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New evidence of old lies Under the heading DIABOLICAL PLOTS, I stated in Beyond Chutzpah - On page 127 of The Case for Israel, Dershowitz writes: Terrorists try everything possible to maximize deaths, even sometimes reportedly soaking the nails they use in their antipersonnel bombs in rat poison to prevent coagulation of blood. Recently, Israeli doctors expressed concern that the blood of some of the suicide bombers, which splatters all over the scene and is touched by medical personnel, as well as their bones, which penetrate the bodies of the victims, might contain hepatitis or the AIDS virus, raising the fear that terrorist leaders could be turning suicide bombers into biological warfare carriers either by injecting them or selecting carriers as suicide bombers. The first such case was documented in the July 2002 issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal. (italics added)On page 193 of The Case for Israel, Dershowitz writes: [T]here is still no moral equivalence between exploding an antipersonnel bomb made of nails soaked in rat poison whose sole purpose is to maximize civilian deaths and injuries, on the one hand, and targeting terrorists under circumstances in which it is likely that some innocent civilians may die, on the other hand. (italics added)What is Dershowitz's evidence for the diabolical plots? Dershowitz cites three sources: "Karen Birchard, 'Hep B case makes suicide bombers an infection risk,' Medical Post, Maclean Hunter Ltd., September 10, 2002 "; "Michael Ledeen, 'Hebrew U Survivor: An Interview with Eliad Moreh,' National Review online, August 6, 2002 "; "'Hepatitis Spread Via Suicide Bombers,' The Straits Times (Singapore), July 26, 2002" (p. 25InnI6, I9, 20). Yet these articles report only that, based on the case of one suicide bomber apparently infected with hepatitis B, Israeli doctors speculate that the blood and bones of other suicide bombers might be infected with this and other diseases. Not one of the cited references mentions fears that the suicide bombers were being deliberately infected by their dispatchers or even that the bombers or their dispatchers were aware that they were carriers of infectious diseases. Not one of the cited references mentions anything about anti-personnel weapons being soaked in rat poison. A journalist investigating the factual basis for the "rat poison" claim, which occasionally crops up in the U.S. media, discovered an "absence of any forensic proof." It is "the sort of tale that newsroom cynics call 'too good to check,'" he concluded. "We so want to believe that the Palestinians are stinking up their bombs with rat poison that we won't eyen ask for evidence."[23] Even the rightwing Jerusalem Post cites the director-general of an Israeli hospital to the effect that it's "ridiculous to suggest" that a suicide bomber infected with hepatitis B "was selected for his mission specifically because he was a carrier": "Hepatitis B is endemic in the Middle East, and more likely in people from lower socio-economic groups. So it is not surprising that the virus was found."[24] The most exhaustive study to date of Palestinian suicide bombers is Human Rights Watch, Erased in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks against Israeli Civilians. It makes no mention of any of these allegations. On the other hand, Amnesty International did call on Israel to investigate the use by Israeli settlers of "toxic chemicals" for the purpose of "poisoning" Palestinian fields.[25] 23. Jack Shafer, "The d-Con Bomb," Slate (11 July 2.002.), http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067819. 24. Judy Siegel, "Hepatitis in suicide bomber 'no threat,'" Jerusalem Post (8 June 2001). 25. Human Rights Watch, Erased in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks against Israeli Civilians (New York, 2002). Amnesty International, "Israeli authorities must put an immediate end to settler violence" (press release, 25 April 2.005). In his attacks on Beyond Chutzpah, Professor Dershowitz remains adamant that these claims of his are valid. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2005, Volume 61, Number 6, pp. 8-9, says otherwise: Infected suicide bombers have put a new spin on biological warfare. But public health experts caution against panic. OF ALL HER WOUNDS, THE bone fragments lodged in the body of a 31-year-old woman hurt in a May 2001 suicide attack at an Israeli mall seemed the least serious. While treating the severe blast injuries to her legs, doctors at the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel, removed the chips and sent them to the Israel Institute of Forensic Medicine for testing—protocol for all material gathered from a suicide bombing. The results surprised even the hardened physicians on the front line of terror medicine: The bone fragments tested positive for the hepatitis B virus. Israel, all too familiar with gruesome suicide terror tactics, confronted yet another ordeal—the possible transmission of a blood-borne pathogen via an infected suicide bomber. The Hillel Yaffe doctors surmised that the force of the explosion was so fierce that the Hamas bomber's bone fragments became ersatz shrapnel, unintentionally transforming him into a human bioweapon. (Hepatitis rates are high in the Palestinian territories owing to poor health and sanitary conditions.) If the contamination had been intentional, it would have constituted a flawed attempt at bioterrorism because exposure to hepatitis B is easily treatable. But terrorism is about fear, and the notion that a suicide bomber might infect victims with hepatitis or even HIV could scare an already jittery public. "Suicide bombers may not just cause carnage when they blow themselves up—they may also spread diseases from beyond the grave," a BBC report cautioned a year after the mall attack. More recently, a retired FBI bomb expert told a homeland security publication that infected suicide bombers are a new "spin on a biological weapon of mass destruction." And even the National Enquirer is spreading rumors of AIDS sufferers offering their lives to Al Qaeda in Iraq "so they can die as martyrs." Yet, as with many terrorism scenarios and public health scares, the grounds for worry have been exaggerated. "It's a hazmat issue," says Robert Bunker, a member of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group. "You consider it a potential, take a few precautions, and move on." Only two incidents of infected suicide bombers have been documented; the second attack—a bomber with hepatitis B (again, likely an unplanned factor) blew himself up at a Tel Aviv nightclub—happened just weeks after the first. Despite press reports about thwarted Palestinian suicide bombers testing positive for HIV, no such attack has ever been publicly substantiated. Furthermore, medical experts believe it's likely impossible to transmit HIV in this manner. "The heat of the blast would probably destroy [the virus]," says Peter Katona, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California–Los Angeles. Still, U.S. first responders are beginning to include the infected suicide bomber potentiality in their literature—mostly as a precautionary measure. If anything, terrorism experts like RAND's Bruce Hoffman see it as an opportunity to highlight hepatitis as a legitimate public health concern and push for a more zealous national vaccination program. "It's just like security," Hoffman says. "Security against terrorism helps damp down crime because people are watching out. The same bonus comes with being concerned about this but looking at it judiciously and using it as an opportunity to get more of the population inoculated." Israel has done just that. The Ministry of Health now mandates that all victims of suicide attacks receive hepatitis B immunization, and physicians at Hillel Yaffe treat the risk as merely another public health precaution. "I'm not scared of this," says the hospital's General-Director Meir Oren. "This is not what I'm losing sleep over." Josh Schollmeyer
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Video: On the place of civility in academic life (10.18.2007) Finkelstein's talk at the academic freedom conference Tenure Denial Letters (June - November, 2007) On How Actual Survivors Were Cheated by Jewish Organizations:
Communication for Middle East Journal. (02.19.2006) Alleged Errors in Beyond Chutzpah. (2005) MEMRI NAZIS (again) (10.23.2006)  New evidence of old lies (2005) Under the heading DIABOLICAL PLOTS, I stated in Beyond Chutzpah...    Articles and Reviews Related to The Holocaust Industry  Preface to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine Postscript to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine The Dershowitz File:
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