1. Well, the meeting took place, between Arafat, representing the PLO, and Shimon Peres, representing the PLO. They agreed on a ceasefire, meaning Israel is supposed to stop shooting back.

   And on the very first day of the "ceasefire", the PLO sent out some stormtroopers from Rafiah in the Gaza Strip through a tunnel and these placed a bomb on the wall of an Israeli military installation, trying to murder the soldiers, wounding three, as it turns out - all loyal Bedouin soldiers.

   In response, Israel kills four of the perps and blows up some houses near the installation, under which the tunnel was dug to get near the IDF post.

   And in the news report on this in the Hebrew Palestinian newspaper Haaretz, your favorite New Journalist and mine, Amira Hass, sums up the set of events as "a gross violation of the ceasefire by Israel". Not in an Op-Ed but in the news report. Huh? The PLO trying to murder some nice Israeli Bedouins is NOT a violation of the "ceasefire"? Nope, because remember ceasefires apply only to Israel.

2. Friends, I fear we have yet another of those famous human rights abuses of the po’ Palestinians by Israel. You see, what with the Palestinians cheering on bin Laden, calling on Iraq to exterminate all the Jews, with daily PLO atrocities and murders, with Palestinian "universities" used for "art" celebrating the suicide bombings of Jewish children, complete with body parts tossed about, seems some Palestinian day workers have not been coming in to their day jobs in Israel. The Israeli tax authorities have not mailed them their tax slips for a while, slips that would allow them to recover back taxes withheld by the Israeli tax offices. And now some of them are feeling pressure, because after spending the day marching for bin Laden and shooting at Jews, they are having trouble recovering these taxes.

   Can Betselem (which is increasingly indistinguishable from the Communist Party) be far behind?

3. While I am usually wary of making forecasts, I’d like to make one now. The moment the very first US bomb lands on Afghanistan, on a bin Laden camp, on Sudan or on Iraq, parts of the Israeli Left will take to the streets and demonstrate solidarity with bin Laden and against the US.

   Think I am kidding?

   The Israeli Left is not only vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, it is also anti- American. (Since the US campus Left is pro-Saddam and anti-American, this should not be too surprising.)

   Israel has already produced a "Solidarity with Saddam Hussein" organization, led by far-leftist Dr. Shaul Zadka, who also happens to be among the founders of the "Four Mothers" protest organization, the whiney demonstrators against Israeli survival who served as figleaf for Ehud Barak’s surrender in Lebanon to the Hizbollah and Syria a while back.

   Haaretz regularly runs anti-American propaganda, and was solidly behind all those "anti-globalization" circus members who trashed Seattle and other fine cities.

   Haaretz continues to show its opposition to any US moves to attack terrorism, and is printing assorted letters about how evil and imperialistic the US is and so Israel should refuse to support the US aggression against Afghanistan. (At least half the letters in Haaretz are always crayoned by Israeli communists.)

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission