And so a Palestinian Arab army, whose three chief commanders had all fought for the Nazis during World War Two, went to war against the Jews using Nazi-supplied weapons (provided for the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1939 and for an Egyptian revolt that never happened in 1942). They lost.From Norway, Israel and the Jews:
Then the armies of the Arab states invaded Israel. They largely lost...
Everything that happened afterward was due to Arab decisions to reject both a two-state solution and Israel’s creation.
That’s the bottom line. So the disaster was due first and foremost to the Palestinian Arab leadership and secondly to the Arab states and publics.
Dealing with the “nakba” would then require that the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabic-speaking world generally would recognize that the disaster resulted from their refusal to accept Israel’s existence and to seek a genuine, compromise two-state solution.
But, instead, in the name of the 1948 disaster they are repeating the same policies that brought it about! Indeed, they are the same policies that led to the self-inflicted disasters of 1967, 2000, and others since then.
An art project is teaching young delinquents how to express themselves by spray-painting “Free Palestine” on the walls of the subway station.
From Khaled Abu Toameh in Hudson-NY:
The picture above is from today’s Aftenposten, with the article heading saying “Spray fantasies on the subway” with the subtitle saying “Meet the wall in a creative way”. The title refers to how the youths in the project are being taught how to spray-paint the walls in the subway station with messages of their own choice. That’s right, they are receiving expert tuition, from a Berlin-based Norwegian artist, on how to best get their message across.
At the same time that Mashaal and Yousef are talking in English about accepting the two-state solution, most of Hamas's other leaders are vowing in Arabic that their movement would never recognize Israel's right to exist.
Following the signing of the Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas, the Islamist movement's representatives in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip reassured Palestinians and Arabs that their movement has not abandoned its goal of "liberating all of Palestine."
Also in Arabic, Hamas leaders have pledged that their charter would not be changed despite the rapprochement with Fatah.
If one really wants to know what Hamas thinks, one should listen to what Hamas leaders tell their supporters in mosques and public rallies in the Gaza Strip, not what they write in the New York Times or the Guardian.
From the Jerusalem Post:
The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition.
Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard’s Air Force, participated in the visit, according to the report. Die Welt cited information from “Western security insiders.”
The rocket bases are to include measures to prevent air attacks on Venezuela as well as commando and control stations.
From RIA Novosti:
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has launched a large-scale conscription campaign to enroll women and children for service in his army, the pan-Arab Asharq Alawsat paper reported on Tuesday.
"We are expecting a NATO ground invasion in Libya and we are currently preparing for any possible situation. In line with these preparations we've started conscripting women and children," a senior Libyan official, who wanted to remain unnamed, told the paper.
Several Western news outlets have reported that Gaddafi's soldiers were using women and children as human shields to protect themselves from attacks in the besieged city of Misrata.
From Reuven Berko, Yisrael HaYom (Hebrew):
Three colors in modern history represent the three major violent forces who have tried to take power on the world: the black swastika represented the Nazi uniforms, red represented communism, and the green represents the Islamic radicalism which seeks to impose Islam on mankind.
Also:
Yemen shoots and kills demonstrators
Secret execution of Jewish-Armenian couple in Iran
Rift appears over UN flotilla report
(h/t Joel, Tundra Tabloids)