Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: 2007

Showing posts with label 2007. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2023

Since 1948, in any given situation, there seem to always be exactly 420,000 Palestinians

Here's an interesting coincidence.

The UN in 1994:

An estimate made by Abu Lughod indicated that the average number of indigenous Palestinians was about 420,000 in the West Bank and about 80,000 in the Gaza Strip by the end of 1948.

News wires, March 2004:

Schools and virtually every shop were closed in this city {Gaza City], where 420,000 people live.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 2007:

Estimates of IDPs in Israel vary widely. There is no government or United Nations estimate. Sources for estimates are accademics, Palestinian NGOs and Israeli papers. The lowest estimate is 150,000 and the highest is 420,000, which includes the children and grandchildren of Arab villagers displaced in 1948, as well as Bedouin communities displaced later on.

Human Rights Watch, 2010:

Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem).

Daily Sabah, 2018:

The 420,000 Palestinians who currently reside in East Jerusalem possess permanent residency ID cards and are treated as foreign immigrants by the Israeli government. (The article predicted that Israel would take away the residency permits of all those Palestinians, a prediction that, like all of them, never came close to being true.)

Eurasia Review, 2018, headline:

What’s Behind The ‘Disappearance’ Of 420,000 Palestinians In Lebanon?

WASH Cluster, State of Palestine, 2020:

WEST BANK: 482,509 of people suffering limited access to water; 420,000 persons consume less than 50 l/c/d.

OpenDemocracy, April 2020:

Palestinians in East Jerusalem: living under a deadly virus and a violent occupation: "There is inescapable and particular on-going acute anxiety about the future of these 420,000 Palestinians."

World Food Programme, August 2020:

In support of the MoSD’s response plan, which estimated that 70,000 families (420,000 people) have been affected by the spike in COVID-19 in Gaza...

UNRWA, 2021:

UNRWA is a lifeline to nearly 420,000 of the most vulnerable Palestine refugees in Syria.

Jeff Halper in Arena, June 2021:

Of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in the country, the war displaced 30,000 to 40,000. Not allowed to return to their homes (which were either demolished or turned over to Jewish Israelis) and wanting to remain sumud (steadfast) near their lands, this population of internally displaced Palestinians has today grown to 420,000.

Middle East Monitor, July 2022:

The Nakba resulted in 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their homes; the 1967 Naksa saw another 420,000 forced to leave.

Al Jazeera, October 2022:

Since the attack, Israeli forces have imposed a continuing blockade on the area around Nablus, restricting the movement of about 420,000 Palestinians, including patients, elderly people and children, who must wait for hours before being able to cross.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, July 2023: (Video, 2:04:33)

“This year, actually over, since the beginning of my mandate [May 1, 2022], I have borne witness to a series of deeply distressing events. 420,000 Palestinians, including 91 children, and 56 Israelis, including five children, have been killed. ”

(She later walked this back, saying the number was 426.)

That's 14 separate times, in different contexts, that "expert" quoted a figure of 420,000 Palestinians.

I am not saying this is a conspiracy or anything like that. It is just a very strange coincidence for that number to pop up in such disparate ways.

420,000 seems like a more realistic, solid estimate than "400,000" or "450,000."

(h/t Irene)

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UN-OCHA moving the goalposts to make Israel look bad

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza.

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities.

They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then.

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges.

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005.

In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.

This is lying with statistics.

(correction on years h/t Irene)

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"Pro-Palestinians" justify their intransigence and hate in revealing response to my cartoon

Last week, Peter Beinart tweeted this:

People in Jenin can't become citizens of the country in which they live. Can't vote for the govt that determines if they live or die. Can't return to the lands from which their families were expelled. This underlies everything happening now. The American press rarely mentions it

Beinart complains that Palestinians do not have a state of their own where they can vote and make their own decisions, but wants to imply that this is entirely Israel's fault..

He blocks me but I tweeted a response:

Palestinian Arabs rejected plans that would have given them their own state in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2014, and 2020. They will not accept the existence of a Jewish state on ANY borders.
This underlies everything happening now, and for the past 8 decades.

And Peter Beinart never mentions it - because his agenda exactly matches theirs.

I decided to make the point in a more acerbic way, with a cartoon:

The more my memes and cartoons tell the truth, the angrier the Israel haters (masquerading as "pro-Palestinians") get. And the many angry responses to this cartoon prove my point.

Are you willing to give a bunch of squatters your land? If you say yes then you are a liar.

That's because the Zionists are dishonest and have an agenda of occupying most of the middle east by force anyway. There is no reaching an agreement with Zionists. People see you.

Revisionist history. Didn’t learn from the pain of Holocaust denial.

thats like asking are you willing to have a gang of theiving ni66ers move into your house? ckuf NO, every single time

Without proper peace deal & Jerusalem NO.

Everybody knows those are false. Zionists need war to survive. They need chaos. Only with chaos and war, they can expand - under pretext of “defending themselves”. If there was peace, Isra*l won’t be as big as it is now.

Can you agree to share your house ownership with me?

Can I come to your house and live in one of your rooms coz my parents kicked me out? I'll slowly occupy your whole house & then kick you out.

Off course “BIG NO” It’s like asking: 🤔 do you accept Zionists who are coming from Western Europe and some African countries to steal your homeland!!? Zionists are very sick

Zionists stole Palestine through terrorism and massacres. WHY would any government agree to be occupied? Especially by European Jewish terrorists?

The history of your settler colonialism proves the opposite you never wanted any coexistence.

The analogy with the house is false. There was no Palestinian state before 1948 and there isn't one now. The peace offers aren't taking away land - they are offering a nation where none existed. The ones since 1948 involve Israel willingly giving away land it controls, something that is practically unprecedented in history.

But there is a second layer to the responses. Only some say it explicitly, but the message is that there is a preference for Palestinians to remain stateless and without a nation than for them to join the community of nations.

Mahmoud Abbas himself said, in retrospect, that the Palestinians should have accepted the 1947 UN partition plan. But you cannot turn back the clock and say that you retroactively accept the peace plan of 75 years ago.

What the Palestinians and their supporters simply refuse to accept is the existence of a Jewish state on any borders. That is the only consistent position that they have had throughout history. And today, Palestinians and their "supporters" maintain that even if there is a two state solution somehow, it is only meant to be a stage on their path to destroy Israel altogether.

Chaim Weizmann famously argued when the 1937 Peel Commission recommended a tiny, indefensible Jewish state - covering only 20% of the British Mandate, divided geographically, with no Jerusalem - that “The Jews would be fools not to accept it, even if the Jewish state were the size of a tablecloth." He understood that something is better than nothing.

It is a lesson that the Palestinian side strenuously disagrees with: they would prefer nothing if the something includes the existence of a Jewish state.

It is worse even than a zero-sum mentality. They are claiming that they would prefer not being citizens of any country than to accept a Jewish state on any borders. Instead of compromising and getting something, they prefer to remain with nothing, as long as there is a Jewish state as well.

This isn't just spite - this is pure antisemitic hate. And the only people this attitude hurts are Palestinians themselves.

Israel, sometimes with reservations, accepted all these peace plans and frameworks. Palestinians rejected them all, even though they all would have given them the independence they supposedly want. What their responses to these plans, as well the responses to this cartoon, prove is that it was never about gaining an independent Palestinian state but the destruction of the Jewish state.

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Thoughts on the burning of the Quran in Sweden

On Wednesday, an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden tore up and burned a Quran after receiving permission to do so as an act of protest, A Swedish court ruled that burning the Quran was a legal expression of free speech and the police gave a permit for the action.

In response, the Muslim world is seething. Many Muslim-majority countries lodged protests against Sweden, and there were riots in Iraq as protesters attempted to break into the Swedish embassy.

In 1976, on Yom Kippur eve, a group of Arab youths - fueled by a false rumor that Jews had torn Qurans - stormed through the synagogue at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and tore up numerous Hebrew holy books as well as several handwritten Torahs which were ripped to shreds.

The desecration of the Torah is much, much worse than tearing or ripping a printed Quran. The best analogy to a ripped Quran would be to a torn up Chumash, a mass printed version of the Torah; tearing up a Torah is more like tearing up a handwritten Quran manuscript.

And Jewish prayer books, chumashim and other holy books are desecrated by Palestinian Arabs much more often than you know.

In 2007, I visited Samuel's Tomb in Israel, unaware that Arabs had rampaged through there the previous Friday night, tearing prayer books, heavily damaging the Torah ark and stealing a Torah.

Nearly all Israeli media ignored this incident. Because Arabs desecrating Jewish holy books and sites is simply not worth mentioning.

It was hardly a unique occurrence.

Also in 2007, Arabs burned down a synagogue near Doled, destroying Torah scrolls.

In 2009, Arabs raided a yeshiva in Homesh and destroyed many volumes of Chumash and Talmud.

In 2012, Arab youths were caught trying to burn books of Psalms at the Mount of Olives.

Holy books at the Tomb of Joseph have been destroyed by Arabs more than once.

Prayer books were burned in an attack at a Gush Etzion synagogue in 2016.

In May, 2021, Arabs torched synagogues in Lod.

In 2022, Arabs burned a Jewish center in Harasha and destroyed many holy books.

When has the Muslim world condemned these incidents against holy Jewish books - equivalent or far worse than the desecration of one of hundreds of millions of printed Qurans?

They haven't, and this weakens their pretense of outrage. If you demand that people respect your holy objects, then at a minimum you should do the same.

The Muslim outrage over Sweden is not about their disgust at a holy book being desecrated. It is an expression of Islamic supremacy.

They want the entire world to adhere to Muslim laws against blasphemy and that everyone should enshrine Islamic laws against destroying the Quran. These protests are just as much political as they are expressions of popular anger: they send a message that unless the West acts as Muslims demand, they can expect violence.

Any attempts to impose Muslim mores or beliefs on the world must be opposed wholeheartedly. It is an attack on everyone's freedom.

_____________________________________

That being said, Sweden's legal ruling allowing the burning was wrong.

From the narrow perspective of freedom of expression, yes, burning a Quran - just like burning a flag - is valid and should not be illegal. But there is another, far more important issue here.

The deliberate burning of the Quran is a hate crime. It was meant not as a message of freedom but as a direct attack on the sensibilities of Muslims worldwide. It was not an expression of criticism of Islam but an expression of hate against Islam and Muslims, by an apparent ex-Muslim.

And Sweden does have hate crime laws.

The Swedish Penal Code, chapter 16, section 8, says:

A person who, in a disseminated statement or communication, threatens or expresses contempt for a national, ethnic or other such group of persons with allusion to race, colour, national or ethnic origin or religious belief shall, be sentenced for agitation against a national or ethnic group to imprisonment for at most two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine. (Law 1988:835)

The deliberate burning of a Quran is an expression of contempt for believing Muslims. As such, it should be illegal - and so should the deliberate burning of Jewish holy books.

The protester could make the same point by burning a photo of a Quran. Destroying symbols of a religion or other protected group is criticism; destroying actual objects of importance to those groups is hate.

That is where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression and purposeful hate.

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As soon as @Amnesty started their "Apartheid" campaign, they STOPPED mentioning Lebanese/Jordanian discrimination against Palestinians

In 2007, Amnesty International wrote a 5-page report describing the institutionalized and legal discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon.

It ended off with these recommendations for the Lebanese government:

To this end, the Lebanese authorities should:
 urgently repeal or revise all laws and policies that directly discriminate against Palestinian refugees;
 take immediate steps to improve conditions in the camps and gatherings;
 register all non-ID Palestinian refugees under Lebanese jurisdiction without delay;
 end the discrimination facing Palestinians in the labour market;
 ensure that adequate health care is available to all;
 ensure that all children have equal access to education.

That report, 16 years ago, was the last time that Amnesty dedicated a report to the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Nothing has changed since then. The discriminatory laws are still in place, Palestinians still cannot own land, they still are banned from many jobs, they still have no access to Lebanese health care, babies born are not given citizenship.

By any definition, including Amnesty's own definition, this is apartheid against Palestinians in Lebanon. But Amnesty never calls it such, and it has not considered this issue worth a follow-up report since the first decade of the century.

Amnesty would briefly mention Arab discrimination against Palestinians in their annual reports on every country. From their annual report on 2014:

Thousands of Palestinian long-term refugees continued to live in camps and informal gatherings in Lebanon, often in deprived conditions. They faced discriminatory laws and regulations, for example denying them the right to inherit property, the right to work in around 20 professions, and other basic rights.

And for 2019:

Lebanon also continued to host tens of thousands of long-term Palestinian refugees, who remained subject to discriminatory laws excluding them from owning or inheriting property, accessing public education and health services, and working in at least 36 professions. At least 3,000 Palestinian refugees who do not hold official identity documents faced further restrictions, denying them the right to register births, marriages and deaths.

2020:

Over 470,000 Palestinian refugees were registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, including 29,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria. The 180,000 of them estimated to be still living in the country remained subject to discriminatory laws, excluding them from owning or inheriting property, accessing public education and health services and from working in at least 36 professions.

But when you look at the Lebanon entry of Amnesty's latest annual report, covering 2021, there is not a word about discrimination and mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Nothing has changed. The overcrowded camps are still there, the discriminatory laws are still there. Amnesty's decision not to mention that which had been in every annual report until now must be deliberate.

Perhaps it was a mere clerical error, an oversight, a regrettable mistake?

Let's look at Amnesty's annual reports on Jordan concerning the non-citizen Palestinians who live there.

2019:

On 14 October, the Ministry of Labour raised from 11 to 39 the number of professions barred to non-Jordanian nationals seeking employment. Among them were long-term Palestinian refugees not holding Jordanian citizenship, most of whom were from the Gaza Strip; they continued to be denied other basic rights and services, too.

2020:

Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip continued to be excluded from basic rights and services as they do not have Jordanian citizenship.

But in the latest 2021 report, there is not a word about Jordanian discrimination against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are not citizens. And they are still suffering from the same discrimination they were the year and decades before.

Why would Amnesty excise any mention of Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians in its 2021 report when they were mentioned in previous reports, and their situation has not gotten any better?

Here's why.

Amnesty released its 2021 annual report in March, 2022. This was shortly after Amnesty issued its report falsely accusing Israel of "apartheid" against Palestinians.

As soon as Amnesty issued its anti-Israel report, in which it had invested so many hours and so much money, it removed any mention of Jordan and Lebanon treating their Palestinian residents far worse than Israel does!

This is unlikely to be a coincidence. Amnesty's libel against Israel would have been diluted by their mentioning how Arab nations officially discriminate against Palestinians who have lived within their borders for decades. They did not want people to point to their own reports showing that Arabs really are guilty of apartheid against Palestinians, with discriminatory laws aimed specifically at them. 2022 was the year that Amnesty dedicated to attacking Israel - even creating T-shirts and swag and encouraging "stunts" to get publicity for their crusade.

Amnesty is not soberly reporting on accusations of Israeli human rights abuses. It is enthusiastically promoting an anti-Israel campaign. Mentioning that their fellow Arabs treat Palestinians worse than "racist, Jewish supremacist" Israel would damage that message.

So they erased all human rights abuses against Palestinians that they couldn't blame on Israel.

Which proves that Amnesty is not the impartial arbiter of human rights it pretends to be. At least when it comes to the Middle East, it is an anti-Israel propaganda outlet. It happily throws Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan under the bus. To them, demonizing Israel is a far more important mission than mere human rights.

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Another look at the "Jekyll and Hyde" head of Al Haq

NGO Monitor published an English translation of a 2007 court ruling by Israel's High Court denying a petition brought on Shawan Jabarin's behalf to allow him to travel internationally. Jabarin was the director of Al Haq and denied any terror ties, same as today.

The petitioner's points sound an awful lot like what NGOs are claiming today about Jabarin and other terrorists who work for NGOs:

The petition claims that the petitioner is a prominent human rights activist in the West Bank, and by limiting his movement there is “an unpleasant odor of harassment of a man active in solidifying the human rights of his people,” and harms the petitioner’s freedom of movement.It also claimed that the “Al Haq” organization- of which the petitioner has served as CEO since 2006- is the oldest Palestinian human rights organization and cooperates with international and Israeli organizations...

The High Court denied the petition based on classified information. The ruling is unhappy that it cannot share this information with the petitioner, but it leaves no doubt that it did everything it could to make up for that - by acting as a "quasi defense attorney:"

With the agreement of the petitioner's representative, we have studied the classified material in camera, and we have engaged in a debate about it with the representatives of the Ministry of Defense. We were convinced that there is a real basis to the claim of the respondent about the activity of the petitioner in the PFLP organization, according to current information. Therefore, as it stands for this requested trip, we do not think that there is a place to intervene in the decision of the respondent not to allow the petitioner to leave the country, due to a concern that the trip will be used for non-human rights activity, but rather the opposite. There is therefore no other choice but to not accept the petition.

The Court saw fit to add the following: Yes, we would have wanted to be in a situation in which we can often lend our hand to all of the human rights organizations, in which the activities of all of their employees will be above all suspicion, in light of the principals in whose name they operate, and we hope that that is generally true. This court, when considering human rights, will find very often find itself on the side which is asking to uphold them and to balance them with security considerations, carefully weighing the issues, with respect and sensitivity to the question of rights. We have studied the classified material regarding the petitioner with an open mind, in a manner of quasi-defense-attorney, despite the fact that only half a year ago - 10.12.06 - a request of the petitioner to leave the country was denied under the same reasons.

Nevertheless, the current petitioner is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights; rather, they violate the most basic right of them all, the most fundamental right that without which there are no other rights - the right to life. ...Our decision is based on the classified information, while knowing that there will be human rights activists who will criticize us; however there is no choice and we have been convinced that there is no basis for the petitioner’s denials [of this information].

Since 2007, as I have recently shown, Jabarin has been publicly representing the PFLP in various forums. At least once he represented both the PFLP and Al Haq at the same time. This is years after Jabarin's attorneys argued that he has no ties to the PFLP!

Lies are standard operating procedure for terror apologists.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Palestinian Authority not even trying to hide their support for terrorism

This morning:

A wanted member of a terror cell who reportedly managed to evade previous attempts to capture him was one of three people killed during a fierce gun battle with Israeli troops in Nablus on Tuesday morning. A further 40 people were reported injured.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, soldiers surrounded the home of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander Ibrahim Nablusi, leading to an exchange of gunfire.

Nablusi was part of a squad that had committed several shooting attacks against soldiers and civilians in the West Bank earlier this year, according to the Shin Bet. The IDF said that included a shooting attack at the Joseph’s Tomb complex in the outskirts of Nablus.

Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are not even pretending not to support this terrorist and his comrades. He was a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah terror group that was supposedly dismantled by the peaceful Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

Fatah issued a statement calling the dead terrorists "heroes whose names will be written in history in the record of the immortal exploits of our people."

Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Shtayyeh called them "martyrs" and tied them to every other Palestinian claim: "What our people are subjected to in terms of organized terrorism in Gaza, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, and the occupied city of Jerusalem; Which is witnessing an ethnic cleansing process, an attempt to Judaize, and the desecration of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque, in addition to the displacement operations, and the seizure of lands in the Jordan Valley..."

Mahmoud Abbas' spokesperson said that "the occupation is approaching a comprehensive confrontation with our entire Palestinian people, through its comprehensive aggression that began in the city of Jerusalem, and then spread to Jenin, Gaza, and today in Nablus. "

Also, one of the dead terrorists was 16-year old Hussein Taha. Recruiting children to terror groups is another human rights crime that the human rights NGOs seems to skate right over.

There was a massive funeral with tens of thousands of people as government offices closed down.

This is as explicit support for terror as one can imagine. And if the PA was doing its job, Israel wouldn't have to go into Nablus to arrest terrorists at all.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Palestinians know that Abbas is a dictator. Why doesn't the West?

On Monday, hundreds of Palestinian lawyers protested Mahmoud Abbas' sweeping powers:

Hundreds of Palestinian lawyers held a rare street protest Monday against what they described as the Palestinian Authority's "rule by decree", condemning president Mahmud Abbas for governing without a parliament.

The Palestinian Legislative Council -- created under the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel -- has been inactive since 2007, meaning Abbas has led without a functioning parliament for nearly all of his tenure as president.

But a new leadership at the Palestinian Bar Association has sought to pressure the PA.

The draft Palestinian constitution allows for presidential decrees "if necessary", in cases where the PLC cannot act, but lawyers said Abbas has gone too far.

According to estimates by Palestinian legal experts, Abbas has issued some 400 presidential decrees while in office.

He officially dissolved the PLC in 2018.

The article doesn't come close to describing Abbas' control of all the branches of the Palestinian government.

In order to "legally" dissolve the PLC, he needed the Palestinian Constitutional Court to make that decision. And guess who appointed every member of that group in 2016?

Yes, it was Abbas himself.

So Mahmoud Abbas controls, either directly or by proxy, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Palestinian Authority.

But his powers don't end there, because the PA is not independent - it reports to the PLO, which is still legally considered the "“Sole Legitimate Representative of the Palestinian People” - and whose chairman is also Mahmoud Abbas.

This is all documented. It is no secret that Abbas controls everything.

Yet Western media almost completely ignores this basic fact. Abbas is never referred to as a dictator - except by Hamas media.

The reason, as always, is that pointing out the corruption of the Palestinians seems to weaken the overarching narrative of an evil Israeli oppressive presence that controls every aspect of Palestinian life, and that narrative must be protected as much as possible.

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Abbas claimed to have dismantled the Al Aqsa Brigades in 2007. They're still here, and no one asks why.

Early this morning, the IDF held an operation in Nablus reportedly to capture an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leader, and two terrorists were killed.

A statement were released by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades mourning the two.

The Palestinian Authority issued statements of condemnation.

But in 2008, Mahmoud Abbas claimed to have completely dismantled the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is under the umbrella of the Fatah party he leads.

No one seems to ask: why do the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades still exist 15 years later?

This isn't like the Islamic Jihad-based fighters in Jenin. These are allies of the Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian Authority. While one can argue that the Palestinian security services are not powerful enough to secure Jenin (which is a separate problem) can they not control their own allies?

Or, as seems more likely, are the Al Aqsa Brigades doing what the Palestinian Authority wants - a terror group that can be used whenever it is convenient for the PA and Fatah?

If the Palestinian Authority was doing its job - under signed agreements - the IDF wouldn't need to go into Area A to arrest terrorists.

So why isn't anyone asking why the Palestinian Authority is not doing its job? Why is no one in the West upset that the PA is supporting and mourning the terrorists rather than arresting them?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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What is "pro-Palestinian" about a protest outside a synagogue during services? (UPDATE)

From the Boulder Daily Camera, in a letter to the editor by someone called Michael Rabb:

Ask Jews and all Americans to renounce their support for Israel: stand vigil in front of Congregation Bonai Shalom, 1527 Cherryvale Road in Boulder, Saturday, Nov. 17, 9:30 a.m.

Bonai Shalom is a Conservative synagogue that, from a glance at its website, does not seem to be particularly Zionist - no apparent Zionist youth groups or organized Israel trips, no Israeli flags on its website. It's pretty much just a synagogue that, like many Conservative temples, is implicitly pro-Israel.

So when someone who claims to be "pro-Palestinian" wants to hold a protest, why would he choose a synagogue during Saturday morning services?

Unless the goal is to target, you know, Jews.

In fact, it looks like Rabb holds these synagogue protests regularly. Here he is on Yom Kippur, outside a different congregation, where he claims that some people took his literature and even appreciated his presence. His trustworthiness is a bit suspect.

Even so, it sounds like the synagogues in Boulder need to beef up their Zionist education programs. A lot.

UPDATE: I covered a similar weekly protest in Ann Arbor back in 2007.

In that case, though, the synagogue decided to do something positive about it and raise money for Magen David Adom based on the number of protesters that show up every week. This gives the members of the synagogue a sense of purpose and community in the face of the haters.

So far they have raised an astonishing $173,000!

(h/t Elemental)

Root causes of media bias against Israel

Tonight, Dr. Richard Landes spoke at Rutgers University. He is the author of The Augean Stables blog, The Second Draft blog documenting media manipulation by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters, and the driving force behind the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog. Somehow, he also manages to be a professor of history at Boston University and the author of numerous books and articles on topics I cannot begin to understand.

His topics tonight were wide-ranging but centered on the media and the Middle East conflict. He brought up numerous videos showing how the media reported on Gaza and how they purposefully ignored facts that would make Hamas look bad. Landes also spent a bit of time on the Goldstone report and on the Mohammed al-Dura Pallywood case. I hadn't told him one way or the other whether I would attend, and tried to keep a low profile, but when he mentioned my blog I admitted who I was. (I am not utterly without ego, but I am working on it.)

So this was a rare public appearance by The Elder. Landes ascribes much of the anti-Israel bias of the media to the media's fear of Hamas (and Hezbollah.) There is no doubt that this is a strong contributor - terrorists make no secret of the fact that if they are displeased with you, they will make your life unpleasant. And they watch the news. We saw it happen in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and we saw it in Gaza with Hamas and the other terror groups, especially a few years ago when journalists were regularly kidnapped.

After Western reporters all fled Gaza, all that were left were Palestinian reporters who have an inherent anti-Israel bias. But more importantly, they are scared witless of Hamas. Hamas has attacked press agencies numerous times. Here is an incident last year when Hamas attacked a mosque, beat people there and trashed it before taking it over. Not one mainstream media outlet published this story. The reason is clearly because of Hamas' threats against Gaza reporters. (Hezbollah also carefully managed news media access to the Lebanon war in 2006, a lot more subtly than Hamas but very effectively.) The New York Times did run a story once on how Gaza reporters censor themselves out of fear. One can pinpoint the exact date that Gaza journalism died. It was mid-June, 2007, and it is detailed in this article from Ma'an - possibly the last objective article Ma'an has ever written about Hamas:

Local Palestinian radio stations in the Gaza Strip were launched in quick succession over recent years. As many as eleven radio stations were counted operating in Gaza Strip in a short space of time. Many of the stations had been closed and looted during the recent conflict in the strip. Ash Sha'b station, affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was looted, whilst Al Hurriya and Ash Shabab, affiliated to Fatah, chose to cease transmission. The spokesperson of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubayda, vehemently denied that the brigades had threatened any of the local stations. Abu Ubayda told Ma'an that the radio stations halted transmission willingly because they were working within a certain framework and their coverage of events in Gaza was partial, rather than objective. He added that the employees and owners of the radio stations closed them out of fear, rather than any direct threats from the Qassam Brigades. Abu Ubayda also said that some of the radio stations were affiliated to well-known Fatah figures, or directly owned by Fatah. Palestine radio stopped transmission from the Gaza Strip during the recent events. A statement was issued accusing the Al Qassam Brigades of torching the station's headquarters and a local transmission tower in Khan Younis. Palestine satellite and terrestrial TV stopped transmission last Friday in Gaza City and began transmitting from Ramallah, in the central West Bank. The director of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Basim Abu Sumayya, ascribed the stoppage to Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip, which prevented employees from accessing the company's buildings in order to work. Abu Sumayya accused Hamas of taking control of every property that belongs to the PBC, in addition to the live transmission vehicle and the satellite frequency, which the PBC changed immediately. ...As for the radio stations, which stopped their transmission, Abu Zuhri said they did so voluntarily because they were involved in inciting and they committed criminal acts when they were fuelling disputes in the Palestinian arena. He asserted that the Al-Qassam Brigades and Executive Force never attacked or robbed any radio station. The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa satellite TV station, which many accuse of lacking professionalism and fuelling dispute, was the sole TV station that continued broadcasting during the conflict in the Gaza Strip. They transmitted special photos of the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Executive Force, while they were storming the security HQs. They also conducted exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The most criticism-provoking act of Al-Aqsa TV was the transmission of the execution of Samih Al-Madhoun. The chief editor of Ma'an News Agency threatened to close the agency's Gaza office as a result of the pressure exerted on him and the agency's correspondents and photojournalists. The Al-Qassam Brigades visited the office, but did not harm any employee or property. Meanwhile, Hamas and their Fatah allies criticised Ma'an's reports and some issued threats.

Things only got worse after that. I agree with Richard that fear is a factor in the loss of objectivity in journalism. He mentioned other factors as well, such as the fact that liberal reporters are (perhaps subconsciously) advocates of the simplistic idea that the absence of war is always a desirable objective and that their role is to help that to happen. Therefore you will see a large number of stories about Israel's use of "disproportionate" force and of Arab civilian victims, but very few giving context of everything Israel tried to do over eight years to stop rocket attacks before resorting to the battlefield. I think that a lot can be ascribed to ignorance. Arabs have hammered the West with consistent, simple-minded memes ("occupation," "intransigence," "illegal settlements," "Likud=far right hawks," "Fatah is moderate") that have become ingrained in the very psyche of the media personalities themselves. This is how we see situations like I mentioned today of Fox misrepresenting their own interview with Obama, after it was colored through the glass of Middle East conventional wisdom.

Another factor that I mentioned in the Q&A, and that Dr. Landes expanded on, is that Israeli self-criticism, which is part of what makes it strong, is perceived by the media as proof of its being immoral. As Richard noted, when the media interviews 100% of Arabs who say that Israel is completely wrong, and 50% of Israelis interviewed agree with the Arabs, then the impression one gets is that Israel is 75% wrong. All in all, it was an interesting evening, and as you can imagine, Richard is a really nice fellow. The turnout might have been better had this not also been the night that Rutgers held a meeting to discuss contributing leftover meal-plan money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a charity that has uncomfortably close connections to terrorism.