Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

MTV romanticizes Arabs stealing Israeli cars

MTV, in a show called "The Vice Guide to Everything," goes to Ramallah to watch Palestinian Arabs steal an Israeli car and go drag racing.

The show is set up for the viewers to identify with the thieves.

From Israel Today via Israel Unity Coalition:

The episode, titled “Ramallah Racing,” opens with the host’s narration stating that “since legally importing car parts is such a hassle, some enterprising young Palestinians came up with a clever alternative – sneak into Israel, steal a nice car, then drive it back into the West Bank and chop it up for parts.”

Viewers are then introduced to “Adam,” a Palestinian man who claims he no longer actively steals cars, but has volunteered to demonstrate how it’s done.

Adam asks the understanding host, “Someone who steals our land, why shouldn’t we steal his car?”

Adam is then shown smashing the window of an Israeli vehicle and struggling to break into the steering column. The show’s host helps Adam to break the column’s covering and start the car. The two then race away while giving approving nods to one another.

Nearly 50,000 Israeli vehicles are stolen every year. It is one of the worst criminal plagues the nation deals with. Prior to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, car theft in Israel was at normal levels. But it has more than doubled thanks to Palestinian thieves being able to quickly reach a safe haven in PA-controlled areas.

Israeli authorities do not dare to enter the Palestinian areas to reclaim the vehicles, since repeatedly doing so would cause an international uproar against Israel. The Palestinians know this, and use it to their advantage.

In turn, the rampant theft is a major factor in creating distrust of the Palestinian Arabs among Israeli Jews. Promoting and romanticizing that theft can only serve to further drive a wedge between the two sides.

The Ramallah part starts around the 7:00 mark.

The Vice Guide to Everything - MTV Shows

Here is a still showing a graveyard of stolen Israeli cars:

The MTV host says there is nothing political about this; it is just Palestinian Arabs rebelling against authority like any other teenagers.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Stuxnet still causing havoc in Iran

Some great new details in the JPost about Stuxnet:

The Stuxnet virus, which has attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities and which Israel is suspected of creating, has set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by two years, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze the program’s code told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

“It will take two years for Iran to get back on track,” Langer said in a telephone interview from his office in Hamburg, Germany. “This was nearly as effective as a military strike, but even better since there are no fatalities and no full-blown war. From a military perspective, this was a huge success.”

...Eric Byres, a computer security expert who runs a website called Tofino Security, which provides solutions for industrial companies with Stuxnet-related problems, told the Post on Tuesday that the number of Iranians visiting his site had jumped tremendously in recent weeks – a likely indication that the virus is still causing great disarray at Iranian nuclear facilities.

“What caught our attention was that last year we maybe had one or two people from Iran trying to access the secure areas on our site,” Byres said. “Iran was never on the map for us, and all of a sudden we are now getting massive numbers of people going to our website, and people who we can identify as being from Iran.”

“There are a large number of people trying to access the secure areas directly from Iran and other people who are putting together fake identities,” he said. “We are talking about hundreds. It could be people who are curious about what is going on, but we are such a specialized site that it would only make sense that these are people who are involved in control systems.”

I think it is time to release a specialized patch, custom made just for these Iranians who are trying to clean up the virus....

Stunning 1930s Jerusalem photos - I need a 3D wizard

One commenter named "lol", in the comments of my posting about old photos of Israel, mentioned a huge collection of old photos that can be found here.

Some of the most stunning photographs were taken from an airplane, apparently in 1936. The photographic quality is absolutely superb. You can download high resolution TIF images from the site, hosted by the Library of Congress.

It is easier to show you a video indicating how high quality the photos are as I zoom and pan across the Old City, concentrating on the beautiful Hurva and Tiferes Yisroel synagogues that were destroyed by Jordan in 1948, from multiple angles:

Now, I know that there is software out there to convert 2D images to 3D models. Can someone out there take these photos, and others on the site, and turn it into a complete model of what the Old City, specifically the Jewish Quarter, looked like before it was destroyed in 1948? I'm sure we can find documentation and experts who can identify buildings, streets and other landmarks so in the end we can have an accurate 3D atlas of how Jerusalem was, especially identifying all the destroyed synagogues that used to be found throughout the Old City.

Who's up for the challenge?

China disagrees with Arab world over Jerusalem?

From Victor Shikhman:

It went unnoticed by me, and apparently by much of the international English language media, that China, a traditionally loyal diplomatic backer and arms supplier of the Arab states and their terrorist proxies, is carving out an increasingly nuanced position on the Israeli-Arab conflict, one more balanced to the interest of the State of Israel and more likely to result in a just and lasting peace agreement. Here's the report, from May 14th, 2010, on Al Jazeera (Google Translation):

A dispute on Jerusalem between the Chinese and the Arab delegation, attending the fourth session of the Ministerial Meeting of China-Arab Cooperation Forum in the port city of Tianjin. The dispute erupted after Chinese officials refused to sign a joint document with the delegation, which includes the Arab Foreign Ministers, East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. According to Al Jazeera's correspondent in China, Ezzat Shahrour that the Arab delegation was surprised at the last minute when Chinese officials refused to sign the document, despite all the efforts that have been made at the last minute in order to contain the situation.

The Al Jazeera article does seem to say that - the Chinese refused to sign a paper calling Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

The position is not quite as pro-Israel as Shikhamn thinks, though. I managed to dig up the Chinese-language communique from the conference, hosted on the Chinese embassy site in Syria, autotranslated:

China's emphasis on supporting the Arab countries under the relevant United Nations resolutions, "land for peace" principle, "the Arab Peace Initiative" and the Middle East peace "road map" peace and stability in the Middle East a strategic choice; call for early resumption of the line of peace talks. The two sides reached a consensus in the international community to support the "two-state solution" under the framework of relevant UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, based on the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian State; restore legitimate Arab rights, an end to Israel beyond 1967 (lines) including East Jerusalem, the [end of] occupation of Arab territories in the Middle East to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace; called on Israel to respond to the peaceful aspirations of the Arab countries, in the "Arab Peace Initiative" with the Arab countries on the basis of negotiations, the full implementation of Security Council resolution; called upon the international community to continue to provide political and economic support of Palestine, to improve the humanitarian situation in Palestine; to lift the Israeli blockade on Gaza, open ports, and promote reconstruction in Gaza; demand that Israel cease, including East Jerusalem, the occupied Arab territories, including settlement building point of such actions; under the relevant resolutions of the United Nations to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem; demanded that Israel cease all actions exacerbate tensions in order to maintain regional stability in the Middle East peace process forward and create favorable conditions.

So while it does indeed appear that China is not officially supportive of Jerusalem being the capital of a Palestinian Arab state, they still want Jerusalem to be divided.

It is an interesting piece of political intrigue, though.

(h/t Firouz)

Ray Hanania says that "Zionism" is a New York City organization

Yet another article by the "moderate" Ray Hanania shows that his grip on reality is getting more tenuous by the day.

Yes, he still denies that Helen Thomas was demanding, in an unguarded moment, that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine." And he insists that her comments about "Zionists" owning Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street" - classic anti-semitic tropes - were about Zionists. (No doubt, hook-nosed "Zionists" at that.)

But now Hanania is going off on his own bizarre theory - that Zionism is an organization!

Thomas has criticized and denounced Zionism, a political movement with headquarters in new York City. The purpose of the organization is to champion the interests of a foreign country, Israel.

...Zionism is a political organization with headquarters in New York. Its agenda is to defend a foreign nation.

...Ms. Thomas criticized Zionism, a recognized political organization that champions the interests of a foreign country.

That's three times he claims that there is an organization, based out of Jew (sorry, New) York City, that is called "Zionism."

Is he referring to the Zionist Organization of America? Or the ADL? Or, more likely, has he just lost his mind?

Even funnier is how he tries to imply that supporting a foreign country is somehow inherently anti-American. Yet on one of his many websites, he headlines it "Can we save Palestine"? Isn't he then advocating for a foreign entity whose policies might be against American interests? Not only that, on that page he announces his candidacy to run for the Palestinian National Council and for the PA Parliament - indicating that Ray Hanania is more loyal to "Palestine" than to his own country of birth! Why, Ray, is being a Zionist somehow inherently anti-American but wanting to join a foreign government is not?

Just more hypocrisy from good ol' Ray. Keep it coming; it is really funny to see you fall apart like this, over a bitter old bigot no less. Since you claim to be a comedian, surely you can see the humor in this.

The real problem is that, by any objective measure, Hanania really is much more moderate than 99% of Palestinian Arabs. And even he cannot find a way to condemn the explicit bigotry of a fellow Arab. Which does not bode well for the chances of peace.

Great video of Israel

This video, which I had never seen before, was apparently made for Israel's 60th birthday.

It's very well done and a lot of fun to watch:

From the Israel YouTube channel.

(h/t Joel)

Some history found, some history recovered

Joel emails me two related items.

One is the Flickr photo album from the Palestine Exploration Fund, which has been studying the area of historic Palestine (including parts of what are now Lebanon and Jordan) since 1865. Over 150 photos are visible, some quite fascinating:

View of the Temple Mount, 1864

Panorama of the Dome of the Rock, 1917 (notice the weeds)

Rachel's Tomb

Also, a recent re-discovery of artifacts from Jerusalem in the first century CE.

HRW, UN actually chide Hamas

Hamas has closed a lot of NGOs and charities over the past couple of years. But one organization they closed on November 30th has some powerful friends.

From Palestine Monitor, December 2:

The Sharek Youth Forum in Gaza City was forcibly closed by police on Tuesday. The forum’s liberal agenda had resulted in frequent clashes with the Hamas government prior to its closure. Sharek staff protest the action is illegal and unjust.

In the past seven months the group’s headquarters have been repeatedly raided and members of staff have been subjected to physical intimidation, harassment and threats. During this time, Executive manager Muheib Shaath has been summoned to 15 separate interrogations from internal security. A summer camp run by Sharek in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was destroyed in May.

Sharek co-founder Sufian Mshasha told us the harassment and ultimate closure was “prompted by our agenda of democracy, social development, and our insistence on holding activities for both genders.” He claimed that “80-90%” of questioning of Sharek staff focused on their practise of mixing genders in their programmes.

The webpage of Sharek includes a large list of donors, including George Soros, the Carter Center, UNRWA, UNESCO, and Save the Children-Sweden.

So in this case, there is actually an outcry.

From UNSCO:

The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian Territory, Maxwell Gaylard, today voiced his concern about the forced closure on 30 November by the local authorities in Gaza of all Gaza-based offices of the non-governmental organization Sharek Youth Forum.

“I am very concerned about the recent forced closing of Sharek Youth Forum in Gaza. Sharek is an important NGO partner of the United Nations in its work on behalf of children and the youth in Gaza”, Mr. Gaylard said.

From HRW:

Hamas authorities in Gaza should allow an organization that helps children and youth to reopen and penalize officials who have harassed its workers, Human Rights Watch said today. On November 30, 2010, Hamas authorities arbitrarily closed all of the Gaza offices of the group Sharek Youth Forum, which provides psychosocial and vocational support and operates summer camps and other programs for 60,000 Gaza children and youth.

Will Hamas cave now that one of their many anti-democratic actions bubbled to the surface?

Stuxnet written by...the Chinese?

A Forbes blogger has a fascinating theory:

I uncovered a connection between two of the key players in the Stuxnet drama: Vacon, the Finnish manufacturer of one of two frequency converter drives targeted by this malware; and RealTek, who’s digital certificate was stolen and used to smooth the way for the worm to be loaded onto a Windows host without raising any alarms. A third important piece of the puzzle, which I’ll discuss later in this article, directly connects a Chinese antivirus company which writes their own viruses with the Stuxnet worm.

...China has an intimate knowledge of Iran’s centerfuges since, according to one source quoted above, they’re of Chinese design.

China has better access than any other country to manufacturing plans for the Vacon frequency converter drive made by Vacon’s Suzhou facility and specifically targeted by the Stuxnet worm (along with an Iranian company’s drive).

China has better access than any other country to RealTek’s digital certificates through it’s Realsil office in Suzhou and, secondarily, to JMicron’s office in Taiwan.

China has direct access to Windows source code, which would explain how a malware team could create 4 key zero day vulnerabilities for Windows when most hackers find it challenging to develop even one.

...As far as China goes, I’ve identified 5 distinct ties to Stuxnet that are unique to China as well as provided a rationale for the attack which fits China’s unique role as Iran’s ally and customer, while opposing Iran’s fuel enrichment plans. There’s still a distinct lack of information on any other facilities that suffered damage, and no good explanations for why there was such massive collateral damage across dozens of countries if only one or two facilities in one nation state were the targets however based solely on the known facts, I consider China to be the most likely candidate for Stuxnet’s origin.

I don't think this is altogether convincing, but it is certainly worth consideration. If you are into Stuxnet, read the whole thing.

(h/t Clark)

Wikileaks: Egypt reiterates that Iran is region's greatest threat

A recent Wikileaks cable, from February 2010, shows that Egypt continues to view Iran and its proxies as the major threat to the entire region, and it even looks at the Palestinian Arab issue through the lens of Iran.

This memo is a scene-setter for Admiral Mullen:

President Mubarak sees Iran as Egypt's -- and the region's -- primary strategic threat. Egypt's already dangerous neighborhood, he believes, has only become more so since the fall of Saddam, who, as nasty as he was, nevertheless stood as a wall against Iran. He now sees Tehran's hand moving with ease throughout the region, "from the Gulf to Morocco." The immediate threat to Egypt comes from Iranian conspiracies with Hamas (which he sees as the "brother" of his own most dangerous internal political threat, the Muslim Brotherhood) to stir up unrest in Gaza, but he is also concerned about Iranian machinations in Sudan and their efforts to create havoc elsewhere in the region, including in Yemen, Lebanon, and even the Sinai, via Hezbollah. While Tehran's nuclear threat is also a cause for concern, Mubarak is more urgently seized with what he sees as the rise of Iranian surrogates (Hamas and Hezbollah) and Iranian attempts to dominate the Middle East.

...Egypt continues to support our efforts to resume negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and maintains a regular dialogue with all sides. Egyptian sponsored negotiations on Palestinian reconciliation are ongoing. Egypt's objectives are to avoid another Gaza crisis while eroding Hamas' power and ultimately returning the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.

This part is interesting as well:

President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as a cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as untouchable compensation for making peace with Israel. Decision-making within MOD rests almost solely with Defense Minister Tantawi. In office since 1991, he consistently resists change to the level and direction of FMF funding and is therefore one of our chief impediments to transforming our security relationship. Nevertheless, he retains President Mubarak's support. You should encourage Tantawi to place greater emphasis on countering asymmetric threats rather than focusing almost exclusively on conventional force.

Which sounds like Egypt, despite over thirty years of peace with Israel, still thinks of its army as primarily concerned with a future war with Israel.

Wikileaks: The Suha Arafat Affair

A pair of interesting cables from Wikileaks concerning Suha Arafat, Yasir Arafat's widow.

From 2006:

The Government of Tunisia's Official Journal of September 26 published a notice that Suha Arafat, wife of the late Palestinian Authority president, and her 11-year old daughter Zahwa had acquired Tunisian nationality. Mrs. Arafat and her daughter have been living in Tunisia since the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, and Zahwa Arafat attends the American Cooperative School of Tunisia. Suha Arafat's presence in Tunisia long predates that, however. She had been a resident of Tunisia prior to her marriage, and, after residing in the Palestinian Territories from 1996-98, she returned in 1998, alternating between residences in France and Tunisia.

...We remain puzzled as to why Mrs. Arafat would want Tunisian citizenship...One possible motivation is that under Tunisian law, foreign participation in a totally non-exporting service industry cannot exceed 50 percent. Several months ago, Mrs. Arafat set up one such company -- to
build an international school in Tunis. Tunisian citizenship will allow her to control this company.

And then things went downhill. From 2007:

The GOT's decision last summer to revoke Suha Arafat's Tunisian citizenship, which had only been granted less than a year earlier, made international headlines. Since the appearance of the official register notice on August 7, the chattering class in Tunisia has not ceased to speculate about the reasons behind the decision. In a mid-October telcon with Ambassador Godec, Mrs. Arafat attributed her ouster to the personal animus of First Lady Leila Ben Ali, following a dispute over the forced closure of the Bouebdelli School, a well-respected private school. Had
it remained open, the Bouebdelli School would have represented serious competition to the new Carthage International School, a joint venture between the two First Ladies. It is doubtful that we will ever know all of the facts in this affair, but the stories of corruption swirling around the Carthage International School have a ring of truth to them.

...In a mid-October telcon with the Ambassador, Ms. Arafat blamed her ouster on the personal animus of First Lady Leila Ben Ali. "I can't believe what she's has done to me," Arafat exclaimed, "I've lost everything!" She charged that all of her properties in Tunisia had been confiscated, even by falsifying documents transferring ownership. (Note: It is rumored that Mrs. Arafat had invested -- and lost -- some 2.5 million euros in the Carthage International School. End Note.) In addition, she said, her friends and colleagues in Tunisia, including her banker, had also come under pressure. "Anyone who supports me is punished."

...Plenty of other theories have stoked the rumor mill in the Suha Arafat affair. One well-connected Palestinian resident in Tunisia told EmbOff that what sealed Mrs. Arafat's fate was that on a recent visit to Tripoli, she had asked Libyan Leader Qaddafi for money. Qaddafi had readily provided a hand-out, but he reportedly subsequently called President Ben Ali to chastise him for failing to provide adequately for the widow of the late Palestinian President. Ben Ali's acute embarrassment, so the story goes, quickly turned to wrath. It was not long before Mrs. Arafat's citizenship was revoked. Another theory holds that Suha Arafat was ousted because she had absconded with a significant amount of the first family's assets. Finally, in the face of persistent rumors that Mrs. Arafat had secretly married Belhassen Trabelsi, brother of the Tunisian First Lady, some commentators chalked up the whole ordeal to the failure of that relationship.

Some other juicy parts of that latter cable, including Suha's accusations of corruption towards the ruling family and the fact that the for-profit school had enjoyed great governmental largesse.

It seems that her Suha learned a bit about corruption during her marriage.

Wikileaks: British anger at UK Muslim open letter

From the latest batch of Wikileaks, a 2006 cable:

Prominent British Muslim leaders sent an open letter to PM Tony Blair August 12 stating that his policy on Iraq and the Middle East offers “ammunition to extremists” and puts British lives “at increased risk.” Appearing as a full page advertisement in newspapers August 13, the letter was signed by three of the four Muslim MPs, three of the five Muslim members of the House of Lords, and 38 Muslim organizations (for full text and list of signatories see para 10). Although the letter states specifically that “attacking civilians is never justified,” its signatories have used this sentence as a double-edged sword in defending the letter publicly, in effect equating civilian deaths in Lebanon with potential civilian deaths from terrorism. As MCB Secretary General Dr. Mohammed Abdul Bari told the press, “As Muslims, we condemn attacks on civilians wherever they happen. Civilians in the UK, the Middle East, and the rest of the world should all enjoy protection.”

HMG reacted sharply to the letter. A spokesman for PM Blair (currently on holiday in Barbados), noting that al-Qaida terrorist attacks began well before Iraq, said, “To imply al-Qaida is driven by an honest disagreement over foreign policy is a mistake.” Home Secretary John Reid told the BBC, “I’m not going to question the motives of anyone who has signed this letter, but I think it is a dreadful misjudgment if we believe the foreign policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under the threat of terrorist activity if we do not have a foreign policy with which the terrorists happen to agree.” Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander echoed these sentiments, saying “No government worth its salt should allow its foreign policy to be dictated to under the threat of terrorism.” Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said it would be “the gravest SIPDIS possible error” to blame foreign policy for the threat of terrorism. “This is part of a distorted view of the world, a distorted view of life,” she said. “Let’s put the blame where it belongs: with people who wantonly want to take innocent lives.” Other ministers called the letter “facile,” “dangerous,” and “foolish.”

It is too bad that, perhaps subconsciously, world diplomats do exactly what they say they won't do: allowing their foreign policy to be dictated by fears of terrorism. But they do it a bit more indirectly, by blaming Israel for Palestinian Arab intransigence and not fulfilling impossible demands.

Israeli eye doctors start work in Maldives amid protests

From Minivan News:

Visiting Israeli doctors from the ‘Eye from Zion’ NGO have begun treating patients at Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) after producing attested documentation, Haveeru has reported.

State Housing Minister Abdulla Shahid, in charge of the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), said there was “high demand” for the team’s services, despite protests in Male’ on Thursday.

Earlier, over the weekend:

Protests erupted across Male’ over the weekend that saw the burning of Israeli flags and calls to “ban all Israeli medical teams” from practicing in the Maldives...

Protesters burned several Israeli flags in Republican Square and demanded the deportation of seven visiting Israeli eye surgeons, who are holding free eye camps in Male’ and the island hospitals.

Protesters gathered near the tsunami monument on International Human Rights Day, claiming that “Jews would not provide any form of assistance, unless there is a hidden agenda”, according to the website of the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives.

The religious NGO has previously called on the government to “shun all medical aid from the Zionist regime”, alleging the Israeli surgeons “have become notorious for illegally harvesting organs from non-Jews around the world.”

Religious NGO Jamiyyathusalaf has also called on the government to provide citizens with military training “before Jews take over the country”.

President Mohamed Nasheed today met with the doctors the Israeli ‘Eye from Zion’ NGO and said “a vast majority of Maldivians” appreciated the humanitarian work of the doctors.

As when I first mentioned this in late November before, the comments section of this newspaper is overwhelmingly supportive of the Israeli effort.

Why do the losers get to define the terms of victory?

A New York Times op-ed by Robert Wright shows how the world has swallowed a Palestinian Arab lie -hook, line and sinker:

If there is no two-state solution, Israel can either (a) give Palestinians in the occupied territories the vote and watch as the Arab birth rate turns Israeli Jews into a minority; or (b) keep denying the vote to Arabs it has ruled for decades, thus incurring charges of apartheid, moving toward pariah status among nations, continuing to give propaganda fuel to regional troublemakers and raising the chances of disastrous war.

...Every day, settlement construction — especially in East Jerusalem — makes it harder to imagine two-state borders that would leave Palestinians with the minimal dignity necessary for lasting peace.

That word, "dignity," is the linchpin.

When Germany and Japan were defeated in World War II, no one said that the resulting, greatly reduced powers they had were too few to maintain the "dignity" of the vanquished and that they should be given more - or else there would be a threat of no "lasting peace." Peace was dependent on limiting their powers.

How did this concept of "dignity" for the losing side become a sine qua non for peace? In larger terms, why do a people and their leaders who have consistently worked towards the destruction of Israel deserve the dignity that they demand as a minimal starting point towards a reward of a state?

Palestinian Arabs did not accept any partition plan before 1948; they did not agitate for a "dignified" state when Jordan and Egypt controlled the territories, they universally supported Saddam Hussein against the allies, even recent polls show that they support terror attacks against Jews in Israel and argue that there is a legal obligation for "resistance" - so why, exactly, is their definition of "dignity" being accepted as a legitimate demand?

Beyond that, why does the party that has lost every single war get to define the terms of victory?

If there is to be a two-state solution, it must be a viable state - not a "dignified" state. Dignity is an elastic concept, with no objective definition, and the arbitrary definitions being bandied about by Palestinian Arabs have zero basis in reality. Not one person has ever yet explained why Jerusalem must be a part of a Palestinian state. Not only that, but the Palestinian Arabs discount the very real rights of the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria: while Arabs in Jerusalem can easily accept Israeli citizenship, Jews across the Green Line cannot be expected live in safety in a Palestinian Arab state - yet the demand that hundreds of thousands of Jews can be forced out of their homes is considered acceptable but a Jewish Jerusalem is not. This is not logical nor is there any real basis for such a demand.

The only reason people like Wright insist that Jerusalem must be divided and that Jews cannot live in the historic heartland of Israel is because Palestinian Arabs demand it. What is not explained by anybody is why they have the right to demand such a thing.

If the goal is a state, they can have one and they could have had one for decades. If the goal is a "dignified" state, then they are being given the unilateral right to define Israel to be a state without defensible borders and without real access to religious and historic sites that are unquestionably Jewish.

Which means that the world has accepted that Palestinian Arabs, consistent supporters of the wrong side in every single war and whose "moderate" leaders demand to this very day the demographic destruction of Israel, have more of a right to dignity than the Jewish nation does to dignity and security.

People have to start realizing that Palestinian Arab demands do not equal rights, and that a Palestinian Arab state cannot and should not be defined in a way that deprives the Jewish state and people of their own competing rights. Insistence is not the same as reality, but the world has confused the two for way too long.

One cheer for AFP

AFP, alone among major news wire services, noticed that Hamas' supposed new moderation was illusory:

The Islamist Hamas group in the Gaza Strip on Monday reiterated its aim to recover all of historic Palestine from the Mediterranean to Jordan, as it prepared to mark its 23rd anniversary.

Ismail Haniya, the senior Hamas leader in Gaza, had said on December 1 that the organisation would accept a peace deal with Israel if the Palestinian people approved it in a referendum.

"We say that Palestine from the sea to the (Jordan) river is fully the land of the Palestinians. We will cede none of it, and we will not recognise the so-called state of Israel," Hamas said in a statement.

It added that its intention was to make Jerusalem the "capital of the state of Palestine," and pledged "the failure of all methods of Judaisation" of the holy city by Israel.

On December 1, Haniya said: "We accept a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the land occupied in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital and a solution to the issue of refugees."

His statement had appeared to signal a shift in the group's long-standing policy of refusing to accept either Israel's legitimacy or any peace treaty negotiated by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

All of this information is easily available to anyone who bothers reading the Arabic press (here's an example from today.) It is really sad that what should be a simple piece of reporting - one that should have accompanied Haniyeh's reported comments, not followed them by nearly two weeks - is only available in one major English-language wire service.

They don't get three cheers because they didn't notice it earlier and for their gratuitous use of "Historic Palestine" as being from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, which is a myth.