embargo against the communist island.
His speech wasn't perfect; it included some obligatory though mild anti-American kvetching ("My nation is hardly perfect in human rights. A very large number of our citizens are incarcerated in prison . . ."). And he repeated the claim that Cuba has a "superb" health-care system--which is simply an urban legend. While Cuba does have lots of doctors, and fine facilities for foreigners who pay for treatment in hard currency, ordinary Cubans get what they pay for in the "free" socialist health-care system.
Still, Carter probably said more on behalf of freedom than anyone has in a long time on Cuba's state-controlled media. And he is an enduring example of democracy's greatest blessings: the power of the people to vote a bad leader out of office.
Life
Imitates Porcine Comic Strip
The April 19 installment of the cartoon "Pearls Before Swine" depicts
a pig writing a letter to Cuba's dictator: "Dear Fidel Castro, How come
you wear the same green uniform all the time? It looks kind of dumb."
A mouse appears on the scene and says: "You stupid pig, why do you bother writing letters like that? No one cares what you think."
The next panel shows a cigar-puffing Castro, standing on a Cuban beach and reading the letter. A tear drips down his cheek.
Well, check out this photo of Castro with Jimmy Carter, both men clad in suit and tie. Maybe cartoonist Stephan Pastis wasn't casting pearls before swine after all.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Remember when your parents used to warn that "you could put somebody's
eye out"? Believe it or not, it turns out they were right. Thirteen-year-old
Jeffrey Figueroa, a student at Northern California's Walnut
Creek Intermediate School, shot a 14-year-old fellow student with a spitwad,
made from a chewing-gum wrapper, last fall. The spitwad struck the other boy
in the eye. He "went to the emergency room and required surgery,"
the San Francisco Chronicle reports. (The paper doesn't say precisely how serious
the injury was.)
A schoolyard prank goes bad, causing injury; clearly some discipline is in order. But Jeffrey wasn't sent to detention or suspended for two weeks. No, he was criminally prosecuted, along with his brother, Stephen, 14, who was with him at the time of the incident:
Last Tuesday, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Araceli Ramirez found Stephen guilty of misdemeanor battery. Jeffrey was found guilty of battery causing serious bodily injury and mayhem, both felonies.
Sentencing is June 6. Judge Ramirez could send Jeffrey to prison for as long as eight years.
Prompted by the suspension of seven Colorado fourth-graders for "pointing their fingers like guns during a game of army-and-aliens on the playground" (which we noted Monday), today's Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News both have sensible anti-zero tolerance editorials. Says the Post: "Let us therefore ask all men and women of good will to pause for a moment, face toward Dry Creek [Elementary School], and emit a rousing Bronx cheer while waving our index fingers vigorously in the direction of what will undoubtedly be a terrified gaggle of doofuses."
A
European Milestone
The Netherlands hold elections today, and The American Prowler draws our attention
to a David
Warren column that notes among the candidates is "the first black man
ever to be presented as a candidate for the prime ministry of a European state."
He is Joao Varela, originally from Cape Verde--and he heads List Pim Fortuyn,
having replaced the party's eponymous founder after his assassination last week.
Fortuyn--the man and the party--has been accused of "racism."
Short
Shrift
Robert Reich is running for governor of Massachusetts, but some accuse him of
shortchanging the little people. Reich, who is 4-foot-10, served as labor secretary
under Bill Clinton (and we mean under him!). The Boston Herald reports
that organizations of short people--yes, there are such groups--are standing
up to object to Reich because he dares to make light of his height.
The diminutive Democrat starts speeches by saying, "They told me to be short," and he "uses a stepstool to declare, 'I am the only candidate for governor with a real platform.' " He also says he wants to be Massachusetts' "first leprechaun governor." (Who knew he was Irish?) Not funny, proclaim a procession of professional peewees:
"If someone in a wheelchair was running, would they say something about it every time they came into a room? It's not all that creative," said Cara Egan, vice president of public relations at Little People of America. . . .
Egan said, "I don't think he's giving people a lot of credit to joke in that way. As a former secretary of labor I'm surprised he would do this."
And Steven Goldsmith, editor of the Web site Short Persons Support, said: "It's a shame that he feels he has to make jokes about (his height) during his speeches. Few groups are denigrated as much as short people anymore. We want respect--to be seen as people, not as caricatures."
Reich retorts: "Look, self-deprecating humor is something we don't hear enough, especially in politics." He's right. It takes a big man to laugh at himself.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Elliot Ganz, Aaron Gross, Damian Bennett, C.E. Dobkin, Raghu Desikan, S.E. Brenner, Jerome Marcus, Chris Fehr, Marie Bourgeois, Jim Orheim, Jim Baer, Jeffrey Shapiro, Natalie Cohen, Paula Kaufman, Jose Guardia, George Lenz, Hampton Stevens, Zalman Shmotkin, Clinton Spence, Steve Prestegard, Evan Benoit, Steve Heyman, Janet Hodson, Michael Williamson and Mark Schulze. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Don't let Gray Davis get away with using Enron as a scapegoat.
- Pete du Pont: Bush has been less then dogged in pursuing his principles.
- John Fund: A court intrigue in a racial-preference case.
