Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Anti-semitic Saudi sheikh spouts off in front of 300,000 in Mecca

Imam and Khatib at the Grand Mosque Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais warned Muslims against drifting away from the noble values of Islamic culture.

"A people achieve glory by holding fast to the noble values of their culture. In the absence of such values, deviant ideologies threatening global peace and stability emerge," Al-Sudais said while addressing hundreds of thousands of worshippers that filled the Grand Mosque and its squares for the Eid Al-Adha congregation and the millions watching around the world Tuesday morning.

The imam also warned against being the victims of the global media controlled by Zionist extremists.

He cited the strategy of the global media, which is under the influence of the Zionist lobbies, to downplay or ignore the suffering of the Palestinians worsened day after day by occupation forces that deny them food and medicine, raze their homes and Judaize the features of Islam and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A captive audience of hundreds of thousands of Muslims listening to anti-semitic stereotypes - and not one thought he was out of line.

This was tame for al-Sudais. From the BBC in 2005:

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, Imam, Ka'ba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia: The history of Islam is the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony. Muslims must exemplify the true image of Islam in their interaction with other communities.

John Ware: Sheikh Sudais is a leading Imam from the great mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

He had one voice for his Western audience - another for his followers in Saudi.

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais: The worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those... whom he... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism... How can we talk sweetly when the Hindus and the idol worshippers indulge in their overwhelming hatred against our brothers... in Muslim Kashmir...

'Eid in the Holy Mosque. Peace, love, brotherhood, forgiveness, and incitement.

Sudais' statement about "Zionist" control of the media, and Israel denying Palestinian Arabs food and medicine has been completely ignored by every Western media outlet. The Saudi Gazette details his speech and specifically leaves out the part about Jews and Israel.

One possible reason: no non-Muslim reporter is allowed anywhere nearby. So we have a bit of self-censorship as well by Muslim reporters who want to downplay or ignore the rantings of the sheikh.

Escalated open thread

I spent way too much time today in the dusty archives of the Internet. (Check out page 921 of this State Department doc- where it sure sounds like the US recognized Jordan's illegal annexation of the West Bank in 1950!)

So to clear my head, I took a short trip to last summer where I saw this interesting view:

A picture of brutality

From a Roger Cohen NYT piece:

The [Hillary] Clinton of today is not the Clinton of a decade ago. Compare that sharp criticism of Israel’s East Jerusalem building with her 1999 position that Jerusalem is “the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel.” Somewhere in the past decade her conviction hardened that the state of Palestine is achievable, inevitable and compatible with Israeli security.

“A bit of an epiphany,” in the words of one aide, came in March 2009 on the road to Ramallah. “We drove in a motorcade and you could see the settlements high up, and the brutality of it was so stark,” this aide said.

Psagot is one of the nearest hilltop communities near Ramallah. So if you want to see what stark, evil, Zionist brutality looks like according to a State Department aide, brace yourself (click to enlarge if you want to subject yourself to its full barbarity):

I get chills.

Speaking of Ging - a real journalist talks to him

After I wrote my post on John Ging, I received an email pointing to a great interview with Ging, along with follow-ups, from Israeli journalist Adi Schwartz.

Schwartz asked what journalists are supposed to ask, and he did not back down when the answers were slick but nonsensical.

It is a long article. Here are some highlights:

I had two long face-to-face meetings with Ging in the last month. After them, and in between, we continued emailing each other with additional questions and answers.

“I want to open a new chapter in the relationship of UNRWA with the Israeli public”, says Ging. “I have come to realize that there are key misunderstandings of UNRWA’s role. We haven’t communicated effectively and we haven’t been providing answers to questions that arise. I perfectly understand the Israeli negative view towards my organization and I understand that there is a basis for people to be skeptical. There are tough questions to be answered, and they should be addressed. There hasn’t been the depth of discussion that would enable people to make a better informed opinion”.

...But Ging is optimistic. The good news, he says, is that only a minority of Gazans are extremists, whereas the majority is committed to a peaceful two-states solution. “I hope that also on this side people will reignite talks and know that on the other side there are people who in their core share our universal values”.

Not everyone is so optimistic. Reporters for The New York Times spent some two weeks in Gaza last July, and published this large reportage. In it they say,

“Ask Gazans how to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – two states? One state? – and the answer is mostly a reflexive call to drive Israel out… ‘All the land is ours’, says Ramzi, a public school teacher from Rafah, ‘we should turn the Jews into refugees and then let the international community take care of them’… Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, says ‘we believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home’.”

Why do you think Israelis should care about the humanitarian situation of someone who wants to turn them into refugees?

“There are tens of thousands of extremists in Gaza, but I can bring more than tens of thousands who would say that there is need for a just solution for this conflict. The State of Israel is here to stay and anyone who is professing an alternative agenda is not acceptable by our standards and we categorize these people as extremists”.

So Hamas would be defeated in case of an elections?

“The moment you try to simplify the politics of the region, you fall into many traps. I am saying that an overwhelming part of the population is good and descent, and demonstrated its capacity to peacefully coexist”.

What are the signs for that? Where are the articles they write, the demonstrations, the NGO’s that are actively pro-peace?

“Why do the parents of Gaza send their children to our schools? and in the business community, with the smallest opening in the last months, the tunnel industry has collapsed. That’s standing up for what is right and what is lawful. It shows that they have intent to do commercial business with their neighbor”.

The fact that people gave up a dangerous route of commerce shows they are committed to peace?
“Yes, otherwise they would continue work with the tunnel”.

Say what? Because they prefer to get goods of better quality and less cost from Israel, that proves that they are moderate?

Why don’t you resettle the refugees?
“This is not our mandate. I am by mandate given for action, not to resolve the conflict. The question of the refugees is an issue that should be decided upon in the negotiations between the parties themselves”.

Gaza is under Palestinian control. Have you tried to initiate a resettlement project there together with Hamas?

“Why would I do that? You are asking me to solve one of the protracted issues of the conflict. This is not our mandate”.

Every reasonable person understands that Israel will never let into its territory 4.8 million Palestinians, because it will stop being the State of the Jewish People. Not settling the refugees is not a neutral act: You thus perpetuate the conflict, and even make it worse, since every day the number of refugees increases.

“UNRWA gets its mandate from the General Assembly. Our mandate is to act, not to solve the conflict”.

I asked Ging again if any western journalist ever visited a [UNRWA-run human rights] class and published his impressions. He said that Donald Macintyre from The Independent visited and published this story. But from reading the story, it is obvious that Macintyre did not visit such a class. It remains a mystery to me why Ging said that Macintyre visited such a class, and how come no journalists visited such an obvious success story of UNRWA.

Ging had very harsh words towards Israel during operation Cast Lead. He gave numerous interviews to newspapers and TV stations around the world, calling upon the international community to do all it can “to stop immediately” the violence and the killings. Here is one example for an interview to the BBC:

Since Ging said time and again during our meetings that his main concern is humanitarian and not political, and that he is not taking sides in the conflict, I asked him if he ever gave an interview to the BBC, calling upon the international community to “stop immediately” the rockets fired to Sderot or the suicide attacks in Israeli cities. He sent me two examples of such interventions: one is a speech he gave in Cleveland US in March 2009, where he said that an Israeli mother, who does not know if her child will be picked off by a rocket fired aimlessly from Gaza is a victim of terrorism. The second was an event in Kibbutz Zikim in the south of Israel, where in front of about 50 people Ging condemned the rockets being fired into Israel.

So – on the one hand we have a live interview, given to an internationally respected broadcaster, viewed by tens if not hundreds of millions of people all around the world. And on the other hand, we have two small events attended by a few dozen Israelis and Americans. That’s ridiculous! There is no comparison in the content either, since I asked Ging whether he called upon the international community to “stop immediately” the violence, and there is no such call in the examples he sent me. If I were supposed to be convinced that UNRWA is a neutral a-political agency, these examples are not doing a very good job.

(h/t Nadav)

There is (almost) no such thing in international law as "illegal occupation" (updated)

You know how you are always reading that Israel is "illegally occupying" territories?

The phrase is used all the time, even by the UN.

And it is not true - even if you believe that Israel is occupying territory and that it is not "disputed."

International law recognizes occupation as a descriptive state. Sometimes it is called "belligerent occupation." But by definition, any occupation is by default legal. The acts that an occupying power perform can be illegal under Geneva, but the legality of the occupation itself is not addressed in either the Geneva Conventions or the 1907 Hague Conventions, the only two sources of international law for occupation.

There is only one way that an occupation can be considered "illegal," which is if the UN Security Council declares it as such under a Chapter VII resolution. That has never happened with Israel.

The ICJ ruling saying that the security fence Israel was building is illegal, which Israel haters point to as proof of their claims, indeed says that the territories are occupied (they claim that for territory to be occupied it does not have to belong to a High Contracting Party, in opposition to Geneva) but nowhere does it say that the territories are illegally occupied.

So any time someone says that Israel is "illegally occupying" territory, you can be certain that they are lying. A valid legal argument can be made that Israel is legally occupying territory - even though many prominent legal experts disagree with even that - but there is no valid legal argument whatsoever that Israel is illegally occupying territory.

(See also here.)

UPDATE: Sometime contributor Zach points to The international law of occupation By Eyāl Benveniśtî, which gives two examples of illegal occupation:

So, as usual, I'm in over my head.

Iran: NATO missile defense is "Zionist"

From NATO:

Missiles pose an increasing threat to Allied populations, territory and deployed forces. Over 30 countries have or are acquiring missiles that could be used to carry not just conventional warheads, but also weapons of mass destruction. The proliferation of these capabilities does not necessarily mean there is an immediate intent to attack NATO, but it does mean that the Alliance has a responsibility to protect its populations.

In early 2010, NATO acquired the first phase of an initial capability to protect Alliance forces against missile threats. At the upcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon, 19-20 November, NATO’s leaders will decide whether the Alliance should build a missile defence for Europe in order to protect its territory and populations.

NATO is asking Turkey to host some of the missiles, but that country is balking.

So how does Iran look at this issue?

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast says the deployment of a missile defense shield in the Middle East is aimed at protecting and supporting Israel.

“The main issue regarding this measure is to support and protect the Zionist regime (Israel) against aggressions and crimes that this regime carries out,” Mehmanparast said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday.

There are “serious doubts” over the deployment of the missile defense system in the region, he further explained.

This comes as the United States has asked Turkey to host NATO-planned missile system on its territory.

How exactly a missile defense system in Turkey protects Israel is not quite explained.

But the more important question is - why would Iran be upset at a European missile defense system - unless Iran has long-term plans to threaten Europe with its own long-range missiles?

Follow-up on John Ging, professional liar (updated)

Here is the report I received back from the person who attended the lunch with John Ging, Gaza UNRWA chief, where I hoped he would answer some real questions:

He had just said that half-truths dominate the discourse on the conflict, and he then proceeded to quote a poll from some agency saying Palestinians support a two-state solution, and one person challenged him by saying that other polls show the exact opposite (e.g. historic palestine, unwilling to comprise on major issues etc.). His response, in part (and I'm not joking), was that Palestinians love Israel, even in Gaza, because they buy Israeli goods rather than Egyptian ones.

I, in turn, asked him, "By your logic, does that mean that Palestinians love settlements because they choose to build them." I admitted to being facetious but he took the point well.

I then asked about his support for the flotilla, which he answered by saying he was misquoted because it was originally in Norwegian (he used this excuse several times).

When asked about James Lindsay's critique of UNRWA, he dismissed the whole content by saying (1) Lindsay never raised those concerns during his employment, (2) there is an American auditing service to ensure accountability, and (3) the list of UNRWA employees are always cleared with Israel.

Someone asked him about the unique definition of Palestinian refugee, and he again said this is a popular myth, and that the definition was "identical" to the UNHRC one, which is clearly false.

The whole thing was actually interesting but he was a politician, unafraid to lie, plain and simple.

Indeed, he is.

Because I just looked up that Norwegian interview that he says was mistranslated. It was in Aftenposten.

And they included a video of his interview - in English.

He is saying in plain English that he wants the international community to send ships to Gaza to avoid Israel and Egypt.

Now, Ging yesterday seems to have argued that the misquoting was about his supporting independent ships to Gaza - he in fact seems to be saying now that he supports nations to send their own ships directly to Gaza. I'm not sure why it would be better to trust Turkey or Iran or Syria to send ships straight to Gaza than the ISM or IHH, and the implication is that he is saying that an organization dedicated to destroying a single nation can be trusted to act responsibly with the goods that it is bringing in, as but the fact is that the UN itself has come out against any aid going directly to Gaza via the sea.

In this case he might be able to say that he was misquoted about flotillas, but what he said is damning enough.

I might get audio of the talk so we can hear precisely how he worded it.

Hajj pilgrims chant "Death to America, Death to Israel"

From Iran's ABNA:

The pilgrims chanted anti-US and anti-Zionist slogans during the ceremony also attended by the Supreme Leader's representative for Hajj affairs, Hojatoleslam Ali Qazi-Asgar.

'God is the Greatest', 'Death to Israel', and 'Death to America', were among slogans chanted by the masses in unison as they gathered in the Desert of Arafat, 20 kms (12 miles) from Mecca, for a day of prayer and meditation.

The faithful - men clad in two-piece seamless white shrouds and women all covered except for their hands and faces to symbolize equality -- converged on Arafat.

Iran politicizing the holy Hajj? Say it ain't so!

New atlas of "Historic Palestine"

Ma'an reports:

The Palestinian Return Centre in London held a seminar Friday to release an atlas of Palestine between 1917 and 1966.

The project is the work of Professor Salaman Abu Sita, who used official documents and maps collected from German, French, Turkish and British archives to outline the history, landscape and geography of Palestine, a statement from the centre said.

In a presentation attended by MPs, journalists and researchers, Abu Sita analysed the ongoing mechanism of expulsion which began in 1947, the centre said.

"I think there is a lack of true, historic and documented evidence of Palestine that Israel tried to erase particularly in the West. The Israeli narrative for many years has been mainstream even though it's faced severe knocks. This Atlas now provides the shattering blow. The atlas simply debunks many myths including the idea that Palestine was empty," PRC director Majed Al-Zeer said.

Why would the atlas choose 1917 as the start date to study Palestine? I thought that "historic Palestine" was there for hundreds of years!

Could it be that Palestinian Arabs define themselves in terms of Jewish return (the date of the Balfour Declaration) rather than in terms of their own, supposedly historic ties to the land?

Or could it be because "historic Palestine" includes parts of Jordan and Lebanon, and that fact would embarrass Palestinian Arabs who are only interested in Jewish-controlled land today?

The author of this atlas had written another atlas five years ago, Atlas of Palestine 1948. Benny Morris reviewed the book in 2005 for The New Republic, and while the original article is no longer available, I had copied most of it here. Morris demolishes Abu Sitta's scholarship with numerous examples of dishonesty and chicanery. It is very worthwhile to read that article because it shows how deep Palestinian Arab lies go, making up facts out of whole cloth in service of their narrative.

No doubt this new book adds many more lies to the tapestry.

Hate for Israel trumps love for Palestinian Arabs - every time.

In June, JoeSettler of the Muqata blog noticed that USAID was paving some roads in the West Bank for Palestinian Arabs:

Sometimes there are unintended consequences to one's actions. For instance, let's takeUSAID as an example.

Now their projects are apparently solely dedicated and intended for the benefit of Arabs only, within the Land of Israel. But sometimes, it just doesn't work out that way. For instance, USAID is investing in road building in Judea. Many of the roads are Jew-free roads, but not always.

Here's one example from a sign of theirs that says, "This project is a gift from the American People to the Palestinian People...".

What I think that USAID overlooked is that Jews also use this road regularly. It's a pleasant drive from the Gush directly to Malcha (and the Bibilical Zoo), not the mention Har Gilo to the Gush.

It would have been nice if they could have added a line in Hebrew and mentioned that it's a gift for us Jews too. After all, many Jewish-owned cars use that road every single day.

Anyway, even though USAID didn't mean to fix the road for the benefit of us Jews, we thank you for building a road that Settlers use all the time.

To any normal human being, a win-win situation is the best possible outcome. Obviously USAID is averse to spending money to help Jews specifically in the West Bank, but just like Arabs use and appreciate the supposed "settler-only apartheid" roads that ignorant Israel haters like to pretend criss-cross the area, Jews can use these new roads that were not intended for them.

Arabs, on the other hand, have tended to reject win-win solutions. To the Arab mind in general, when dealing with Israel, honor demands that Israel lose, even if Arabs lose as well. That was the logic of the historic rejectionism of a Palestinian Arab state from the 1930s to today, that was the logic behind the second intifada.

Normal liberals, and especially liberal Jews, tend to be the ones who desire a win-win more than anyone else. They are the ones who work hardest to find the best solution to an intractable problem with the maximum of benefit for the minimum of pain. In a normal world, this is sensible to the point of being obvious.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a normal world.

My Right Word notices that Akiva Eldar, one of Ha'aretz' columnists who most reliably insults his own country, found out about the paved roads that JoeSettler thanks USAID for. And to him, if a single settler is happy, that is unacceptable:

Travelers along the "original" West Bank roads, the ones enabling drivers to bypass Palestinian villages, can see signs declaring "USAID from the American People."

The roads are one of the initiatives of the United States Agency for International Development for building infrastructure in underdeveloped countries. Israel has already proudly left the club of developing countries and is not among the clients of USAID. Nevertheless, it appears the Smith family of Illinois is making the occupation a little less expensive for the Cohen family of Petah Tikva.

According to a June 2010 fact sheet on the USAID Internet site, last year American taxpayers funded the paving of 63 kilometers of asphalt roads in the West Bank. It also says completion of a road in the southern part of the West Bank dramatically increased the amount of trade between Dahriya and Beer Sheva.

What the site doesn't say is that a significant segment of the road goes through Area C - the 60 percent of the West Bank under exclusive Israeli civilian and military control....

This is not the only occupation-perpetuating road funded by American money. Dror Etkes, an expert on the settlements, noticed a few days ago USAID workers energetically laying asphalt on two roads in the Samaria region (northern West Bank ) that crosses Area C. Israelis haven't been traveling these roads for years now because the taxpayer (in this case, the Israeli taxpayer ) has already paved separate, wide, modern roads for them.

One of the main complaints that Palestinian Arabs have had was that they could not easily travel between their towns, because of Israeli checkpoints. The newly paved roads help them immensely, and there is no choice but to have them go through Area C. To Eldar, however, the fact that the roads also help some Jews is completely unacceptable, and somehow they help the "occupation."

His bizarre logic is that if the State of Israel intends to keep the West Bank - a policy that doesn't seem to have ever existed, as it has yet to be annexed in the past 43 years - then Israel should pay for the roads, and Americans should be upset that their money is helping Palestinian Arabs in portions of an area that they want for their state. Eldar would rather not have any roads there at all, or perhaps have Israel's taxpayers give them as a gift to "Palestine".

The reason that "Israelis haven't been traveling those roads for years" is because there was a very good chance that they would get shot and killed. That's why the other roads were built to begin with. To Eldar, that is also unacceptable, of course. Perhaps he can suggest a third intifada to ensure that Jews and Arabs remain as separate as possible, and he wouldn't have to stomach terrible scenes like the two groups shopping together.

The only way to look at ramblings like this is to realize that the amount of self-degradation is so deep that people like Eldar have bought into the Arab mindset that what helps a Jew - even accidentally - is by definition bad for Arabs and therefore inherently evil.

Video of Turks stealing sheep off moving truck for Eid

From Al Arabiya:

Two Turks attempted to steal a sheep so as to slaughter it as a sacrifice on the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, because they didn't have enough money to buy one. Muslims will celebrate Eid al-Adha on Tuesday.

Muslims around the world slaughter sheep and cattle in remembrance of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son. Due to the high demand on sheep and cattle prior to Eid al-Adha, prices usually soar in Muslim countries.

The two thieves were arrested and as part of their questioning the police asked them to re-act the attempted theft, which seemed as part of a "thrill" movie, but the fact that it was real gave it the real humor.

In another funny incident, an Israeli shop that sells electric devices came up with a new promotion to draw in customers; buy TV or another appliance and get a sheep for free, the Telegraph reported on Monday.

The special offer was aimed at Israel's minority Arabs ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

New customers however will be disappointed as the promotion was shut down just hours after launch after Galilee's chief veterinary surgeon stepped in, according to the Telegraph.

For the past couple of days I've been teasing my readers with something I called "The Z-vent." I was trying to build buzz, but unfortunately one of my major problems is the complete inability to self-promote. As well as being terrible at keeping secrets. So here's the deal.

I was asked to speak to a group of students at Yeshiva University on the topic of Israel advocacy, and whatever else I feel like talking about. I like the idea, and the more I think about it the more I want to say.

I put together this blurb, which may or may not be accurate by the time I actually get up to speak:

Hasbara 2.0: What works and why

Elder of Ziyon is one of the world’s most influential pro-Israel bloggers. He has years of experience in writing original articles and analysis, spearheading research efforts and breaking literally hundreds of stories before the mainstream media. In addition, he has created multimedia pro-Israel products such as videos, song parodies, posters and T-shirts.

In his first public appearance, “The Elder” will critique existing Hasbara efforts - including his own - and unveil new Hasbara paradigms that will translate into much more effective approaches to pro-Israel activism. Within this framework, Elder will describe many specific ways that everyone can help Israel, both online and in the real world.

He promises it will be much less boring than this description makes it sound, or your money back!

I will try to accomplish the impossible: speak in public while remaining anonymous. And, no, I will not be wearing a mask.

Hopefully, the talk will be educational, entertaining and edifying.

The event is planned to take place at Yeshiva University, in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, on December 7 at 8 PM - the seventh night of Chanukah.

The organizers do not know how many people will show up, and neither do I, so if you think you might want to attend, just leave a comment or an email to me so I can give a better estimate and they can decide whether to reserve a stadium, lecture hall, classroom or closet. Once we know the actual venue I will of course publicize it.

It should be fun.

Loads of afternoon links

I keep seeing good stuff, but I only have so much time to blog....

The Arab Lobby: The European Component (h/t EoL)
See also The Arab Lobby: The American Component, written by Mitchell Bard, who recently suffered a heart attack, so keep him in your thoughts.

Should Lincoln University Enable Holocaust Denial? (Richard L. Cravatts)

J. E. Dyer on another problem with how Obama is handling the settlement issue.

London Review of Books: Ten years of anti-Israel prejudice (Just Journalism)

Eid stress: An Egyptian woman asked her husband for money to buy sacrificial meat for Eid al Adha. He wasn't happy that she dared to make such a request, because he couldn't afford the high prices of meat in Egypt, so he threw her from the second floor. After all, a man must maintain his pride.

If you want to see a hilarious example of misoziony, check this out: The Baghdad Cathedral Massacre: Zionist Fingerprints All Over

Soccer Dad emailed me links to a portion of the huge documentary on the founding of Israel, Pillar of Fire:
http://wejew.com/media/1764/Pillar_of_Fire_Movie_1/
http://wejew.com/media/1765/Pillar_of_Fire_Movie_2/
http://wejew.com/media/1770/Pillar_of_Fire_Movie_3/
http://wejew.com/media/1775/Pillar_of_Fire_Movie_4/
http://wejew.com/media/1781/Pillar_of_Fire_Movie_5/

Preview of movie, "The Intifada Comes to Campus":
(h/t O)

Eleven questions for John Ging

A reader will be attending an invitation-only lunch today with UNRWA head John Ging, called "The Possibility of Peace Ensuring Human Security in Gaza And National Security in Israel: A Dialogue with John Ging." He asked me if I had any questions for him.

I quickly came up with eleven:

1. UNRWA in the early 1950s tried to quietly encourage Arab governments to resettle the Palestinian Arabs with their works programs, and to transfer responsibility of the refugees to the host countries themselves - and the Arab countries refused to do so. Given that, what exactly was wrong with Andrew Whitley's public statement that "If one doesn’t start a discussion soon with the refugees for them to consider what their own future might be – for them to start debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless but preserve rather the cruel illusions that perhaps they will return one day to their homes – then we are storing up trouble for ourselves." ? Is there anything wrong with that statement? Does Ging think that there is any realistic chance that the "refugees" will ever move to Israel, and if not, why isn't UNRWA or the UN in general in the forefront of addressing this growing problem?

2: UNRWA officially says it is a non-political organization. Then why does Ging explicitly support the flotillas, asking for more of them, when they are self-admittedly political in purpose?

3: Why is UNRWA silent on its web site about the current month-long strike in the West Bank? Doesn't the donor population have the right to be informed of the good and the bad? This has happened in the past during strikes as well.

4. Does UNRWA have any way to take Palestinian Arabs off their definition of "refugees" outside of dying? I couldn't find any. Even if they become citizens of the US I'm pretty sure UNRWA still defines them as refugees. This is also in contradiction with how UNRWA acted when it started, as they tried then to reduce the rolls. Corollary: Does UNRWA have any plan to reduce the number of refugees? If not, why not?

5. How many "refugees" would voluntarily choose to become citizens of their host countries, with full equal rights, given the choice? As head of UNRWA he should have his finger on the pulse of what the "refugees" want. If he claims they wouldn't, I have counterexamples from Lebanon and Gaza of PalArabs desperately trying to become citizens of Lebanon and Egypt, respectively.

6. In his opinion, does the Convention of the Rights of the Child - that says that every child has the right to a nationality - apply to stateless children born in Arab countries to PalArab parents? If not, why not?

7. What percentage of UNRWA's budget is paid for by Arab nations?

8. When Ging says that " Let me say unequivocally that there is a crisis that is far larger than a 'humanitarian crisis'; there is a crisis that affects every aspect of public and private life in Gaza." does he really mean that things in Gaza are worse than in Somalia or the Sudan? If not, than how can it be "far larger" than a humanitarian crisis?

9. Does UNRWA negotiate with the PA to eventually take over the camps in its own territory? If not, why not? Isn't there a contradiction to call people "refugees" when they live in their own territory?

10. Is the nationhood of Palestinian Arabs so fragile that it would be damaged by them becoming citizens of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar where there are so many of them living? That is the argument of the Arab governments - does UNRWA agree?

11. Why did the UN oppose Israel building real towns for the refugees in Gaza in the 1980s? What was UNRWA's position?

I'm sure I could have come up with more - asking about this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or even this.