An Israeli Writer’s One-Way Mirror

The Israeli writer and novelist David Grossman, in an article published in the New York Times Tuesday, October 1, lays out his theory that Israelis know only the side of their conflict with the Palestinians that Israel chooses to tell itself. He writes: “The story that now reigns nearly unchallenged in the media and political discourse obliterates more than 33 years of roadblocks, thousands of prisoners and untold numbers of deportations and killings of innocent people.” Grossman claims that Israelis act as though “there had never been long months of closures, … no humiliations, no incessant harassment, … no bulldozing of hundreds of homes, no uprooting of vineyards and olive groves…”
According to this writer, Israelis honestly believe that “the Palestinians suddenly exploded in September 2000 in an uncaused natural eruption, spewing out lava and ash and igniting the entire region. They had no logical reason for exploding and there was no prior Israeli provocation.”
What David Grossman is trying to prove is that Israelis, because of a “manipulative fog created by the prime minister and his cabinet,” are unwilling or unable to grasp the complete picture.
His article ends by conceding: “It is true that the Palestinians have committed serious errors and war crimes in the past two years. It also may well be true that had they acted otherwise they would have a state today.”
Grossman’s article is captioned: Dangerous delusion: Israelis don’t hear the whole story.
It seems to us that maybe the writer suffers from his own brand of the ignorant delusion he attributes to his fellow Israelis. Three facts offered here by debkafile might suggest that the picture David Grossman presented New York Times readers is sorely deficient, if not one-sided.
1. Abu al-Abbas
debkafile has referred more than once to the head of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front chief, his close collaboration with Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, the Palestinian General Security chief wanted in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks, and their joint function as communication link between Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein’s military intelligence.
This week, a reader wrote in with a reminder of a long-forgotten, terrorist episode:
Many have forgotten that it was Abu al-Abbas who masterminded one of the most horrific of Palestinian terrorist attacks way back in 1979 in the north Israeli Mediterranean town of Nahariya. On April 22, a Palestinian cell member used his rifle butt to smash in the skull of 4-year old Einat Haran and helped murder her father, Danny Haran aged 32 in the same attack. Two-year old Yael Haran died when her mother, watching her family murdered from an attic, accidentally smothered the child to death to keep her from crying out.
Two of the Palestinian terrorists were killed in the attack; two captured, one of whom was turned loose in the 1985 exchange of prisoners deal. The second, Samir Kuntar, stayed in prison. During the 1982 Lebanese war, a lavish publication produced by al-Abbas’s ALF was discovered depicting the terrible Nahariya episode as a military victory.
Gaining Kuntar’s freedom was the object of the hijack of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 by his controller, the same Abu al-Abbas. This time, he gained lasting infamy by throwing a wheel-chair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard to his death.
In 1996, Ehud Barak’s government allowed al-Abbas to visit the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. He returned to Iraq via Egypt. At the time, a hidden hand wiped the Nahariya episode from the communiques and reports released on the visit. Needless to say, the Israeli authorities who allowed the visit, did not invite him to Jabotinsky Street 67, Nahariya.
In October 20002, al Abbas demonstrated his gratitude for the kid glove treatment he received in Israeli authorities, by enlisting his organization to Arafat’s Intifada. Since then, his group has channeled millions of dollars donated by Saddam Hussein to the families of Palestinian suicide-killers.
Grossman starts the catalogue of Palestinian “errors and war crimes” two years ago. The massacre of Danny Haran and his babies occurred in 1979 – and that crime was not a lone instance then either.
2. A long-planned “spontaneous” uprising:
Some facts that will show David Grossman how carefully the Palestinian leadership choreographed the “spontaneous popular uprising” that “erupted” in September 2000, complete with weapons and war equipment, at least two years before the failed Camp David peace summit of summer 2000. Its supreme planner was Yasser Arafat assisted by diligent aides. The names of four of the wanted terrorist bosses cornered in Arafat’s compound today are less well known than Tirawi and the Force 17 commander Mohamed Demara. However their actions in the run-up to the September 2000 “eruption” are a glaring betrayal of the forward planning invested in preparing the violence to come:
Ramzi Khouri: One of Arafat’s top advisers, he sent his family overseas on September 25, three days before the Intifada began.
Adnan Saadi: This senior security officer in charge of Arafat’s personal safety shipped his wife and three children out of the country on September 13, sixteen days before Arafat’s D-Day.
Atallah Aweid: He was close enough to Arafat to have the advance knowledge for sending his wife and children out of the country six months before the violence began, on April 14, 2000.
Said Zahran: Arafat’s spin doctor got his family out of harm’s way on August 10, 2000, days before the Camp David conference, knowing that its failure was built into the Intifada master-plan.
This is only a partial list. All four families are still abroad, evidence of the remarkable prescience of the members of Arafat’s inner circle. The tour made by Ariel Sharon, then leader of the Israeli opposition, of Temple Mount on September 28, 2000, was a lucky break that gave the Palestinian plotters the pretext for the confrontation Arafat’s team had planned for years.
Perhaps New York Times readers should be told that, when Arafat attended the three-way “peace summit” at Camp David in August 200, he was not only cheating the Israeli prime minister Barak, but President Clinton. Arafat was the only leader present with a complete plan in his pocket – a war plan.
Rat Poison as Terror Weapon
Another chapter of the “whole story” that seems to have escaped the notice of David Grossman was revealed by the Washington Post on the same day as his article appeared in the New York Times. Here is a quote:
“Doctors in Israeli hospitals had been noticing that when they operated on people wounded in homicide bombing attacks, patients often continued to bleed even after being sutured. Eventually, a young medical resident figured out why: The terrorists filled their bombs with as many nails, screws, glass shards and pieces of shrapnel as they could, and these were first dipped in rat poison. The rat poison worked as an anticoagulant.
Now Israeli emergency room doctors can treat bombing victims with Vitamin K to control the bleeding, but as the Rocky Mountain News reported, stronger drugs can cost up to $10,000 per vial.”
So who is missing what, David Grossman?