DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Arafat Agreed to House Secret Iranian Bases Inside PA - Yossi Melman (Ha'aretz)
    Iran and the Palestinian Authority headed by Yasser Arafat reached a secret agreement in 2002 to establish Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps bases in the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for military aid.
    Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who served as defense minister at the time, discovered the details on Monday.
    As part of the deal, Iran supplied the PA with 50 tons of military equipment, which was intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces on the ship "Karine A" in 2002.

Report: Syrian Network Planned to Kill Lebanese Officials - Ali Waked (Ynet News)
    Lebanese security forces exposed a network which planned to assassinate 36 senior anti-Syrian Lebanese officials and arrested two of the network's key members, the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported Wednesday.
    The network trained in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and planned to execute a plot initiated by the Syrian government.
    The detainees, a Syrian and a Saudi, were part of a 200-member network.

UNIFIL Destroying Hizballah Weapons in South Lebanon - Ze'ev Schiff (Ha'aretz)
    Thousands of Katyusha rockets are still being hidden by Hizballah in south Lebanon, especially in the larger villages in the Tyre region.
    At the same time, Belgian, Spanish, and French UNIFIL units have discovered and destroyed a number of Katyusha and ammunition dumps, in part based on Israeli intelligence.
    Hizballah operatives are active in south Lebanon, although they do not wear uniforms, carry weapons, or enter positions they held near the border with Israel.

How the Imams Terrorized an Airliner - Audrey Hudson (Washington Times)
    Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports, and aviation security officials.
    Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks - two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle, and two in the rear of the cabin.
    "That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane."

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Why Rachel Corrie Is Not the New Anne Frank - James Kirchick (New Republic)

• In the 90-minute, one-woman show "My Name is Rachel Corrie," playing in New York, Corrie looks either like one of the upper-middle-class kids who take Latin American latrine-digging vacations to buff up their college resumes, or one of the "political pilgrims" who ventured to totalitarian lands and returned to boast of slumming it with the liberated natives.
• In a photo circulated after her death, Corrie flaunts her hatred of the U.S. by burning a mock American flag while Palestinian children crowd around her.
• In prostrating herself before an Israeli bulldozer, Corrie actually became that which she was (unwittingly, perhaps) protecting: the Palestinian suicide martyr. She received the martyr treatment, becoming a pieta of the anti-Israel movement.
• Due to the epistolary basis of "My Name is Rachel Corrie," comparisons have been made to "The Diary of Anne Frank." Anne Frank was a probing character whose blameless observations of fascist Europe demonstrated the cruelty of a period in which children were perfunctorily murdered. Rachel Corrie was a know-it-all who deliberately placed herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• What's more, there is an issue of moral culpability among antagonists. Obviously, Frank's murderers had it. But Corrie died, accidentally, after giving intellectual (and actual) cover to those who are, essentially, the heirs of Frank's killers.