JERUSALEM NEWS
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Jerusalem News-850
Jerusalem News 850
1 Nisan 5769, 26 March 2009
Contents:
1. Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get
Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
2. Some Good Arabs:
Palestinians Who Helped Create Israel by Daniel Pipes
3. Israel Air Force Bombs Enemy in
Sudan
IAF
hits Sudan arms convoy bound for Gaza; Sudan confirms strike
1. Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get
Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/asia/26tribal.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 25, 2009
Extracts:
WASHINGTON. The Taliban's widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made
possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan's military
intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to
militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government
officials.
The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance
to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in
Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.
Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by
operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate
for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that
ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to
intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.
The American officials said proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani
spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. The Pakistani
officials interviewed said that they had firsthand knowledge of the connections,
though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency.
The ISI helped create and nurture the Taliban movement in the 1990s to bring
stability to a nation that had been devastated by years of civil war between
rival warlords, and one Pakistani official explained that Islamabad needed to
use groups like the Taliban as "proxy forces to preserve our interests."
Top American officials speak bluntly about how the situation has changed little
since last summer, when evidence showed that ISI operatives helped plan the
bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an attack that killed 54 people.
The Taliban has been able to finance a military campaign inside Afghanistan
largely through proceeds from the illegal drug trade and wealthy individuals
from the Persian Gulf. But American officials said that when fighters needed
fuel or ammunition to sustain their attacks against American troops, they would
often turn to the ISI.
2. Some Good Arabs:
Palestinians Who Helped Create
Israel
by Daniel Pipes
Extracts:
Jerusalem Post
March 26, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/6244/palestinians-who-helped-create-israel
Extracts:
Palestinians have so loudly and for so long (nearly a century) rejected Zionism
that Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasir Arafat, and Hamas may appear to command
unanimous Palestinian support.
But no: polling research finds that a substantial minority of Palestinians,
about 20 percent, is ready to live side-by-side with a sovereign Jewish state.
Although this minority has never been in charge and its voice has always been
buried under rejectionist bluster, Hillel Cohen of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem has uncovered its surprisingly crucial role in history.
He explores this subject in the pre-state period in Army of Shadows: Palestinian
Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-19448 (translated by Haim Watzman, University
of California Press); then, the same author, translator, and press are currently
preparing a sequel, Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli
Arabs, 1948?19677, for publication in 2010.
In Army of Shadows, Cohen demonstrates the many roles that accommodating
Palestinians played for the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in the Holy
Land. They provided labor, engaged in commerce, sold land, sold arms, handed
over state assets, provided intelligence about enemy forces, spread rumors and
dissension, convinced fellow Palestinians to surrender, fought the Yishuv's
enemies, and even operated behind enemy lines. So great was their cumulative
assistance, one wonders if the State of Israel could have come into existence
without their contribution.
The mufti's absolute rejection of Zionism was intended to solidify the
Palestinian population but had the opposite effect. The Husseini clique's
selfishness, extremism and brutality undermined solidarity: using venomous
language and murderous tactics, declaring jihad against anyone who disobeyed the
mufti, and deeming more than half the Palestinian population "traitors" pushed
many fence-sitters and whole communities (notably the Druse) over to the Zionist
side.
Consequently, Cohen writes, "As time passed, a growing number of Arabs were
willing to turn their backs on the [rejectionists] and offer direct assistance
to the British or Zionists." He calls collaboration with Zionism "not only
common but a central feature of Palestinian society and politics." No one before
Cohen has understood the historical record this way.
He discerns a wide range of motives on the part of the Yishuv's Palestinian
allies: economic gain, class or tribal interests, nationalist ambitions, fear or
hatred of the Husseini faction, personal ethics, neighborliness, or individual
friendships. Against those who would call these individuals "collaborators" or
even "traitors," he argues that they actually understood the situation more
astutely than Husseini and the rejectionists: accommodationists presciently
realized that the Zionist project was too strong to resist and that attempting
to do so would lead to destruction and exile, so they made peace with it.
By 1941 the intelligence machinery had developed sophisticated methods that
sought to utilize every contact with Palestinians for information gathering
purposes. Army of Shadows highlights that the Yishuv's advanced social
development; what Cohen terms the "deep intelligence penetration of Palestinian
Arab society" was a one-way process. Palestinians lacked the means to
reciprocate and penetrate Jewish life.
Along with the development of a military force (the Haganah), a modern economic
infrastructure, and a democratic polity, this infiltration of Palestinian life
ranks as one of Zionism's signal achievements. It meant that while the Zionists
could unify and go on the offensive, "Palestinian society was preoccupied with
internal battles and was unable to mobilize and unify behind a leadership."
3. Israel Air Force Bombs Enemy in
Sudan
IAF
hits Sudan arms convoy bound for Gaza; Sudan confirms strike
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074032.html
By Yossi Melman, Amos Harel and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents and Agencies
Extracts:
Two senior Sudanese politicians on Thursday said that unidentified aircraft
attacked a convoy of suspected arms smugglers as it drove through Sudan toward
Egypt in January, killing almost everyone in the convoy.
American network CBS reported that the Israel Air Force carried out an attack
last January against a convoy of trucks in Sudan carrying arms for Hamas in the
Gaza Strip.
According to the report, 39 people riding in the 17-truck convoy were killed,
while a number of civilians in the area were injured.
Israeli officials declined Wednesday to confirm or deny whether Israel had been
involved in an air strike in Sudan.
The Sudanese politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the
sensitivity of the issue, said the strike took place in a remote area in east
Sudan but did not say who carried it out.
Sudanese State Minister Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem was quoted in the Paris-based
Sudan Tribune Web site as saying that a "major power bombed small trucks
carrying arms, burning all of them."
The strike "killed Sudanese, Eritreans and Ethiopians, and injured others,"
Saleem added.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin broke the story. He says
that Israeli intelligence learned of plans to move weapons through Sudan, north
toward Egypt and then via the Sinai into the Gaza Strip.
According to Martin, Israel and the U.S. had signed an agreement for closer
international efforts to block smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip.
During the final days of the Israeli offensive against Hamas, Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni and her American counterpart Condoleezza Rice signed a
security-intelligence memorandum on intensifying cooperation in a joint effort
to block the smuggling of arms from Iran to Hamas via Sudan.
The Sudanese news site said the attack took place "in a desert area northwest of
Port Sudan city, near Mount al-Sha'anun."
In the original Sudanese report, an unidentified Egyptian official was quoted as
saying that the planes that carried out the attack were based out of many
countries in the region, and some observers guessed that he meant Djibouti, but
there is no such confirmation.
Meanwhile, Israel defense sources refused to comment on the report of an air
strike in Sudan or on the role that Israel may have played in that attack.
Defense sources have reiterated on a number of occasions that Iran embarked on
an intensive effort to supply Hamas with weapons and ammunition during Operation
Cast Lead.
The Israeli security sources said that an international network has been set in
place in which smugglers move arms caches from Iran through the Persian Gulf to
Yemen, on to Sudan and then to Egypt and Sinai where they are brought into the
Gaza Strip through tunnels.
Israeli intelligence has warned that the deliveries include anti-tank missiles,
small arms, and military grade high explosives, as well as missiles.
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