From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Family
Ties--I
Remember Suhaib Salem? He's the Reuters photographer whom Israel arrested in
Gaza on May 22 on suspicion of terrorism--the Israelis claimed, and he denied,
that he had a grenade in his possession--then released last week. The Associated
Press reports that Salem's brother Salah was "one of the men involved in
the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldier Cpl. Nachson Waxman in 1994. Both
Salah Salem and Waxman were killed when the Israelis attempted to rescue Waxman."
Reuters doesn't seem to have mentioned Salah Salem in its coverage of his brother's
arrest.
Suhaib Salem, of course, is not responsible for his brother's actions, and we know of no reason to doubt he's fine journalist. (Here's a sample of his work, a shot of an unnamed Palestinian man enjoying a tender moment with the founder of the terror group Hamas.) But isn't there an obvious conflict of interest in assigning the brother of a Palestinian terrorist--or, in Reutervillian parlance, of "another man's freedom fighter"--to cover the Israeli-Arab conflict?
The AP reports that when Salem was arrested, he was on his way to Japan to cover the World Cup, a soccer tournament. If the folks at Reuters are really in the business of news rather than propaganda, they ought to let Salem stay in Japan, or else reassign him to cover some other part of the world where there would be no obvious reason to question his objectivity.
A second Reuters staffer, TV cameraman Jussry al-Jamal, remains in Israeli custody, the AP reports.
A
Religion of Peace
"Ikram Sabri, the PA-appointed Jerusalem Grand Mufti announced there was
no problem, 'religiously or legally' regarding suicide bombing attacks,"
Arutz Sheva reports.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports that "Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric has called on the Islamic world to unite against a worldwide conspiracy of Hindus, Christians, Jews and secularists threatening Islamic moral values" Sheik Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, the government-appointed imam of the Mosque of Mecca, unsurprisingly called Jews "pigs and monkeys," but he also raged against '"idol-worshipping Hindus" and "worshippers of the Cross."
"Oh God," he said, "support our brother mujahideen in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya. Oh God, we ask you to support our Palestinian brothers in Palestine against the aggressor Jews and usurper Zionists."
According to the U.S. State Department, "After September 11 . . ., the Saudi Government reaffirmed its commitment to combat terrorism. . . . The King, Crown Prince, Government-appointed religious leaders, and official news media publicly and consistently condemned terrorism and refuted the few ideological and religious justifications made by some clerics."
'Ready
for Pre-emptive Action'
Has President Bush gone wobbly, as some have feared? To judge by the speech
he delivered to graduates at West Point, the answer is a resounding no:
Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. . . .
Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.
Saddam Hussein, look out.
Great
Moments in Airport Security
Lt. Greg Miller, a U.S. Army combat medic and member of a special-forces patrol,
was wounded in Afghanistan in April. Shot in the jaw, he lost feeling in his
mouth, and doctors in Germany wired his jaw shut. "His doctor issued him
a pair of wire clippers to carry at all times in case he became sick and needed
to open his jaw to avoid choking," the Associated Press reports.
Miller, who lives in Texas, flew to San Francisco to visit his mother. "He said he was told at his local airport that the clippers weren't prohibited on the plane. Security personnel there even gave him a sticker saying they were allowed." But when he tried to fly back to Texas, the Frisco security staff confiscated his clippers. "Miller complained to an American Airlines official, and Miller said the official responded he was too busy to help." He got on the plane, where "flight attendants told him there was nothing on board to open his jaw if he became sick."
The CIA's
Turn
Last week the FBI was under fire for botching the case of "20th hijacker"
Zacarias Moussaoui. Now Newsweek has looked into the CIA bungle that allowed
two men the agency had identified as al Qaeda terrorists who attended a January
2000 terror meeting in Malaysia's capital to travel freely in America. They
were among the hijackers of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into
the Pentagon:
A few days after the Kuala Lumpur meeting, Newsweek has learned, the CIA tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States as he pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived in the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.)
Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which could have turned them away at the border, nor did they notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools—until the morning of September 11. . . .
the FBI didn't know it was supposed to be looking for them until three weeks before the strikes, when CIA Director George Tenet, worried an attack was imminent, ordered agency analysts to review their files. It was only then, on Aug. 23, 2001, that the agency sent out an all-points bulletin, launching law-enforcement agents on a frantic and futile search for the two men.
From
Kenya With Love
Anyone who think the world hates America should read this wonderful Los Angeles
Times report from Enoosaen, Kenya, where Masai villagers, in a show of solidarity
with America, "decided to give their most prized possessions, what Masai
regard as the highest expression of sympathy: cattle."
About 500 people, many bedecked in elaborate beadwork jewelry, gathered on the rolling East African savanna for the ceremony. Masai women sang mournful songs. Young warriors, some carrying spears, leapt into the air. And village elders presented to the United States a herd of 14 cows.
"They say Americans are wealthy, and indeed we are in many ways," said acting U.S. Ambassador to Kenya William Brencick, who gratefully accepted the cattle. "But when we count the value of these cows and . . . add the value of the great spirits that gave them, we can say without doubt that you seem richer still."
After a local resident who is a premed student at Stanford brought word of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Times reports, "Osama Bin Laden became a household word. People who are unpopular in the village are now known simply as Osamas. 'We don't have anyone as cruel as him,' said James Ngodia, 44. "This man is a world enemy. If he comes to Masailand, we will surely kill him with our spears and arrows.' "
Arafat-Style
Democracy
Here's Yasser Arafat's idea of reform: He has "offered cabinet posts to
four militant groups involved in suicide attacks against Israelis," Ha'aretz
reports. Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and
the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine all rejected the offer
out of hand, but Hamas took the offer under consideration before it too said
no.
"Of the more than 60 suicide attacks by Palestinians in the current conflict, Hamas' military wing has carried out more than any other group, including the deadliest attacks," Ha'aretz notes.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Ha'aretz also reports that a Palestinian "court" has ordered the release of PFLP leader Ahmed Sa'adat. He's one of six men the Palestinians agreed to imprison as a condition for ending the siege of Arafat's Ramallah offices. Sa'adat may, however, be better off staying behind bars. The Jerusalem Post reports that Sa'adat and the other five prisoners "are being held in very lenient conditions." They are "are free to mingle among themselves and receive unlimited visitors," according to Avi Dichter, director of Israel's Shin Bet security service.
If the Palestinians do release Sa'adat, Israel is unlikely to be so indulgent. Ha'aretz quotes Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "If he is not brought to justice, we will bring justice to him."
Family
Ties--II
Marina Pinsky is innocent. She's the Israeli Jew who, according to reports last
week, was arrested as a possible accomplice to a suicide bombing in Rishon Letzion.
It turns out that the woman Israel picked up was actually Irena Polichik, a
Ukrainian Christian who used to work as a prostitute in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem
Post reports. "She told her interrogators that about a year ago she stole
Pinsky's ID card and brought it to Bethlehem, where a forged copy was made."
Pinsky told an Israeli TV station that she knew Polichik, whose husband, Ibrahim Sarachane, is a Palestinian who allegedly drove the 16-year-old Rishon Letzion bomber to his target. Pinsky's ex-husband, an Israeli Arab also named Ibrahim Sarachane, is a cousin of Polichik's husband.
Shhh,
It's a Secret!
"Secret Middle East Talks in Britain" blares the headline in the Guardian,
the left-wing newspaper based in Manchester, England (italics ours):
Israelis and Palestinians have met in Britain to hold their highest-level talks since the failed Taba meetings of January 2001. Key figures in the Northern Ireland peace process were brought in for the first time to advise the belligerent parties.
In three days of discussions, hosted by the Guardian, Irish politicians, including the former IRA commander Martin McGuinness and David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist party, urged both sides in the Middle East to seek outside help in moving the conflict out of its impasse.
We've always wondered just what the guys at the Guardian are guarding. Guess it's not secrets.
'Muslim
Fun' for Kids
London's Independent reports on "Muslim Fun," a CD-ROM game set produced
by a British company that includes a game called "The Resistance"
in which "you are a farmer in south Lebanon who has joined the Islamic
Resistance to defend your land and family from the invading Zionists":
Players procure ammunition to fire at Israeli tanks by answering multiple choice questions and then firing at the Israelis as the tanks roll across the screen. There are three playing levels: for children aged between five and seven years, those aged eight to 10, and the hardest level for children aged 11 and over.
Questions include "What was the crime of the Jews of Khayber?" and "Who said: 'I know I have been elected thanks to the votes of US Jews. I owe my election to them. Tell me what I have to do for the Jewish people' to Ben Gurion?"
The Islamic Fun Web site recommends the game for children ages five and up and says: "Your child will learn about Islam by playing lots of exciting games, full of colourful animations and cute sounds effects."
Anti-Semitism
in Alabama
An anti-Semitic leaflet has become an issue in an Alabama congressional race.
Rep. Earl Hilliard--who last month was one of only 21 congressmen to vote against
a resolution "expressing solidarity with Israel in its fight against terrorism"--faces
a challenge in tomorrow's primary from Artur Davis, the Associated Press reports:
Davis has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Jewish donors, and Hilliard has received money from Arab-American causes. Recently Davis was targeted in a flier headlined "Davis and the Jews, no good for the Black Belt."
The four-paragraph leaflet full of misspellings and grammatical errors surfaced in April. It accuses Davis--who attends a Baptist church--of being too close to "the Jews." "Mr. Davis must simply understand that Jews the world over have never come to the aid of black or dark skin people because it was the right thing to do," the flier says. Both candidates are black.
The leaflet says: "If the current invasions, murder and abuse within the Palestinian territory sound familiar, its only because in the not to distant past we seen the apartheid do exactly the same in the black villages of South Africa with Israel's support."
The sheet was signed: "By friends to re-elect Earl Hillard for Congress in the seven congressional district," misspelling the incumbent's name.
It's unclear who produced the flier, but Hilliard has a conspiracy theory. He "suggested Davis wrote it himself to generate more donations from offended Jewish supporters."
Surprise:
Castro Rejects Democracy
The Associated Press reports from Holguin, Cuba, that on Saturday Fidel Castro
"said the democracy President Bush wants to see in Cuba would be a corrupt
and unfair system that ignores the poor." As opposed to what, exactly?
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
A freshman at Rhode Island's Cumberland
High School says he was only joking when he drew "flaming sticks ,
the word 'bomb,' and the words 'CHS will pay,' " the Providence Journal
reports. It hardly needs saying that school officials wildly overreacted. They
suspended the unnamed boy for 10 days and evacuated the school while police
searched it and had the youngster arrested. He was arraigned on disorderly-conduct
charges and could spend up to six months in "the state Training School."
"It's not just a case of a kid doodling a picture of a bomb," Detective Sgt. Albert Skeldon tells the Journal. "This was specific."
Great
Moments in Public Education
New York state's Education Department has been rewriting works of literature
used in its Regents English exam, given to graduating high-schoolers, to make
them conform with "sensitivity review guidelines," the New York Times
reports. Among the censored authors are Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov
and William Maxwell:
In an excerpt from the work of Mr. Singer, for instance, all mention of Judaism is eliminated, even though it is so much the essence of his writing. His reference to "Most Jewish women" becomes "Most women" on the Regents, and "even the Polish schools were closed" becomes "even the schools were closed." Out entirely goes the line "Jews are Jews and Gentiles are Gentiles." In a passage from Annie Dillard's memoir, "An American Childhood," racial references are edited out of a description of her childhood trips to a library in the black section of town where she is almost the only white visitor, even though the point of the passage is to emphasize race and the insights she learned about blacks. . . .
Certain revisions bordered on the absurd. In a speech by Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, in addition to deletions about the United States' unpaid debt to the United Nations, any mention of wine and drinking was removed. Instead of praising "fine California wine and seafood," he ends up praising "fine California seafood." In Carol Saline's "Mothers and Daughters" a daughter no longer says she "went out to a bar" with her mother; on the Regents, they simply "went out."
In an excerpt from "Barrio Boy," by Ernesto Galarza (whose name was misspelled on the exam as Gallarzo), a "gringo lady" becomes an "American lady." A boy described as "skinny" became "thin," while another boy who was "fat" became "heavy," adjectives the state deemed less insulting.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Karolyn Terry was excluded from attending graduation at Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School as punishment for missing a rehearsal of the ceremony. School officials weren't persuaded by her excuse: She was attending her first college class.
Porn
in the USA--I
Eugene Volokh has a useful analysis of last week's ruling by a three-judge District
Court panel in Pennsylvania overturning as unconstitutional the Child Internet
Protection Act, which mandated that local public libraries receiving federal
money use "filtering" software to block Internet access to pornography.
(The ruling, in PDF format, is here.)
The act provides that the challenge will go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court,
bypassing the Court of Appeals.
There's something screwy about both sides of this issue. It's preposterous to suggest that the authors of the Constitution intended to mandate that public libraries cater to perverts. On the other hand, it's equally far-fetched to think that they meant to authorize the federal government to regulate public libraries--the quintessential local institutions--at all.
Volokh says he thinks the court was "least persuasive" when it argued that instead of using filtering software, libraries could " 'adopt Internet use policies,' 'requir[e] patrons to . . . agree[] to comply with the policy,' and then enforce the policies 'either through direct observation' (the 'tap-on-the-shoulder' approach) or 'through review of the library's Internet use logs.' " But what's wrong with this approach? It is, after all, the way companies deal with employees who look at Internet porn on the job.
Perhaps localities should treat library porn viewing as a quality-of-life crime. Librarians or even cops could issue citations to patrons who violate the library's Internet usage policy, which would be codified as a local ordinance. If indeed there is a constitutional obligation to make porn available, a library could offer one computer, in an area off limits to kids, for that purpose. Rudy Giuliani used just such "time, place and manner" restrictions to clean up New York City's worst red-light districts.
Porn
in the USA--II
The Internet Movie Database reports (seventh item) that Reed Stomberg, a Miami
lawyer, "has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of himself and every
other male who purchased the June issue" of Penthouse, which featured what
were purportedly nude pictures of tennis star Anna Kournikova but turned out
to be images of someone else. We heard about this gem from Overlawyered.com.
"The sole reason I paid the $8.99 was for the alleged Anna pictorial," Stomberg says. "I bought it for a friend of mine, not to say I didn't take a quick peek at the pictures." Presumably you can opt out of the suit if you only read Penthouse for the articles.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to C.E. Dobkin, Natalie Cohen, Zalman Shmotkin, Jerome Marcus, Jeffrey Weinstein, Damian Bennett, Robert LeChevalier, Michael Segal, Nancy Eckert, Raghu Desikan, Gregory Taylor, Robert Davis, Howard Weiser, Robert Paci, Michael Yerushalmi, Elliot Ganz, Gordon Kaplan, Marie Bourgeois, Andrew Cooper, David Simon, Reuven Weiser, Jim Orheim, Jamie Gregorian, Carl Sherer, Jonathan Polonsky, Gershon Dubin, Randy Schwartz, Adam Sager, Joseph Braunfeld, Jose Guardia, Romesh Chander, Aviva Ross, Doug Levene, Anthony Brunsvold, Monty Krieger, John Lott, Arnold Nelson, Scott Flagg, Joe Littrell and Brian Meeker. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Jerusalem's Mayor Ehud Olmert: Israel can't do business with terrorists.
- Robert Bartley: Is the FBI botching the anthrax investigation too?
- Brendan Miniter: In praise of leaks, which spurred the FBI to reform.
