Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: TOI

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Monday, February 12, 2018

Palestinians continue to prioritize paying terrorists over paying hospital staff. (So does the world, incidentally.)

Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, announced on Sunday that it was suspending all surgeries, with the exception of emergency cases, due to a cleaners’ strike over unpaid salaries.

“It has been decided to postpone all scheduled surgeries, including those for patients with tumors,” the hospital said, noting that the decision excluded “life-saving cases.”

The strike, which began on Sunday, threatens patients’ and workers’ lives because of the dangerous accumulation of medical garbage in the hospital, the staff warned.

It was the second time in recent weeks that the hospital cleaners in the Gaza Strip went on strike.

Last month, the cleaners agreed to return to work after the Palestinian Authority government promised to pay them their salaries. However, the government has since paid salaries for only two months, prompting the cleaners to renew their strike.

Hamas officials have accused the PA government of failing to provide funds to the health system in the Gaza Strip despite a Hamas-Fatah “reconciliation” agreement signed in Cairo in 2017. According to the officials, many hospitals are suffering from a severe shortage in medicine and generator fuel as a result of the PA’s failure to carry out its duties.

More than 830 cleaners work in 13 hospitals and 73 other medical centers in different parts of the Gaza Strip. The cleaners are employed by 13 companies at a cost of NIS 943,000 ($267,000) per month.

To put this in context, the PLO budgets over $28 million a month to pay both prisoner salaries and and families of "martyrs."

They willingly pay 100 times the amount needed for keeping hospitals open - to terrorists.

The entire world is complicit with this.

Which is more important, UNRWA schools where they teach support for terror and destroying Israel, or hospitals? Obviously, UNRWA, because that's what gets the funding.

The World Bank looks at the PA budget every year and makes recommendations to help its economy - but doesn't say a word about the high percentage of the funds that go to pay terrorists and their families.

"Pro-Palestinian" NGOs? Don't be absurd - their money goes towards political initiatives to fight Israel, not to actually help Palestinians.

The hospital situation in Gaza shows, in no uncertain terms, what the priorities of the "State of Palestine" are - and they are not to help their own people.

Yet the world continues to fund these leaders who willingly sacrifice their own people.

(I have to wonder why the many NGOs in Gaza cannot find volunteers to clean up the hospitals. Chances are they'd be threatened.)

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Who are the US Jews that Abbas met, and why are they so stupid?

From WAFA:

President Mahmoud Abbas urged leaders of the American Jewish community to support efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

He told a group of Jewish community leaders he met in New York Monday evening that this is the time to make peace.

“We have a real opportunity to achieve lasting, just, and comprehensive peace,” he said on the eve of the opening sessions of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). “We can do it, make no mistake. No one gains more from reaching an agreement than Palestinians, and no one loses more if we fail to reach an agreement. Failure in not an option for us,” he said.

“We need your support to ensure the successful conclusion of the peace negotiations so that the State of Palestine can live side by side with the State of Israel in peace and security on the 1967 borders,” said Abbas.

Abbas said that he speaks the same language everywhere in the world, urging the Jewish community leaders to listen to his speech at the UNGA in which he will reiterate the Palestinian position of an independent state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital along with resolving all final status issues.

I cannot find any mention of this meeting in the news media. (UPDATE: TOI has the story now, h/t Ian.)

Which brings up two questions:

Who are these "leaders" that are so eager to meet Abbas?

And if they are pro-Israel, why are they so ignorant that they cannot ask him any real questions?

For example:

If you are so interested in peace, why did you go out of your way to meet with child-murderer Samir Kuntar?
Why does the PA name institutions after terrorists who targeted innocent civilians?
Why is there still daily incitement on PA TV against Israel?
Do you believe, as Arafat did, that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem? Do you realize that this position is at odds with what Muslims said openly before 1967?
Do you agree with many of your people that there should be no "normalization" with Jews in Israel?
Why did you threaten your citizens who dared to shop in a Jewish-owned supermarket that has low prices?
Recently you said that you believe that the Holocaust occurred. You wrote a book that claimed that it was exaggerated. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?
Do you really believe that Jews are raising dogs and wild boars and training them to attack Arab farms, as you have stated?
Do you really believe that Hamas would accept Israel's existence if you reconcile with them? Do you actually read any of their material?
Why does the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group still exist, if you are the leader of Fatah? How do they get funded?
Do you agree with the Fatah platform that terrorism is legal under international law?
Why does some 6% of the PA budget go towards terrorist prisoners and released terrorists?
Do you consider the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with Hitler to be a hero?

There are plenty more questions like these that an educated Zionist leadership should know to ask. I have lots of examples of Abbas' lies and outrageous actions through the years.

Any Western politician who could be accused of any one of these positions would be mercilessly pilloried if they met with these same "leaders," but Abbas is given a free pass with only perfunctory questions that he knows how to sidestep.

So were the "Jewish leaders" simply members of J-Street and writers for Open Zion, or were they clueless heads of local federations, or what? And even if they were J-Streeters or Peter Beinart's gang - shouldn't intellectual honesty force them to ask these questions of Abbas anyway?

Jordan tells Syrian Palestinians to drop dead. No one cares.

From Times of Israel earlier this week:

Jordan has turned away dozens of Palestinian refugees on the Syrian border fleeing regime bombardment of the Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus.

Palestinian refugees living in the Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus have tried to enter Jordan through the Jaber border crossing after their camp was bombarded by Assad regime forces in previous weeks. They told Al-Jazeera earlier this week that while Palestinian refugees carrying Jordanian IDs were allowed to enter Jordan, children of Jordanian women who were not citizens are being refused.

Jordan has absorbed some 126,000 Syrian refugees, but Palestinians fleeing Syria are placed in a separate refugee camp at the Cyber City compound, under stricter conditions, and are banned from entering Jordanian cities. The Jordanian government fears that an influx of Palestinian refugees may tilt the demographic balance in Jordan even more towards the Palestinians, who are already believed to comprise a large majority of the population.

“Jordan is not obligated to pay a political price for the Syrian crisis,” Jordanian government spokesman Samih Maaytah told Al-Jazeera when asked why the Palestinians were not being let in.