Americans this week have been swamped with dire pronouncements by their leaders warning that additional terrorist attacks on US soil are a foregone conclusion. From Vice President Richard Cheney to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Americans this week were told it is only a question of time before they will again experience mass murder similar in scale to the September 11 attacks.
Also this week it surfaced that on March 27, the very day the Arab League convened in Beirut to discuss the much touted Saudi "peace plan," a clandestine conference of leading al-Qaida, Hizbullah, and Hamas operatives took place in the Lebanese capital. Given this confluence of discoveries and warnings, one could have reasonably expected that the State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, released on Tuesday, would be a no-holds barred explication of the threats posed by terrorist organizations and their sponsors against which the US is currently at war.
Secretary of State Colin Powell himself gave cause to believe the report would meet this expectation when, in releasing the document, he announced, "This report, mandated by Congress, is the 22nd such annual report to chronicle in grim detail the lethal threat that terrorism casts over the globe."
Sadly, at least with regards to Palestinian terrorism against Israel, the report is a painful disappointment. Far from detailed, and a football field shy of the truth, it paints a muted, almost apologetic picture of Palestinian terrorism. So far from accurate is the version of events that one is given pause to consider whether the State Department is committed to playing a helpful role in winning the war against terrorism.
An examination of the report must first begin with its reporting on terrorist attacks. Its "Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents, 2001" lists all terrorist incidents that occurred worldwide during 2001 that the department deems "significant." According to the report, "An International Terrorist Incident is judged significant if it results in loss of life or serious injury to persons, abduction or kidnapping of persons, major property damage, and/or is an act or attempted act that could reasonably be expected to create the conditions noted."
As Aaron Lerner of Independent Media Review Analysis news service notes, the chronology contains only nine incidents of Palestinian terrorism against Israel in all of 2001. It is far from clear how the State Department chose which attacks to mention. Some of the nine took place within Israel's pre-1967 borders, and others took place outside of them. Some were large-scale massacres, while others were isolated drive-by shootings. The most likely explanation is that the State Department considered significant only attacks in which non-Israelis were killed or wounded, as in all but one of the nine, foreign nationals were among the victims.
While not included in the department's own definition, a determination that the only "significant" terrorist incidents are those which involve harm to non-citizens of the state in which the acts are perpetrated could perhaps be defended if it were applied across the board. But going over the list, it is clear that this is not the case. The State Department provides relatively detailed accounts of 37 terrorist incidents in India, none of which involved any non-Indian victims.
Thankfully, the massacres at the Dolphinarium discotheque and Sbarro restaurant make the list. The Dolphinarium massacre apparently warranted note because among the 21 victims was Sergei Pancheskov of Ukraine. Similarly, Sbarro presumably receives notice because among the 15 dead were two American citizens and five members of the Schijveschuurder family, who held dual Israeli-Dutch citizenship (although the State Department mentions only that they were Dutch). Again this is unclear, because the report fails to mention that another victim of the Sbarro attack was a tourist from Brazil.
The Foreign Ministry, which lists victims murdered in terrorist attacks since the start of the Palestinian terrorist war on its Web site, counts 95 terrorist attacks in 2001 that resulted in 191 fatalities. The total death toll from attacks noted by the State Department is 56.
Among the 86 terrorist attacks and 146 victims the State Department deemed insignificant were the assassination of tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi on October 17; the massacre of 15 (including one Philippine national) on an Egged bus in Haifa on December 2; the murder of 10 Israelis in an attack on a Dan bus outside of Emmanuel on December 12; the March 26 murder of 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, gunned down by sniper fire while being wheeled in her baby carriage at a playground in Hebron; or the murder of five and wounding of 100 Israelis blown up by a Palestinian terrorist outside a shopping mall in Netanya on May 18 to name just a few examples.
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Also this week it surfaced that on March 27, the very day the Arab League convened in Beirut to discuss the much touted Saudi "peace plan," a clandestine conference of leading al-Qaida, Hizbullah, and Hamas operatives took place in the Lebanese capital. Given this confluence of discoveries and warnings, one could have reasonably expected that the State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, released on Tuesday, would be a no-holds barred explication of the threats posed by terrorist organizations and their sponsors against which the US is currently at war.
Secretary of State Colin Powell himself gave cause to believe the report would meet this expectation when, in releasing the document, he announced, "This report, mandated by Congress, is the 22nd such annual report to chronicle in grim detail the lethal threat that terrorism casts over the globe."
Sadly, at least with regards to Palestinian terrorism against Israel, the report is a painful disappointment. Far from detailed, and a football field shy of the truth, it paints a muted, almost apologetic picture of Palestinian terrorism. So far from accurate is the version of events that one is given pause to consider whether the State Department is committed to playing a helpful role in winning the war against terrorism.
An examination of the report must first begin with its reporting on terrorist attacks. Its "Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents, 2001" lists all terrorist incidents that occurred worldwide during 2001 that the department deems "significant." According to the report, "An International Terrorist Incident is judged significant if it results in loss of life or serious injury to persons, abduction or kidnapping of persons, major property damage, and/or is an act or attempted act that could reasonably be expected to create the conditions noted."
As Aaron Lerner of Independent Media Review Analysis news service notes, the chronology contains only nine incidents of Palestinian terrorism against Israel in all of 2001. It is far from clear how the State Department chose which attacks to mention. Some of the nine took place within Israel's pre-1967 borders, and others took place outside of them. Some were large-scale massacres, while others were isolated drive-by shootings. The most likely explanation is that the State Department considered significant only attacks in which non-Israelis were killed or wounded, as in all but one of the nine, foreign nationals were among the victims.
While not included in the department's own definition, a determination that the only "significant" terrorist incidents are those which involve harm to non-citizens of the state in which the acts are perpetrated could perhaps be defended if it were applied across the board. But going over the list, it is clear that this is not the case. The State Department provides relatively detailed accounts of 37 terrorist incidents in India, none of which involved any non-Indian victims.
Thankfully, the massacres at the Dolphinarium discotheque and Sbarro restaurant make the list. The Dolphinarium massacre apparently warranted note because among the 21 victims was Sergei Pancheskov of Ukraine. Similarly, Sbarro presumably receives notice because among the 15 dead were two American citizens and five members of the Schijveschuurder family, who held dual Israeli-Dutch citizenship (although the State Department mentions only that they were Dutch). Again this is unclear, because the report fails to mention that another victim of the Sbarro attack was a tourist from Brazil.
The Foreign Ministry, which lists victims murdered in terrorist attacks since the start of the Palestinian terrorist war on its Web site, counts 95 terrorist attacks in 2001 that resulted in 191 fatalities. The total death toll from attacks noted by the State Department is 56.
Among the 86 terrorist attacks and 146 victims the State Department deemed insignificant were the assassination of tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi on October 17; the massacre of 15 (including one Philippine national) on an Egged bus in Haifa on December 2; the murder of 10 Israelis in an attack on a Dan bus outside of Emmanuel on December 12; the March 26 murder of 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, gunned down by sniper fire while being wheeled in her baby carriage at a playground in Hebron; or the murder of five and wounding of 100 Israelis blown up by a Palestinian terrorist outside a shopping mall in Netanya on May 18 to name just a few examples.
Want to read more?
http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1021813237423