April 14, 2002

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a travel advisory advising people to exercise "extreme caution" when visiting France and Belgium. 11:11:26 AM     Robert Fisk demands that US Secretary of State Colin Powell travel to Jenin to see the results of the recent Israeli actions there. Good idea, as a former military officer Colin Powell should have the opportunity to consider what took place. Rather than giving the civilians time to leave and then bombing and shelling the camp from afar to kill the armed fighters that remain, Israel sent in ground troops into an urban area, one of the most difficult military operations. This cost Israeli lives and caused great damage, but still was less damaging then simply destroying the town to reach its defenders. 12:56:15 AM     An article in Ha’aretz states that Israeli military officers are being to believe that the decision to bar reporters from the fighting in areas such as Jenin refugee camp was counterproductive as Palestinians are claiming the fighting was a massacre. These officers are correct, if foreign reporters had accompanied Israeli soldiers during the fighting they would have seen how fierce it was. The notion of unarmed Palestinians resisting Israelis would have been put to rest and they would have seen that rather than being a massacre, the events in the camp were an example very tough house-to-house fighting, one of the most dangerous military tasks. 12:15:09 AM     Ha’aretz reports that the Belgian government is considering a commercial boycott of Israel. This would severely affect Israel’s diamond trade, as Belgium is an important supplier of rough diamonds to Israel. This type of boycott would totally destroy any ability of Europe to claim to be fair players in the search for peace. Even while Arab states complain that the United States is biased against the Palestinians they have never boycotted Palestinian goods. If this occurs, Israel should work to cut Belgium out of the loop and import diamonds directly from the countries that mine them. Secondly, all those interested in working to real peace should boycott Belgian goods. No more Belgian chocolates, they are not good for you, or peace. 12:06:50 AM

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