Thursday, May 15, 2008

  • Thursday, May 15, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From JTA:
Four synagogues were vandalized in two London neighborhoods.

Dozens of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans were spray-painted Wednesday night on shops, pavements and walls outside the synagogues.

Residents of the Stamford Hill and Clapton Common neighborhoods were "shocked" Thursday to see some 40 slogans such as "Jihad to Israel" and "Jihad to Tel-Aviv," according to media reports.

A spokesperson for the Community Security Trust, which provides for the safety of British Jewry, said the community already was on high alert after receiving threats from supporters of the al-Qaida terrorist group.

Police said investigators were looking into footage from surveillance cameras and that forensic teams had recovered a canister of spray paint.
24dash.com adds:
Anti-Semitic incidents in the UK remain "far too high" and the number recorded last year was the second highest ever, a minister said today.

Cohesion minister Parmjit Dhanda said there were 547 incidents last year and the Government had to continue to work to "bear down" on the problem.

For the Tories, Paul Goodman said all forms of hate crime were "an unqualified and unmitigated evil."

Mr Goodman said that many different places of worship had been attacked in the UK. "But only one religious institution in Britain is under threat to such a degree that those who attend are advised not to linger outside after worship, namely the synagogue."

Labour's Andrew Dismore, whose Hendon constituency has the largest proportion of Jewish people, said the Jewish community lived, in effect, in a "permanent state of siege and underlying fear".

Mr Dismore added that it was unfair for parents to be asked to contribute to funding security at Jewish schools.

"It's a voluntary contribution, but Jewish parents are expected to pay towards the cost of making sure their children are secure in school," he said.
The only other British media source mentioning this current spate of British anti-semitism (according to Google News) is This Is London. Nothing from the BBC, Guardian (although they do mention a recent report on anti-semitism on campuses), Times or other major news outlets.

As opposed to "Islamophobia."
  • Thursday, May 15, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
AFP has an interesting, inconsistent policy of when it puts scare quotes around the word "terror."

When performed against Israel, of course, terror is the ambiguous "terror":
Bush vows to support Israel against 'terror'

Visiting US President George W. Bush vowed on Thursday to support Israel in battling "terror" groups as the nation marks its 60th anniversary still struggling to find peace with Arab neighbours.
And against India, terror is also in the eye of the beholder:
Some 216 people were wounded in what police said was the first "terror" attack in the Rajasthan state capital.
But attacks against the US - which probably pays much of AFP's bills - are definitely terror:
Since 1970, Las Vegas saw gambling revenues fall only once -- in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, when gaming revenues in 2002 were less than 1 percent lower than 2001.
The United States has poured nearly 40 billion dollars in aid to South Asia since the September 11 attacks but the terror threat from the region remains a top problem, a congressional hearing was told Wednesday.
The trial is the first in Europe over the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" programme under which it has secretly transferred terror suspects to third countries known to practise torture.
Colombian paramilitaries to be tried by US for terror, drugs
Obama has disowned Wright, denounced the terror campaign of Weather Underground, and says that his not wearing a flag lapel pin does not make him any less patriotic.
The UK definition of terror is also OK by AFP, as the scare quotes are nowhere to be found:
Ditching the 10 percent lowest tax bracket infuriated Labour backbenchers, while Brown faces further clashes with them over plans to let police hold terror suspects for 42 days without charge.
China also gets to define terror its own way without challenge from AFP:
The reports came a day after a top Olympic security official said the military would be involved in anti-terror efforts, and government confirmation earlier this week that China had introduce more stringent visa requirements.
So does Zimbabwe's critics:
Pressure mounted on Zimbabwe Thursday to admit foreign observers to oversee a presidential election run-off amid fresh claims that pro-government militias were deliberately instilling terror.
As does the UN:
Canada has asked the United Nations to take one of its nationals off a list of terror suspects, a Sudanese-Canadian who has been blocked in Sudan for five years, his lawyer said Friday.
It appears that most countries have the right to call terror terror without the AFP's editorializing scare quotes, but attacks against medical clinics in Israel or simultaneous bombs in India don't make the cut.

But there is one other case where AFP uses the scare quotes as it does against Israel and India: Vietnam.
Three pro-democracy activists including an American were handed jail terms of up to nine months on "terrorism" charges in a trial held under tight security Tuesday.

The three, all linked to a US-based party banned in Vietnam, were accused of "inciting riots threatening the national security" of the communist country by distributing leaflets.

Yes, AFP considers Israel and India uses of the word "terror" to be as ambiguous as that of Vietnam's.

When a policy is applied inconsistently in different situations, but consistently against Israel and India, what does that say about AFP's editorial policies?

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

  • Wednesday, May 14, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Firas Press has a bizarre article claiming that Israel must have shot the rocket at Ashkelon in order to gain sympathy while George Bush is visiting:
Informed sources in the Palestinian resistance said that the resistance had not fired a Palestinian rocket at the shopping center in Ashkelon. The source who refused to reveal his name said that the Israeli game is to enlist worldwide support and an omen of imminent invasion of Gaza outline Zionist Israel exists and create the world public opinion. For Kasaba, the source added that this drama it made up for Israel earn the approval of Bush's interests are not obvious to one of the Palestinian people at the same time stressing that the Palestinians had not fired any missiles at Ashkelon, warning data intriguers to adopt practical Palestinians until there is no excuse from the occupation to commit new massacres against the Palestinian people.

It is worth mentioning that Al-Quds Brigades have denied any missile launched at Ashkelon today as did Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades.
Although a number of press sources said that Islamic Jihad and the PRC both claimed responsibility, I have not seen those claims in the Islamic Jihad webpage, although they did praise the people who shot the rocket ("injuring of Zionist usurpers.") (I do not know the URL of any PRC webpage.) Firas did have a separate report of the PRC denying shooting the rocket.

This is quite strange.

My guess is that this is related to the brief kerfuffle that occurred last month when Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri chided Hamas for targeting women and children with their rockets, and Hamas denied doing so. Perhaps (as we saw yesterday) the Islamists are starting to get embarrassed by attacks that hurt clear non-combatants while at the same time they want to continue to make the lives of Jews in the Negev hell. Since that event, terrorist claims of responsibility for rocket attacks now claim to be aiming at military targets, even when they shell the crossings that provide them with food and fuel.

UPDATE: Or perhaps Firas is just incompetent. A PRC leader told YNet explicitly that his organization takes responsibility. And the PFLP is also reported to have claimed responsibility.
  • Wednesday, May 14, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Iran's Al-Alam made very clear that it considers all of Israel to be "occupied" territory, as it gleefully reports on the latest terror attack in Ashkelon:
ASHKELON, Israel, May 14--A rocket fired from Gaza exploded in a shopping center in the occupied southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Wednesday, wounding at least 30 people, rescue officials said.

The rocket ripped through the roof of the mall, causing a large chunk of the roof to collapse in a huge pile of rubble and twisted metal. Four windows were blown out of the side of the building.

A hospital official said a woman and her young daughter were seriously wounded, along with another child. Another woman was seriously wounded, and several other people were slightly wounded, said the official, Leah Malul of Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.

Two Palestinian resistance groups, the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, claimed responsibility. Earlier Wednesday, five Palestinians were martyred in military operations by the Israeli regime in Gaza.

While activists have fired homemade retaliatory rockets into occupied border towns for several years, only recently have they gained the capability to target Ashkelon, a city of 110,000 people about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Gaza border.
With Iranian Grad rockets, of course.
The rocket attack came as Bush was wrapping up talks in occupied al-Quds with Zionist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israel's high-tech military has been unable to find a way to stop the crude rockets.
Iran stands quite behind its proxies in Gaza.
  • Wednesday, May 14, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
From The Nation, by Ha'aretz Arab apologist Akiva Eldar, preaching to the choir:
There are journalists, including some prominent and well-known ones, who learn about distant lands and foreign peoples from casual conversations with taxi drivers. A chance exchange with a Manhattan cabby last fall taught me a few things I did not know about my newspaper and myself. The Alexandria-born driver, a veteran of the Egyptian navy, revealed that my colleagues and I at Ha'aretz were not speaking into a void. After he discovered my identity, he adamantly refused to take any money from me. Abe said that he had been a loyal reader of mine for years, and this was his modest way of expressing his esteem for a journalist who charges him up on a weekly basis with some hope for peace in the region where he was born.

Among the thousands of hate-mail messages I receive from people on the Israeli right wing, and the venomous talkbacks that Jewish Americans submit through the Ha'aretz website, the occasional word of encouragement slips through from Arab readers, both from neighboring countries and from the West. At international conferences I get pats on the back from pragmatic Muslim intellectuals as well as from left-liberal Jews and non-Jews. But the Egyptian cabby's warm words were the most precious gift I have received over the three decades--half of Israel's age--during which I have written more than 2,000 articles.

The Israeli ambassador to a major European capital once told me that David Grossman, whose articles appear frequently in the local press, and myself were "ruining his job." He complained that every time he attacked Israel's critics for their "anti-Israeli" stances, as he put it, they would argue that our own articles were far more critical. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt cite me in their controversial book, The Israel Lobby, as one of the Israeli journalists whose criticism of the occupation is even sharper than their own.

The prominent Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in November 2000 (in a publication of the Israel Democracy Institute) that "there are Israeli reporters who do not pass the 'lynch test.'" These, he wrote, are journalists who could not bring themselves to criticize the Arabs even when two Israelis were savagely murdered by a mob in Ramallah. Barnea, who last year was awarded the Israel Prize for journalism, went on to argue that our support for the Palestinian position is absolute. He concluded, "They have a mission." I was honored to be mentioned as one of those journalists, alongside my fine colleagues Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.

I admit to being guilty as charged. I am a journalist with a mission, and also no small amount of passion.
Even though we already knew that Ha'aretz purposefully reports only the news that conform to its ideological objectives and downplays the news that does not, this is still an astonishing admission from a news reporter.
  • Wednesday, May 14, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Iran's President Ahmadinejad's recent statements include, "The era of the Zionist literature and the Zionist political mechanism and the Zionist bullying policies has come to an end," "I just want to tell you that holding a birthday party for a dead person is of no use. These gatherings can not revive a corpse," and "The Zionist regime is dying. The criminals imagine that by holding celebrations ... they can save the Zionist regime from death."

Mahmoud al-Zahar said today, "The Palestinians and the Arabs have crushed the Jews' assumption of supremacy… The Zionist legend of invincibility has been destroyed. Now more than ever I tell you – will never recognize Israel… We will form the Palestinian state on all of Palestine's territories and the sun of liberty will burn the Zionists. To them I say – you will lose. You will leave and we will keep hounding you. The blood of our slain sons will haunt you forever."

These sorts of statements are nothing new, and we've been hearing variants since before Israel even existed. It is valuable to recognize what makes people say things like this.

Obviously, Israel is not going anywhere. While there are political threats to its borders and terrorist threats to its citizens, Israel's existence is in no doubt for the foreseeable future.

The biggest testimony to Israel's strength and self-assurance comes, ironically, from its own self-criticism. Only a people who are secure can look at their own faults and admit mistakes publicly, and no one admits mistakes - real or imagined - more publicly than Israelis do.

The Second Lebanon War is a case study in the difference between how Israelis look at themselves and how Israel's enemies look at it. From a military perspective, the war was a draw - Israel inflicted a great deal of damage on Hezbollah and the cease fire agreement drove Hezbollah north of the Litani, but it was not the crushing defeat that Israel desired nor was it enough to stop Hezbollah from re-arming quickly. But by no stretch of the imagination was Israel "defeated" unless your definition of defeat is very unrealistic.

Yet, Israel underwent much public self-criticism and self-evaluation after the war to learn from its mistakes.

Conversely, Israel's enemies celebrated their "victory," masking the loss of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters with huge banners across Lebanon .

This is not a reflection of reality - this is bravado.

People who act this way are fundamentally insecure. They cannot distinguish between putting up a brave front and real bravery.

They tell their people about their impending victories in an attempt to shore up their own delusions and to avoid any real self-examination, which would lead to despair. They surround themselves with people who will agree with their public posturing. They inflate events that are meaningless as long as they support their fantasies, and they ignore any evidence to the contrary.

A hallmark of this institutionalized bravado hiding insecurity is not only the lack of self-criticism but deliberate acts against those who dare criticize. Hence we see Iran's brutal attacks against dissidents, Hamas' threats against journalists, and Hezbollah's total censorship in areas under its control.

This bravado is so institutionalized in the psyches of its practitioners - and so much a part of the honor-shame mindset that helps spawn it - that they cannot understand that Israeli self-criticism is a reflection of its strength. To them, any criticism is shameful and only an utterly defeated people can admit mistakes. The more delusional actually start to believe that Israel is weak and they then start thinking they can defeat it.

The bigger the bluster, the weaker the core that the blusterers are trying to hide.

This does not mean that they aren't dangerous. Of course, they can - and do - inflict damage.

But their bravado is not an indication of their strength. On the contrary, it proves their weakness.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

  • Tuesday, May 13, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
MEMRI blog translates from Al-Arabiya:
Many accusations have recently been leveled against 'Isam Al-Hadri, Egyptian national soccer team player and goalkeeper for the Swiss soccer club Syon, for agreeing to wear a club shirt with the logo of a company that makes alcoholic drinks.

Muhammad Rafat 'Uthman, instructor at Al-Azhar University and member of its Center for Islamic Research, said that it was forbidden for Al-Hadri to wear the shirt, and that if the club insisted that he do so he must break his contract and quit.

In contrast, liberal Egyptian thinker Gamal Al-Banna said that Al-Hadri should not be accused, because he had acted like a Muslim minority member should act within a non-Muslim majority.

As the picture above shows, the sponsor in question is the Giroud Winery. Everyone on the club has to wear this shirt, as Giroud is one of the sponsors of the club.
  • Tuesday, May 13, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Lots happening today:

- Hamas took over a mosque east of the Jabalya camp, and confiscated the keys to its library.

- Hamas signed an agreement with the local Internet provider to stop any access to pornographic websites starting May 15th.

- Hamas forces surrounded the home of the Azzam family in Jabalya and forced its way in, injuring two men and causing a pregnant woman to miscarry.

- Hamas also stormed a kindergarten in Jabalya.

- There was a mysterious explosion at the Right to Life headquarters in Gaza, which appears to be a facility for children with Down's Syndrome.

- Hamas' leaders announced that all schools must be closed on Thursday in commemoration of "Nakba day."

- The Palestinian Health Ministry warned Gazans on the consequences of using cooking oil as replacements for diesel and petroleum in cars. Due to the fuel shortage many people have converted their cars to use cooking oil (causing some car exhausts in Gaza to smell like falafel), but the Ministry warned of health and environmental problems that this could cause. They also warned that using oil is bringing the price of cooking oil higher in Gaza, making it harder for everyone to afford food.
  • Tuesday, May 13, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
We are in the midst of two solid weeks of "nakba" commemorations, each one further removed from reality than the last.

Yesterday, during yet another "nakba" celebration, PA prime minister Fayyad stated that the Palestinian Arab flight in 1948 was the "biggest tragedy of displacement in the modern era." (Ma'an Arabic) So I decided to do a quick check of the numbers of people who have been displaced in various wars and other events in the modern era, and compare them to the 711,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in 1948. Most numbers are from Wikipedia.

Event Year Number of refugees
Notes



Armenian 1915-21 1,100,000
Russian revolution 1917-21 1,500,000
Greece/Turkey 1923 2,000,000 Population exchange
Spanish Civil War 1939 500,000 Spanish Republicans to France
World War II 1939-45 7,000,000
Poland/Ukraine 1944-46 2,600,000 Population exchange
Potsdam conference 1945 12,000,000 Forced repatriation of ethnic Germans to Germany
Soviet Union 1945-47 2,500,000 Forced repatriation of Russians to USSR
Germany 1945-61 560,000 Flight from East to West Germany
India/Pakistan partition 1947 18,000,000 Population exchange
Palestinian Arabs 1948 711,000 UN count
Middle East Jews 1948-60 700,000 Arab countries to Israel
Korean War 1950-53 1,000,000
Algerian independence 1954-62 2,000,000 To Morocco, Tunisia
Pieds-Noirs 1962 900,000 Algeria to Europe
Bangladeshi Liberation War 1971 10,000,000 Bengalis to India
Sahrawis in Western Sahara 1975 150,000
Salvadoran Civil War 1975-82 1,000,000
Lebanese civil war 1975-90 900,000 Displaced from their homes
Khmer Rouge 1978-79 300,000 To US, Canada, Australia
Afghan War 1978-92 6,000,000 To Pakistan and Iran
Sri Lanka Tamils 1983-2008 800,000 to Europe and Canada
Kurds from Turkey 1984-99 378,000
Al-Anfal campaign 1986-89 1,000,000 Iraqi Kurds
Nagorno Karabakh 1988-89 750,000
Kashmir 1990- 300,000
Sudan war 1990? 930,000
Burundi 1990? 485,000
Democratic Rep. of Congo 1990? 462,000
Somalia 1990? 389,000
Russian Jews 1990-95 700,000 USSR to Israel
Persian Gulf War 1991 1,400,000 Iraq to Iran
Balkans 1991 2,700,000
Kuwait Palestinians 1991 400,000 expelled from Kuwait
Chechnya 1991- 2,000,000
Tajikistan 1992-97 500,000 Russians, excluding Jews who went to Israel
Abkhazia 1993 250,000
Rwanda 1994 2,000,000
Serbia 1999 1,000,000 Albanians
Darfur 2003- 2,500,000
Current Gulf war 2003-8 2,200,000 Iraq to Arab countries


The problem is not that there were so many refugees in 1948, although it is a significant number by any yardstick. The problem is that Palestinian Arab leaders and other Arab leaders, together with the UNRWA and so-called "human rights" organizations, have conspired to not only perpetuate the issue but even to exacerbate it.

By uniquely defining descendants of original Palestinian Arab refugees as refugees themselves, the "refugee" problem grown from 700,000 to over four million. Therefore, we see such nonsensical statement as this one from Human Rights Watch:
Palestinians are the world's oldest and largest refugee population, and make up more than one fourth of all refugees.
- a manifestly absurd statement, and one that serves to minimize the real refugee problems worldwide and give a single group preferred refugee status, generations after most of them are no longer refugees by any sane definition. The sheer number of displaced persons during the past hundred years is breathtaking, and in context the Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948 are barely a footnote.

Much larger refugee populations listed above have been forced to integrate and assimilate into the countries that they migrate to, but Arab countries who claim affinity with "Palestinians" have kept Palestinian Arabs separate and second-class.

No matter which historical narrative one believes, the 1948 refugee problem was indeed a disaster for Palestinian Arabs. But the fact that the problem still exists today is directly due to the conscious actions of their Arab neighbors and "supporters" for the past sixty years who want to see only one "solution" - destroying the State of Israel and replacing it with another giant refugee camp populated by people who mostly never lived there and who would be ecstatic to live as equals among their Arab brothers today.

Here's a nice litmus test to see whether people who claim to care about Palestinian Arabs: ask them if they would prefer to see millions of PalArabs in camps sixty years from now, or to have them become productive full members of the huge Arab world?
From Peninsula On-Line:
The Sixth Conference for Dialogue Between Religions is due to kick off here today at Doha Sheraton hotel with prominent intellectuals, scholars, media persons and followers of three major religions participating.

The conference, to be inaugurated by the Minister of Awqaf (Endowments) and Islamic Affairs, H E Faisal bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud, will focus on three major topics: The peaceful relations among the three religions, the value of life in accordance with religion, including issues such as suicide, abortion, human trafficking, trafficking of human organs, clinical death and euthanasia, and insulting religious symbols. Many of these issues are medical issues with a religious dimension.

The third topic deals with violence, self defence and media and violence, in addition to questions over the suicide bombings taking place in Palestine and Afghanistan and whether they are violence or a type of self defence according to the viewpoint of religious scholars.

The conference, organized by the Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and Qatar University, will host up to 200 delegates representing Islam, Christianity and Judaism as well as local research centres.
I don't know what rabbis are participating in Qatar, but I do know that the fact that they are there is enraging at least one nation:
Iran boycotts Qatar's International Conference on Dialogue between Religions in a bid to protest the participation of Zionist rabbis, PressTV reported.

Iran's representative, Ali Akbar Sadeqi Reshad has asked the organizers of the conference to withdraw his paper from the event.

The Egyptian scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi has also boycotted the conference, which will be held on May 13 and 14, 2008 in Doha.
And what exactly does "interfaith dialogue" mean to the hosts in Qatar?
To a question on the participation of the Jewish rabbis, she said that the annual visits of the participating Jewish rabbis have contributed to the change of their conception on Muslims.

“I remember that the Jewish rabbis who participated for the first time in interfaith dialogue were very scared and even asked for tightening security measure. They thought they were coming to a country of terrorists. We do not expect them to hand over Palestine to us after inviting them to such meetings. The important thing is that their perceptions have changed with their annual participation in the Doha Interfaith Dialogue,” she explained.
Notice yet again that the point of "interfaith dialogue" from the Muslim perspective is not to learn from other religions, but to force them to learn from you. In other words, it is a Muslim monologue disguised as a conversation.
  • Tuesday, May 13, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Barack Obama's recent pro-Israel statements don't reflect his pre-campaign thinking. From the NYT (h/t EBoZ)
He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.

“He has a pattern of forming relationships with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago.
Electronic Intifada is not just a Palestinian Arab advocacy periodical; it is a virulently anti-Israel publication that supports Hamas and advocates Israel's destruction.
As Mr. Obama moved closer to running, he paid a visit to James S. Crown and his father, Lester, billionaire investors who presided over a sprawling Chicago business dynasty and prominent leaders in the Jewish community.

As the meeting ended, the younger Mr. Crown said, his father — who is “fairly hawkish” about Israel’s security — was noncommittal about Mr. Obama. But, James Crown said, “I pulled him down to my office, and I said, ‘Hey, look, I think you should run, and I want you to win.’ ”

In courting families like the Crowns, Mr. Obama was gaining entree into the upper echelon of the city’s corporate boardrooms, a ripe source of campaign money. But he was also seeking to broaden his appeal to Jewish voters, and he was wading more deeply into one of the touchiest issues in American politics: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For years, the Obamas had been regular dinner guests at the Hyde Park home of Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East scholar at the University of Chicago and an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1990s peace talks. Mr. Khalidi said the talk would often turn to the Middle East, and he talked with Mr. Obama about issues like living conditions in the occupied territories. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama during his Congressional campaign. Both Mr. Khalidi and Mr. Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, said Mr. Obama had spoken at the fund-raiser and had called for the United States to adopt a more “evenhanded approach” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.
My critique of Rashid Khalidi's work can be seen here and here. Khalidi considers all of Israel "occupied" and was critical of Arafat - as being too flexible on Israel.

A.J. Wolf, a Hyde Park rabbi who is a friend of Mr. Obama’s and has often invited Mr. Khalidi to speak at his synagogue, said Mr. Obama had disappointed him by not being more assertive about the need for both Israel and the Palestinians to move toward peace. “He’s played all those notes right for the Israel lobby,” said Mr. Wolf, who is sometimes critical of Israel.

During the Senate campaign, Mr. Obama joined in a “Walk for Israel” rally along Lake Michigan on Israel Solidarity Day. The Crowns and other Jewish leaders raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him. Several days before the primary in 2004, some of his Jewish supporters took offense that Mr. Obama had not taken the opportunity on a campaign questionnaire to denounce Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or to strongly support Israel’s building of a security fence.

But in a sign of how far Mr. Obama had come in his coalition-building, friends from the American Israel Political Action Committee, the national pro-Israel lobbying group, helped him rush out a response to smooth over the flap.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that “none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.”
Notice that his letter didn't denounce Arafat or support the security fence.
Mr. Abunimah has written of running into the candidate around that time and has said that Mr. Obama told him: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping that when things calm down I can be more upfront.”

The Obama camp has denied Mr. Abunimah’s account. Mr. Khalidi, who is now the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, said, “I’m unhappy about the positions he’s taken, but I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed.” He added: “People think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s a politician.”

But for all of Mr. Obama’s attentiveness to Jewish concerns about Israel, Republican Party officials have made it clear that they think this is an area of vulnerability. Though Mr. Obama has condemned Hamas, a militant Palestinian group, as a terrorist organization, just last week Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, suggested that the group wanted to see Mr. Obama in the White House. Mr. Obama denounced that suggestion as a “smear.”
It was more than a suggestion. Hamas leader Ahmad Yousef said explicitly, “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.”

Monday, May 12, 2008

  • Monday, May 12, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Few of the Palestinian Arabic-language press that I could find has mentioned that the victim of today's rocket attack was a 70-year old grandmother.

Palestine Today describes her as a "youth of American origin."
Ma'an does not mention it.
I couldn't find a mention in WAFA.
Firas Press describes her as a "settler."
Palestine News Network described her as an "Israeli settler."
And Islamic Jihad refers to her as a "settler."

Only Ramattan calls her a 70-year old woman.

It appears that when the victims can be spun into aggressors, the Palestinian Arabs are uniformly proud of their terrorists (as in the case of the Mercaz HaRav massacre, as they considered them all extremist settlers.)

But old ladies cannot be turned into monsters, so it is easier to just not mention that they are old ladies - easier to call them "settlers" or even "Americans."

There seems to be a small amount of embarrassment for terror, and that shame needs to be hidden well. They are proud for having killed but not quite so proud as to publicize who they killed.
  • Monday, May 12, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Islamic Jihad today gleefully took credit for the successful murder of a 70-year old women from a Qsssam rocket.

Their webpage describes the victim as a "settler". Perhaps they are slightly embarrassed at the identity of their victim (any man who gets murdered is automatically considered a "Zionist soldier.")
From the Guardian (UK):
In Yemen, the situation is more serious even than it is among its neighbours. In terms of freedom, it is probably Saudi Arabian women who have the hardest time of all. But even there, females have access to education and healthcare. In Yemen, an absence of citizenship rights for women horribly combines with crushing poverty to create a society in which women are not only the property of men, unable to leave the house without the permission of a male relative and vulnerable to arbitrary arrest on the street even once they have it, but are also likely to be illiterate, to be married before they reach puberty, and to die in childbirth. 'Our family law is the worst in the Middle East for women,' says Suha Bashren, a Yemeni who works as a campaign officer for Oxfam. 'It is medieval.' Does the fact that the law permits Yemeni women to drive - something that is illegal in Saudi Arabia - make up for any of this? You'll forgive Suha for thinking that it does not.

Yemen is one of the least developed countries in the world, with a Human Development Index of 149 (out of 177 countries), and a poverty level of over 40 per cent. Only 35.9 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water. For women, though, life is especially tough. A woman has only a one-in-three chance of being able to read and write (some 71 per cent of Yemeni women are illiterate, as opposed to 31 per cent of men; in most other Middle Eastern countries, the average female illiteracy rate stands at 35 per cent). If a Yemeni woman has a baby, she has only a one-in-five chance of being attended by a midwife, and she has a one-in-39 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth over her lifetime. As for rights, she has none - or very few. The law does not state what age a woman must be before she marries, which means that many females find themselves with a husband when they are as young as 12, something that has a serious impact on maternal mortality rates, and which can also result in other serious health problems, such as incontinence.

Male power is total, and not only in politics (one woman MP out of 301 members, 35 women represented in local councils out of 6,000). A woman cannot, for instance, marry without the permission of a male relative; if she has no father, she must ask her brother, or a cousin and so on until, if she has no male relatives at all, she must turn to a judge. Women are regularly the victims of arbitrary arrests, picked up for 'immoral acts' such as adultery, smoking or eating in a restaurant with a 'boyfriend'. It is not only the police who can make such arrests; power is invested in all kinds of men from the minister of the interior to local neighbourhood chiefs, even coastguards.

'Any uniform will do,' says Suha. The country's prisons are full of women who should not be there - their 'crimes' are so vague, even they are uncertain as to what they have done wrong - and many of whom have never faced a trial. Compared to all this, the way that women are expected to dress is unimportant, a cosmetic trifle. But they are highly covered up, and while this may be voluntary - this is a deeply religious society - to an outsider, even one who has travelled widely in the Middle East, it is bewitching and unnerving in equal measure. In Hadramout, a rural province in the south, I see women working in the fields whose every body part is covered in black fabric: even their hands, even their eyes. So, your vision adjusts. You stop expecting to see women's faces. You look at your own in the mirror of a hotel bathroom, and feel vaguely amazed.

...The concept of haram (shame) is so embedded in the culture that people do not always say what they mean, even - or perhaps especially - when asked a direct question. You need a translator not only of Arabic, but of the subtle language of avoidance and denial.

Say'un is a town of 30,000 people in the biggest wadi or watercourse, Wadi Hadhramawt, in the Arabian peninsula. Hadhramawt is extremely inaccessible. ...In Say'un, Oxfam is trying to improve reproductive healthcare, chiefly by funding the training of midwives and traditional birth attendants (TBAs). This is more important work than you may realise. In this part of Yemen - rural, religious, isolated - women are often unwilling to be treated by doctors, for the reason that they are men; it would be shameful for a woman to show her body to a man, even if the alternative meant that she might bleed to death. Getting more women into the healthcare system is therefore vital. 'Our midwives work in the hospital in Say'un,' says Basima Omer, a doctor involved in the programme. 'They save lives. But they also go back to their communities with new information about hygiene, high blood pressure ...' She sips her coffee - in the country that gave the world coffee, everyone drinks Nescafé with condensed milk - behind her veil. So how on earth did she become a doctor? She laughs, quietly. 'Oh, I went on hunger strike for three days until my father agreed.'

In a side room in the hospital, I meet some of these newly qualified midwives - and find proof of something I was told before I came here: that in Yemen there are women who, having taken the veil when they reach puberty, show their faces to no one - not even their own mothers - until they marry. For this reason, though we are in a private room, I am able to see the face of only one of the midwives (she lifts her veil because she is a divorcee).

...Wameedh and Suha take me to Hudaydah prison and, after a long wait on the governor's Seventies leather sofa beneath a creaking ceiling fan, I'm taken to meet women on whose cases Oxfam's volunteer lawyers work in their free time (the prison governor is unaware that I am journalist). The women's prison is a squat concrete building, its communal cells built around a yard in which washing can be hung in the sun. The place is clean and tidy, the cells, open to the yard, freshly scrubbed by the 52 inmates who inhabit them. But it's shocking how many of the women have babies, and how terribly young some of the prisoners are; when a warder gathers them to ask for volunteers to meet me, it's as though I've walked into a classroom rather than a prison. S (for their own safety, I am unable to identify the women) is 21, A is 22 and M just 14. Their stories are patchy and dreamlike, a quality that perhaps catches the sophistry that led to their arrest.

'I was visiting a friend,' says M. 'We were in a friend's house. We were chewing qat. Suddenly, I was arrested for prostitution. I've been here 11 months.' M, who has been in prison for two months, recounts that she was watching TV in a neighbour's house when she was arrested on suspicion of having committed an immoral act.

A tells me that a man offered to pay her for sex; when she refused, he took her to an interrogation centre where she was beaten until she admitted 'to everything I had done in the past'. She has been in prison for three months. None of the women has so far faced a trial.

Between them, Wameedh and Aminah unpick their stories for me. The friend whom S was visiting in her friend's house was probably a boyfriend. In the case of M, Wameedh believes that she is probably too ashamed to admit to me that she was having sex with a boy as well as watching television with him, though she later passed a virginity test. A has fallen victim to a local self-appointed religious vigilante, who is making it his business to arrest women on the streets. S begins to cry. 'My family are poor,' she says. 'They cannot do anything.' (Some prisoners are released if their families can pay up - irrespective of the so-called legal process.) The truth drawn out, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am lost for words.

... Most of the women gathered here, all of them married as teenagers, insist that they have been happy in their marriages. Then one, Shueiyah, who suddenly found herself with a husband at 12, before she'd even had her first period, tells me how horrible it was.

'At first, I was happy. There was singing, I had new shoes. Then I was alone with him in my room. I was afraid. I started to cry. He called his mother. She had to explain: "This is your husband. Don't be afraid. You're grown-up now. Act like a woman." I couldn't say no to my parents, but I didn't know what marriage involved.'

She didn't mind the cooking and cleaning. The only thing she didn't like was the night time. She used to try and find excuses to stay away from him. 'We argued a lot. But I couldn't explain why to his family. I couldn't tell them that it was because of sex. He wanted to have sex every night. No one told me anything about sex.'

She gave birth to a son, but four years later she and her husband divorced. We seize the moment. Was she too young? Would she put a daughter of hers through such a marriage? She laughs. 'I would be happy for my daughter to marry early.' When Suha starts to argue with her, Shueiyah becomes annoyed. It isn't long before she brings up Aisha.

On the journey back to our hotel, Suha lets off steam. She wonders aloud how she can prove to people that refusing to marry off children is not haram. Then she invites me to join her and Wameedh at the house of one of the Oxfam lawyers to chew qat. I do join them, though I don't chew qat; I don't have the taste for it. Our hostess has prepared delicious food, and she lights a water pipe for us. She dabs at our ears with exotic scents as if we were in a harem. No one is veiled; there are no men in the house. We could go on all night. Abdullah, our driver, is happy to wait for us: he is lying with the guard on a divan outside, chewing qat, in the cool of the night. It's a happy evening, our last before we go back to Sana'a. I admire these women more than I can say. So I get out my camera. I'm going to take a picture. But, no. Our hostess - a lawyer who gives up hours of her time fighting the cases of abused and forgotten women - gives me a big smile. 'I'm sorry but you can't take a photograph of me,' she says. 'Not like this.' She points to her unveiled face. 'I must ask my husband's permission, and he is out with his friends.' Like I said, nothing is straightforward here. Suha chews on her qat furiously.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

  • Sunday, May 11, 2008
  • Elder of Ziyon
Major newspapers are dutifully printing Palestinian Arab nakba nonsense. Here's a sample.

From Ahmad Samih Khalidi in the Guardian:
Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs - both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists' intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.
Given that there are now more Arabs in Israel than existed there in 1948, this is manifestly untrue. Of course, the Arab leaders in the 1920s and 1930s did all they could to stop Jewish immigration, even though none of them were being dispossessed by it - and in fact their people became much richer as a result.

From Daoud Kuttab in the Washington Post:
Jews worldwide, including modern-day Israelis, should be the first to understand Palestinians' desire to return. For 2,000 years Jews reminded each other of the prayer for Zion, repeating the hope "next year in Jerusalem." No one opposed that dream. Likewise, no one should demand Palestinians stop yearning to return.
Sorry, Daoud, but your heroes like Haj Amin Husseini did all they could to oppose that dream, and your tolerant Arab brethren in Jordan made sure that historic Jerusalem was Jew-free when they controlled it. But it really sounds good.

From Saree Makdisi in the Los Angeles Times:
To resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli Jews will have to relinquish their exclusive privileges and acknowledge the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes. What they would get in return is the ability to live securely and to prosper with -- rather than continuing to battle against -- the Palestinians.
Yes, just as Jews lived securely and equally with their Arab neighbors for centuries, right?

No, having a single Jewish state in an ocean of Arab states - almost all of which declare Islam to be their official state religions - is inherently abhorrent to Arabs. Their love for democracy starts only as soon as they can rig the results to ensure an Arab majority.

Note that Saree Makdisi teaches at UCLA, Daoud Kattab teaches at Princeton University and Ahmad Samih Khalidi teaches at St Anthony's College, Oxford. As I pointed out in my last posting - all these former Palestinian Arabs are living in the West, claiming to want what is right for their brethren still in the Middle East, but not willing to actually leave their cushy academic positions to truly help. Their protests ring hollow when one realizes that they pretend to be advocating for a people who just want to raise their families somewhere, and cannot because of the actions of "friends" like these.

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