Ma'an reports on the planning for the rallies in support of a unilateral declaration of "Palestine" tomorrow in Ramallah.
It says that all government workers are being given off to attend the rallies.
The rallies will include concerts to attract more people.
Classes will be cancelled so students from grade 7 and up can attend, including those at Bir Zeit University.
Stages are already set up, complete with lots of flags, at Clock Tower Square.
Free buses are available.
So when you see the throngs of crowds in Ramallah tomorrow, you'll know that it would be an act of will for people to stay away, and that it does not reflect any serious popular support for the UN stunt. Not that the media will notice.
Independent Palestinian Arab media has been somewhat lukewarm about the unilateral declaration of independence that Abbas is planning this week at the UN, and one major reason is that they felt that he was not including anyone else in the decision making.
I have pointed out that at least one PLO Central Council member has complained that no other institutions were informed about the move, even those that are supposed to be the official decision making bodies of the PLO.
And plenty of Palestinian Arabs, in the entire political spectrum, have said either that they are against the bid or that they have serious reservations about the potential repercussions.
Looking again at Abbas' interview on Fox, one is struck about how he is speaking:
"You promised me a state by September 2011. I hope you will deliver."
"I felt there is no way for negotiations..."
Everything is in the first person singular.
He is not speaking as if he is representing his people - he is speaking as if he is the only person whose opinion matters.
President Mahmoud Abbas says he does not plan to form a new cabinet on his return from New York, where he will submit an application for full UN membership.
Asked by Ma'an if he would form a new government on his return to Ramallah, the president said he would only consider doing so when the situation was "more stable."
The Palestinian Authority cabinet resigned in February, but Abbas swiftly reappointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and tasked him with reforming the Ramallah cabinet.
Despite several announcements that the new cabinet was imminent, it has not yet been formed. Since February, the resigned cabinet has been acting in a caretaker capacity.
It was the third time Abbas had designated Fayyad to form a new Palestinian Authority government since June 2007, when Hamas split from the government and took power in Gaza.
No elections have been held since 2006, and the mandate of the president, legislative council, municipal leaders and cabinet have ended.
Analysts, and Hamas, said that disbanding the cabinet in February was a tactical move in response to concerns raised about the government's legitimacy as a wave of popular protests swept the region calling for the ouster of unrepresentative leaders.
With the arrival of Salaam Fayyad, then finance minister and now prime minster, the PA began to experience a degree of accountability and transparency. Indeed, it appeared the PA was cleaning up its act. However, in recent years, Fayyad has been sidelined by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has consolidated power, and he is now abusing it.
One egregious example is the Palestine Investment Fund. The PIF was created in 2002 to manage and distribute the money and commercial interests owned by the PA.[10] The bylaws were established so that its operations would be transparent, since the PIF effectively functions as a sovereign wealth fund. The PIF succeeded in bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of commercial assets in the Palestinian budget into the light of day. The PIF's operating procedures call for the Fund to operate as an independent vehicle for economic stimulus for the benefit of the Palestinian people. In recent years, however, Abbas changed the charter, installed his own choices for board members, placed the PIF under his full control, and neglected to have the PIF audited by outsiders. Today, Prime Minister Fayyad has zero oversight of the PIF, despite his celebrated mandate for transparency.[11]
The "moderate" monicker becomes less and less relevant every day. Abbas has more in common with Syria's Bashir Assad than with any Western leader.
Maybe that's why the anti-Syria protest yesterday in Ramallah fizzled. No support from the government.
Today, in Ramallah, a giant blue chair was unveiled in support of Mahmoud Abbas' bid for "Palestine" to become a recognized nation.
This chair symbolizes everything wrong about the Palestinian Arab leadership.
No effort is put into actually building a nation - only in appearing to build a nation to make the West happy.
No effort is put into finding a peaceful compromise with Israel - only in appearing to look more moderate than Netanyahu.
"Unity" with Hamas, pretending to change the PLO Covenant - everything the Palestinian Arabs do is for show, with no real value.
They are great at symbolism, because that's all they know how to do.
The circus this week at the UN is just another method to avoid doing real work for peace and instead rely on fooling the world with stunts. It is a magician's act where the audience doesn't want to look behind the curtain, fearful it might ruin their enjoyment of a great show.
First it was churches and a minority Islamic sect, then the gay community and a former Playboy editor. Now the country’s much-derided Muslim hard-liners are reportedly targeting one of its most beloved icons: Wayang.
Ki Slamet Gundono, a world-renowned dalang (puppet master) for the traditional Javanese shadow puppetry, on Wednesday said hard-liners in Sukoharjo, a town south of Solo, had broken up several performances in the area.
“A bunch of youths calling themselves Laskar Jihad [warriors of jihad] attacked a wayang performance taking place in Sembung Wetan village in Sukoharjo on Saturday night,” he said.
“They threatened members of the audience and forced them to disperse. “We strongly condemn this violence,” he added.
Gundono said he only recently learned about the incident from fellow wayang practitioners who were afraid to report it to police.
“We have decided to take a united stand to protect the arts and culture against violent acts by any group,” he said, adding people should not be afraid to hold future performances.
Joko Ngadimin, founder of Sekarjagad, a wayang and gamelan music troupe, said several similar attacks had occurred before.
“The latest incident on Saturday happened near my house,” he told the Globe.
“Two people were injured and the performance was forced to stop. The attackers from Laskar Jihad were throwing rocks and brandishing swords.”
He added the attackers all wore turbans and kept yelling “ Allahu Akbar! ” (“God is great!”) while running amok.
"Our festival offers something for everybody. So that means, for children and for adults," says Ilan Savir, artistic and general director of the center and the festival for the past eight years. The Holon facility also houses a puppetry school and a museum.
This year, in addition to Israeli groups, the festival included performances by the Figura Puppet Theater from Iceland and the Happy Puppetry Company from Taiwan.
From PMW, quoting Al Hayat Al Jadida, September 8, 2011:
[PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, Issa] Karake while visiting prisoners' families at Qalandiya refugee camp... explained that the international recognition of the Palestinian State changes all the imprisoned Palestinians into prisoners of a state, prisoners of war held hostage in another state... He noted that the recognition of the state means recognition of the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle that the Palestinian nation fought, in the search for freedom and independence. In addition, it [recognition of a state] indicates that the struggles (Arabic- Nidalat) of the prisoners are legitimized and legal according to UN Resolutions, international laws and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions.
Yesterday, I noted that a man participating in an anti-capitalist protest on Wall Street was openly anti-semitic. I don't know whether similar sentiments were expressed in Saturdays' larger protests, but if they were - chances are no one would ever know.
Last night there was a protest in Vancouver against Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman who was speaking at the Jewish Community Center. A number of left-wing sites show the protesters in heroic terms as they denounce Lieberman as a "racist."
A peaceful protest is fine, and they have the absolute right to hold one.
However, an EoZ correspondent tells me that protesters were also saying that the Holocaust was a Jewish plot meant to gain sympathy for Jews.
In a similar little-reported event, protesters at the Paris airport on Sunday prevented passengers from checking in at the El Al counter by screaming "Death to Israel" and "Death to Jews."
Also, thugs tried to break into a kosher wine tasting in Paris, also screaming "Death to Jews" - and they tried to break down a glass door to the event. Police took their time before responding. The witness to the event said it felt like Kristallnacht.
These are the parts that you do not usually hear about when these protests occur.
Israel’s consulate in the southern French port city of Marseille was temporarily evacuated Tuesday when a bomb disposal squad found a mock device placed in a van parked outside.
Police were alerted after an anonymous caller telephoned in a bomb threat, and found a pressure cooker with protruding wires and marked with a radiation warning sticker in a Renault van parked outside the Israeli mission.
The area was cordoned off and specialist officers investigated, but the wires were found to be attached to a car radio hidden in the pot, and radiation tests proved negative, a police official said.
The alert was called off an hour-and-a-half after it began.
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied reports that a bomb threat forced the evacuation of the Israeli consulate in the French port city of Marseille.
According to the Foreign Minstry, there was no evacuation of the building and they were not made aware of any bomb threat.
Does this mean that the French police didn't inform the diplomats of the threat altogether? That seems scarier than the bomb threat itself.
UPDATE: Jonathan-Simon Sellem of the excellent JSSNews site tells me that a friend of his who works there said that there were no need of evacuation. The police work closely with the consulate, and they do a good job. They also checked for radioactivity to see if it was a "dirty bomb."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has a message for President Obama:
"You promised me a state by September 2011. I hope you will deliver."
In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the Palestinian president said he's willing to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations this week.
Abbas told Fox News he hasn't given up on negotiations.
"I will meet any Israeli official any time," said Abbas. "But there is no use if there is nothing tangible."
"I felt there is no way for negotiations because the American administration including President Obama exhausted their efforts to bring Netanyahu to the negotiating table. They couldn't convince him to cease the settlement activities."
As we showed yesterday, President Obama did not promise a state to Abbas by September 2011.
And Israel has offered everything "tangible" for peace - nearly all the West Bank and all of Gaza. He has refused to even give a counter-offer that is remotely acceptable for Israeli security.
Moreover, the US did pressure Israel to freeze construction in the territories - and Abbas still refused to negotiate for nine out of the ten months of the freeze.
Abbas knows that he has been treated deferentially by the media for years, and he has no fear that a real reporter will challenge him on his lies. So, why shouldn't he keep lying?
On Monday, there was a series of tweets from Joseph Dana, an anti-Zionist journalist who traveled to Ramallah to cover an important news story:
Demonstration in support of Syrian protesters about to start in Ramallah's Manara sqaure.
Protest in solidarity with the Syrian people slowly getting started in Ramallah
Palestinians are wearing shirts saying 'your blood (syrians) is our blood. You struggle is our struggle'
'Yalla, Leave Bashir' chants now in Ramallah
solidarity with syrian people rally is now marching through ramallah
More and more PA police are showing up. March has about 50 people but growing
Unfortunately, his breathless tweets of social action in Ramallah ended there.
So was there really a major demonstration against the murderous Assad regime? Did the rally grow into a major event? Did Palestinian Arabs actually show some selflessness and caring for people who are in worse shape than they are - for once?
I found a video of this giant rally that proves that Palestinian Arabs care deeply about other people besides themselves:
That's right - maybe a couple of dozen people, tops, showed up.
Compare this to, say, this rally put together by Islamic Jihad in October 2009 (a similar sized one was held last year):
If it was a Hamas rally, you could explain - they forced employees to go, they shut down schools, and so forth.
But this rally was for Islamic Jhad, a pure terrorist group with no political representation. And still they get tens of thousands to show up at any rally they set up.
I don't really expect the anti-Zionist left to make the observation that getting Palestinian Arabs to celebrate violence is much, much easier than getting them to condemn it. They will continue to cover non-events like what happened today and they will continue to ignore the massive support for terrorism that exists in the territories.
The sad fact is that the photo above represents far more Palestinian Arabs than the video taken on Monday. And there is nothing on the horizon that will change that.
Today I happened to be on Wall Street, where there was some leftover anti-capitalist protesters from Saturday's fizzled out "Day of Rage."
Here was one of the demonstrators:
I will declare that (for today at least) I was a Wall Street Jew. However I am not a Jewish billionaire (yet) and I believe that 3 out of the 5 Federal Reserve Board governors are Jewish.
To help raise the SEO of this post, I will write the word "Jewish" a few more times, because, after all, this guy wants you to Google the word "Jewish" to find out our nefarious plots.
It is a shame I was in a hurry to get somewhere when I saw him, or else I would have interviewed him. I would love to know what was the point of his sign, what he has against Jews, and what kind of job he holds that allows him to take a day off and rail against the Jews who supposedly have all money.
Like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or the Walton family, who I imagine he thinks are hidden Jews.
Extremist Jewish settlers Saturday set fire to Palestinian farms adjacent to the evacuated Homesh settlement, south of Jenin, said security sources.
They said 15 settlers broke into the area under Israeli army protection, verbally assaulting local residents and setting fire to fields near the settlement.
So not only are these fanatically religious extremist jewish settlers setting fires on their Sabbath - but the IDF is protecting them while they do it! (The same army that is fighting against the "price tag" attacks by some of these settlers!)
And it must be true! Because "security sources" said so!
And, of course, so did Mondoweiss!
Normally, Hamas media only focus on Hamas terror training. But they seem to be chummy with the Popular Resistance Committees, so Palestine Times has a photo essay of their training in Gaza:
You never know when you will need to stop blowing up Jews and start praying.
Like now, for instance.
A "work accident" just waiting to happen.
What playground did they steal this from?
Allah hu akbar! We blew something up!
Nothing happens in Gaza without Hamas approval, and certainly no one can just start training in open space without Hamas allowing it.
So when Hamas claims to not be engaging in terror lately, it is pretty much to allow idiots like richard Falk to believe them - but in reality, the PRC is just about a branch of Hamas.
The Hamas mouthpiece Palestine Times published an article this weekend accuding UNRWA of "killing religion" by not spending more time teaching the Koran and for hiring teachers of Islam who are not as fanatic as Hamas would like.
The author complains that UNRWA's Islamic education is being treated with the same seriousness as gym and far less than math or science. The teachers, he claims, are not experts in Islam and they teach it like just another subject, in ways that would not give the youngsters an adequate desire to grow up and kill Jews (a paraphrase, but that is what he is saying.)
In a followup article the author says that some teachers were not happy with what he had written, and he calls on them to - as much as they can without getting fired - disregard the official UNRWA curriculum and instill Islamist concepts into the students.
Notice that no one is saying that UNRWA schools - bankrolled by secular Western nations - are not teaching Islam. They are. The complaint is that they aren't doing it to the exacting standards of Hamas, as a springboard into teaching more hate.
.
Last week, Mahmoud Abbas accused Jewish settlers of unleashing wild pigs against Palestinian Arabs.
While major news outlets may have ignored this perfect example of insane Palestinian Arab conspiracy theories wholeheartedly believed by their leaders, we here at EoZ know when there is a golden opportunity.
Just Journalism is a fantastic, professional organization that exposes anti-Israel bias in the British media. They also managed to get op-eds published in a number of places.
We very much regret to inform you that Just Journalism is closing down. Despite our extremely modest budget it has become increasingly difficult to financially sustain the operation in the current economic environment.
We are extremely proud of the work we have produced since we launched and of the impact it has made all around the world. This would not have been possible without your help and support.
This is a major loss.
It is a shame that anti-Israel NGOs can effortlessly gain funding from any number of foundations or nations, but the other side must beg for crumbs.
Palestine Press Agency reports that a Jewish family has donated the lungs and heart of their brain-dead daughter to a Palestinian Arab woman from Nazareth.
The Jewish girl was killed in a traffic accident in early August. She was 18. Her family, named Ayyash, is of Moroccan origin.
The two families met in Nazareth over the weekend, and the Jewish family was overwhelmed to meet the woman within whose body their daughter's heart was beating.
An Arab doctor from the area urged more Israeli Arabs to donate organs, noting that there are far fewer Arab donors than Jewish ones. He also urged more Arab bone marrow donors.
Palestine Press Agency reports that due to the onerous restrictions on travel via the Rafah crossing, tunnel operators in Gaza are now competing to offer good rates for Gaza residents to visit Egypt.
The going rate is now bout $50.
Gazans are mostly limited to visiting Rafah and El Arish, because Egyptian security is carefully watching people leaving those areas.
The tunnel operators have even set up an committee to set up an informal visa-type system to ensure that the people crossing have legitimate need to visit the other side, because they don't want terrorists to use the tunnels which would get them shut down.
All of those rumors about Egypt shutting the tunnels down seem to have disappeared.
President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that he has not scheduled to meet with US President Barack Obama during the 66th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, but is open to the possibility.
“Neither I, nor Obama asked for a meeting, so I don’t believe we will meet. However, if we meet, I will remind him that he promised last year that the state of Palestine would be a full member of the UN this year, and I came here on the grounds of the promise I heard,” Abbas told a Ma'an delegate.
Did Obama promise a Palestinian Arab state?
Here are sections of the speech Abbas is referring to, to the UN General Assembly, on September 23, 2010:
Last year, I pledged my best efforts to support the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, as part of a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors. We have travelled a winding road over the last 12 months, with few peaks and many valleys. But this month, I am pleased that we have pursued direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in Washington, Sharm el Sheikh and Jerusalem.
...[W]e all have a choice to make. Each of us must choose the path of peace. Of course, that responsibility begins with the parties themselves, who must answer the call of history. Earlier this month at the White House, I was struck by the words of both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “I came here today to find a historic compromise that will enable both people to live in peace, security, and dignity.” And President Abbas said, “We will spare no effort and we will work diligently and tirelessly to ensure these negotiations achieve their cause.”
These words must now be followed by action and I believe that both leaders have the courage to do so. ...
The conflict between Israelis and Arabs is as old as this institution. And we can come back here next year, as we have for the last 60 years, and make long speeches about it. We can read familiar lists of grievances. We can table the same resolutions. We can further empower the forces of rejectionism and hate. And we can waste more time by carrying forward an argument that will not help a single Israeli or Palestinian child achieve a better life. We can do that.
Or, we can say that this time will be different -- that this time we will not let terror, or turbulence, or posturing, or petty politics stand in the way. This time, we will think not of ourselves, but of the young girl in Gaza who wants to have no ceiling on her dreams, or the young boy in Sderot who wants to sleep without the nightmare of rocket fire.
This time, we should draw upon the teachings of tolerance that lie at the heart of three great religions that see Jerusalem’s soil as sacred. This time we should reach for what’s best within ourselves. If we do, when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations -- an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.
Obama did not come close to promising anything. He said if the negotiations that just started that month would bear fruit, then by September 2011 there could be an agreement that would lead to an eventual Arab state in Palestine. And that ultimately it was up to the Palestinian Arabs and Israelis themselves to make such an agreement, not for it to be imposed externally.
Earlier this month, there have been Palestinian Arab radio ads that implied a promise from Obama, and Abbas was reported to have called it"the Obama promise." But to have a putative head of state blatantly lie about what another head of state said publicly is a much bigger deal.
Yet again, Abbas is exposed as a liar. President Obama is being used by him. Will anyone in the media call him on it?
Turkish hackers attacked dozens of Israeli websites over the weekend, only to find out that the sites belonged to Palestinians.
The confusion was caused due to the fact that the Palestinian sites, which have a .ps web suffix, use Israeli web servers.
"The hackers left anti-Israel messages on 70 Palestinian sites," said Shai Blitzblau, the head of Maglan-Computer Warfare and Network Intelligence Labs. "Most of them discovered it when it was already too late. Only after they broke in and sabotaged the websites did they found out these were Palestinian sites."
The message, which featured an image of an Israeli soldier washing blood off of his hands, read: "Because you voted on behalf of Israel on Blue (Mavi) Marmara report… We will suspend this site. You will apologize Netanyahu, you will apologize Israel."
This was not as sophisticated as the Turkish DNS attack earlier this month that redirected hundreds of sites (not all Israeli) that was seen as a "test run."
Web site defacement is sort of like spraying graffiti on the front door of a company. It looks bad but doesn't really affect anything.
A DNS attack makes it difficult or impossible for customers to reach the company altogether.
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