August 2, 2002, 8:45 a.m. Language, Lies & Jesse Jackson The end game for Hamas.

By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz On Wednesday, at lunchtime, Arab terrorists bombed the cafeteria of the Frank Sinatra building, located in the Nancy Reagan courtyard, on the Mount Scopus campus of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. The bomb killed seven people and injured 90 — students, professors, and administrative staff. This attack will reverberate in homes around the world, as many of those on campus for the summer semester are overseas students. Many of them are from the United States and four of those murdered were American citizens.

The Hamas immediately and proudly claimed responsibility for the multiple homicide on the Hebrew U. campus, saying that it was "revenge" for the Israeli assassination of the organization's second-in-command, Salah Shehadeh, last week. Speaking in English with European media outlets, Hamas spokesman Abd al-Aziz Rantisi further explained that Hamas is only trying to "defend our children… stop demolitions of our houses…" and the ever-popular "end the occupation." What self-abasing, leftist European wouldn't at least "understand" such motivations?

The problem is that Rantisi said something altogether different in his Arabic television soundbite: "I am saying to the Zionists that this [the Hebrew U. attack] is just the first reaction and if they do not want to get hurt a lot more, they should go back to the countries they came from." Or, in another clip, he said that the attacks will continue "until the Jews leave Palestine." I guess some things just don't translate well into English.

In this context, it may be instructive to recall an interview the Hamas spokesman granted to Dr. Aharon Lerner of Independent Media Review and Analysis in December of 1997. In that interview Rantisi said, "Everybody in the world knows that the Jews came in 1948 and they occupied our land, uprooted our people from our land and so we consider all of Palestine now under occupation." That is, when terrorists say they want to "end the occupation," the translation is that they want to destroy the State of Israel and force the Jews into exile. As the Hamas Covenant states in its preamble, "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

The Hamas is far from alone. After the bombing in the university cafeteria, while speaking with Western reporters, PLO leader Yasser Arafat blamed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the increased violence, but, at the same time, voiced condemnation of such terrorist attacks. On the other hand, PA senior minister Nabil Shaath was quoted as saying that the PLO discussions with Hamas regarding the terrorist bombings "are about how and when… about if it is acceptable to temporarily pause during the Jihad… " That statement, also, was made only in Arabic.

Perhaps the word "revenge" also has a different meaning in Arabic than it does in English. Fourteen people have been killed in several terrorist attacks since the assassination of Shehadeh in Gaza ten days ago. Every Palestinian Authority faction, not just the Hamas, has taken part in recent attacks, all claiming that their actions were "revenge" for Shahadeh's death. The only trouble is that, during an equivalent ten-day period prior to the Shehadeh assassination, a total of 15 people were killed by PA-based terrorists. Were they victims of "preemptive revenge"?

It is not just Arab spokesmen who have a problem with consistency. Jesse Jackson, leader of the Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and self-described "bridge-builder," was in Israel this week as part of a delegation of religious leaders promoting "reconciliation." As part of his "peacemaking" tour, Jackson had planned to visit the Gaza home of the founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin. The terrorist leader told Reuters that he welcomed the visit. Jackson was at the Erez checkpoint outside of Gaza when news of the Jerusalem bombing broke. He immediately changed his plans and proceeded to Ramallah, instead. Apparently, the good "reverend" thought that it would be unseemly to visit Yassin so soon after such a deadly terrorist attack, carried out under the auspices of his intended host. The only question is why Jackson felt it was acceptable and moral for him to pay his respects to the man in the first place. Just last month, Hamas took responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus packed with students on their way to school, in which 19 people were killed. If that terrorist attack did not cause the self-appointed "civil-rights leader" to forego a meeting with the Hamas leader, why would the Hebrew University bombing have caused him any second thoughts? Was the "bridge builder" perhaps worried about becoming collateral damage in an Israeli counterstrike?

However, unlike Jesse Jackson, interested in self-promotion alone, Hamas has a very distinct worldview. It might be summed up in a paraphrase of the famous Hitlerian expression, "Today, Israel; tomorrow, the world!" As Article 15 of the aforementioned Hamas covenant states, "The day the enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised." When asked in the 1997 IMRA interview if this ideology also applied to states such as Spain, once under the Muslim crescent, Abd al-Aziz Rantisi laughed and replied, "I am speaking now about Palestine… It's up to our religious leaders who can give a fatwa [ruling] on this. But I am a politician and I am only speaking about our land in Palestine."

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2002

Answers

Sure would be a shame if Jackson was in the wrong place at the wrong time, huh?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2002

Too bad he wasn't having lunch at the U. when this happened!

Taz

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2002