NBC Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher has gone so thoroughly native in the West Bank that hes turning in pieces like this oneshowing the human side of a family of brutal terrorist murderers: One mans terrorist, anothers freedom fighter.
NABLUS, West Bank It is hard for me to describe Ahmed Sanakreh as a terrorist, although I know its true. Hard, because I got to know him and his family quite well, and when you understand people, its hard to hate them: Twenty-year-old Ahmed, baby-faced with black hair sticking up in gelled spikes, and a passion for his Nokia 90 cell phone; and his elder brother, Alaa, the intense, hollow-cheeked leader of the Palestinian al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. They are the hard core of the hard core.
Although Alaa was the leader, Ahmed was the one Israel most wanted dead. I often asked Alaa why his younger brother had so many bodyguards, and Alaa would only smile mysteriously. But one day he confirmed Israels claims: that Ahmed blew up an Israeli officer, and was the bomb-maker behind other suicide bombers.
Alaa, Ahmed and their friend Nasser abu Aziz were my de facto guides to the Palestinian side of the second Intifada (uprising). They were terrorists to the Israelis, freedom fighters to their neighbors, and sources to me.
#3
The perils of naively allowing non-Americans to present the news to Americans. Walter Duranty wasn't the first or Fletcher won't be the last.
Posted by: ed ||
01/26/2008 10:20 Comments ||
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I gather that the SS concentration camp guards were good to their dogs and went home to dinner with their families at the end of a shift. I'm sure Martin couldn't have hated them if he'd had the chance to get acquainted.
"Together, we must confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists, and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation's wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people but on developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job finding and destroying more of Iraq's arsenal than was destroyed during the entire Gulf war. Now Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from completing their mission.
"I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein, "You cannot defy the will of the world," and when I say to him, "You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again."
President William Jefferson Clinton
January 27, 1998
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Never, ever let him forget this. His damned wife also. They both think we are stupid and have no memory. What a sad country we have to allow this kind of sh*t to hold political office.
Instead of a fence or a virtual fence, we could begin broadcasting the speeches of the Democratic presidential candidates into Latin America. When the citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and other locales get wind of the dreadful conditions in the "two Americas," little girls without coats, people dying at the doors of emergency rooms, and the otherwise widespread pestilence that is upon the land, how could any of them even think of coming north? We could call it Radio Free Edwards.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/26/2008 09:23 ||
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Superior snark. :-D
Wonder if we could contact the reader (through Mike at National Review) and invite her/him to join us at Rantburg?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/26/2008 9:57 Comments ||
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I have no personal relationship with NR, Barb. I just know a good snark when I see one.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/26/2008 10:16 Comments ||
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Sorry, Mike - didn't mean you.
The writer at the NR who posted the letter from the reader is also named Mike. Didn't mean to confuse the two. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/26/2008 10:21 Comments ||
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Better yet, after learning of the "two Americas", the illegals would opt to stay at the prosperous one - John Edwards house.
Bet we could clean up standing around the border selling maps to Edwards' house (kinda like those maps to the stars' homes that are sold around Hollyweird). :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/26/2008 16:30 Comments ||
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I think the Arizona model across the border would be a great idea. It really has had an impact on illegal immigration there already. Couple that with the planned Social Security review planned by US DHS in March and employer sanctions, and you get a very powerful stimulus for the 12-15 million illegals here to self-deport. Once that happens, really close the border, and then determine who comes in based on the real employee needs of our businesses. Pay a decent wage, and use tarriffs and tax incentives to encourage US business to buy American. Finally, stop allowing US corporations to go multi-national and export the profit offshore, and you get a national prosperity turn around.
How hard is this to articulate as a policy for the presidential candidates?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
