NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, January 23, 1995
7A
Terrorists kill 18 in Israel
Bombings rock Israelis' faith in peace process
The Associated Press
BEIT LID JUNCTION, Israel — A suicide mission by Islamic militants near a snack bar crowded with soldiers killed 18 Israelis and wounded about 60 yesterday with a grusome new tactic — setting off a small blast and ambushing would-be rescuers with a second major explosion.
The result was a hammer blow to the Israel-PLO peace treaty, which was already in jeopardy after an unprecedented series of attacks inside Israel.
President Ezer Weizman proposed that Israel stop the peace talks for an extended review before expanding Palestinian self-rule into the West Bank. The president has little power but is looked to as an indicator of the national mood in times of crisis.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin convened an emergency Cabinet session yesterday evening to determine the government's response.
The first step was a complete closure of the occupied territories, blocking the movement of all Palestinians into Israel. It has been the response after each similar attack and has kept tens of thousands of Palestinians away from jobs in Israel.
Rabin underscored the deepening concern about such carnage by making his first personal inspection tour of a suicide-bombing site.
"There is no doubt in my mind that this action now is another attempt by the extreme Islamic terror groups to achieve their dual goal of killing Israelis and halting the peace process," he said.
Hecklers at the scene shouted, "How much longer?" while Rabin toured the devastated site. Smaller demonstrations were held at the site later in the night and outside government offices.
The radical Islamic Jihad organization issued leaflets in both Gaza and in Damascus, Syria, claiming responsibility for the double-barreled suicide mission.
The Gaza statement said the attack was to avenge the death of Hani Abed, a leader of the military wing whose death was blamed on Israel, and the killing of three Palestinian police shot by Israeli troops earlier this month.
The two suicide attackers were identified as Salah Shakr, 25, from Rafah and Anwar Sukar, 23, from Gaza City, whose father is a Palestinian traffic policeman.
Outside Sukar's house, Islamic activists chanted "Death to America and Israel" and said the bomber would be rewarded in paradise. Clearly distraught relatives cried, spat at the Islamic Jihad members and cursed them as "dogs." One threw a flower pot that narrowly missed people in the crowd.
Sukar had been detained briefly by the Palestinian police after the Nov. 11 bicycle bombing by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber that killed three Israeli officers.
Most of the 18 Israelis killed and 62 wounded in Sunday's attack were soldiers, although the dead included at least one elderly civilian man.
The brunt of the explosion was taken by a single army company, one of a special unit deployed to guard bus stops, especially on Sundays when they are crowded with troops returning from weekend furloughs.
Kit bags, jackets and the red berets of the elite paratrooper unit, many of them bloodstained, lay scattered among the broken glass and other debris after the blast. Religious medical teams combed the ground and the trees for scattered bits of flesh, since Jewish law requires all body parts to be buried.
"There was a huge explosion. We came outside and saw everything was charred. As I moved toward the snack bar, I saw body parts, heads, arms, a God-awful scene," said eyewitness Haim Hershkovitz.
snack shop, was inside with her husband and son and at first thought she had been knocked to the floor by an electric shock.
"By the time I was able to get up there was another explosion. Again, the entire roof collapsed and the solar panels fell on me," she said from her hospital bed.
Bella Zioni, 42, who owns the
The bombs exploded at the Beit Lid junction, also known as the Sharon junction, near the coastal town of Netanya about 9:30 a.m. Named after an Arab village that once stood there, it is 18 miles northeast of Tel Aviv and about six miles from the West Bank.
The blasts occurred across the street from Ashmoret Prison, where Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, has been serving a life sentence since 1989 for ordering the killing of Israeli informants and other activities against the occupation.
Officials said the two explosions were about three minutes apart.
Islamic Jihad claims Israeli bomb attack
Survivors reported a man wearing a uniform doubled over as if to throw up who they believe exploded the first bomb outside the snack bar. When soldiers rushed to see what happened, the second bomb exploded. The tactic was unseen in Israel before.
The Associated Press
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The spiritual leader of the Islamic Jihad group, which claimed responsibility for yesterday's bomb attack, sat cross-legged on a straw mat watching footage of the carnage on television.
Such attacks are merely to inflict pain, Sheik Abdullah Shami said. Ultimately, nothing but the obliteration of Israel will do.
"It's an open war between us," Shami said. "The solution lies in uprooting the cause of the problem ... the state of Israel."
Members of Islamic Jihad — or Islamic Holy War — see destroying Israel as their divine mission and a step towards establishing an Islamic empire made of the entire Middle East.
They say they have a single weapon that would defeat the Israelis: their faith.
They say it is faith that turns an activist into a kamikaze willing to fulfill the duty of devout Muslims to die for the faith. Their slogans reflect these beliefs:
"A booby-trapped body is our way to heaven."
"We explode the heads of the Israelis and knock with them on the gates of paradise."
In another attack in November, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility when a Palestinian with explosives strapped to his body rode a bicycle into an army post outside a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. The blast killed three Israeli officers and wounded 11 people.
Activists formed the Islamic Jihad movement in the late 1970s. Activists in the secret group number in the hundreds.
Big Bird and PBS could sell-out to private interests
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Senate Republican leading the campaign to privatize public broadcasting said yesterday that several communications companies, including Bell Atlantic, were interested in buysing public television stations.
Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota also complained on CBS "Face the Nation" that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting "is running a nasty nationwide campaign against Republicans, saying that we are trying to kill Big Bird," the popular character on Sesame Street.
Pressler, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee which controls CPB's budget, contends that the corporation's $285 million budget this year — 14 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total income — could be cut without affecting quality television programming.
He said he had met with the heads of several telecommunications companies, including the Arlington, Va.-based Bell Atlantic, and they expressed interest in buying and running the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"It could be done with a provision that they would continue children's programming and rural broadcasting. They could do this without spending any federal money," Pressler said.
A representative for Bell Atlantic, Shannon Fioravanti, called the purchase of CPB affiliates a very preliminary idea.
"Pressler tipped the Republican hand that what this is about is Republicans cutting deals with huge communications companies that need television outlets to acquire and cannibalize public TV," said one source within public television. "That’s the bottom line."
She said that if Congress decided to privatize public broadcasting, Bell Atlantic would be interested in partnership agreements or buyouts, under a pledge that it would continue high-quality educational and rural programming.
CPB chief executive officer Richard Carlson, appearing with Pressler on CBS, predicted public broadcasting would survive a cutoff of federal funds, but he said that many smaller rural stations will undoubtedly crash.
CPB distributes the federal money to more than 1,000 stations and groups nationwide, including the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.
Carlson said CPB provided stations in Pressler's home state of South Dakota with $1.7 million out of their total budget of $5.8 million and eliminating federal funds would have a serious effect.
But Pressler said Republicans were the targets of a mean-spirited campaign organized by people in Washington.
He insisted that Congress "could privatize public broadcasting without losing Barney," a character in a popular children's program.
This could be done by private industry acquiring CPB and program rights or through partnerships where private companies obtain some commercial rights and advertising. Pressler said.
The CPB budget, while relatively small compared to those of other government agencies, has been a prime target of Republicans seeking to shrink government and slash the nation's budget deficit.
The debate took a turn last week when House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has previously vowed to cut off all federal funding, appeared to soften his stand.
THE NEWS in brief
EVREUX. France
Bishop demoted to priest for challenging Catholicism
A bishop dismissed by the Vatican for his dissident views and maverick style delivered the final Mass of his tenure yesterday with a promise to continue both his religious work and his activism.
About 8,000 supporters gathered in the rain outside this town's cathedral, about 60 miles northwest of Paris, to listen to Bishop Jacques Gaillot's homily over loudspeakers. Roughly 2,000 others filled the church, including four French bishops.
Gaillot pledged to continue his work "in communion with the church to bring the good word to the poor."
"The church must be the church of the excluded and not of exclusion." he said.
The Vatican, after years of annoyance at Gaillot's high-profile challenges to church positions, dismissed him Jan. 13 as bishop of the diocese of Evreux. He remains a priest.
The ouster drew wide criticism within and outside the church, and thousands have demonstrated in support of the 59-year-old bishop.
In the outpouring of commentary about Gaillot's dismissal, a common theme emerged — a widening gap between the Vatican and substantial numbers of French Catholics.
Throughout his 12 years in Evreux, Gaillot challenged church doctrine on abortion, use of condoms, married priests and homosexual couples. His frequent newspaper articles and television appearances also angered some fellow French bishons.
The split over his dismissal "reveals the deep aspirations society is awaiting in the church," he said. "Aspirations of freedom of speech, the right to be different, of the respect of dignity of each individual, of democracy."
Evreux Without Bordere, a group of supporters, plans a march to Paris leaving today and arriving on Feb. 4, collecting signatures along the way. The group then plans to protest at the Vatican.
Members of AIDS support groups held placards reading "ignorance Kills, Intolerance Does Too." Others waved signs that said, "Jean-Paul, you're out of it. Get Out!"
"He's taken a profound human stand, very different from what is said and done by the official church," said Thierry Lepercq, 30, an activist with the AIDS awareness group AIDS.
NEW YORK
Rock memorabilia fetches high prices
A collection of six rare Beatles albums sold for $32,000 and a guitar stained with the blood of the late Kurt Cobain brought $15,000 Saturday at an auction of rock n' roll memorabilia.
Only rock' n' roll? Not at these prices
But one of the biggest items — a 1954 Elvis Presley recording of"I'll Never Stand in Your Way"—failed to sell in day three of the four-day "40 Years of Rock & Roll" auction.
The acetate recording, done at the Memphis Recording Service for $4, failed to reach the reserve price of $100,000, said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's auction house. It was expected to bring up to $200,000.
Acetate discs were used to transfer music from an electronic signal to pressed vinyl.
Presley's 10th-grade Humes High School yearbook was sold, however, for $5,000. The book includes photos of Elvis as a junior varsity basketball player.
Another item that didn't leave the auction block was the first Fender electric guitar, a prototype built in 1948 by Leo Fender and George Fullerton. It would have fetched a world-record prize for a guitar sold at auction, but the high bid of $425,000 fell short of the $475,000 minimum, Ettinger said.
The catalog describes it as "arguably the most historically significant guitar in the world" because it paved the way for today's mass-produced, solid-body electrics.
Cobain had smashed his Stratocaster electric guitar at a 1993 Nirvana concert in Jacksonville, Fla. The instrument, which bears the late singer's blood on a white pickguard, had been given to a fan who was pulled onstage. The guitar was later signed by all three band members.
About 5,000 items were put on the block at the event, billed as the biggest rock'n'roll auction ever.
Cobain committed suicide last year
GARY, Ind
Nurse gets will tattoed on stomach
Maria Rodriguez was so fearful of one day being put on life support, she had a living will tattooed on her stomach. The 40-year-old nurse said she had seen enough patients and their families suffer when lives were prolonged.
Rodriguez said the 'No Code' instructed hospital and ambulance workers not to resuscitate her or keep her alive by artificial means.
The red and black tattoo features a red heart slashed with the universal "no" sign and the words "No Code." The will reads, "Pain and comfort only. Organ donor." It ends with her initials, M.R.
"I would never want my family to suffer seeing me in a vegetative state, to have them mortgage their homes and go broke paying for my care," she said.
"When my name gets called, I don't want anything holding me up." she said.
The will, however, may not be legally binding.
Indiana's living-will statute requires the will to be dated and signed by the person writing it and two witnesses. Although her will does not meet those requirements, Rodriguez said she hoped it would be respected.
"I don't expect people to agree with me," she said. "But this is my body, my life and my belief. And I hope they respect that."
Rodriguez got the tattoo last month after suffering chest pains she attributed to a June miscarriage, job stress and Christmas. Her doctor said it was nerves.
Convincing her husband of 24 years, Gilbert Rodriguez, 50. was tough, she said.
"I never want to let her go," he said. "But I understand."
*Valid on registration priced items and merchandise only. Sale excludes
admitted items including 20 best Sellers(1.08 CDs, 68 Batteries).