OTHER VIEWS I Belonged In Israel called Tel Mond, am sitting at my com- which is maybe 12 puter trying to reflect miles from the hotel on my experiences of in Netanya. I did not the last two weeks and hear the blast, but I the words just don't want to heard the sirens and come. But I feel compelled to ambulances rushing try, even if I can't express on to the scene and I paper what is in my heart. saw helicopters over- My daughter Marni, 12, ANDY head. I did not wit- and I just returned from ROI S MAN ness firsthand any of Israel. This was my seventh Community the devastation that trip and my second in six Views night, but was told months — I was in Israel on about the victims Sept. 11 with the Jewish from my brother's next-door Federation of Metropolitan Detroit- neighbor, who is a nurse at sponsored solidarity mission and the hospital in Netanya. She thought that to be a monumental described how the power of event in my life. the blast did such damage to Being in Israel on Passover night the victims' lungs and how was something I will never forget. My she had never witnessed such carnage. friends keep asking me what it was Names and faces of the people who like to be there during the Netanya died that night were constantly shown bombing and how far away my family on television so that they shouldn't be was when the bombing took place. forgotten. This is something that the I don't know how to answer the first Israeli TV has been doing every time question, but two words keep popping there is a homicide bombing. We need into my head: horrific and amazing. to know who these people were and This is my answer to every question I not forget about them. am asked about what is going on there. It is horrific for me to see what has The answer to the second question happened just in the last six months. is not very far. We were in a place Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Herzliya are Andy Roisman of West Bloomfield is ghost towns at night. Restaurants and program coordinator at the Jewish stores are closed, people are terrified Community Center in Oak P.ark. to be on the streets, and roadblocks Make Saudis Pay For Terror Philadelphia he Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's massive implica- tion in the death of 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, I argued in February, is reason for the victims and their families to consider suing it for compensation. Three important developments have occurred since then, all of them pro- pelling this idea forward: No loss of U.S. benefits. A U.S. law passed on Sept. 22, 2001, seemed to stipulate that to share in the open- ended fund allocated by the U.S. gov- ernment to compensate the victims of Sept. 11 and their families, they had to give up their right to sue the Saudis or anyone else. Recipients, states the "Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act," have to waive "the right to file a civil action (or to be a T Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. His e-mail address is Pipes@MEForum.org 4/19 2002 32 party to an action) in any federal or state court for damages sustained as a result of the terrorist-related aircraft crashes of Sept. 11, 2001." But Kenneth R. Feinberg, the spe- cial master in charge of dispensing the open-ended fund (which he estimates will total about $4 billion), informs me that another piece of legislation effectively reversed my interpretation of the law. On Nov. 19, Public Law 107-71 amended the above quote in the following manner: "The preceding sentence does not apply to a civil action to recover collateral source obligations, or to a civil action against any person who is a knowing partici- pant in any conspiracy to hijack any aircraft or commit any terrorist act." The effect of this amendment is drastically to narrow the Sept. 22 legis- lation by distinguishing between Sept. 11's unknowing participants (such as the airlines or the airports) and know- ing ones (such as the terrorists them- selves or those who sponsored or 7 ?" and police are everywhere. My broth- er's family lives in Nordiya, located next to Netanya, and they are nervous about leaving the house. I see the toll it has taken on my brother and sister- in-law. They don't sleep much and the radio is always on. When I was in Israel, I woke up to CNN (Cable News Network) every morning and fell asleep watching Sky News every night. We debated for days about a Pesach trip to the Galilee and finally decided to go. It was a good Around the seder table in Israel: Marni Roisman, from left, Etai Coles, Sichma, Ron reciting the Four Questions, Col. Alon and Karen Friedman. ROIS1V1AN on page 33 "Qassam." U.S. intelligence financed them). It keeps the sources have concluded that former off-bounds, but permits Saudi princes are spending ,suing the latter. In Feinberg's millions of dollars to help words, any person "in Saudi large numbers of Al Qaida Arabia (or anywhere else) who and Taliban members escape provided assistance to the ter- the American dragnet. rorists on Sept. 11 can be sued One source told Middle by claimants participating in East Newsline, "The money the Fund." Or, in his plain- DANIEL flow to Al Qaida continues English explanation, claimants PIPES from members of the royal can "have their cake and eat it, Special too." This amendment is won- Commentary family." To staunch this flow of funds, U.S. authorities are derful news, permitting the taking the initiative, some- families to accept an on-aver- times close to home. In March, they age $1.2 million from the U.S. taxpay- raided 16 locations, mostly in the er, then sue Saudi Arabia. Washington, D.C., area, primarily to More indications of official Saudi learn more about two high-ranking sponsorship of terrorism. Recent Saudis, Khalid bin Mahfouz and weeks have turned up some extraor- Cherif Sedky, and their role in fund- dinarily incriminating documents, ing Al Qaida. such as a hard drive seized by U.S. Progress against Libya. A Scottish troops in Sarajevo from a computer appeals court in March upheld the at the office of the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Herzegovina. An operative was Am flight 103, killing 270, a develop- arrested carrying documents that ment that Allan Gerson, a lawyer for proved Saudi funding of the Hamas many P'n Am families, calls "a giant terrorist group to enable it to pro- step" toward making sponsors of ter- duce a short-range missile called the .