Sunday, September 29, 2013
Fatah Facebook: "Blood of Martyrs draws the borders of the homeland"
During the current peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Fatah chose to glorify violence and Martyrdom death as the way to determine "the borders of the homeland":Sarah Honig: Thanks for the revelations
"My homeland taught me that it is the blood of Martyrs (Shahids) that draws the borders of the homeland."
That text, together with a picture of a man holding a rifle, was posted by the administrator of one of Fatah's official Facebook pages, "Fatah - The Main Page," on Aug. 26, 2013.
While Israel serially drew back from its positions in order to appease America and/or to coax Arabs into some modicum of accommodation, Arab orientations during all that time hadn’t budged a fraction of a millimeter.Jewish leaders urge Abbas to publicly state his opposition to right of return
Their only modifications were tactical. Instead of eradicating Israel in one fell swoop (which they didn’t do only because they couldn’t), they settled on slicing Israel’s salami bit by bit to deprive it of strategic depth, render it more vulnerable to predations and erode it by demonization and demoralization.
The basic premise remains that at most the de facto existence of the unwanted “Zionist entity” is acknowledged provisionally, that this entity must shrink and that Arabs have a right to deluge it.
Whenever we concede even a theoretical point, we imbue Arab obstructionism with an aura of righteous respectability in the (kangaroo) court of world opinion. We irreversibly undermine our own case.
A slate of 100 US Jewish leaders wrote Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urging him to make public his opposition to a ‘right of return’ and his agreement to a demilitarized Palestinian state.Mideast quartet seeks Israeli, Palestinian action by 2014
The letter, spearheaded by the Israel Policy Forum, noted that in a recent private meeting, Abbas said an agreement would end the conflict and any Palestinian claims to “Haifa, Acre and Safed,” and that a Palestinian state would not need “planes or missiles” but a “strong police force.”
Meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Friday, top diplomats from the United Nations, United States, Russia and the European Union said in a statement that both sides should take “every possible step” to make ongoing US-mediated negotiations a success.Hitler understood propaganda, so do the Palestinians
“The quartet reaffirmed its determination to lend effective support to the efforts of the parties and their shared commitment to reach a permanent status agreement within the agreed goal of nine months,” the group said in a statement released Friday.
The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, with its falsifications of history and politics, its portrayal of themselves as not only innocent but the most compelling victims in the world, its staging of events to blame Israel for atrocities they themselves have committed, its deliberate concentration on alleged injuries or deaths of children, and its achievement in persuading much of the media to accept and advance its manipulation of language and action, have all been part of its success in the propaganda war.How the EU directly funds settlements in occupied territory
That success is shown by the fact that a considerable proportion of the European population accepts the Palestinian propaganda that Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians, in spite of the reiteration by Palestinian leaders of their determination to eliminate the State of Israel. Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, is held responsible for the problems not only of the area but for those in the world in general.
Yet it turns out that despite the guidelines, the EU still knowingly and purposefully provides substantial direct financial assistance to settlements in occupied territory – in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, that is. So the EU funds the occupation of an EU member state. Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Cyprus in 1974 was condemned the UN Security Council, and the EU’s official policy is that the Turkish occupation is illegitimate, and Turkey must completely withdraw. The EU does not recognize the Turkish government in Northern Cyprus.Iranian arrested in Israel on suspicion of espionage
Nonetheless, the EU maintains an entire separate program to direct funds to Northern Cyprus.
They even put out a nice, colorful brochure last year.
Israeli security officials recently detained an Iranian with Belgian citizenship who officials believe is an agent of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and whose main mission was to spy on American interests inside Israel.Israel warned Kenya about terror attack, officials say
The agent, Ali Mansouri, was arrested at Ben-Gurion International Airport on September 11 by the Shin Bet security service while attempting to depart Israel for Belgium, the security agency said Sunday.
He was traveling under the alias Alex Mans and had been observed photographing the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and recording activity there. He was found with photographs of the US embassy and other sites.
Kenya was reportedly given specific warnings by foreign countries, including Israel, that there was a high risk of a major terrorist attack in the country before last week’s violent takeover of a Nairobi mall.PA official rejects partial control of Gaza-Egypt border crossing
Kenyan newspapers reported that, according to intelligence sources, Kenya’s chief of staff and four key cabinet ministers — treasury, interior, foreign affairs, and defense — received the warnings but failed to take action.
The Palestinian Authority does not want to return to the Rafah border crossing as part of a partial solution, Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of the Fatah Central Committee, said on Saturday.Syrian conflict takes a toll on Palestinian aid
Rajoub’s announcement came as Egyptian authorities reopened the Sinai-Gaza border crossing after a one-week closure.
Displaced Palestinians are losing out to Syrians in desperate need of aid, and the United Nations is asking Arab countries to pitch in and bolster funding for its agency mandated with helping Palestinian refugees.Egyptian Journalist Heikal: All Arab Countries Have Chemical, Biological Weapons; Nazi Scientists Helped Produce Them
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his counterpart at the Arab League, Nabil El Araby, are co-chairing a ministerial meeting Thursday in New York on the funding challenges that the UN Relief and Works Agency is facing.
Lebanon: Four Dead Amid Rising Tensions in Hezbollah Stronghold
Four people have been killed in a gun battle in the eastern Lebanese town of Baalbek, a stronghold of the Shi'ite Hezbollah terrorist group, highlighting ongoing tensions over the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.Special Report: Hezbollah gambles all in Syria
Shi'ite supporters and Sunni opponents of Hezbollah traded small-arms fire in running battles in the Bekaa Valley town last night. Two of the dead were identified as Hezbollah members, while the other two were identified as Ali Mustapha al-Rifai and Ali Sami al-Masri. It is not clear whether the latter two men were killed fighting Hezbollah forces, or were bystanders caught in the crossfire.
In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite paramilitary group.Bahrain's FM says Hezbollah leader Nasrallah is a 'criminal'
Taken in April during a discreet visit by the Hezbollah chief to his financial and ideological masters, the photograph captured a turning point in Syria's civil war and the broader struggle between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the two main branches of Islam. It was the moment when Iran made public its desire for Hezbollah to join the battle to help save Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, diplomats said. At the time, Assad and his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, were losing ground to an advancing Sunni insurgency.
Bahrain's foreign minister slammed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday for criticizing the Sunni-led Gulf kingdom's treatment of its opposition Shi'ite population, AFP reported. "The people of Bahrain are above being addressed by a criminal whose hands are stained by the blood of innocents in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq," Khalid al-Khalifa wrote on his Twitter account.Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood Lashes Out At “Zionists” Over Egypt Anti-Brotherhood Moves
Brothers in Jordan are not only displeased with Cairo’s actions, but they’re pretty sure they’ve located the culprit driving the effort:Muslim Brotherhood moves office… to London
“The coupists are trying to reestablish oppression and tyranny as well as absolute military rule. They want to silence opposition and turn everyone into followers.”… Bani Rsheid said the ruling “shows that the military rulers are going through a deep crisis and that they are weak and confused. Every day the coup’s agenda, which is linked to the Zionists and some countries in the Gulf, becomes clearer,” he added.
The Brotherhood already maintains a London presence through which it was previously running the administrative affairs of the organisation. The London headquarters is a “research centre” headed by Ibrahim Mounir, former member of the Guidance Bureau and former Secretary General of the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood.Iran hacked U.S. Navy computers
As President Obama appeals for better relations with Iran, unnamed U.S. officials are pointing fingers at Iranian hackers for spying on U.S. Navy computers.Greece arrests leaders of neo-Nazi party
U.S. officials are saying that Iranian government or state-sponsored hackers penetrated an unclassified U.S. Navy computer network used for email and the “service’s internal intranet,” the Navy Marine Corps Internet, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Four top officials of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party were among a flurry of arrests of party members Saturday, in an escalation of a government crackdown after a fatal stabbing allegedly committed by a supporter.Turkey’s Crumbling Domestic and Foreign Policies Risk Downward Economic Spiral
It is the first time since 1974 that sitting members of Parliament have been arrested.
The decline of the Brotherhood in Egypt left Erdogan “raging on a daily basis,” according to Georgetown-based Turkey expert Michael Koplow. His vitriol against Egypt ended up triggering economic retaliation, and more broadly his alignment against U.S. allies who backed the army cost Turkey precious import markets in the Gulf.My Grandfather, the Nazi Mass-Murderer
Now Turkey’s even losing the ability to export soap operas, to say nothing of an array of other goods:
A steely-eyed Nazi killer picks off Jewish prisoners with a rifle from a balcony in a concentration camp in 1944. More than six decades later, a Nigerian-German woman who has studied in Israel thumbs through a book about the sniper and is shocked to learn the man is her own grandfather.Israel Daily Picture: The British Imperial War Museum; Presenting General Allenby Entering Jerusalem in 1917
In a memoir published this month with the chilling title "Amon: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me", Jennifer Teege recounts her dark family secret and the extraordinary story of how her own life became enmeshed with one of history's grimmest chapters.
Teege is the child of a Nigerian student and the German daughter of Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp outside Krakow in today's Poland who featured in Steven Spielberg's 1993 Holocaust drama "Schindler's List".
Photographers accompanied the Imperial British Army forces throughout the battles of World War I in Palestine, starting at the Suez Canal in 1915 and continuing through the capture of Damascus in 1918.
The grand scale of the fighting in Palestine is not fully recognized today even by historians, with attention often focused on the European front. One statistic may put the fighting into perspective: The British army suffered more than half a million casualties; the Turks even more.
