[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE TERROR MASTERS

                                  _____
                                 

                           HON. STEVE ISRAEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 29, 2003

  Mr.  ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with my colleagues 
this provocative piece by Steven Emerson from the Wall Street Journal 
on Friday, April 18, 2003.

                           The Terror Masters

                          (By Steven Emerson)

       Eighteen years after the execution of American Leon 
     Klinghoffer on the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, the 
     U.S. has demonstrated by the capture of Abu Abbas that it 
     will not wipe the slate clean on international terrorism. For 
     years, however, diplomatic niceties and misplaced State 
     Department priorities subverted this principle, enabling 
     purveyors of terrorism to literally get away with murder. The 
     war of liberation in Iraq now provides the U.S. with an 
     opportunity to ensure that those Arab leaders and regimes who 
     have carried out or threatened attacks against this country 
     and its citizens are subject to American justice.
       Because of its conspicuously brazen support for Saddam 
     Hussein in transferring military supplies to Baghdad and 
     providing sanctuary to Iraqi Baathists, and in encouraging 
     Arab fighters to go to Iraq to kill Americans, Syria's role 
     in supporting terrorism and threatening American interests 
     has finally come into focus. That it took actual complicity 
     in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq for us to finally 
     confront Damascus is a measure of how successful Syria was in 
     deceiving the world, with the connivance of even the U.S. All 
     one has to do is read the State Department's annual reports 
     on international terrorism which have stated with mantra-like 
     repetition, that Syria has not been involved in 
     ``international terrorism'' since 1986.
       Given the fact that the Israeli borders with Syria and 
     Lebanon are international borders, I have always failed to 
     see how the State Department could portray Damascus in this 
     light given its direct support, training, supplies and 
     sanctuary extended to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, to 
     name just a few of the groups that serve as de facto members 
     of the Syrian foreign service. Since 1988, more than 1200 
     Israelis and some 30 Americans have been killed in Israel, 
     the West Bank and Gaza by groups headquartered in, or 
     sponsored by, Damascus. Recently, the U.S. indicted the head 
     of Islamic Jihad, Ramaddan Abdullah Shallah, on charges 
     including murder. Shallah continues to receive sanctuary in 
     Damascus, where he routinely issues threats against the U.S.
       After Sept. 11, Syria pretended to be helping the U.S. in 
     the war on al Qaeda, as evidenced by Damascus' arrest of a 
     senior suspected al Qaeda operative. The State Department 
     even issued a statement lauding Syria's role in the fight 
     against al Qaeda. But the reality was different. Testimonies, 
     court records and wiretaps introduced in Italian trials of Al 
     Qaeda and other militant Islamic leaders show that Syria has 
     been working hand-in-hand with Islamic extremists in Europe 
     for years, providing transit, sanctuary and training for al 
     Qaeda terrorists traveling between Iraq and the Arab world. 
     An eye-opening expose, by Sebastian Rotella in this week's 
     Los Angeles Times, shows in incredible detail how Syria 
     served as a hub for al Qaeda terrorists shuttling between 
     Iraq, Syria and Europe. U.S. officials believe that at least 
     one of the primary 9/11 plotters spent extensive time in 
     Syria and that Syrian front-companies in Europe worked 
     intimately with al Qaeda.
       According to U.S. intelligence, conspirators in the 1996 
     bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 
     American servicemen met repeatedly in Syria to plan the 
     terrorist operation--meetings that could not have taken place 
     without the knowledge of the Syrian regime. Syria's role in 
     attacking Americans goes way back. In 1983, Syria--together 
     with Iran and the Hezbollah--coordinated the bombing of the 
     Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines.
       The capture of Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Abbas has 
     provoked demands from the Palestine Authority that he be 
     immediately released and claiming that the slate had been 
     wiped clean by the Oslo Accords. Under the PA's reasoning, 
     compliance with treaties need only be one-way since both 
     Abbas and the PA brazenly violated the terms of Oslo by 
     continuing to carry out terrorist attacks.
       Since October 2000, Abbas's group, the Palestine Liberation 
     Front, has transferred millions of dollars to the families of 
     Palestinian suicide bombers. Abbas has dispatched terrorists 
     trained in his Iraq-based training camps to the West Bank to 
     carry out major attacks on Ben Gurion airport, poison 
     Israel's water supply and attack schools and other civilian 
     targets.
       The Palestinian Authority's defense of Abbas is not just 
     symbolic; it's self-protecting. If Abbas goes down, so could 
     Yasser Arafat. If Abbas is prosecuted for Achille Lauro, or 
     for the funding given to the families of suicide bombers 
     (some of whose victims included Americans in Israel), 
     Arafat's complicity in these terrorist plots would almost 
     certainly be exposed. And if a true accounting were to be 
     made, the role of the Tanzim and the al Aqsa Brigades--
     terrorist groups directly sponsored by Arafat--would show 
     that roles in the killing of hundreds of Israelis and at 
     least 15 Americans in the past 30 months. As for the mass 
     murder carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PA today 
     continues to protect the killers and masterminds.
       The duplicitous role of Saudi Arabia in extending support 
     to al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups also needs to 
     be fully exposed. In the buildup to the war, Saudi Arabia 
     demonstrated where it really stood on al Qaeda by releasing 
     Sheikh Saeed bin Zuair, a military Islamic cleric whose 
     release had been demanded by Osama bin Laden in a tape 
     distributed last year. (The other person whose release was 
     demanded by bin Laden was Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, convicted 
     for his role in the WTC related conspiracies in 1993.)
       In unprecedented ways, the war of liberation of Iraq has 
     provided a unique opportunity to see exactly where Arab 
     nations and Islamic leaders have stood on the issue of 
     international terrorism. If anything, the war has enabled 
     Americans to see an unvarnished reality of true attitudes 
     toward the U.S.