Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Ma'aan

Showing posts with label Ma'aan. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

"Moderate" Palestinian news editor: "Israelis are monsters who drink the blood of their victims and ate the flesh of the dead."

Dr. Nasser Lahham, editor in chief of the relatively moderate Ma'an News site which is not affiliated with any terror groups, seems to have a problem with Israelis.

When natural disasters happen, whether earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, or even polar depressions, beasts stop fighting, and animals stop fighting. Except for the Israeli occupation, which has degenerated to a lower degree than animals and corrupted the whole earth with its horrible moral decline. Today, I write without hesitation that Israel's decline and lack of laws has become a contagious virus that can spread to the rest of the world.

The people of Palestine, including the settlers, felt the earthquake on Monday, yet the occupation was blocking the roads in Hawara, Beit Rima and Beit Ummar. The world was racing to extend a helping hand to Syria and Turkey, and the occupation was carrying out a mass execution of young men in Aqabat Al-Jabr camp. All of humanity was mourning and respecting the thousands of victims of the earthquake, and Israel was literally writing in its press "there are no Jews among the victims in Turkey."

What dirt! What depravity! And what a stigma in the forehead of humanity!

Instead of offering aid to the Palestinians under its military rule, Israel, "the state of the Jews and God's chosen people," as they claim, began striking at all meanings of religion, morality, and honor. And prove that she is without religion, dignity, honor, or morals. Indeed, the mafia gangs have morals and red lines, but Israel is stripped of them.

Hate blinded the hearts of the Zionists, and blinded their insight. They became monsters who drank the blood of the victims and ate the flesh of the dead.

...Today, with this devastating earthquake that killed the victims and the innocent. No one expects Israel to actually send relief missions or aid to the victims because it is among the humanitarian groups. No and a thousand times no. Perhaps these missions are for the Mossad or for some security conspiracy or political blackmail. But not for relief.

Israel is the scum of morals on earth. It cannot be believed that it contributes to the relief of any other people.

And I want to remind the liberals and the deceived, that the Palestinian Authority sent the Palestinian Civil Defense youth years ago to help Israel extinguish the big fire that broke out in the Damon Mountains. Indeed, with the testimony of the Hebrew press. Palestine firefighters were heroes in fighting the fire. And when Israel held a ceremony honoring the firefighters, it refused to grant the Palestinian firefighters passage permits to enter the Green Line!!

Has humanity heard or seen more despicable morals than this people!

I'm not copying all of his false examples of Israeli "immorality," which are all lies, but just pointing out:

There is nothing wrong with being relieved that no Jews are earthquake victims, just as Palestinians are following how many Palestinians have been killed in Turkey and Syria. (And there are Jews missing and apparently killed in Turkey.)

Out of ten Palestinian firefighters who helped out in the Carmel fire disaster, due to a bureaucratic screwup, three of them did not get permits. Israel apologized

Israel has been widely praised for its selfless support in the case of natural disasters. Lahham is so filled with hate that he simply cannot accept any examples of Jews acting nicely. They are simply hiding their evil!

And this is not a member of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. This is a mainstream Palestinian news editor. Compared to most other Palestinians, he would be considered a moderate.

If you want to know why there is no peace - it is because Palestinians are fed a steady diet of lies and hate their entire lives, across the board, from every source. Anyone whose only source of information about Israelis are Palestinian schools and media would of course hate them.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Unusually high amount of antisemitism in Arabic media yesterday

All of these articles were published on Tuesday.

From Turkey Al-Aan, the world's capitalist system is split between the British and the Jews.

The global capitalist system is supported by the dialectical relationship between two authoritarian powers, whose struggle sometimes takes the form of collusion.

The Cold War was just an invented fictional war. There were ostensible capitalist and socialist blocs, but the real battle was between two invisible actors. One of these actors was the Anglo-Saxons, whose masterminds were the British.

The second actor is the active elements in the Jewish power, who are known as the proponents of the globalization theory, and they are the founders and owners of the American establishment system.

Two important weekly magazines serve as spokespeople and watchdogs for the world order: The Economist and Time.

The Economist magazine is the mouthpiece for the interests of the British, that is, on behalf of the Anglo-Saxons. As for Time magazine, it is the voice of the Jewish power, which is centered in the United States, but this power also controls the economies of many countries such as Russia, Germany and France.

These are the two most powerful magazines that control and direct those who rule the world. It is essential to follow these two journals regularly to see where the world is heading, and what kind of calculations the masters of the world order follow.

From Al Raiah (Hizb ut-Tahrir) - the Jews are greedy:

The greed of the Jews, their greed that knows no bounds, and their loss of insight and political vision, is what confuses the West and raises their fears. The West realizes that the Jews have no acceptance of Muslims or a real struggle with them, and that all that keeps them in the region is conspiracies, betrayals, and colonial projects, not the power of the Jews and their own capabilities, in When Jewish leaders have been blinded by greed and hatred from seeing this fact, and now they think that they have the strength that enables them to achieve their greed and their biblical and Zionist aspirations.

From Sudan's Sudanile - the Jews control the world:

The Jews have sought for a long time and are still diligently striving to control the world, because their morals are on vacation, and they commit shameful things, evils and sins with coldness.Their own people and others can do anything of the atrocities that have no limits!!.. The strange thing is that Israel, which is part of its club that controls our poor world, presents itself to the beholder with the innocence of children in its eyes, and does not show any fuss about what its sinful and criminal hand has done. Rather, it remains silent like fish to manage its conspiracies and hatred against all!!
America deludes everyone that it is sitting on the top of the global polarity. In fact, it is a humiliated follower of the Jews, along with Europe and many countries of the world, and finally some Arab countries began to be dragged into the Tel Aviv club, and the story is going on, and Sudan, our beloved country, is a strong candidate to plunge into the Zionist mud and shame.

An op-ed in Ma'an says Zionist Jews are excavating in Jerusalem specifically to weaken the foundations of the Temple Mount so the Al Aqsa Mosque will collapse the next time there is an earthquake.

These excavations [near the Temple Mount] have revealed the foundations on which the mosque was built, so that it appears as if it is hanging without foundations or supports to support it, and this act is a preparation by the state of the entity [Israel] to be ready to collapse in the event of any strong natural disaster that may occur in the future, such as the occurrence of an earthquake, for example - Allah forbid! They are betting on the collapse of the mosque as a result of this, so that the reason becomes before the world that it collapsed as a result of natural factors, so that no one condemns them and the Islamic and international community does not turn against them.

None of these would have sounded unusual in 1930s Nazi Germany.

But in the 1930s, the Jews tried desperately to warn the world and the antisemitic outrages were mentioned in the media.

Today, no one wants to talk about endemic, systemic and often official Arab and Muslim antisemitism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The eagle-eyed Waqf confiscate "Talmudic objects" being "smuggled" to the Temple Mount

Ma'an reports:

The guards of Al-Aqsa Mosque confronted today, Thursday, a settler who stormed Al-Aqsa, along with a candlestick and biblical artifacts.

The settler was among a group of tourists who stormed the mosque through the Mughrabi Gate, and the guards were able to seize him and prevent him from taking pictures in Al-Aqsa.

Here the guard shows off the contraband:

Good to know that the Waqf is protecting Muslims from these terrible weapons.

A reminder: In 2017, two Israeli guards in the Old City were murdered with guns that had been stored on the Temple Mount. So Muslims can bring guns but Jews (or, more likely, Christians) cannot bring a Kabbalistic "sh'viti" diagram meant for meditation.

(h/t Eliyahu who pointed out that Christian tourists buy seven branched menorahs)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinian officials and media unanimously support Abbas' antisemitism

After Mahmoud Abbas yet again spouted antisemitic lies in Germany on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and pundits unanimously supported him.

Bassam al-Salihi, head of the People's Party and PLO Executive Committee member, wrote that Abbas' statement that Israel committed fifty "holocausts" against Palestinians was true. "President Abbas' statements express the position of all the Palestinians, and the unrelenting Israeli incitement against the Palestinian president is totally and completely rejected," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement also supported his statement. Fatah spokesman Munther al-Hayek said that Abbas' words were meant "to remind the world of the suffering of the Palestinian people and the massacres committed by Israel." If there is to be any apology, al-Hayek said, it should be to the Palestinian people "whose land was occupied and the most heinous crimes were committed in front of the eyes and ears of the world without the killer being held accountable."

Ma'an News Agency reported Abbas' statements as "bold" and dismissed criticism by Israel as "hysteria."

The editor of Amad strongly defended Abbas' antisemitism, saying that "the patriot must stand without hesitation, conditionality, or thinking in the battle to defend President Abbas’s words, and that they represent what every Palestinian inside and outside the homeland believes… It is a political moment that never accepts neutrality. Silence on the fascist entity's war against the content of President Abbas's words is a partnership in it..there is no consolation for the cowards and the trembling."

Wattan.net even went beyond Abbas' words, with a Jew-hating screed that said that Israel is guilty of far more than 50 "holocausts." By insisting that the Holocaust is a unique event, the editorial says, Jews believe that their lives are worth more than anyone else's. "The Zionist extremist voices that have become addicted to blackmailing the world are nothing but a follow-up to the idea of ethnic or religious discrimination linked to the illusion and myth of 'God’s Chosen People' attributed to a racist god, and a real estate and land dealer who is intolerant of a part of his creation, which does not fit the description of the Creator."

I could not find one condemnation of Abbas' words in Palestinian media.

For his part, Abbas' fake apology was an excuse to insult Israel again. He didn't apologize at all, but merely said that he "condemned the Holocaust in the strongest terms," which is as low a bar as one can imagine.

But Abbas then attacked Israel, and implied that what Israel does is worse than the Holocaust, saying, "the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba at the hands of the Israeli forces... have not stopped to this day." Meaning, the Holocaust ended in the 1940s but Palestinian suffering has lasted for over seven decades. (This theme has been used often in Palestinian media.)

Among the anti-Israel activists I follow on social media, I could not find one condemning Abbas' words besides J-Street. This includes the self-described experts on antisemitism who follow he Middle East extensively like Linda Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill, and Peter Beinart. Because to them, if antisemitism doesn't come from a white nationalist, it isn't antisemitism.

Their silence condones Abbas.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Jews dedicating a Torah to the Cave of the Patriarchs to help families of kids with cancer. Arabs want UNESCO to stop it.

Tonight at 8 PM Israel time, there will be a ceremony dedicating a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) to be used at the Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs where tradition says Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives are buried.

It is the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount.

The ceremony will include a concert. The money raised for the event is being used to provide vacations to families of children with cancer in Israel.

In response, Palestinian Arabs are now claiming that the site is the fourth holiest in Islam, and saying that the idea of Jews dedicating a Torah to a synagogue is a desecration of the site.

They are threatening violence.

The Hebron Waqf said in a press release: "Some Hebrew sites published a promotional video stating that the settlers will present at 8 pm on Thursday a Torah scroll to the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque with a concert.

"This attack is a grave violation of the sanctity of the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque and a dangerous precedent, and it affects the feelings of Muslims," the statement said.

The Waqf said that "the occupation government has full responsibility for the visits of the settlers and their desecration of the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque, the change in its Arab Islamic features, and the imposition of punitive measures against it."

The organization called on all international and human rights institutions, especially UNESCO, to shoulder their responsibilities towards the holy place, and to stop this "grave violation."

In a veiled threat, the Waqf said "the occupation government bears full responsibility for what happens as a result." Meaning that Muslims will riot.

The Palestinian Authority issued a very similar statement denouncing the event.

Ma'an published this video of a large tourist group visiting the holy site, whom they call "settlers," in order to inflame Arabs to stop large numbers of respectful Jews and non-Jews from visiting the holy site.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Mondoweiss' (and "human rights activist") fawning interview with a terrorist

Frank Barat's byline in Mondoweiss says that he is a "Human Rights activist based in London."

Mondoweiss publishes his adulatory interview with Leila Khaled, the notorious hijacker from the 1970s, who says that Palestinian Arabs didn't use enough terror during the intifada:

Q: How are you Leila? What are you doing nowadays in Amman?

Leila Khaled: I am fine as long as I am a part of the struggle for freedom, for our right of return and for an independent State with Jerusalem as capital. I know it is not going to happen in the near future, but I am fighting nevertheless. Here in Amman, I am the chief of the department of refugees and Right of Return in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P).

...Barat: If negotiations do not bring peace to the Palestinians, what will? What should the leadership do?

LK: Resist! That’s how you achieve your rights as a People. ...

Barat: P.L.O stands for Palestine Liberation Organization. Do you think it has lost its true meaning? Bassam Shaka in 2008 told me that the P.L.O, before anything, needed to go back to its roots as a liberation movement.

LK: No liberation is achieved without resistance. My party has not changed. It has stuck to its original program. We are calling to escalate the resistance. People talk about popular resistance. It does not only mean demonstrations. Using arms is also popular. We have people who are ready to fight.

Barat: What does peaceful and non-violent resistance means for someone like yourself, who chose armed resistance as a mean for liberation?

LK: Resistance takes more than one face. It can be all kinds of resistance. Non violent and violent. I am ok with those who choose non-violence. We are not going to liberate our country by armed struggle only. Other kinds of resistance are necessary. The political one, diplomatic one, the non violent one. We need to use whatever we have got.

... We chose armed struggle. We did not achieve our goals. Then the intifada broke out and the whole world took us seriously. We gained the support of people all over the world. Still, we did not reach our goals because the leadership was not brave enough at that time to escalate the intifada, to take it to another level.

..Every year, around December, I look back at the past year and then decide to do something for the coming year. This year, I decided to quit smoking, so I did.

Barat: Mabruck!

Israel-haters don't have the slightest shame about their hypocrisy of pretending to care about "human rights" while discussing how to murder the most Israeli Jews in order to achieve their aims. Barat has not the slightest discomfort when Khaled says that blowing up buses and restaurants was not enough for her.

But at least we learned one thing from the terrorist Khaled: when "pro-Palestinian activists" say "popular resistance" it does not necessarily mean "non-violent resistance."

(h/t Gary@CiFWatch)

UPDATE: Ma'an also published the interview.

Lebanese apartheid: More than half of Palestinians in Lebanon live in poverty

From Ma'an:

Around 160,000 Palestinians are living below the poverty line in refugee camps in Lebanon, the ambassador to Beirut says.

Nearly 13,000 Palestinian refugees are living in extreme poverty in Lebanon, Ashraf Dabour told Ma'an.

Palestinian refugees are banned from entering 75 professions in Lebanon. "Practicing any of these careers is considered a breach of Lebanese law," Dabour said.

The Lebanese parliament amended a law restricting Palestinian refugees' access to work. "However, the Lebanese cabinet has not put that amendment into effect," the Palestinian ambassador said.

"We hear sweet talk from Lebanese officials about the Palestinian refugees' right to work and live in dignity, but in reality nothing is translated into action."

Dabour said the Palestinian health sector in Lebanon owed hospitals around $2 million. "There are some medical procedures which our health security program in Lebanon can't afford, and I hereby urge Arab and Palestinian businessmen to help our people in refugee camps in Lebanon."

There were, at the end of 2010, between 260,000 and 280,000 Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon (UNRWA has over 465,000 registered "refugees" but about 200,000 actually left Lebanon for Europe and elsewhere.)

Which means that more than half of the Palestinians in Lebanon are in poverty, because of the discrimination they face by the Lebanese government.

Not that this is new news. Two years ago UNRWA came out with a report with more specifics about Palestinian poverty in Lebanon, and it mentioned that one reason was that many were forced to live in "closed" camps that were not integrated into the economy of surrounding towns, and that in itself was an indicator of likely poverty. Only one other area had that same problem - the West Bank, under the PA.

Since then, Palestinian Arab refugees from Syria have come into Lebanon, and been forced into these same overcrowded and poverty-stricken camps, unlike other refugees from Syria.

Yet this blatant discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon is simply not mentioned by those who pretend to care about them. No calls for boycotts by rock stars, no campus demonstrations, no calls for aid.

When their suffering cannot be blamed, even indirectly, on Israel, no one really gives a damn.

The next time you see a "pro-Palestinian" demonstration, just ask them about discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon. And put it on video.

Mahmoud Abbas writes entire article full of lies about Iraqi Jews

Last week I noted a new book in Arabic that claimed that Jews were forced out of Iraq by Iraqis who were colluding with Zionists. Because of this collusion, the Iraqis took away the rights of Jews and eventually forced them out,

As nutty as that was, Mahmoud Abbas' idea of history is even more filled with lies.

He wrote an article in Ma'an two weeks ago, translated now by MEMRI, where he claims there was a Zionist-British-Iraqi conspiracy to expel the Jews. He further claims that Iraqi Jews had no desire to leave the country but a Zionist terror spree in Iraq convinced them to go.

We've seen these bizarre conspiracy theories before, and they have been debunked thoroughly. Here is another opportunity to show that Mahmoud Abbas is a liar.

Here is how the American Jewish Yearbook contemporaneously described life for Jews in Iraq before Israel was declared a state:

Iraq's position at the crossroads of Russian and Western influences made her the target for conflicting propaganda from Russian sources on the one hand, and American and British on the other. Whenever these cross-currents resulted in student demonstrations, strikes or even the fall of a government, as in January, 1948, the Jews were the first to be endangered by the restless elements.

As a result of the growing economic discrimination against Jews, a number of them emigrated from Iraq, and many went to Palestine, usually illegally. The Arab League boycott of "Zionist goods," in which Iraq had already distinguished itself in 1946, furnished a ready pretext for commercial discrimination. The boycott was against all goods coming from and via Palestine. Typical of the stupidly blind fanaticism was a case reported in October, 1947, when Swiss goods arriving in Baghdad by an airplane which had landed at a Palestinian airport were confiscated and burned at once.

When the UN partition decision was announced, a storm broke out in Iraq as in all other Arab states. Nevertheless, the Iraqi government did not allow any serious bloodshed or pillage to develop. It contented itself with nonviolent economic pressure. To protect Iraqi Jews, Chief Rabbi Sassoon Kedmi of Baghdad was compelled to declare to the Iraqi press the "complete solidarity of Iraqi Jews with other Iraqis in the denunciation of Zionism and in their determination to continue living in brotherly Iraq, as they have lived for hundreds of years."

However, the fury had been let loose. After December 1, 1947, no Jews were permitted to leave Iraq, and those who had not yet left could not now escape. At first the Iraqi assault on local Jewry was financial, Jews being forced to contribute large sums to the fighting fund for the Palestinian Arabs. From January to May, 1948, life in Iraq was extremely unpleasant. Anti-Jewish feeling ran high, especially as Iraqi troops were defeated and the Arab refugees began arriving from Palestine. However, there was an outward calm. There were no pogroms in Iraq then, at least none that received any publicity abroad.

The storm really broke on May 15. Then, Jews were treated in Iraq as enemies within the gate, spies, agents provocateurs. Iraqi Jewry's only hope for the future lay in emigration.

When Iraq joined the other Arab nations in the war against Israel in May, 1948, the antagonism and bitterness, which had been stored up against the Jews of Iraq during the six months that followed the United Nations decision to partition Palestine, found an outlet. There were demonstrations by angered mobs and riots in some of the smaller towns in Iraq which resulted in some loss of life and damage to property. But for the most part Iraqi Jewry suffered from forms of official persecution, such as travel restrictions, dismissal of Jewish government officials, excessive taxation, and "voluntary contributions" to "general welfare" causes.

All Jews were classed as enemy aliens, and all Zionist activities were characterized as treason. Imposing martial law, the government embarked on a program of searching Jewish homes "for illegal weapons," since, under martial law, arrests or searches could be made on the sole basis of suspicion. Many Iraqis found this a convenient way of settling long-standing personal feuds with their Jewish neighbors. All in all, 310 Jews were arrested in Bagdad alone during the initial period of the war; about half of these were released after questioning, and the rest were held for trial. Similar acts occurred in other towns and villages.

The anti-Jewish repressions also served as a lucrative source of income for the government, which imposed heavy fines upon arrested Jews, thus replenishing its treasury and helping to finance the cost of the war. In addition, the government requisitioned buildings owned by the Jewish community, as well as some Jewish-owned private buildings, to house Arab refugees from Palestine. The sequestration of Jewish property and business, and blackmail, official and unofficial, proved profitable undertakings. The Jews found themselves forced to become the heaviest contributors to government campaigns for funds to continue the war and to provide for the Arab refugees, as the alternative to being branded enemies, Zionists, Communists, or spies. Thus, the wave of arrests of wealthy Jews was especially productive financially. The dismissal of almost all Jewish officials from government jobs, to "insure the better guarding of state secrets," proved of benefit to the large number of Iraqi Moslems who replaced them. Jews were also prohibited from enrolling in government schools of higher education.

The anti-Jewish persecutions reached their height with the arrest and execution of Shafiq Ades, an Iraqi Jew, on the charge of dealing with the enemy by selling arms to Israel. Surplus material which Ades had purchased two years previously from the British army was found in Palestine during the fighting. Ades claimed that he had sold the equipment to Italy. Because Ades threatened to expose several Moslem high government officials as having been involved in the deal, his trial was held behind closed doors. He was convicted in September, 1948, and his hanging in the public square in Basra was followed by the confiscation of his property, officially valued at $20,000,000. The execution of Ades was a shock to most Iraqis, Jews and non-Jews alike, because he had never associated himself with the Jewish community or contributed to its institutions.

No Jew was spared in the outburst of Iraqi antagonism, not even Chief Rabbi Sassoon Kadourie, who was arrested in October, 1948, allegedly for having, in the course of his Yom Kippur sermon in the synagogue, exhorted the Jews to "acts contrary to the safety of the state."

Contrary to Abbas' claims, there was persecution against Iraqi Jews before Israel; Iraqi Jews risked their lives to make aliyah before Israel was declared; the Iraqi government was the only party behind the decision to expel their Jews and grab their property; the Jews who said that they were anti-Zionist were often forced to say that in order to keep their jobs or money (and even then it did not help them.)

I also would like to call attention to an AP article written during the first phase of the Iraqi exodus, that shows that many Jews were anxious to leave Iraq and go to Israel:

Abbas is once again proven to be a liar.

Hamas still holding Gaza hostage by refusing fuel shipments

From Ma'an:

The Gaza Strip has not received enough fuel to resume normal electricity levels, a Gaza energy official told Ma'an on Saturday.

The deal as described by al-Nunu includes longer-term measures to increase the capacity of the power plant and link Gaza's electricity grid to Egyptian infrastructure. The shorter-term requirement is the delivery of fuel into Gaza, but a disagreement on the route of the fuel still appeared to be pending agreement.

Egypt wants to stop the use of underground tunnels for delivery of Egyptian fuel purchased by Palestinian authorities, and has severely reduced supply through the tunnel network, prompting the current crisis.

The Gaza government is pressing for the Rafah terminal between the countries to be equipped for fuel transfer, and is reluctant to accept fuel to be delivered via the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing.

The government fears Israel will use control of supplies to squeeze the coastal strip.

However, Rafah currently is only fitted for passengers, and its development is restricted by an agreement between Egypt, Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.

"We are still waiting for the Egyptian agreement to let fuel enter Gaza officially and legally," Abu al-Amreen told Ma'an.

As I have noted several times, Israel never restricted the flow if fuel to Gaza except for logistical reasons, and was regularly supplying all of Gaza's power plant needs until January 2011 when Hamas refused the shipments.

So when you cut out all the double-talk, Hamas is less interested in helping Gazans than it is in refusing to get fuel through Kerem Shalom. Hamas is using the crisis as an excuse to gain politically - and Gazans are the ones suffering because of it. Hamas knows that if the fuel goes through Kerem Shalom, there would be no political pressure on Egypt to prioritize other delivery methods, so Hamas prefers to keep Gaza in the dark - endangering the electric supply to hospitals, water treatment plants and other infrastructure - to get its message across.

The entire crisis is an exercise in cynicism and disregard for the lives of Gazans, and yet the world is still fooled by Hamas' subterfuge.

Do you think that "pro-Palestinian" activists would ever say a word against Hamas? Have they ever?

Abbas to Lebanese PalArabs: "Screw you"

From Ma'an:

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will not be offered Lebanese passports, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday following his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at the Republican Palace. Abbas’ remark quashed recent rumors concerning the issuing of Lebanese passports to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, adding that the refugees’ presence in the country is temporary, particularly as Lebanon’s membership in the UN Security Council next year will help the Palestinian cause.

Generations have grown up in Lebanon, raised families, and died, but their supposed "leader" is more interested in them keeping their stateless status rather than giving them the simple choice of allowing them to be more integrated into the land of their birth. Mahmoud Abbas, that supposedly moderate leader of the PA, the PLO and Fatah, who claims to represent millions of people of Palestinian Arab descent, has once again told his people to go screw themselves rather than give them the option of happiness as full citizens of other Arab lands. He arrogantly claims to know what is best for his people, and is dead-set against giving them the option of making their own decisions. Because he knows that the majority them would not choose to put their families through the hell that they have gone through thanks to the decisions of Arab leaders over the past six decades. Palestinian Arabs who choose to become citizens of Arab countries will, by and large, never choose to move to an eventual "Palestine." They will identify only peripherally as "Palestinian." They will lose their value as pawns to corrupt, arrogant "leaders" who pretend to know what is best for them, and whose power derives from their very misery. Moreover, if Arab countries would give PalArabs full citizenship, a significant number of Palestinian Arabs in the territories - hundreds of thousands, if not over a million - would happily move to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Dubai. (Ironically, they would also have a positive influence on most of their host Arab countries, as they tend to be better educated and harder working, and Gulf countries import many workers from Indonesia and Africa, causing many problems that could be avoided if Palestinian Arab workers replaced them.) The operative word here is "choice." Palestinian Arabs are not given the power to choose where to live, and Arab nations specifically deny them the ability to become citizens that they give all other Arabs. Yet there are no "pro-Palestinian" organizations tha lobby on behalf of real Palestinian Arabs. They all repeat the lie that they can best help them by fighting Israel, militarily or politically. It is a myth, and one that is easily disproven - it has not helped them one bit in 61 years. "Human rights" organizations may mention some of these problems in isolation but they do not push for the simplest, fairest and cheapest solution to the problem of millions of stateless people. Abbas, the one person who pretends to represent his people the best, tells his suffering would-be constituents that their six-decade old problem is "temporary." This is a travesty of human rights. The way to tell if someone is truly pro-Palestinian Arab or is simply using the Palestinian Arabs as pawns to help destroy Israel is to ask him one simple question: Do you support giving all Palestinian Arabs the choice to become full citizens of any Arab country that they desire, according to the existing naturalization rules that they have for other Arabs? This is the question that needs to be asked of every Arab leader, every Palestinian Arab leader, every NGO, every human rights organization. It should be hammered in during every interview. They must be forced to answer the question clearly and forcefully. Unless they can answer that question in the affirmative, the inescapable conclusion is that most people who pretend to be "pro-Palestinian" are nothing more than liars and hypocrites who support discrimination against the very people they claim they want to help.

Work accident! (correction)

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian was killed on Monday morning and four others were injured in a mysterious explosion in the northern Gaza Strip, medical sources reported. One Palestinian, identified as Rajab Usama Subuh, 25, was killed in the blast, while two of four others injured in Beit Lahiya were in critical condition just before noon on Monday.

Earlier, Gazans had claimed this came from an Israeli artillery shell, but the IDF denied any activities in the area. The PalArab self-death count in 2009 is now at 29. UPDATE: This was not a work accident, just an apparent case of stupidity:

Palestinian hospital officials say a 25-year-old Gaza man has been killed and five people have been wounded in a blast along the border with Israel.
Palestinian security officials say the explosion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya was caused when people who were melting down scrap metal for recycling inadvertently threw an explosive device into the fire.

This no longer falls into my definition of self-death (although, as Richard from Augean Stables points out in the comments, it is a Darwin Award candidate,) so we are back down to 28, unless more information comes out.

(h/t PTWatch)