Posted February 22, 2002

Palestinian Terrorism

[Regarding Ran HaCohen's column of February 15, "Terrorism Vs. Occupation":]

...Why does . . . [Ran HaCohen] want to remove all the Jews from the West Bank, but he wants Israel to let in millions of Palestinians? He wants an Apartheid Palestinian state, where no Jews are allowed to live in it, but he wants Israel to let in millions of Palestinians. That doesn't make sense.

Lets say Yossi Beilin became Prime Minister and did this. He left the West Bank and Gaza, removed all the Jews from there. He left the Arab sections of East Jerusalem and gave the Arabs the Temple mount. But Beilin told the Palestinians, the Palestinians are not coming to Israel. They're going to the new Palestinian state. Lets say, Palestinian terrorism continues against Israel. The Palestinians use their latest excuse, which is, only when Israel lets in millions of Palestinians, will we stop killing Jews in disco's and Bar Mitzvahs. How would Ran HaCohen then want Israel to respond? I have a feeling, Ran would then write an article saying, if Israel would just allow in millions of Palestinians, then Palestinian terrorism will stop.

The bottom line is this: The Palestinians just can't accept a peace, where there is a Jewish majority in Israel. They will never accept an independent Jewish state and only when a radical Israeli leader, like Ran, lets in millions of violent Palestinians, so Israel is destroyed, will the Palestinians be happy.

~ J. Wilson

Ran HaCohen replies:

I want all Israelis removed from the occupied territories because they were moved there contrary to international law and in order to destroy Palestinian contiguity and to deprive Palestinians of their land and water. Why was it so obvious when Saddam Hussein was moving Iraqi settlers into occupied Kuwait?

Hypothetical scenarios of the other side breaching a peace agreement are a favourite Gedankenexperiment in anti-peace circles. They have been proved wrong in the case of Egypt, of Jordan and recently even of Lebanon.

I often have the feeling that people like Mr. Wilson (and many Israelis) need Palestinian terrorism much more than Palestinians themselves do.

$500 Reward

In his 2/18 column, Justin Raimondo responds to Carol Valentine's case against Antiwar.com with scorn. But in my opinion Ms. Valentine is asking exactly the right questions. Within a matter of hours after the 9/11 attacks, CNN pronounced that the guilty party was Bin Laden. But where is the evidence for this convoluted conspiracy theory, that Bin Laden masterminded this highly complex plot from his headquarters in Afghanistan? Bin Laden is a private citizen. According to law, if he is accused of a crime, he should be tried according to the evidence. This is exactly what the Taliban offered to do. George Bush launched a war instead -- with the full support of Justin Raimondo....

So here is my challenge to Justin Raimondo: Prove . . . to me, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Al Qaeda carried off the 9/11 attacks. (Evidence that comes directly from proven US government liars will not cut it with me.) Or prove to me that Israel had nothing to do with it. The belief that Israel might have been behind the 9/11 attacks, is widely held on the Arab street and is backed by a variety of evidence that has been cited by Valentine and others. If you are going to ridicule this position, and put your credibility solidly behind the US-backed conspiracy theory, then you owe it to your readers to elaborate on your position. And I know that time is money. If you do credibly back your position, I will send you a $500 donation.

~ Jerry Russell

'Our' Government

Carol Valentine . . . is about half right on 9/11. There is no way in hell any kind of airplane could have gotten within 12 miles of the towers -- on a non-approved flight diversion -- without an airforce challenge unless someone in "our" government, at the very least, wanted it to happen. Response is automatic unless overridden. There is also a mountain of information from true experts who say in unison that there was just too much planning and coordination in the acts for that planning to have totally escaped government intelligence.

~ Tony B.

Preaching to the Choir

Good stuff, wish it were more than another site preaching to the choir. I don't mean that at all to criticize. What makes me sad is that people like me (old anti-war activist that I am) will easily flock to a site like yours, meanwhile the people who need it, who might have their heads opened up by the information it contains, are, like my yahoo next-door neighbors, spending this Sunday watching the Nascar races and pinning portable American flags to every piece of metal sticking out of their SUV.

~ Nancy L.

Beacon Theory

Recently I have been reflecting on just how it was that the terrorists could have been so deadly accurate in their attacks. Surely others have mused about this. Yet I have not seen one article anywhere addressing what, to me, is now the most puzzling question about these attacks. Having flown light aircraft many years ago, and knowing that you do not just steer a large airliner to a pinpoint on the map and be at exactly the correct altitude for maximum effect without either considerable knowledge and skill, or a beacon to guide you, I feel my beacon theory should be considered. These were presumably "student pilots," who had maybe quite a few simulator hours, but that is very different from being in the air, certainly in an emotionally charged situation, and driving through the skies and getting to the right altitude, then proceeding to hit a bull's eye. Did they tune in to a commercial transmitter that was affixed to the sites? Or even dial in a planted transmitter? I would like to see this theory explored.

~ Joe M., Texas

Axis

Seven countries Bush should have mentioned and why. Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Albania.

Sudan: Only one of 7 Rogue States that has had direct ties to bin Laden. Osama lived here from 1992-1996.

Yemen and Somalia: Practically the only countries in the world most similar to Afghanistan and the most likely places for al Qaeda to regroup. Warlords and tribal warfare similar to Afghanistan.

Pakistan: 8,000-10,000 madrassas.

Saudi Arabia: Billions sent into Pakistani madrassas and Afghanistan since 1980.

Bosnia and Albania: Reports of al-Qaeda and Iran gaining influence in area during the 1990's. Clinton administration supporting radical KLA which was on State Department's 1998 terrorist list but later removed even though it hadn't stopped smuggling women and Afghani heroin.

Iran/Iraq/North Korea: 0 madrassas and $0 sent into Pakistani madrassas and Taliban/anti-Soviet mujaheddin in 80's and 90's.

Conclusion: Powell is right and the paranoid, schizophrenic, and criminally insane Perl-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld Axis is wrong.

~ Rob J.