Small bombs were detonated at three banks in Argentina today. The targets were two Citibank branches and a branch of Galicia Bank. Several other explosives were discovered. A security guard who was holding a package containing a bomb was killed when it detonated.

Not a major terror attack - but a sign of the high level of frustration in Argentina. At this point there is no evidence that this action was linked to an international terror group. The small size of the explosives is not indicative of a large-scale operation.

But - easy-to-follow instructions on how to build effective bombs are readily available on the internet. Iran has led the way, producing high-quality how-to bombmaking videos. There is a lot of animus, and with the major Hezbollah operations center in the Tri-Border region nearby, the possibility of a major international terrorist group taking advantage of the growing Argentine animus should be a real concern.

The Wall St. Journal's George Melloan cited my book and used it for background in his November 16, 2004 column "Arafat is Gone, but Hamas Remains," calling it "informative."

The paragraphs citing my work are about two-thirds of the way in.


November 16, 2004

GLOBAL VIEW
By GEORGE MELLOAN

Arafat is Gone, but Hamas Remains
November 16, 2004; Page A25

What was that wild crowd in Ramallah signifying with its hysterical, gun-waving reception for Yasser Arafat's coffin last Friday? Certainly the young men weren't honoring anything that the great man ever did to improve life for Palestinians; he had systematically looted the Palestinian Authority treasury, among other crimes. Their chances for a normal life were worse than when he and his henchmen arrived from Tunis to assume power under the Oslo Accord a decade ago.

But the reason for their excitement isn't hard to guess. The mourners were paying homage to a life that had a single goal, the destruction of Israel. His successes, achieved through terrorism and the enlistment of international support, had eroded Israel's power and sense of security.

As if to confirm Arafat's manipulative skills, encomiums flowed in from national leaders all over the world. Jacques Chirac visited his bedside in Paris. Kofi Annan, partly in retaliation for the Bush administration's snubs of Arafat, no doubt, ordered flags at the United Nations flown at half-mast.

Whether intended or not, all the adulation sent a message to the swarm at the helicopter landing site: We think your cause is just. So go ahead doing what you've been doing, making bombs to blow up restaurants or buses in Israel. It worked for Arafat and it can work after his death.

Soupy thinking of this sort in the substantial number of chanceries and salons where Arafat became a cult hero has hardly furthered the U.S. war against terror. In parts of Europe and some countries of Asia, it may reflect latent anti-Semitism. There's also resentment of the Bush administration's presumption in thinking the U.S. can spread democracy around the world. But many Arafat worshippers are guilty of pure ignorance, a misunderstanding of the extent to which Arafat's Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have by now aligned themselves not only against Israel but Western civilization.

Much ink has been spilled making the argument that a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the key to ending terrorism. But that argument is far from complete if it doesn't say what kind of settlement might be possible. An eminent Mideast authority, Bernard Lewis, wrote in yesterday's Journal that it would be rather difficult for the Israelis to make peace if it meant yielding to the central Arab demand, that Israel cease to exist.

New hopes are being pinned to Arafat's successor as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas (sometimes known as Abu Mazen). He shows more promise as an interlocutor than Arafat ever did. But what of the leaders of Hamas who never willingly submitted to Arafat's authority and aren't about to give up the goal they shared with Arafat, the destruction of the Israeli state?

After the latest Intifada touched off a series of suicide bombings and other attacks in September of 2000, Israel adopted a policy of systematically assassinating Hamas leaders. The Israeli Defense Forces finally killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, with an air strike on March 22 of this year.

The combination of this strategy and security fences between Israel and the Arab territories brought about a sharp reduction in suicide bombings. But Sheikh Yassin had built Hamas (an Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) quite well. Its overt wing seeks converts through sermonizing and various charities, for which it has raised money abroad, even in the U.S., for years. But the overt wing also recruits Palestinians for the covert wing, which conducts suicide attacks and other forms of mayhem.

Some Hamas leaders prefer to stay out of range of Israeli attack helicopters, or at least they hope they are. According to an informative book by Mideast specialist Aaron Mannes titled "Profiles of Terror" (Rowman and Littlefield), the "effective head" of Hamas since the death of Sheikh Yassin has been Musa Muhammed Abu Marzuq, formerly Yassin's deputy. Abu Marzuq spent several years in the U.S. pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering and setting up Hamas fund-raising operations. He and another top leader of Hamas, Khalid Mash'al, now operate from Damascus.

Abu Marzuq has made it his business to win the cooperation of the Iranian mullahs and their terrorist protégés in Hezbollah, which mainly operates from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. According to Mr. Aaron, Hezbollah probably has taught Hamas operatives some of its tricks for making bombs and rockets.

A lot of theoretical mumbo jumbo has surrounded the operations of these shadowy groups. Scholars have argued that Hamas would never work with the Iranians because Hamas is affiliated with the Sunni branch of Islam and the Iranians are Shiites. This is similar to the argument that Saddam Hussein would never have cooperated with Osama bin Laden, because Saddam was a secular Arab socialist and bin Laden was an Islamist. Those theories have been exploded by our knowledge today that Saddam sheltered a top al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who now is a central figure in the insurgency that coalition troops are fighting in Iraq.

If an explanation can be divined for why smart politicians like Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin brought Arafat from Tunis and put him in charge of the Palestinian Authority, it might have been due to similar muddled thinking. Arafat, who was set up with the PLO by the Soviet Union to be a Cold War nuisance to the U.S., was also an Arab socialist. The late Mr. Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli extremist on Oct. 4, 1995, may have thought that Arafat was just the man to control Hamas Islamists. Arafat did fight some skirmishes with Hamas to assert his supremacy, but he did little to restrict Hamas terrorism against Israel and at times cooperated with it.

Arafat is dead, and Israel, the U.S. and anyone else who sincerely wants a Mideast peace will have to try to figure out what new Mideast alignments they are facing. There is not much room for optimism. Palestine is not only an Arab casus belli, it is the epicenter of the war on terror. It's where the efforts of the leading terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and their state sponsors Iran and Syria, are focused. Even after Fallujah, the war won't be over.