Free Republic

STOCKHOLM - Swedes, usually perceived in Europe as a comfortable, middle class lot, are poorer than African Americans, the most economically-deprived group in the United States, a Swedish study showed yesterday. The study by a retail trade lobby, published in the liberal Dagens Nyheter newspaper 19 weeks before the next general election, echoed the center-right opposition's criticism of the weak state of Sweden's economy, following decades of almost uninterrupted Social Democratic rule. The Swedish Research Institute of Trade (HUI) said it had compared official U.S. and Swedish statistics on household income, as well as gross domestic product, private consumption and...

ARIEL SHARON's military, economic and slander campaign against helpless Palestinians is reminiscent of the Nazi tactics against the Jews in Europe on the eve of the holocaust. The similarities are alarming. Knowing Sharon's war crimes record, the international community should pay close attention to what might be the beginning of a Palestinian holocaust. Before massacring millions of innocent Jews in Europe, the Nazis launched a misinformation campaign about how the Jews conspired to control the vital economic institutions and take over Germany and Europe. A similar campaign has been under way to portray innocent Palestinians as possible terrorists whose long-term...

What a surprise.

A new computer computer game called "Kaboom," which simulates a suicide bomber, is available on the Internet, Army Radio reported Tuesday morning. The opening screen to the game displays a picture of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. The goal of the game is to kill the highest number of civilians with the player deciding at what point the suicide bomber will explode. It is unclear who is responsible for the game which has until now been circulated only on the Internet. The game begins with a terrorist running up and down a street filled with pedestrians. A click of the...

As a UN fact-finding mission prepares to investigate allegations of a massacre in Jenin, most aid workers in the city say that they have come to one major conclusion - though massive destruction took place in the refugee camp, there was clearly no massacre. Aid workers and local doctors have found 52 corpses so far. The workers believe that 21 of them were civilians, including four women, two 14 year old boys, two invalids, and two or three elderly men. "The majority of those killed," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher at US-based Human Rights Watch posted to Jenin, "were...

My recent encounter with CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his producer made me realize that much of the anti-Israel coverage in the media -- which treats Israel with a double-standard unparalleled anywhere else in the world -- is attributable to factors other than anti-Semitism. I met his CBS producer at a building in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter that overlooks the Temple Mount where she wished to film from. We proceeded up to the roof which afforded a masterful view of the centerpiece of the Old City. Sprawled out in front of us was the Temple Mount, the place where the...

ARIS, April 18 — "I told you so" is the bugle call that makes old white-supremacist warhorses, from George Wallace to Ian Smith, lift their heads. It is blowing now for Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is hardly out to pasture. At 73, he is running for president for the fifth time. "To battle! God will give us victory!" he shouted, quoting Joan of Arc, patron saint of French nationalism, to his rather grizzled troops last week as they sailed down the Seine aboard a dinner boat for $62 a plate. Victory is not considered within his grasp, but he is...

ABU DIS, West Bank – Khaled's sinewy muscles tensed beneath the thin blanket when he heard the distant grate of tank treads on asphalt. ...Khaled is eager for Israel to relax its grip on Bethlehem, so he can reunite with his comrades and renew the battle against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that they have waged with rocks, guns and suicide bombings. "Of course, it will be different," he said. "We were in the open before. Too open, I think. Now, we will be underground. It is not the first time." Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs...

Saudi cleric says peace not possible with Israel   By Inal Ersan DUBAI, April 19 (Reuters) - A top Saudi Arabian Muslim cleric prayed to God on Friday to "terminate" the Jews and urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon efforts to make peace with Israel. "We must say farewell to peace initiatives with these people (Jews)," Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Sudais told worshippers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine, in a sermon, carried live by several Arabic television and radio networks. He prayed to God to "terminate" the Jews, whom he described as "the scum of humanity... the rats of the world... prophet killers... pigs...

IDF says only 45 Palestinians killed in Jenin camp battles By Ha'aretz Staff According to the IDF estimates, 45 Palestinians were killed in ten days of fierce battles in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. This is significantly lower than earlier estimates according to which 150 to 200 Palestinians were killed. According to the army, the total number of Palestinians killed during "Operation Defense Shield" is 188 - 45 from Jenin, 104 in Ramallah and Nablus, five in Qalqilyah and Tul Karm, 28 in Bethlehem and Hebron and six in Tamon, Tubas and Taisir. Twenty-nine Israeli soldiers were...

JERUSALEM (April 12) - Information gleaned from terrorists who were arrested and documents confiscated by the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield indicate that Palestinian Authority West Bank General Intelligence chief Tawfik Tirawi assisted in recruiting, arming, and dispatching terrorists to perpetrate attacks in Israel. Lists of names of potential suicide bombers that Israel handed over to Tirawi, demanding they be arrested by the PA, were instead used by Tirawi to warn the terrorists to evade arrest. A senior Fatah operative captured by soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp, Abed al-Karim Awiss, admitted during questioning that Tirawi recently gave him the...

LON MOREH, West Bank, April 9 — Standing on a high bluff overlooking Nablus, the besieged Palestinian city, Maj. Avi Picard said this afternoon that he can almost see the Palestinian militants, hundreds of them, in the city's Anskar refugee camp. "There are 18-year-olds in there with explosive belts," he said, "just waiting for us to leave so they can go to Tel Aviv or Netanya. I can tell you, if we were Americans, we would just bomb the place. But we don't want to do that. We go slow." Now, he said, the Americans "want us to stop." Major...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has remained mum on whether Saudi Arabia finances the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign against Israel.The U.S. policy comes as Palestinian sources acknowledge that Saudi Arabia has provided money to the families of suicide bombers. They said charities from such Gulf Cooperation Council countries as Qatar and Saudi Arabia have relayed thousands of dollars for the survivors of so-called martyrs.U.S. officials said the Bush administration has been careful to avoid any connection between the Saudi kingdom and the Palestinian campaign to send suicide bombers to Israel. They said the administration has established that Riyad is...

Israel Defense Forces reservists from one of the infantry platoons that has occupied Bethlehem had their Friday night Shabbat dinner in a meeting room belonging to Yasser Arafat's office. "I sat in Arafat's chair, and blessed the wine," says Yoad, an armored personnel carrier driver who came yesterday morning to Checkpoint 300, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to pick up soldiers who had spent their weekends at home. For these reservists, it was their first vacation leave since they received their mandatory call-up notices, a week and a half before. As Yoad spoke, the roadblock area looked like a major transport...

Israelis say 'anti - terror' campaign needs more time   JERUSALEM, April 7 (Reuters) - The Israeli army said on Sunday its aim to crush a Palestinian "terror" network could not be achieved by the end of this week, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit in pursuit of a ceasefire. U.S. pressure on its main Middle East ally to end its offensive into West Bank towns handed back to Palestinian rule under interim accords during the 1990s has been steadily mounting in the face of an international outcry. "If the time (for the operation) ends up at the end of this week, we won't...

ERLIN I wish it were possible that we could recall the prize," Hanna Kvanmo, a member of Sweden's Nobel Peace Prize committee, said recently about the 1994 award to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel. She mentioned no similar regret over Yasir Arafat, who shared the prize with Mr. Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister. The remark is emblematic of European opinion on the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Sympathy for Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians, always strong, has grown stronger, while criticism of Ariel Sharon and Israel has grown more strident. Anti-Semitic incidents are rising, especially...

EL AVIV, April 6 — The Palestinian militants battling the Israeli Army in the West Bank lack the basic weapons available to the world's guerrilla armies: antitank guns, missiles and land mines that can cripple armored vehicles. But Israeli intelligence officials say they have evidence that the Palestinians have recently augmented their limited arsenal with significantly more powerful, military-grade explosives that appear to have been smuggled into the territories. Israeli officials said a forensic examination of two massive explosive charges used to cripple Israeli tanks in the Gaza Strip in February and March found traces of RDX, an explosive that...

Palestinians kill three "collaborators" in village   JENIN, West Bank, April 5 (Reuters) - Masked Palestinian gunmen shot dead three men suspected of collaborating with Israeli forces in their West Bank village on Friday, Palestinian sources said. Palestinian municipal officials said the incident occurred after Israeli troops had left the village of Toubas, near the city of Jenin, on Friday night. But the army could not immediately comment on whether soldiers had pulled out of the village, which they had entered as part of a wider invasion of Palestinian cities in the West Bank to root out militants. Palestinian officials and witnesses said gunmen...

<p>ERUSALEM -- Because the names remain the same, and because the moral is such a tidy one, Ariel Sharon's current battle against Yasser Arafat has been widely compared to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. "As in Lebanon," writes David Ignatius in the Washington Post, "Sharon appears to have leapt into this military campaign without knowing where he would land." "For Mr. Sharon," adds Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, "tanks seem to work no better in the West Bank than they did in Lebanon." Yesterday, even President Bush, while not mentioning Lebanon directly, called for Mr. Sharon to "halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas, and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied." This, he said, would "lay the foundations of future peace."</p>

<p>President Bush bowed to pressure from Europe, the Arab world and most of the U.S. media yesterday by urging Israel to end its siege against Palestinian terrorists. This strikes us as a mistake, maybe even a large one, though it all might be redeemed if this helps Mr. Bush refocus the war on terror back on Iraq.</p>