Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 19, 2012

New State Dept. anti-jihadi strategy: Trolling

In the decade since 9/11, the U.S. government has used a wide variety of tactics against terrorists. It’s invaded countries where they operated (and ones where they didn’t). It’s tried to win the backing of foreign populations in which the terrorists hide. And it’s sent commandos and deadly flying robots to kill them one by one.

One thing it hasn’t done, until now: troll them.

Within the State Department, a Silicon Valley veteran has quietly launched an improbable new initiative to annoy, frustrate and humiliate denizens of online extremist forums. It’s so new that it hasn’t fully taken shape: Even its architects concede it hasn’t fleshed out an actual strategy yet, and accordingly can’t point to any results it’s yielded. Its annual budget is a rounding error. The Pentagon will spend more in Afghanistan in the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence.

But it also represents, in the mind of its creator, a chance to discourage impressionable youth from becoming terrorists — all in an idiom they firmly understand. And if it actually works, it might stand a chance of cutting off al-Qaida’s ability to replenish its ranks at a time when it looks to be reeling.

The program, called Viral Peace, seeks to occupy the virtual space that extremists fill, one thread or Twitter exchange at a time. Shahed Amanullah, a senior technology adviser to the State Department and Viral Peace’s creator, tells Danger Room he wants to use “logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments, not just to confront [extremists], but to undermine and demoralize them.” Think of it as strategic trolling, in pursuit of geopolitical pwnage.

...Viral Peace doesn’t have a strategy yet. And to hear Amanullah and his colleagues tell it, the State Department won’t be the ones who come up with one. It’s better, they argue, to let Muslims in various foreign countries figure out which message boards to troll and how to properly troll them. Americans won’t know, say, the Tagalog-language Internet better than Filipinos; and as outsiders, they won’t have the credibility necessary to actually make an impact. The best the State Department can do is train good trolls — which Amanullah began to do this spring.

That means taking a big risk. If Viral Peace works as intended, with the trainees taking control of the program, Amanullah and the State Department will have little control over how the program actually trolls the terrorists. And the first wave of meetings in Muslim countries shows how far the program has to go.

...

In April, Amanullah dispatched two young associates, Humera Khan of the U.S.-based counter-radicalization think tank Muflehun and the playwright and essayist Wajahat Ali, to set the idea into practice. They took a quickie tour of Muslim nations to meet young local leaders who might be interested in confronting extremism. It was a pilot program for Viral Peace and a related program of Amanullah’s called Generation Change. The idea was to connect notable people — rising stars in the arts, business and culture fields, who had an online following — with one another and to people who focused on counterterrorism.

“You don’t need to teach this generation how to use social media. They know how to use Twitter. They know how to use Facebook,” says Khan, who participated in Viral Peace in her individual capacity. “The whole [Viral Peace] curriculum is about learning what strategy is.”

Except that the first wave of Viral Peace didn’t yield a strategy. In Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia — Ali went to Pakistan as well — the opening meetings brought together about 30 people per country, selected by the State Department and Amanullah’s own social networks, for sprawling brainstorming sessions. Some of them were just about how Muslim communities are perceived in their own countries. And some participants didn’t place counterterrorism at the top of their agendas.

“Yes, there were issues of extremism” discussed, Khan says. “But by and large, the people felt that if you could deal with economics, education, making sure the rights of the underprivileged were maintained, it would take care of a lot of the other problems.”

That may be, but it’s also far afield from trolling the trolls. Amanullah accepts that mission creep is a risk. But, he contends, if you want to get the most effective people denouncing jihadis online, it’s a risk worth accepting. And unlike the U.S. government, they stand the better chance of getting lurkers to think of them as “actually a cool group of people to be in,” as Amanullah puts it.

What’s more, Amanullah has basically no budget. Viral Peace, a global program, has mere thousands of dollars in annual seed money so far; the Obama administration is asking for about $85 billion for the Afghanistan war next year. Participants are staying connected via Facebook, with minimal U.S. government presence as a middleman; Amanullah wants to expand to more countries soon. But it’s not clear where Viral Peace fits in Obama’s broader counterterrorism strategy: White House officials declined repeated requests to comment for this story. Amanullah sees it as a supplement to existing counterterrorism efforts — not a replacement for, say, drone strikes in Yemen — and he also concedes that his project will take a long time before it starts to pay counterterrorism dividends.

But Amanullah doesn’t view that as an unconquerable obstacle. He thinks of counterterrorism like a venture capitalist might.

“I come from Silicon Valley, from the start-up environment. I want to prove you can do small, inexpensive, high-impact projects that don’t just talk about the problem but solve the problem,” he says. “And solve it the right way: not with the government’s heavy hand but by empowering local people to do what they already know to do but don’t know how.”

It is worth throwing a few bucks at; it certainly can't hurt and deflating jihadist egos is a fun thing to so.

(h/t Sasha)

Photo of Bulgarian suicide bomber, more updates (UPDATE: video of burning bus)

UPDATE 3: He was identified.

From Frog News, Bulgaria:

Some initial reports from eyewitnesses indicated it was a female suicide bomber, and it is easy to see why they thought so.

His backpack is large enough to hold a very powerful bomb.

JPost notes:

The man was filmed walking around the airport for an hour prior to the attack by security cameras on the premises, according to the report. His body sustained the most damage in the blast, leading investigators to believe that he set off a bomb located on his person when he boarded the bus.

An FBI check of the document's found on the man's body, including a passport identifying him as a Michigan resident, determined that they were counterfeit, according to the report.

Bulgaria site Novinite says the death toll has risen to eight, as an Israeli victim succumbed overnight as did the Bulgarian bus driver.

Algemeiner has photos of Zaka members recovering bodies from the scene. (Original photos at the Zaka site, some graphic.)

JPost has interviews with people who were on the bus.

One young woman, Gal Malka, who flew to Bulgaria on a vacation before being drafted into the IDF, told Channel two by phone from the scene, “We got on the bus. There were a lot of people on it... Suddenly someone got on there, and something exploded. We heard a boom. And we actually saw body parts. We tried to escape. The door was closed. But there was a hole in the side, through which me and my friend escaped.”

Malksa said there were bodies all around her, and that many people were screaming. She said she bandaged a man who was suffering heavy bleeding from his head.

After the earth-shattering blast, “I opened my eyes and saw that everything around me was fire,” Malka later told Ynet.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the burning bus, from Bulgarian TV:

UPDATE 2: Here is the fake Michigan driver's license that the bomber had:

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE 3: He was identified.

UNDP says Gaza only has 8 AIDS patients; sends 100 people to conference

From the United Nations Development Programme:

Gaza Strip, 11 June 2012 – 40 journalists and 60 representatives from the national HIV and AIDS committee, UN agencies, civil society and government institutions completed a three-day workshop on strengthening the response to HIV and AIDS in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The workshop aimed at providing broad areas of training to strengthen the role of UN organizations and partners, from local and national institutions, in response to HIV and AIDS in the occupied Palestinian territory. The workshop also developed the participants’ leadership skills in order to reduce the stigma and convey accurate messages and facts on HIV and AIDS. The workshop was organized by UNDP through the Global Fund to fight HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and facilitated by experts from Egypt.

During the workshop, Dr Majdi Thhair, Director of Preventive Medicine in the Ministry of Health, thanked the Global Fund Programme for organizing the workshop and funding the training of two doctors from the Gaza Strip in HIV and AIDS medical treatment and psychological support.

According to the Ministry of Health, the cumulative number of patients with HIV or AIDS since 1987 reached 72 cases in the occupied Palestinian territory. There are 29 cases in the Gaza Strip, eight of whom are still alive and receiving treatment and support from the UNDP Global Fund programme.

There is no indication that anyone from the West Bank attended, so this was really a seminar for Gaza alone.

A hundred people to cover how Gazans deal with only eight AIDS patients?

Of course, there are far more than eight people with AIDS in Gaza, the number is absurdly low. (In the West Bank it is low as well.) But UNDP's press release reveals no skepticism about Hamas' and the PA's official numbers, which means that either it is wasting a huge amount of time and money that could have been better spent elsewhere, or the agency is just to scared to point out that Hamas is the reason for the stigma about diagnosing AIDS.

Either way, the people in the UNDP look like clowns.

I emailed the contact person on the press release two days ago but received no response. Of course.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Israel Research Fellow)

Work accident!

A member of the Popular Resistance Committees, Abdul Rahman Abbaba, 24, was killed Wednesday evening in an explosion at a PRC terror training site west of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The Nasser Saladin Brigades, military wing of the PRC, called him a "martyr" and said that he died while performing a "mission of jihad."

The PRC is one of those terror groups that are tiny compared to Hamas, but big enough to ensure that they have veto power over any potential peace agreement. Which is reason #9488 why peace is impossible.

But for now - break out the candy!

Wednesday links

From Ian:

Israel Says Syria Pulls Troops from Golan to Suppress Revolt Elsewhere

"In the briefing, the general said that satellite images show that Mr. Assad’s forces are directing artillery at highly populated regions and acting “extremely brutally, which displays their desperation and indicates they are unable to find more efficient solutions to pacify the uprisings.”

Now They Are Slaughtering Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

"What is clear is that this massacre of Palestinians has received little attention in the international media. Most of the Arab countries, as well, which treat Palestinians as second-class citizens and subject them to apartheid systems, do not seem to care about the ongoing massacres against Palestinians in particular and Syrians in general."

A-G: Israeli law is applicable on Temple Mount

"Filed Sunday, by the Temple Mount Faithful group, the petition claims infrastructure work carried out to strengthen the Dome of the Rock is harming the Foundation Stone, the large stone on which the Ark of the Covenant is believed to have rested."
"The group said work carried out by the Wakf Islamic trust is not under the supervision of the Israeli authorities and is damaging the holiest site in Judaism."
“There are some people who want to make noise, claiming that the work is damaging,” he said, “but all of the work being done there are is under supervision of the Israel Antiquities Authority without any kind of damage to any antiquities.”

Report Shows How HSBC Maintained Its Ties With One Of Osama Bin Laden's Key Benefactors
This story broke in Israel a few days ago: 'HSBC ignored financial transactions to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas'

Chilling archives of French Jews deported to Auschwitz shown for 1st time to public

French paper Liberation prints Mohamed Merah transcript

"Earlier this month, relatives of Merah's victims said they were "outraged" after TF1 broadcast parts of the conversation, and their lawyers said they would seek an injunction to block further broadcasts."

Saudi survey shows high number of women suffer low self worth

"A whopping 90 percent of Saudi women are not satisfied with their appearance, according to a study conducted by a health intelligence office in the kingdom's eastern region."

Palestinian Media Watch:
Fatah summer camp named after female terrorist Mughrabi, who led killing of 37 in bus hijacking
Abbas and PA leaders attend Fatah performance presenting Israel as "Palestine"
Arab member of Israeli parliament Ahmed Tibi attends Fatah performance presenting Israel as "Palestine"

From the BBC Olympics website – Palestine is a country with East Jerusalem as its Capital
From Daphne Anson: Palestinian Statehood Confirmed – By The BBC
But there’s more:
Palestine
Key Facts - Capital East Jerusalem
Israel
Under Key Facts no mention of a Capital!
I checked all 32 counties on the page with Israel, only Ivory Coast doesn’t have a capital listed.
Also the map for “Palestine” is zoomed way out with only a Palestine marker, the Israel map is correct and only shows Jerusalem, so that’s something.

Also:
Eritrean regime cashes in on arms and human trafficking, says UN report

A multimillion-dollar arms trafficking industry that is funding the Eritrean military regime is behind the kidnap, torture and ransom of thousands of Eritrean refugees, according to a leaked report to the UN security council.

An investigation by the Somalia and Eritrea monitoring group has uncovered a trafficking highway running from the Eritrean highlands through Sudan's refugee camps into the Sinai desert, delivering arms to militant groups, and Eritrean asylum-seekers to Bedouin gangs, who use starvation, electrocution, rape and murder to extort up to $40,000 (£25,000) from relatives in the Eritrean diaspora for their release.

According to witness testimony, part of the arsenal smuggled from Eritrea is sold to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. This industry, run jointly by Eritrean officials, Sudanese and Egyptian smuggling gangs, is estimated to generate more than $10m a year.

(h/t Yoel)

What we call peace, they call "collaboration"

The IDF's COGAT brings us another of those little-reported stories that illustrate how different things are on the ground compared to what we hear from the media.

Those who stayed at the Grand Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv in recent days probably observed a group of approximately 45 Palestinian foresters, who came for a 3-day training workshop on the subject of forest preservation. The workshop took place through financing and planning provided by the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria and in cooperation of the Israel National Fund and the Forest Department at the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture.

"This is the third workshop we've held with the Israel National Fund and the Forest Section at the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture", explained the Agriculture Headquarters Officer at the Civil Administration, Mr. Samir Muadi. "The purpose of this workshop is to tighten the relationship and cooperation, to preserve the forests, to carry out information exchange between both parties and to train the foresters of the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and the Agriculture Headquarters Officer".

The whole workshop was planned and funded by the Civil Administration that cared for the permit issuances for the foresters and financed the travel and hotel accommodation. Among the foresters, 12 Palestinian foresters who work at the Civil Administration were also present and also participated in the workshop in order to refine their professional knowledge in their field of expertise.

"A forest requires correct tending, correct maintenance, correct inspection and correct surveillance in order to preserve it", says the Agriculture Headquarters Officer. "Strengthened relationships greatly contribute to forest preservation. Consequently, within this framework, we try to tighten our relations and learn from the accumulated experience of the Israel National Fund, since once there is cooperation between the parties, the forests are better preserved".

Unlike other stories I've mentioned about the IDF helping out West Bank businessmen and farmers, here we see that the Palestinian Authority itself is working with Israel on matters of mutual interest - all paid for by the hated IDF. Not only that, but he much vilified Jewish National Fund is involved in this initiative as well!

Needless to say, there is nothing about this mentioned on the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Agriculture webpage, nor in any Arabic media. To Palestinian Arabs, any cooperation with Israel is not a sign of peace but a sign of "collaboration" with the Zionist enemy.

(Incidentally, Hamas has its own separate Ministry of Agriculture - moa.gov.ps as opposed to moa.pna.ps.)

Iran's cyberwar against Israel (updated)

Kaspersky Labs analyzes a number of Trojan Horses and malware examples targeting Israel that are apparently written in Iran, in part one of a two part article.

The malware, nicknamed "Madi" (presumably a reference to the Shiite messianic figure of the Madhi), is not sophisticated. Instead, it relies on tried and true methods of social engineering, relying on naive computer users to allow scripts to run in PowerPoint presentations, ignoring the warnings that Windows gives about potentially dangerous actions.

It is well known in the computer security world that people are too likely to fall for such schemes.

Another method used is to send what appear to be JPG images, but in fact they are programs as well, using a known Microsoft bug where Unicode characters in languages that are written right-to-left can create file names that appear to have the extensions of mere images but in fact are executable programs that can do anything to the computer (in this case, a screen saver):

Once the malware is loaded then the attackers can remotely do anything they want on the infected machines.

Again, these are not sophisticated attacks in the least; hackers have been doing things like this for years. But it only takes one stupid victim to click on that cute photo of nature or puppies to compromise an entire company or government department.

This specific malware can take screenshots at regular intervals and also make audio recordings from the victim's computer, which can then be uploaded to the attackers' machines.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Iran is the target of the malware, even though key parts were written by Farsi speakers. I find that hard to believe given that Hebrew in the Powerpoint above, although the people who created the Trojan are not necessarily the same as those that created the Powerpoint macro that calls the Trojan.

UPDATE: It appears I am right:

After analyzing initial data on the virus when it was first publicized Tuesday, Symantec released a report saying that nearly two thirds of the computers that have been infected by Mahdi are in Israel. That is in sharp contrast to initial assessments Tuesday that claimed that the majority of infected systems were in Iran itself. Computer security firm Kaspersky Labs reported on the Mahdi virus on Tuesday.

(h/t Yoel, Ian)

Haaretz is live-blogging. So is the Times of Israel.

From YNet:

A number of casualties were reported in what appears to be a terror attack on an Israeli bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, according to initial reports.

Channel 10 said the blast occurred inside the terminal of Sarafovo Airport.

AFP reports three killed.

The JC:

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has confirmed Israeli tourists have been killed in an explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria.

Local media in the resort of Burgas claim the bus was outside the Sarafovo airport and was packed with Israelis.

Bulgarian radio said three people had been killed. It is thought at least 20 have been injured.

The explosion is thought to have occurred at around 6pm local time.

Burgas is the second largest resort on the country's Black Sea coast. It is popular with Israeli tourists and is home to a Chabad centre. Israeli teens are known to flock to the resort for their summer holidays.

Israel has previously warned Bulgaria of the threat posed by Hizbollah.

Israeli media has interviews with eyewitnesses who said thatthe explosion was in the luggage compartment of the bus and people were jumping out of the windows to escape.

Of course, Hezbollah is an arm of Iran.

Three days ago YNet had a report by Alex Fishman saying that Hezbollah, frustrated at not being able to successfully kill Israeli diplomats, was ready to target tourists. This was in the wake of the discovery of a plot against Israeli tourists in Cyprus.

There were reports of an unsuccessful bomb attack that targeted Jewish tourists in Bulgaria this past January that was apparently hushed up.

YNet adds in a newer report:

An eyewitness told Channel 2 News that Bulgarian authorities were slow to respond to the event; adding that search and rescue teams and the paramedics "Didn’t seem to care too much. They took a while getting these two small fire-extinguishers to fight a burning bus, and the airport's fire truck took over 15 minutes to get there."

I am told that Israeli media is now reporting 7 killed.

A tweet quotes Israel's Channel 10 as saying it was a suicide bomber. Well, that rules out Mormons.

JPost notes that this is the 18th anniversary of the AMIA bombings in Argentina, done by Hezbollah for Iran.

Last night, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Cairo to meet with Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi today.

This morning, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal arrived in Cairo for exactly the same reason, and he plans to meet Morsi tomorrow.

Morsi said in a speech that Egypt regards both of the groups equally and is committed to reconciliation between them.

It is widely expected within the Palestinian Arab community that Morsi will expand the operations of the Rafah terminal to allow more people to pass through as well as starting to allow commercial goods - and who knows what else - through the crossing. While that was an election promise, so far Morsi has said nothing specific about his plans for Rafah.

The Assad regime is falling apart

Syria roundup:

Syria’s state TV said the country’s minister of defense, General Daoud Rajha, and Assad’s brother-in-law have been killed in a suicide attack in Damascus on Wednesday, as raging battles across the capital upped the stakes ahead of a Security Council vote on the Syria crisis.

President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, is also the deputy minister of defense, was initially transferred to the hospital and was in a critical condition.

The television said interior minister, Mohammed al-Shaar, was still alive and in a “stable condition,” after Arab TV stations reported his death.

Meanwhile, the Syrian intelligence chief, Hisham Bekhtyar, was undergoing a surgery after being wounded in the bombing, security sources told Reuters.

Security officials told AFP that several other participants in a top-level meeting were wounded in the blast and taken to al-Shami hospital in the capital for treatment.

Suicide bomber worked as bodyguard for president Assad’s inner circle, Syrian security source told Reuters.

More than 60 soldiers have been killed in clashes with the rebel Free Syrian Army in Damascus in the past 48 hours, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

“Between 40 and 50 soldiers of the regular Syrian forces were killed the day before yesterday (Monday) in fighting in Damascus, and at least 20 were killed yesterday,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Two Syrian brigadier generals crossed into Turkey overnight, a Turkish foreign ministry official told AFP Wednesday.

"Some 330 Syrians including two brigadier generals fled to Turkey Tuesday night," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official also said that nearly 43,300 Syrian refugees were now living in camps near the border with Syria.

“We are seeing an increase in the number of Syrians arriving in Turkey, whether they are civilians or military,” he added.

On Monday, a Syrian general and several soldiers crossed into the Turkish side of the border.

The United Nations said the number of Syrian refugees who have sought help from it since April has almost tripled to 112,000, according to The Associated Press.

The U.N. refugee agency said women and children make up three-quarters of the Syrians who it has registered or assisted in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said Tuesday in Geneva that the actual number is probably “significantly higher” and that many Syrian refugees are completely dependent on humanitarian aid.

Edwards said that Jordan has seen 33,400 Syrian refugees, while 30,900 have arrived in Lebanon. Another 7,900 have sought sanctuary in Iraq.

Also, Jordan taking steps concerning possible chemical attack from Syria.

(h/t Yoel)

Honor killing in Gaza

A 17-year old girl from the al-Shati camp in northern Gaza was strangled early this morning.

Police say that she was killed by her father and brother.

Sources say that she was killed for reasons of "honor."

So the dead girl's family can now hold their heads up high.

Turkey - using "Palestine" instead of helping it

A biting critique in Hurriyet by Burak Bekdil:

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu must have been too busy isolating (now) Russia and China (after Israel) to notice that his favorite brothers in the Middle East, the Palestinians, recently sounded an alarm when they found out that they were incapable of paying June salaries to 160,000 employees on time.

The shortfall was considered the biggest crisis in Palestinian history, and the authorities said they heavily relied on the availability of Arab and international aid. It is bizarre that Ankara did not pay any attention to the Palestinian cry. Which other nation in recent history has been the loudest supporter of the “Palestinian cause?” Where are the Turkish brothers of our Palestinian brothers? Some facts and figures I recently came across might shed light on the situation.

In the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara tragedy, Mr. Davutoğlu said this was “Turkey’s 9/11,” that more Turkish-led flotillas would be on their way to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that Turkish military planes and ships would protect these “aid vessels” and that Israel would eventually be entirely isolated.

That challenge was followed by numerous other promises for every manner of possible Turkish aid for our Palestinian brothers, including a revelation that Minister Davutoğlu was dreaming about “praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque in the Palestinian capital Jerusalem.” Naturally, all that made Mr. Davutoğlu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan heroes in the Palestinian lands – for some time.

Two years later, the Palestinians may be feeling differently. A Palestinian friend who lives in a European capital and has never hidden his admiration for his nation’s greatest Turkish saviors now thinks that the Turks used the Palestinians in an Orientalist power game. “We’ve been deceived by many nations, and now, once again, by the Turks,” he wrote to me recently. I replied that I was not the right person to contact and gave him Minister Davutoğlu’s office number.

Facts and figures... Yes. Every new day we hear from the prime minister that “we are the world’s 17th – and sometimes 16th – biggest economy and we are running fast to become one of the top 10.” Yet, at an international donors’ conference for Gaza in March 2009, the Turkish pledges stood at a mere $93 million (no typo here, ninety-three million dollars). That pledge accounted for only 2.1 percent of all international (mostly Christian!) pledges made at that conference which totaled $4.257 billion. But there is more.

If you examine the source country data of all 216 approved projects in the Gaza Strip, you will see a breakdown that is not really proportional to the Turkish extravaganza of boasting one of the world’s biggest economies as well as its brotherhood with Palestine. Of those 216 projects, 180 are run by international aid organizations, three by the World Bank, three by the Red Crescent, 13 by Germany, two by France, and one by each of Belgium, Egypt, Holland and Sweden. Turkish projects? None. Zero.

Ah, but there once was one. In the late 2000s, a Turkish business organization, TOBB, launched an “industry for peace” project which would have built an organized industrial zone in Jenin and created 5,000 jobs. In 2009, a memorandum of understanding was signed, with all the dignitaries smiling in Kodak-moment happy pictures. Another signature ceremony in 2010 and a pledge to build a similar industrial zone in Gaza followed. More Kodak-moment happy faces. The most recent news on the Jenin project appeared a few months ago when a Turkish official briefed Palestinian journalists on “the latest developments.” We journalists have the immediate reflex to know that this simply means there is no real progress to speak of.

And, by the way, any ideas about the Turkish-Palestinian foreign trade? After I saw that the annual two-way figure for 2010 was $29 million and that Palestinian exports to Turkey stood at $270,000, I didn’t bother checking the 2011 numbers.

It isn't only Turkey. Every Arab and Muslim nation uses the "Palestinian cause" to distract their people from what's happening at home, but when it comes down to it they do little.

Except for Iran, which is happily arming any terror group who claims to want to destroy Israel.

(h/t Herb)

Switched at birth in Gaza? (UPDATE: Radio Netherlands responds)

A reader emailed me about a CBC radio program (originally from Radio Netherlands, link here) he heard recently about Ahmed Masoud, a British writer and playwright who was born in Gaza.

During the program, Masoud told this story that he had written for The Guardian last year:

I had a very happy childhood in a very large family, with five sisters and six brothers. I'm right in the middle, which is a good place to be. But we lived in one of the worst places on Earth – the Gaza Strip in Palestine – and when I was six, in 1987, the first intifada started.

...Despite everything going on outside I had a happy childhood. But all this changed when I was 17.

One day I came home from school and turned on the TV. There was a programme about Palestinian refugees and how their families were fragmented because of the troubles, and it talked about how children and babies were mixed up in hospitals.

I looked at my mother and she was electrified – her mouth was open, her eyes were staring and she looked like a ghost. I knew there was something she wasn't telling me. My dad, too, was staring at the screen. I could see that behind his glasses there was a tear coming down. I hadn't seen my dad cry before, and to see his tears falling down his cheek was terrifying to me.

Then he wiped his eyes and held my hand, and my mum's hand, and he started telling the story about what happened when I was born.

At the time, the hospital was being raided and I was evacuated to a special care unit before my mum had even seen me. My dad heard news that the hospital was being bombed and went straight there. When he arrived he was told the room and cot number where he could find me. He ran as fast as he could, but when he got there, he found not one but two babies in the cot. He didn't know which one was his – the one on the left or the one on the right. There was no time to make a decision. He had to take one. He wondered whether the number they had given him was a mistake, but when he looked around all the other cots were crammed with babies too. And he had to make that decision. So he picked me up. Even now, if you ask him, he can't answer why he picked me and not the other baby.

He went back to my mum and she wrapped me up, and they ran with me through the streets back home. He didn't say anything to her until they got home. My mum just put me to her breast and began to feed me. That bond, that love, that motherly feeling was there. The more she looked at me and fed me, the more she was sure I was her son.

Wow...what a story! It is custom made for reader (and listener) sympathy. You can almost feel the heat from the explosions and smell the gunpowder, as you picture Masoud's father desperately trying to save his baby's life from the heartless Israeli air raid at the maternity ward, and the parents' desperate race through the streets of Gaza - with the still recovering mother forced to flee on foot, no doubt barefooted, dodging the falling bombs and debris while tenderly protecting her newborn baby.

Only one problem: Israel didn't bomb any hospitals in Gaza when Masoud was born. It didn't have air raids until the second intifada.

This story happened six years before the first intifada, when tens of thousands of Gazans were peacefully commuting to and working in Israel. Hamas didn't exist. Thousands of Israelis lived in Gaza. More from Israel would go there weekly to buy goods cheaper than they were within the Green Line. Arabs with the proper means would travel to Israel to be treated in hospitals there.

Masoud's birthday is August 27, and I cannot find any possible actions by Israel in Gaza in 1981 or 1982 around that date. Israel was fighting in Lebanon, not Gaza, and the very few protests there were met with riot control methods, not airplanes. (In 1981, there was one highly unusual mass protest in Gaza where one protester was killed, and that was in December. Most of the protests at the time were from the PLO in the West Bank.)

This story is fiction.

Now, it is entirely possible that Masoud's father is the one who made up the story, perhaps because poor procedures in the Gaza hospital caused a possible mix-up. After all, he admits that there were two children in the same bassinet.

Or possibly Masoud himself, who has received awards for his autobiographical fiction and who co-wrote a dramatic and seemingly highly exaggerated BBC radio play about how he escaped Gaza during Cast Lead, just made it up.

What is not at all surprising is that the media would swallow such a story without the least modicum of fact-checking.

(h/t Tom)

UPDATE: In the Radio Netherlands website, this was brought to the attention of the people who produced the radio show. Here is their response:

Ahmed Masoud’s story was part of an entire show on adoptees and their sense of family. His particular story centres on his suspicion that he was switched at birth and was raised in the “wrong” family. He then goes on to recount how after an initial period of alienation from his parents and siblings, he came to realize that it doesn’t matter whether he’s genetically related to them or not. They are his “real” family, in the end. It is expressly not about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I've found no reason to think his story is a fabrication.

As for the criticism that there were no air raids at the time of his birth, we contacted Mr. Masoud and here is an excerpt from his reply to me: “I have made my position clear to these allegations before: I never made a claim that the hospital was bombed. I mention clearly that my father heard [sic] on the news. The story is about the parent/son relationship and not the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where facts can be muddled up depending on which side of the fence you are. I hope this answers your questions.”

I'm not sure it does. We based our interview on an article in The Guardian newspaper Saturday 19 March 2011. Mr. Masoud describes how as a teenager he’d come home from school. His parents were crying as they watched a TV program about children who were mixed up at birth in the hospital. Mr. Masoud describes his father at that moment: “Then he wiped his eyes and held my hand, and my mum's hand, and he started telling the story about what happened when I was born. At the time, the hospital was being raided and I was evacuated to a special care unit before my mum had even seen me. My dad heard news that the hospital was being bombed and went straight there…”

The passage is ambiguous. On the one hand, it implies that the raid is a matter of fact. On the other, it mentions that the raid was his father’s perception, one based on his hearing a news report. So was the raid real or not? Here is part of Mr. Masoud’s response: “As you can read from the article, I never make the allegation of the hospital being bombed which seems to be the focus of the complaints. Raided doesn't mean bombed.”

I’ve tried to verify independently if there were any Israeli raids of any sort on hospitals in Gaza in the early 1980s. This much we know: Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and had a military presence there. The Lebanon war was on. In 1981, Israel bombed Iran. Israeli fighter jets flew low over Gaza. Things were extremely tense, so it’s understandable why Mr. Masoud’s father could believe that a hospital had been raided. But to my mind, Mr. Masoud’s use of the term “raid” is misleading: it’s treated more like a background fact rather than a perception or misperception. We’ve therefore altered the language describing his story on our website.

Here is where Radio Netherlands falls short. Now that we know that Israel hadn't dropped any bombs on Gaza in 1981, or indeed at any time since 1967, the idea that the father immediately believed that a hospital (!) was being bombed is fantastic enough. But to go beyond that and say that he ran to the hospital, presumably saw that the rumor was completely unfounded, and still chose a nearly random baby to take in his rush is beyond belief. Moreover, that he would then take his still recovering wife to flee, on foot, away from a completely safe hospital goes way beyond plausibility, no matter how sympathetic you want to be with the father.

CAMERA found a similar story about a fictional Israeli raid -this one a tank attack in 1948 - that was reported in the media in 1998 as background to a different story. In that story as well, the main point of the story wasn't the fictional raid, it was a different topic entirely, where Israeli disregard of the lives of civilians is taken to be understood, retroactively, in the context of the modern revisionist narrative.

And we've seen this happen a lot - for example, Mahmoud Abbas offhandedly describing his family's eviction from Safed, when in fact they never saw an Jewish soldier. It is a subtle rewrite of history that is meant to cast Palestinian Arabs as eternal victims of Jewish aggression rather than as people who were actively involved in the events at the time. And when innocent sounding details like these are placed as background facts in writings on different themes, they are generally believed by the reader subconsciously, far more effectively than if it was a straight narrative of events where the reader is on guard for explicit bias.

This is why this is a big deal, and why the lies of a playwright who is practiced in creating drama need to be called out.

(h/t The Dude)

UN's OCHA pretends to be "neutral"

From a UN briefing yesterday:

U.N. HUMANITARIAN ARM STRIVES FOR NEUTRALITY IN OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY

Asked about a letter sent to the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Spokesperson said OCHA’s role with regard to the humanitarian situation and concerns in the occupied Palestinian territory -- as the UN coordinating body for humanitarian affairs -- focuses mainly on advocacy, both on behalf of people in need of, or dependent on, humanitarian assistance, and with both Palestinians and Israelis.

These include, for example, families made homeless by evictions or demolitions, such as in Area C of the West Bank, and people whose lives and livelihoods are affected by the impact of the Gaza blockade restrictions.

Nesirky said that this advocacy includes providing an independent assessment of the situation on the ground and making this available publicly through fact-based reports, which are routinely shared with and used by national and international partners.

However, he noted that OCHA does not implement programmes or directly provide relief items, but that OCHA strives to ensure its neutrality and impartiality in all aspects of its work.

Note how both their examples of "neutrality" ignore any humanitarian concerns of Israelis.

But showing that OCHA is anything but neutral is even easier. In December, they published their "Humanitarian Atlas" (large download) and the very beginning shows that they are anything but even-handed:

Palestinian civilians living in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) continue to bear the brunt of ongoing conflict and Israeli occupation. A lack of respect for international humanitarian and human rights law has resulted in a protection crisis with serious and negative humanitarian consequences.

OCHA mentions in this report that in 2011, three Palestinians had been killed by Israeli settlers (without mentioning any context on what they might have been doing at the time.)

Yet it doesn't mention that in 2011, 8 Israelis in the West Bank were killed by Palestinians (the Fogel family, the Palmer father and son and Ben Yosef Livnat) nor that four other Israelis were killed from Grad rockets and anti-tank missiles fired from Gaza (Moshe Ami, Eliyahu Naim, Yossi Shoshan, Daniel Viflic).

How impartial can a report be when it only mentions people from one side being killed? Or does "neutral" mean it doesn't take sides between Fatah and Hamas?

The "humanitarian" UN must not consider Jews who are killed by Palestinian Arab terror "human."

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Israel Research Fellow)

UPDATE: Ian in the comments reminds us:

OCHA's Khulood Badawi tweeted a fake photo of a child supposedly killed by the IDF.
UN Media Official Responsible for False Photo Tweet

Also OCHA and Ms Badawi produced (with end credit) a Palestinian propaganda film by Pink Floyd cover band member Roger Waters.
Walled Horizons English- Narrated by Roger Waters