Monday, August 13, 2007

The series continues....
Hamas' Executive Force on Monday banned any form of demonstration in Gaza unless its organisers obtain permission.

Spokesperson of the EF, Saber Khalifeh, issued a statement announcing that "for the sake of the general benefit and to secure the rule of law, it is totally forbidden to demonstrate without getting permission from the Executive Force."

The Palestinian factions called a rally on Monday in protest against EF actions in the Gaza Strip.

Eyewitnesses at the rally of Palestinian factions said the Executive Force banned journalists from covering the events.

A journalist who attempted to film the demonstration on his mobile phone was arrested.

Of course, Hamas' many repressive actions don't stop idiots in Britain from trying to increase ties with the terror group:
"The government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas," the all-party group of lawmakers said.
UPDATE: PCHR adds lots of details of this morning's moderate Hamas activities:
The Center’s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 11:00 on Monday, 13 August 2007, tens of members of the Executive Force deployed around the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Palestinian Legislative Council building. They prevented dozens of civilians from reaching the area to attend a rally organized by several PLO factions to protest the attacks of the Executive Force in the Gaza Strip. In addition, the Force prevented journalists from covering the rally, and confiscated the camera of Ahmad El-Ras, cameraman for Ramattan News Agency, and detained him in one of their vehicles. The Force members used sticks to disperse the demonstrators.

Ahmad El-Ras gave the following statement to PCHR’s fieldworker:

“At approximately 10:30, two colleagues and I went to cover the rally in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier area. When I disembarked from the agency vehicle carrying a camera, 2 members of the Executive Force raised their weapons at me; and one of them said to me, “If you take photage, we’ll put an end to you.” I answered them that I have not taken any photage; and I went back to the car to leave the area. Then, two Executive Force vehicles intercepted us. Force members took me and put me in one of their vehicles. They confiscated my camera. Several journalists gathered around the vehicle in which I was detained. They talked to the Force members. The latter stated that they would release me only if the camera tape is confiscated. And this happened.”

At approximately 11:35, two Executive Force gunmen raided the offices of Al-Arabiya and MBC satellite stations in the 12th floor of Al-Shoroq building in Gaza City. They confiscated the camera and rally photage belonging to Al-Arabiya. Reem Abd El-Karim, the director of the offices, informed PCHR’s fieldworker that the Executive Force gunmen raided the office and requested the rally photage. A verbal exchange took place when she refused to hand over the materials. However, the Executive Force took the camera and photage by force. The Executive Force returned the confiscated equipment to Al-Arabiya at approximately 15:30.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Palestine Today (English):
The An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, The military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), have announced responsibility for setting a trap for an Israeli Press vehicle on a road, east of Gaza City, on Friday.

The brigades claimed that one of the Israelis in the vehicle was injured.
Many of these tyes of reports end up being fabricated or exaggerated, but the point is not whether the PRC actually succeeded in targeting Israeli journalists - it is the fact that they are bragging about targeting them, thus violating international law (the Geneva Conventions define journalists as civilians and therefore as protected.)

Reporters Without Borders has a number of articles about alleged Israeli targeting of Palestinian Arab journalists, and about reporters being caught in the crossfire between warring PalArab factions, but I could not find a single mention of Palestinian terrorists targeting Israeli reporters.
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today (Arabic) reports that the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics announced this morning that one third of Palestinian Arab youth between the ages of 15-29 would consider emigrating. Fully 45% of young Palestinian males would leave, and the top reasons cited were the economy, security, and political reasons.

Now, who exactly is stopping them from leaving and making new lives in other countries? It appears that while the "right of return" is sacrosanct, the "right to emigrate" is not quite up there in the list of human rights that Palestinian Arabs like to talk about.

In addition, 59% of Palestinian Arab youth use the Internet. Evidently, the starvation we keep hearing about still allows the purchase of computers.
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestinian Arab psyche underwent tremendous changes in the years after the 1948 war. In some ways, the Palestinian Arabs were more fragmented than ever before - certainly physically - but in some very important ways, for the first time in their history, they were turning into a people.

It is difficult to overemphasize the amount of shame that the 1948 war inflicted on both the Arab nations and the Palestinian Arabs themselves. This unprecedented disgrace informs most of the actions taken by the Arabs during the 1950s and 1960s, and nothing took priority over erasing this shame from their collective minds.

In the early years after 1948, the refugees tended to blame the Arab countries for their fate. For their part, the Arab nations looked at Palestinian Arabs as embarrassing reminders of their impotence in 1948, and this is one of the reasons that there was so little interest shown by the Arab nations in helping out Palestinian refugees at all, let alone allowing them to resettle in their countries (again, with the exception of Jordan, who used them to help expand their own boundaries.)

As has always been the case, there were extremists and pragmatists among the Palestinian Arab populations. The influence of Amin Husayni was still felt as it was a Palestinian Arab who assassinated King Abdullah of Jordan in the Dome of the Rock in 1951, and his co-conspirators had ties to the ex-Mufti. In the following years, communism made ideological inroads into the refugee camps as well. The philosophy that made the greatest and broadest inroads in the Palestinian Arab consciousness, however, was that of pure hatred towards Israel.

Hate is not too strong a word to describe the feelings that Arabs, both Palestinian and at-large, felt about the Zionists and, by extension, all Jews. Loathing towards the Jews poured out of the Arab media. The disgrace of 1948 could not have elicited any other reaction to a people who are as proud as Arabs are. They seethed, they detested, they were disgusted by Jews. In the aftermath of the 1948 war the Jews of Arab countries were accused of being spies, many were tortured and ultimately most were expelled and their possessions confiscated.

The Arab nations' propaganda against Jews and Israel, and their pretense of caring about the refugees, seeped into the Palestinian Arab viewpoint. Although the Arab nations as a whole were using the Palestinians as pawns, often in conflicting ways, the cognitive dissonance of believing that their brethren were not interested in their well-being was too much for Palestinian Arabs to handle. It was much easier to blame Israel and the West for all their troubles than to see how they were being used for selfish, political gain.

No matter what their disposition - Christian or Arab, religious or secular, in camps or in houses in Israel - Palestinian Arabs created their own fictional accounts of the war in 1948 to mitigate some of their feelings of shame at having been in the forefront of their ignominious defeat. They made up stories of massacres by Jews (although practically none of them knew anyone who had been killed,) they claimed that the US and/or Britain had conspired against them, they claimed that the Arab nations swooped into Palestine in 1948 to defend them from the Jews, they claimed that they all had palatial homes in Palestine and huge tracts of land they owned that were stolen by the Jews. They kept inflating their fantasies and they taught them to their children, the next generation to carry on their tradition of hate.

As the UNRWA tried to employ them and fix the refugee problem by building the economy of the Middle East itself, the Palestinian Arabs had no qualms about taking every advantage of the system. They never reported any deaths in order to get more ration cards, and a black market in food rationing cards flourished in the camps. They started businesses in the camps but didn't put up signs for fear of losing their benefits. They happily took in all the free perks of refugeehood - by the early 1960s they were better fed, better educated and better equipped to work than their non-refugee neighbors. While their situation in 1950 was desperate, by 1960 the Palestinian refugees under UNRWA were doing better than most Arabs.

But if the UNRWA expected to see appreciation and thanks from the Palestinian Arabs, they were sorely mistaken. The Palestinians attacked the agency both verbally and physically. To the Palestinian Arabs, all the free schooling and aid - more than most refugees worldwide have ever received - only symbolized their dependence on Western charity. Their pride wasn't strong enough to say no to the benefits, but it was quite strong enough to despise the people who were providing them.

This was one manifestation of the defining characteristic of Palestinian Arabs that started in the 1950s: that of selfishness.

Even though they had supported a war that they lost, even though they had for the most part chosen to flee their homes in the expectation of a quick victory, even though they were to a large extent responsible for their own troubles, the Palestinian Arabs of the era had little capacity for self-examination nor for self-criticism. All the bad things that happened were the fault of others, and anything that could compensate for these bad things were their inherent right.

Another example of this selfishness was their utter inability to empathize with anyone besides themselves. Had the tables been turned, they would have happily cheered their Arab brethren dumping all the Jews into the sea, and the very idea of compromise with Jews when they were in the superior position was unthinkable. Now, in defeat, they clung to the 1947 UN Partition plan as their right - they wanted the victors to share the spoils with them, even though they would have laughed had someone asked them to do the same.

This selfishness stems from a number of factors: Arab supremacism, the desire to reinstate the Arab empire of the early part of the millennium, and Arab pride -where it is easier to deny history than to submit to the shame that accompanies defeat, especially defeat at the hands of a seemingly weak foe. Mostly, though, the selfishness comes from the "us vs. them" mentality that Arabs have had for their entire history, pre-dating Islam. The Arab nation is the only important fact; any other nation can be used if they are needed but the are effectively irrelevant. The fact that Arabs routinely accuse Jews of this very behavior, despite the thousands of counterexamples where Jews over-empathize with their oppressors to the point of self-annihilation, is but one outstanding example of Arab projection of their own attitudes on their enemies.

This selfishness is all the more notable since the 1950s was the lowest point in Palestinian Arab history. One would expect a people who are hated by those who profess to love them, and who hate those who were doing the most for them, to have some ability to step back and see where their problems may have started so as not to repeat them. But in fact the 1950s Palestinians were buffeted by competing Arab leaders trying to use them against each other. In the few cases where Arab leaders tried to help resettle the Palestinians, the criticism was so withering that the plans were abandoned. In 1952, Syrian "strongman"
Colonel Adib Shishekly worked with UNRWA to create a plan where the agency would provide $30 million to irrigate undeveloped northern Syria with the intent of resettling 80,000 refugees there; he became president in 1953 but was overthrown in 1954. A 1953 plan of resettlement and job creation, close to being agreed by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel, was shot down in 1955 by the Arab League. Even plans to plant trees or build permanent housing in refugee camps were criticized as diluting the desire for Palestinian Arabs to want to return to their homes.

There is of course an irony here - just as the Arab leaders in the 1940s claimed to be doing things for the good of the Palestinian Arabs that ended up hurting them the most, so were the 1950s leaders prepared to do the same. In reality, it was pride that forced them to act this way, because if the Palestinian refugee problem would be solved by the Arabs, it would be an indirect belated admission of defeat in 1948. As long as the refugee issue could be kept alive, the Arabs could pretend that they still had a chance to destroy Israel without firing a shot.

The Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser, said this explicitly in 1961: "If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist." Year after year the Arabs would lobby the UN for Palestinian Arab return, and their goals were hardly altruistic for their suffering brethren.

The only people who were truly working to solve the problem of Palestinian Arab misery were Westerners. Saudi Arabia contributed no money to UNRWA, but Israel did.

For their part, the refugees would say themselves that they would never return to any part of Palestine that is controlled by Jews. Even Israeli Arabs, enjoying benefits undreamed of before the war, still claimed that they were in worse shape and would prefer Arab rule, at least when talking to Westerners. Privately, some admitted that it may be possible to compromise. It is difficult to discern how many Palestinian Arabs were pragmatic and how many were truly hardline in their beliefs, but in an atmosphere where moderation could be construed as weakness and collaboration with the hated West, it makes little difference.

For a while, Gamal Abdel Nasser used radio broadcasts effectively to incite Palestinian Arabs against Jordan. To the refugees, Nasser was a true Arab leader that they thirsted for. Nasser, along with his rhetoric supporting the refugees, became a hero. In 1956, Egyptian incitement caused Palestinian Arabs in Jordan to riot and, in one case, the young King Hussein's troops had to quell a riot in a refugee camp, killing 100.

Nasser's fortunes with Jordanian Palestinians dipped, however, after the 1956 Sinai campaign where he very quickly lost the Sinai militarily (although he gained it back diplomatically.) Even so, his major incentive remained to right the perceived wrongs of 1948 and to become a pan-Arab leader, and even his survival after the 1956 war was considered a victory by many other Arabs. Hussein's rule over Palestinian Arabs in his country was far from absolute; terror attacks against Jordan included the bombing of an Amman office buildingin 1958.

The Palestinian terrorism of the 1950s, whether the fedayeen attacks against Israel or the attacks on Western interests of Jordan, were still planned and funded by the Arab states. Only in the end of the decade were the first stirrings of a new independent Palestinian Arab initiative starting - but rather than trying to unify Palestinian Arabs for peaceful purposes, this initiative was also centered on terror and violence.

The Fatah movement was started by a few Palestinian Arabs who had managed to move out of the refugee camps, into college in Cairo and then to jobs in the Persian Gulf. Even though they would have been considered the success stories of the West - people who managed to get off the UNRWA dole and find jobs - they would be the vanguard of the most destructive period of Palestinian Arab history, a period that is synonymous with terror and yet which made them heroes to the entire Arab world.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
Isn't it wonderful to see how well the PA is spending the millions of dollars they have gotten from Israel and the West? This "peace dividend" has so far paid for Hamas terrorist salaries (they now claim a PA member was bribed to transfer that money over - I guess that the Palestinian Arab audit department is not too skilled) and now, they are paying salaries to another group of people who haven't gotten much productive work accomplished over recent years:
Bethlehem – Ma'an – The minister of prisoners' affairs, Ashraf Ajrami, said on Sunday that two-month's allowance for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will be paid on Monday.

The terrorists are really loving the PA for how well it takes care of them.

As far as building libraries, schools and hospitals, well, let's just say that the PA has its priorities exactly where they want them.
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
Haveil Havalim is the weekly round-up of the best of the JBlogosphere, and this week I am honored to have been mentioned three times:

Hamas blaming internal fighting deaths on Israel?
A Grim Milestone - 500 PalArabs killed by each other this year
Bat Mitzvah girl donates $100K for playground in Israel.

The last couple of Haveil Havalim were not numbered, but I think that the current HH at Jack's Shack is number 129. Check it out!
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
We noted last week that the Palestinian Arab Ma'an news agency wrote a headline accusing Israel of crimes that even its own article contradicted. Well, they've done it again:

Palestinian women in Israeli jails risk rape, says director of research institute
Gaza – Ma'an – Director of the Prisoners Center for Studies and Research, Rifat Hamdona, said on Saturday that female Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are at risk of rape.

Hamdona said that the Israeli prisons' officers are threatening to rape women during interrogation in order to force them to confess to crimes.

However, Hamdona said that there have been no documented cases of rape in the prisons and expressed doubt that such cases exist. He said that the threat of rape is only used in order to exert pressure on female detainees to obtain a confession.

"Many Palestinians in Israeli jails have died to preserve their dignity and are regularly on hunger strikes, but I have not heard of any case of rape," said Hamdona.
So he is saying that there's a "risk for rape" but admits that it is highly doubtful that any rape would ever occur. The one accusation he has, that Israelis threaten to rape Palestinian Arab women prisoners, is stated with no corroboration whatsoever.

Yet another example of the quality of the best of PalArab journalism.
  • Sunday, August 12, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
As I research the next chapter of my series on the history of Palestinian Arabs, I have been having some troubles finding sources on how ordinary PalArabs were living or thinking in the 1950s and 1960s. But tonight I found a single article that is a goldmine - a long article in The Atlantic from Martha Gellhorn, who visited many Palestinian Arabs in a number of countries in 1961.

One part of this article is very illuminating (although the entire article is very worthwhile). Gellhorn spent a large part of her time trying to understand the PalArab mindset and how they can be understood by Westerners,and then she came across an Israeli Arab man who also clung to fantasies about 1948:
At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.

"Please bear with me and help me," said I. "I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me. In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it and lived under an Economic Union. And, of course, the Arab countries around the borders would have to be peaceful and cooperative or else nothing would work at all. The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with five regular armies and forty million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?"

"It is right."

"The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this. The statements of the Arab representatives, in the UN are on record. The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this, you wanted it. And you thought, it seems to me very reasonably, that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost."

"Yes." It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.

"Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this, which is what I must, know. If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war--to come back?"

"Certainly not," he said, without an instant's hesitation. "But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea."

He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is "empathy"--entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why--owing to this nice, gray-haired schoolteacher. It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings, and civilization would collapse (as it notoriously did in Nazi Germany) if most people did not naturally move to help their hurt fellow men. But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune (there, but for the grace of God, go I) and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher.

"Do you follow the Eichmann trial?" I asked. An Arabic daily paper, weeklies, and radio station thrive in Israel.

"Yes. Every day." He wrinkled his nose with disgust.

"Do you not imagine that all the Jews in Israel believe this massacre of their people could have been prevented if the Jews had had a homeland to escape to? Don't you think that they knew,, also, what you just said: there would have been no Jewish refugees from here--they would be dead or in the sea? Doesn't that perhaps explain them to you a little?"

He shrugged, he smiled; with these gestures he tacitly admitted the point, but it was of minor importance.

This is a brilliant observation. The Palestinian Arabs (who, for the most part in 1961 were living better lives than other Arabs due to the UNRWA and US aid) didn't want justice - they wanted to see all the Jews dead. When they whine about "justice" what they really mean is "give us everything we demand and ask nothing in return." In their mindset, they have no blame, no guilt, no shame - everything is always the Other's fault.

This is not only a Palestinian Arab trait - it is universal among Arabs. The Arabs, by their nature, seem to feel that they deserve everything and no one else deserves anything. You will not see Arab charities giving aid to non-Arabs or non-Muslims. You will not see them say that the Jews (or Kurds...) have a right to live in peace in their own country. What few concessions some of them may have made towards the West have been out of political necessity, never out of a true belief that these concessions were the right thing.

The absolute lack of Arab empathy is the key reason why true peace is illusory. Without empathy you cannot even begin to see how the other side thinks; you cannot even begin to come up with an equitable solution. The entire Arab point of view is not one based on a win/win or an accommodation, it is based on the pure selfishness that is a component of the inability to empathize.

How can two sides come to an agreement when one side has no ability to think past his own self?

Another section later in the article, starting with a conversation with her Israeli Jewish driver:
"What's the matter, Nissim?"

"Nothing. What the children say."

"You mean just now, shouting?"

"Yes. They say: 'Where you going, bastard? I spit on you.'"

What for, I thought, what for, and will it never stop?

"Do you hate the Arabs, Nissim?"

"No. Of course no."

"Why not?"

"What is the good of hate?"

What indeed? Arabs gorge on hate, they roll in it, they breathe it. Jews top the hate list, but any foreigners are hateful enough. Arabs also hate each other, separately and, en masse. Their politicians change the direction of their hate as they would change their shirts. Their press is vulgarly base with hate-filled cartoons; their reporting describes whatever hate is now uppermost and convenient. Their radio is a long scream of hate, a call to hate. They teach their children hate in school. They must love the taste of hate; it is their daily bread. And what good has it done them?

Saturday, August 11, 2007

  • Saturday, August 11, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon

In this week's episode of Saudi Vice...

Muslims like to point out that in Mecca, it doesn't matter what race you belong to or what country you are from; there is a beautiful feeling of unity with all other Muslims worldwide for the pilgrims who travel there from near and far. As Ummah.net describes it:
Although Makkah is always filled with visitors, pilgrims wear special clothes: simple garments which strip away distinctions of class and culture, so that all stand equal before God.

Peace is the dominant theme. Peace with Allah, with one's soul, with one another, with all living creatures. To disturb the peace of anyone or any creature in any shape or form is strictly prohibited.

Muslims from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe assemble in in response to the call of Allah. There is no royalty, but there is loyalty of all to Allah, the Creator....It is also to remember the great assembly of the Day of Judgement when people will stand equal before Allah.

A group of eight pilgrims from the US and Britain of Iraqi descent visited Mecca last week with the intention of participating in this holy rite where all are equal before Allah.

But they were Shi'ite.

When they tried to perform a Shi'a - flavored version of the holy ritual while circling the holy Kaaba stone, they were arrested by our heroes, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

As was described by an infidel newspaper:
“While in police custody we were handcuffed and savagely beaten with chairs, bats, sticks, shoes and police radio communication devices,” 24-year-old pilgrim Amir Taki said.

He said they were refused food, water, medicine and access to toilets. One was told they would be “killed and thrown to the dogs”.

The group, aged between 16 and 26, said they were not allowed to contact their embassies or relatives.

However, using a cell phone hidden by one of the pilgrims, they were able to contact family members and were released after intervention from the embassies.
The Shi'ite infidels may have won this round, but the Commission (known as the Muttawa) will be ever vigilant to make sure that the sanctity and holiness of Mecca is unsullied by the infidels again.

Last week's episode is here.

Friday, August 10, 2007

  • Friday, August 10, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
For the past two weeks, posts of mine have been nominated to the weekly Watcher of Weasels list of the best posts of the week (for non-Council members.) While I didn't win. I didn't expect to - when up against serious heavyweights from serious on-line sources and authors like Newsweek or Michael Totten.

Thanks to Soccer Dad who nominated me and to those who voted for me or just read the nominated articles: the article I wrote on the "Grim Milestone" (which has to date received roughly 5000 hits) and "The Extremism and Bigotry of PA 'Moderates' " from last week.
  • Friday, August 10, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Arutz-7:
Shortly after 11 AM not far from the Old City of Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate, an Arab terrorist grabbed the gun of a guard in a building belonging to Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim. The Arab managed to shoot at the legs of the guard, while another guard opened fire and killed the Arab. Nine other passersby were hurt in the incident as well, some by bullet grazings and others as they fell while running away. The guard and two passersby sustained moderate wounds.
So of course, we need to hear from "Dr." Mustafa Barghouti, one of the more moderate members of the PA government (autotranslated from Palpress:)
MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the National Initiative, denounced the Israeli crime perpetrated by a Jewish extremist (this) afternoon, and led to the martyrdom of the Palestinian people and injuring eleven others wounded in the old town of Jerusalem.

Al-Barghouthi feet to guard Jewish extremist killed in a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem Christians and wounded 11 others suffered light to moderate volume and the viciousness of the Israeli crimes and shed Palestinian blood on the hands of the occupation.
You see, according to our allies in the PA that we are giving millions of dollars to, the Jewish guard should have just let himself be killed. This is considered the natural order in the Arab world - Jews cower in fear for their Arab superiors and they are forbidden to do anything to defend themselves. If, Allah forbid, they actually try to stop themselves from being murdered in cold blood, then they are clearly violating the rules that have been passed down in Arab tradition from time immemorial.

Thus we have the conflict in a nutshell. Even the most moderate, anti-corruption, educated, suit-clad Palestinian Arab will never allow any Jews to live in a position of power in the Middle East if he can help it. They claim that every Jewish activity is offensive - building a wall, immigrating, building a synagogue - every single activity that is not done from a position of dhimmitude is automatically deserving of condemnation. The very existence of guards to protect Jews in Jerusalem is thoroughly offensive to these bigots.

They would much prefer to see all the Jews slaughtered, because that would herald a return to the good old days of Muslim rule.

These are the people we are showering with millions of dollars because of their moderation, pragmatism and pro-Western thinking.
  • Friday, August 10, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
You will no doubt have noticed the screaming headlines worldwide condemning Mahmoud Abbas for allowing torture in his prisons. But in the tiny chance you missed them, here are the details:
Hamas have said that Palestinian security sources in the West Bank have confirmed the death of a Hamas member they claim was tortured in a Palestinian security prison.

Twenty-two-year-old Mou'aiad Bani Odeh in an Israeli hospital, from Tamon in the north of the West Bank Tobas, died in an Israeli hospital after he was transferred from Al Junied Jail in Nablus.

The Palestinian media centre said that according to Palestinian sources, "Bani Odeh died after he was severely tortured in Al Junied Jail, which is run by the Palestinian Authority.

Bani Odeh's family are blaming the Palestinian security services for their son's death.

In a news conference Hamas said that this is an example of the torture their members are facing in Palestinian Authority jails.
The PalArab self-death count rises to 505 for the year.

UPDATE: It was apparently a fake-out; Fatah put the man on TV and he claimed he was a Hamas member and a collaborator with the Shin Bet. Back down to 504.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

  • Thursday, August 09, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
An amazing article from Debbie Schlussel.

As Robert Avrech points out, Hollywood producers don't have to worry about being killed when they bash Jews or Christians. The crude Muslim version of censorship - claim "Islamophobia" while subtly hinting that violence may happen to break out and threaten the set or the producer - works quite well, even in America.
  • Thursday, August 09, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
Remember the 6000 Arabs stranded in Rafah because the EU no longer monitored that crossing from Egypt to Israel? The PalArabs, especially Hamas, whined incessantly about the humanitarian crisis, about how they were sick and dying, and how Israel must open that crossing point.

Israel, meanwhile, made a deal with Egypt for them to cross through Israel into Gaza, and over the past week, that's what has been happening.

Now there are only 30 left - all of them refusing to go to Gaza because they know Israel will arrest them as being terrorists:
ARISH, Egypt -- The last batch of 6,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt since Hamas took control of Gaza in June returned home Thursday, leaving behind 30 Hamas supporters who cannot travel via Israel.

The final group of 400 Palestinians crossed the Oja (Nizana) checkpoint, near the divided town of Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border, before continuing to Gaza via the Jewish state, a Palestinian source at the border said.

Rafah, the usual crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, has been closed since Hamas militants violently took over the territory June 15, stranding thousands in dire conditions in the Egyptian desert.

"These 30 Palestinians would rather stay in Egypt until the Rafah terminal is opened, and they refuse to cross via Oja," an Egyptian border source said. "They know they're down as belonging to or sympathizing with Hamas and fear being arrested by the Israeli authorities," he said.

"They don't have any choice but to wait for the Rafah crossing point to open, because either they're wanted by Israel or because the Zionist enemy won't allow them in," Hamas MP Moushir Masri said Tuesday.

"We demand that the Rafah crossing point be opened and reject any Israeli involvement" in controlling who crosses, said Masri, himself stranded in Egypt.

When open, Rafah is operated in close cooperation by Egypt, European Union monitors, Israel, and the Palestinians, and can be closed if any one party refuses to participate.
Here we have a classic case of erstwhile "leaders" of Palestinian Arabs who are willing to allow thousands of their people to suffer for their cause. Hamas did everything they could to not allow the stranded people to come to Gaza - and they continue to blame Israel, when the hated Zionist entity worked so hard to help out the Palestinian Arabs stuck in the desert.

Once again, Israel shows more concern for the welfare and well-being of Palestinian Arabs than their own leaders do.

Once again, Israel was vindicated in its reasoning of why the Rafah crossing needed to be monitored to begin with - because known, wanted terrorists were freely crossing between Gaza and the rest of the world via Egypt.

And once again, a few weeks ago the world media had a field day with suffering PalArabs that could (erroneously) be blamed on Israel, but now when Israel helps those people despite their own leaders' objections and Hamas is still fuming that their human pawns have disappeared, the story is almost impossible to find.

UPDATE: Look how the Palestinian Arab English propaganda press is spinning this story to make Israel look as bad as possible. Orwell is alive and well at IMEMC.org.
  • Thursday, August 09, 2007
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestine Press Agency, which is rabidly pro-Fatah, anti-Hamas but also rabidly anti-Israel, is reporting that Hamas is hiding deaths from internal clashes and then, if any Israeli activities happen anywhere in Gaza, they claim the deaths came from Israel.

I'm still on the fence about how accurate Palpress.com is, but on the other hand it is clear from many examples that there is no independent press in the PA that is willing to report objectively about Hamas because of death threats against reporters and a general atmosphere of intimidation (the public relations director of Shifa Hospital, who said that medical supplies in Gaza were running low, was arrested overnight by Hamas.)

My working policy on counting PalArabs being killed by PalArabs is that if the news source mentions names, I regard it as legitimate. And this story names the victims. Also, one of the commenters corroborates that Hamas indeed does things like this. On the other hand, the IDF does confirm that they killed two armed men in Gaza yesterday and then Hamas announced that they were Hamas members, and named them.

The auto-translation is a little difficult but this is interesting:
Sources close to Hamas martyrs of the Qassam Hamas claimed today cites the impact of a military confrontation with the Zionist occupation forces were only two dead fell following internal clashes occurred yesterday between leaders of the executive power lawless and banned street Palestinian Qassam around Disagreement over the loot that had been looted from the headquarters of the Palestinian National Authority in the wake of the bloody coup carried out by Hamas against the organs and the PA offices and the two deceased were killed in the west of Gaza City supporters.

The same sources "that the two deceased were Fadi Fawaz Arkic 22 general, Mohamed Subhi Batunaiji 24, both from the Shajaiyeh neighborhood east of Gaza, Hamas has had to transfer their bodies to a nearby site of the Al-Mintar and conceal the fate of deaths for fear of detection daily crimes occurring between gangs and Qassam militia force operational sharing the Palestinian people and the property sold and divert funds to personal accounts.

The source continued that the Qassam Brigades took Bomb occupation soldiers mortar, which is the first time the bombing by Hamas rallies after the coup on the Israeli Palestinian legitimacy and to work to lure the occupation forces to respond to the bombing scene to show picture engineered by Hamas that targeted or killed in military operation against the Israeli occupation forces.

The source confirmed that the explosion which occurred near the towers of Sheikh Zayed northern Gaza days ago, which claimed the lives of the family Zulkiparneh Tefilin is the result of leaving the Hamas elements of explosive devices and ready-Bina children, which exploded after tampering (packaging belonging to Hamas)

This is known that Hamas had lied to the methods and falsifying many to justify its crimes against our people growing in the Gaza Strip, and the sons of the Fatah movement in particular.
And the commenter adds:
God give wrong evil-doers ... that the statement in the news is true ..

And I live very close to the compound supporters and the Office brother President Abu Mazen and heard heavy firing light and medium weapons and was clear that the clash lasted about a quarter of an hour and saw many ambulances and heard many screams in the place .. and assured me that there were dead and wounded the day before yesterday I met one of the businesses in the ER section of Shifa Hospital, told me that he had seen the dead and wounded .. When asked by a member of the so-called operational reason, I keep silent answer is not to do with you .. and this happened last Sunday evening, and God on what to say a martyr ... and that the firm also of those killed yesterday allegedly at the al-Mantar crossing is not right, did not kill them

There were killed because of missing two days before the announcement of the killing, and this Aydhahussb many of the witnesses and relatives Alkateliokadd heard this from some of their relatives ... have revealed all their papers and found enclosed in their misrepresentations and deceit everyone I, Banat Hamas for what God .. unmasking them violin and violin .
I knew the violins were important!

In the light of the IDF statement, I will not count these - I can't see how Hamas could fake the deaths of two already-dead people. In all likelihood, Palpress.com is not adhering to any journalistic standards in its anti-Hamas zeal and is willing to believe anything.

Even so, it is interesting that there are a couple of photos of the dead PalArabs - in Hamas colors - but no omnipresent wire service photos of grieving relatives at those two funerals.

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