Friday, October 07, 2022
From Ian:
PMW Special Report: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids
Melanie Phillips: Democracy’s watchdog has abandoned its role
PMW Special Report: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids
In recent months, many young Palestinians have died as “Martyrs” while carrying out terror attacks against Israelis – be it throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, stabbings or shootings. What is it that make kids want this? The answer is what Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out for years: That the PA and its leading party Fatah – both led by Mahmoud Abbas – as policy encourage kids (and adults) to carry out terror and seek Martyrdom - and thereby become heroes.
Now that the summer holiday is over it is important to examine the values the PA and Fatah decided to bestow on Palestinian kids via their summer camps – one of the “tools” the PA uses to inculcate the ideals of terror against Israel and Martyrdom.
One distinctive PA message was that terrorist murderers are heroes. Being presented with this strong role modeling for decades impacts on kids, and many young Palestinians set out to die as Martyrs, seeking to earn the ultimate glory in Palestinian society.
Announcing the opening of the summer camps, PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Head Jibril Rajoub explained that 42,000 young Palestinians were to participate in 600 camps. Rajoub stated that:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary and Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Jibril Rajoub: “The goal of these camps is to serve as a melting pot and formulate the consciousness of these children according to the Palestinian national ideology.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]
Same Rajoub strongly hinted at the content of the teachings in the PA/Fatah summer camps when he in his opening speech singled out terrorist murderer Thaer Hammad who killed 10 Israelis as “deserving of blessings”:
Jibril Rajoub: “[Silwad] is the town of Thaer Hammad (i.e., terrorist, murdered 10), who deserves blessings, and who constituted a milestone in proactive national action. Blessings to him, his family, and our prisoners from Silwad and from throughout the homeland.”
[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, July 18, 2022]
Prior to Rajoub’s opening of the camps, a Fatah “registration announcement” for participation in a camp under Fatah’s military unit Al-Asifa explained the camp activities which clearly sound like military training and combat, among them: “military order and discipline, infantry, combat skills and Shooting live ammunition at a shooting range”; (emphasis added)
Melanie Phillips: Democracy’s watchdog has abandoned its role
It has often been said that the media is a pillar of democracy because it keeps our politicians honest.Jonathan Tobin: Blame Biden’s disastrous Iran and energy policies for Lapid’s Lebanon fiasco
Lifting the veil of secrecy in which authorities like to cloak themselves, revealing inconvenient truths that expose the inadequacies and worse of government actions and subjecting all politicians to forensic questioning without bias—this is how the media acts in the public interest.
But when the media doesn’t deliver, truthfulness goes out of the window, propaganda and ignorance take over and democracy stumbles.
We see this in much Western coverage of Israel, with newspapers often delivering nothing more than thinly disguised Palestinian propaganda. So, people with no knowledge of Israel or Jewish history get a wholly false impression.
It’s in America, however, that we see most graphically and frighteningly the media’s abdication of its professional role.
The most influential mainstream media outlets have turned into brazen shills for the Democratic Party and became willing accomplices in the attempt to remove President Donald Trump via the bogus Russian conspiracy smear, which involved elements of the FBI, Justice Department and the Democrats.
At same time, the media refused to report troubling revelations of corruption involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine, which implicated Biden senior as well.
And they have left Americans largely in the dark about the acute peril into which Biden’s policies are putting America, Israel and the West.
Unfortunately, however, the Americans clearly hope that strong-arming Israel in order to help Iran-proxy Hezbollah—which will presumably profit, directly or indirectly, from Lebanon’s natural-gas business—will influence its masters in Tehran to stop stalling and sign a new, and even weaker, nuclear deal with the West.Behnam Ben Taleblu: You cannot stand with Iran’s women while seeking a deal with Tehran
If this happens after more humiliating U.S. concessions to Iran in the negotiations that will likely resume after the midterms, it ought to get Iranian oil flowing freely to the West. That could impact the price of oil in the long term and help the Democrats’ efforts to hold onto the White House in 2024, even if it also guarantees that the Iranians will eventually obtain a nuclear weapon. It will also constitute a betrayal of the courageous demonstrators who have taken to the streets in Iranian cities to resist the theocratic regime.
Lapid walked into this trap because he is committed to a strategy of avoiding public disputes with Biden at all costs. For months, as the Americans moved closer to an agreement with Iran that he knew was antithetical to any notion of protecting the security of Israel or its Arab allies, he spoke of trying to influence the U.S. not to go down the path of appeasement.
Iran’s hardline stance in negotiations momentarily seemed to vindicate him. Yet, when Biden gave him his marching orders on Lebanon, he appeared to have believed that he had no choice but to blindly obey.
Seen from this perspective, it’s clear that Lapid was not so much surrendering to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as he was to Biden, though the blow to Israel’s national interests was much the same.
It remains to be seen whether Biden will tolerate, even if only for the five weeks until the election, Lapid’s act of political survival in moving away from the Lebanon pact that the U.S. administration has ordered him to accept. What is obvious, however, is that Lapid has not yet learned what Netanyahu came to understand during the course of his 15 years as prime minister.
Managing relations with Israel’s sole superpower ally is the nation’s top foreign-policy priority. And though doing so is vitally important, Washington can’t be allowed to dictate to its small Israeli ally. The true measure of an Israeli prime minister’s diplomatic acumen is not how close he can stay to an American president. The real test is showing that a premier can say “no” to the Americans when it’s absolutely necessary, as it was with respect to the natural-gas-fields dispute.
Lapid failed that test. Biden and his team now understand how far they can push him, even when Israeli security is on the line. That’s a fatal flaw in any leader.
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