Who will watch the watchdogs?

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a three-person investigative committee to visit the site in Jenin where Israeli efforts to uproot the infrastructure of terror have prompted Arab allegations of "massacre." However, before the "fact-finding team" is dispatched, those who care about fairness should carefully investigate the investigators.

Twenty-three of them succeeded as homicide bombers. The area was controlled by the terrorist networks of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, and the Tanzim. Within Israel - a country that prides itself on acerbic self-criticism and that has indicted leaders over lesser acts of non-feasance - there is a remarkable and uncharacteristic unity this time in the belief that its defense forces acted properly in Jenin.

Ha'aretz, an influential but extremely liberal and anti-Sharon newspaper, titled its editorial on the subject: "There Was No Massacre in Jenin." And a unity government that has brought together Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres offers no apologies for uprooting the infrastructure of terror in Jenin.

During its operations in Jenin, Israel uncovered complex networks of tunnels in which terrorists hid, traveled, and stockpiled arms and bomb-making materials. Even the terrorists admit that they hid amid women and children and booby-trapped civilian homes. . Al Ahram, the official government organ in Egypt, published an interview with an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin. He boasted proudly that 50 buildings had been booby-trapped to collapse into rubble. In the most horrible incident sustained by Israel's forces, several reservists approached a house where terrorists were believed to be encamped. As they neared, bombs exploded, and the building collapsed on several, killing them. When rescuers raced to extricate the survivors, terrorist snipers stationed on rooftops around the area fired at them. Thirteen Israelis died.

Shaken reservists have come home to tell of the horrors of Jenin - recounting Arab atrocities aimed at them. Of booby-trapped wheelchairs - with apparent invalids sitting in them, wired to explode. Of booby-trapped corpses. Of female suicide bombers running directly into Israeli fire, hoping to detonate themselves close enough to kill soldiers.

The Israelis - perhaps in an overabundance of caution, fearing world reaction - chose not to eradicate terrorism from Jenin as America does in Afghanistan. So Israel employed no carpet bombs, no aerial strafing. Instead, it sent its soldiers house-to-house, to minimize civilian casualties among a population Arafat has taught to hate Jews to death.

And now the three members who Annan has selected to "investigate" Jenin do not augur objectivity as they prepare to "find facts." Committee chair Martti Ahtisaari, former prime minister of Finland, is immediate past president of the European Union. For that reason alone, his appointment presages trouble for Israel. Israelis recall that he was Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's personal choice in July 1999 to mediate Arafat's talks with the Ehud Barak government of Israel. Ahtisaari has been a long-time Arafat favorite: on December 12, 1994, after receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat flew to Finland to thank Ahtisaari personally for Finland's support of the Palestine Authority. Strike one.

The second "team" member is Sadako Ogata, former United Nations high commissioner for refugees. Ogata has long been a favorite of Annan and previously was mentioned as his choice for deputy secretary-general.

However, she declined that offer at a time when she was plagued by controversy over allegations she had mismanaged a significant portion of her department's billion-dollar annual budget. On October 6, 2000, Agence France Press (AFP) quoted Ogata as saying: "I was in the [Mideast] region earlier this year and I know under what kind of fragile and crowded conditions the Palestinian refugees are living." That was before Jenin. Strike two.

Finally, Annan has appointed Cornelio Sommaruga, former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In May 1993, Sommaruga made world headlines when he alleged that Israeli behavior in the disputed territories the Israelis call "Judea and Samaria" violates the Fourth Geneva Convention on Human Rights. Israel had sealed off the territories six weeks earlier following a wave of deadly anti-Israeli attacks.

"I was badly impressed by the sufferings of the Palestinian people and the destructions of property" by the Israeli army, Sommaruga said. Four years later, in April 1997, Sommaruga pronounced that "construction of Israeli settlements in disputed territory violates the Geneva Convention." Strike three.

And so the "fact finding team," impeccably credentialed and unequivocally tilted against Israel, soon sets off to paint bull's-eyes in Jenin around the arrows that Israel's foes already have shot.

Will public opinion demand that Annan return to the drawing board and name a truly impartial team of investigators - or will the anti-Israel charade proceed?

The writer, an attorney and rabbi in Los Angeles and national vice president of the Zionist Organiza-tion of America, is author of General Sharon's War Against Time Magazine (Steimatzky, 1985)

Neither the Palestinians NOR the Red Cross can be trusted

Here the Red Cross is caught giving money (some from Americans given after the 911 Atrocities)
to the evil Taliban, shaved from being prisoners in an Afghanistan prison.

Here, in Beirut Lebanon, Red Cross Hanri Fournier (L) speaks with Hezbollah Wafek Safa and approves his attacks on Israel
which provoked the current wave of fighting.

Here, in Ramallah, Palestinian terrorist leader Arafat remains entertained by fawning Red Cross and Crescent
groupies [March 30, 2002]

The Red Cross/Crescent is antiSemitic and has helped
BOTH Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists.

Palestinian - American Media Fraud

In early 1988, reporters were called to el-Mokassed Hospital in Jerusalem
to film a dying Palestinian boy. His Palestinian doctor showed him hooked to life-support tubes,
and claimed the child had been savagely beaten by Israeli troops.
On February 8, 1988, ABC's Peter Jennings introduced the report by saying UN officials
"say that the Israelis have beaten another Palestinian to death in the territories."
NBC and CBS also gave the claims wide publicity.
But the story wasn't true.
According to the child's autopsy and medical records, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
He had been sick for more than a year.
Overall, the U.S. networks, Emerson wrote,
"have been complicit in a massive deception about the West Bank conflict.

Ashwari, Arafat: "All your media are ours."

Annan: "We, at the Imperial Holy UN, encourage the use of
dynamited-wheelchairs to kill Christians, Jews, and Americans.
We also endorse house-to-house and Church-to-Church terrorism by Arafat and his Islamic puppets.
We also thank Mr. Arafat for his donated crosses and stunning gold artifacts from some of the Churches,
which he sent me. Now before you go away,
be sure that you send the taxes and reparations that YOU Americans
owe me and my wife, Nane, to our New York address."

On the issue of bias -- I wrote to a friend the other day that calls for the U.S. to "do something" about the Arab-Israeli conflict made little sense because (for other reasons) we were liable to credible charges of favoritism. The U.S. has been in a strong alliance with Israel for many years, and never more so than now. I personally freely admit to a pro-Israel bias. If the U.S. came up with a set of suggestions that some hypothetical man from Mars would see as perfectly fair, they would appear to many (perhaps most) to be biased suggestions, in favor of Israel. We cannot fill the role of an "honest broker" because, for too many observers, there is nothing we can do that will impress them as honest.

For similar reasons, I do not think that the U.N. can play the honest broker role either. To many, the U.N. has a history of bias against Israel. It has spent about a third of its energy since over the past 30 years examining everything Israel does, and condemning most of what it "finds". Even if, by some fluke, the U.N. came up with a fair way to move forward, suspicions engendered by that past bias would arise among many Israelis and friends of Israel.

If I am right about all that, then any solution to the current impasse will come through either an ongoing war or negotiations hosted by someone with less history of bias toward either side than the U.S. or the U.N. Who might that be? People from Russia or China might step forward. The Japanese? Lee Kwan Yoo of Singapore popped into my head this morning. Anyone else have suggestions?

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