Herbert Zweibon

Increasingly Israel looks for its defense abroad. In Lebanon it relies upon a UN force, in Gaza upon EU monitors. Olmert looks to the Americans to take care of Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel.

Even worse, Israel looks to the EU and the U.S. for moral approval. To recognize how absurd and self-defeating this is one need only read the fine interview the Jerusalem Post’s Ruthie Blum conducted with Italian journalist Fianna Nirenstein, author of a surprise best-seller entitled Israele Siamo Noi (Israel is Us). Nirenstein describes a Europe in which anti-Semitism is rampant. The theme of her book is that Europeans should make Israel their model so as to repair their own sick societies.

Nirenstein (who needs bodyguards when she travels in Italy) tells Blum about teaching a Mideast history class at Luiss University in Rome: “I turned to the students and asked them, ‘If you were threatened like Israel is, would you go into the army?’ And they all said no. Then I asked them if their brother or sister were being threatened, would they go into the army, and they said no.” Nirenstein contrasts this with the attitudes of Israeli young people: “When you speak to Israeli boys and girls – even during this time of the Winograd Committee finding about the failures of the government and upper echelons of the IDF – you realize how unique they are. None of this stops them from wanting to serve in the army…Israel is special for the fantastic men it has created, which is why I feel so bad whenever I see it despised and destroyed by Israelis themselves.”

And there’s the rub. Suffering from a terrible failure of political and intellectual leadership, Israel fails to recognize its own moral stature, fails to press its own rights, fails to act forthrightly in its own defense. On a recent visit to Israel the courageous Moslem dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it simply: “Israel first of all has to stand firm. A state’s primary responsibility is to guarantee the security of its citizens. If Israel doesn’t do that, its society is in danger.”

Israeli leaders once understood this obvious truth. Menahem Begin destroyed the nuclear reactor at Osirak despite universal condemnation. In 1976, with over 100 Israelis hijacked on an Air France plane, the Rabin-led government did not run to Western governments but launched the Entebbe raid. Now Israel does not even protect its own cities from missile assaults.

Instead Israel invites the contempt of friends and enemies alike by its relentless appeasement and apologies. In Cairo, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni groveled in an interview with Al Ahram, declaring that uprooting 7,000 Israelis from Gaza was intended to be a “message” concerning Israel’s love of peace, and that “in order to establish a Palestinian state we must withdraw from additional territories.” She pleads with the Egyptian public to understand how much Israel wants peace. In this issue we print an article by Nonie Darwish (yet another courageous Moslem woman) on a recent Egyptian film which she describes as “the vilest and most hateful example of Arab anti-Semitic propaganda I have ever seen.” Why did not Tzipi Livni use the Al Ahram interview to remind the Egyptian public that the 1977 treaty between Israel and Egypt called for an end to anti-Israel incitement in the media and that unless and until Egypt lived up to its promises, it should not expect Israel to seek more empty peace agreements with Arabs?

Israel’s enemies will not be moved by her self-abnegation and Israel will not be saved by a hostile “international community” itself in retreat before the Islamic tide. Benny Avni aptly notes in The New York Sun, “As for world opinion, it might not like Jewish power, but it will always back a winner.”

Newsweek: Saudi Money Tied to Radical Clerics
NewsMax Wires
Monday, Apr. 05, 2004
New York -- A federal investigation into the bank accounts of the Saudi Embassy in Washington has identified more than $27 million in "suspicious" transactions -- including hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Muslim charities, and to clerics and Saudi students who are being scrutinized for possible links to terrorist activity, according to government documents obtained by Newsweek.
The probe also has uncovered large wire transfers overseas by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The transactions recently prompted the Saudi Embassy's longtime bank, the Riggs Bank of Washington, D.C., to drop the Saudis as a client after embassy officials were "unable to provide an explanation that was satisfying," says a source familiar with the discussions.

A Saudi spokesman strongly denied that any embassy funds were used to support terrorism and said Bandar chose to pull the embassy's accounts out of Riggs.

The Saudis point out that an earlier FBI probe into embassy funds that were moved to alleged associates of the 9/11 hijackers has not led to any charges. The current probe, by the FBI and Treasury Department, is one of the most sensitive financial inquiries now being conducted by the government and is being closely monitored by the White House.

The federal commission investigating 9/11 was also recently briefed on developments, sources say.

U.S. officials stress that they have identified no evidence of any knowing Saudi aid to terrorist groups. But they express frustration at their inability to penetrate a number of large and seemingly irregular transactions. "There's a lot of money moving in a lot of directions -- maybe not all that carefully," said one senior law-enforcement official. "Everyone wants to get to the bottom of it."

Among the payments that have drawn scrutiny, documents show, were $19,200 in checks between December 2000 and January 2003 from the Saudi Embassy to an Islamic cleric, Gulshair Muhammad al-Shukrijumah.

The Florida-based imam has been on the FBI's radar screen for some time: he once testified on behalf of convicted terrorist Clement Hampton-El.

Suspect Operative

The imam's son, Adnan G. al-Shukrijumah, also known as "Jafar the Pilot," is a suspected Qaeda operative who is the subject of a worldwide FBI manhunt. A Saudi spokesman said Gulshair al-Shukrijumah was a Saudi-funded "missionary" whose payments were terminated last year.

Another area of FBI inquiry involves $70,000 in wire transfers on July 10, 2001, to two Saudis in Massachusetts.

One of the Saudis wrote a $20,000 check that same day to a third Saudi who had listed the same address as Aafia Siddiqui, a microbiologist who is believed to have been a U.S. operative for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

A Saudi spokesman said the wire transfers had no connection to Siddiqui and were used to pay educational and medical expenses for Saudi families in the United States. But bureau officials say the matter remains under active investigation; a government document shows the bulk of the funds were wired to an account in Saudi Arabia.

The documents obtained by Newsweek are "suspicious activity reports," or SARS, filed by bank auditors to alert Treasury to possible improprieties. Many may simply reflect longstanding Saudi practices, such as big movements of cash. "It's not fair to apply American standards to this.

They're not General Motors," said Nancy Dutton, a lawyer for the Saudi Embassy. But investigators say the embassy accounts show a large commingling of funds with Islamic charities that have been the prime target of U.S. probes.

Other SARS may prove personally embarrassing to Bandar, the dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington who has had close ties to the White House. One involves $17.4 million in wire transfers last year from the Saudi Defense Ministry account to a man in Saudi Arabia identified as the coordinator of "home improvements/construction" for Prince Bandar.

The funds were to build a new palace for the prince. Ali Ahmed, a prominent Saudi dissident, noted that Bandar already owns at least seven palaces and mansions around the world.

"This is corruption beyond the pale," he said. But Saudi Embassy lawyer Dutton said that government and private accounts are frequently intertwined by Saudi royals. "Just because it went through a government account doesn't mean it's not his personal money," she said.