Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The secret Jooish plan to move Al Aqsa

Iran's PressTV has all the gory details:

Extremist Jewish organizations in Israel have demanded that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock from East Jerusalem Al-Quds be transferred to Mecca.

Gershon Salomon is seeking the removal of the mosques from East Jerusalem Al-Quds, which Israel occupied during the 1967 aggression and illegally annexed it later despite international opposition, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday.

The founder and leader of the ultra-Orthodox Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement plans to have Israeli engineers transfer the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to the Muslims' holy city of Mecca, the daily added.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original alleged YNet article, in Hebrew or in English. The best I could find was an article in a Turkish website that claimed the same thing.

My section of the Elders was lobbying to have the mosques transferred to Ramallah, but we were voted down by the secret Gulf section who showed that our Saudi allies were amenable to such a move, in order to gain more tourist dollars.

The flatbed trucks and helicopters are being procured now.
(h/t Meryl Yourish via email)

Goldstone and the Abu Askars

I just looked at the testimony of one of the Goldstone witnesses, Mohammed Abu Askar. While the report did mention that he was a Hamas member it stressed that he was not a member of the Qassam Brigades. He testified concerning the Fakhoura school incident.

Here is a prime example of how credulous the commission was of his testimony, concerning his oldest son Khalid who was killed in the attack:

Khalid is a newlywed groom. He got married 15 days before the war, and such grooms, as you know, are, are, happily spend their days as newlyweds, and they do not really have time to go to war or other, or to be wanted. He's also quite young. He was only 18 years old. Again I say that what was being targeted was a child.

The final report mentioned Khalid's newlywed status, in an effort to show that the IDF could not have possibly been targeting him legitimately:

686. It would appear that shortly after the attack the Israeli armed forces received some information that two Abu Askar brothers had been killed. That much is indeed true. However, the use made of that information appears to the Mission to have been knowingly distorted. The brothers were Imad and Khalid, not Imad and Hassan as asserted. One was a 13-year-old boy, the other was a recently married 19-year-old. The certainty and specificity with which the Israeli authorities spoke at the time make it very difficult for them to suggest now that they had simply mixed up the names.

Could Khalid and Imad have been shooting mortars at the time from the street? It is difficult to think that Imad was involved, but it is certainly a possibility.

First of all, Mohammed Abu Askar understated the ages of both his sons: Khalid was 19 (born December 12, 1989), and PCHR indicates that Imad was 14, not 13.

Secondly, the al-Qassam Brigades has an unusually detailed obituary for Khalid, indicating that he was quite well known. It says that he was an avid attendee at mosques from a young age, that were festooned with "jihad slogans." He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 2004, meaning he was (almost certainly) 14 at the time. More importantly, he wanted to join the Al Qassam Brigades at the same time, but was rejected because he was too young, causing him to throw a temper tantrun and lock himself in his room. He demanded again to join the Qassam Brigades when he entered high school and this time he was accepted.

Khalid was already involved in terror attacks when he was 16, participating in "dozens of ambushes." He attempted "martyrdom operations" against Israelis at least three times, in March, April and June 2008 (one at Kerem Shalom) but they were not successful.

He fought with the Qassam Brigades even after his marriage in December, fighting with Ayman Ahmed ‘Amer al-Kurd who was killed (#758 on PCHR English list.)

Given that history, is it so far-fetched that young Imad would have the same burning desire for martyrdom at an early age that Khalid had, and that he would tag along with his older brother that he idolized as he sought revenge for the destruction of their family house earlier that day? One could argue otherwise, but any fact-finding mission should at least have considered this.

More to the point: The Goldstone Commission accepted their father's testimony without any skepticism, even after Mohammed claimed that he saw over 6 mortars fired (the final report says they were only aware of four.) It mentioned the utterly irrelevant fact that Khalid was a newlywed but ignored the quite relevant fact that he was a well-known al-Qassam Brigades member. It didn't think anything strange about the discrepancy of ages, even as it noted his correct age after hearing Mohammed's testimony that he was 18 (using his young age as to score a propaganda point.) Finally, it believed the father when he claimed that his son wasn't fighting after his wedding.

Goldstone seized on the inconsistent Israeli position between the immediate aftermath of the incident and the later clarifications that the IDF made as proof that the IDF claims were not credible, but the inconsistencies of an admitted Hamas member who raises his sons to be martyrs is not considered at all.

Daily Goldstone 10/15

Some good stuff out there, as the UNHRC convenes to yet again condemn Israel (and ignore Hamas, directly ignoring the parts of the Goldstone report that are inconvenient.)

Warren Goldstein in the Jerusalem Post attacks Goldstone on legal and procedural grounds:

The Mission's findings were based on accepting the allegations of only one party to the conflict. The Mission did not try to cross-examine or challenge the witnesses in any real way. There is a lengthy, fascinating article by Jonathan HaLevi of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in which he analyses in detail the methodology employed by the Mission in respect of witnesses. He demonstrates that there was a lack of adequate cross-examination of the testimony of the witnesses. Unproven allegations of Hamas officials were accepted as established facts. Even the most basic questions were not asked; when, for example, allegations were made of Israel's bombing civilian installations, witnesses were not asked whether there were Hamas fighters or weaponry in the vicinity, or whether any attacks had been launched from the area.
[Another] procedural injustice which undermines the integrity and credibility of Judge Goldstone and the three other members of the Mission: There simply was not enough time to do the job properly.
Any lawyer with even limited experience knows that there was just not sufficient time for the Mission to have properly considered and prepared its report. One murder trial often takes many months of evidence and argument to enable a judge to make a decision with integrity. To assess even one day of battle in Gaza with the factual complexities involved would have required a substantial period of intensive examination. According to the Mission's Report, the Mission convened for a total of 12 days.

The Forward notes the contradictions that Richard Goldstone states in his interview published last week:

“We had to do the best we could with the material we had,” he said during the interview. “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

And: “I wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.”

Nothing proven? Allegations? The air of tentativeness that hung over Goldstone’s remarks that day was surely missing from the stark and disturbing legal conclusions in the report, in which Israel was told flat out that it had violated international law by targeting civilians — “the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Nor is there anything tentative about Goldstone’s words in a New York Times opinion article published after the report was released, in which he wrote, “Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.”
It is difficult to know what to make of these contradictory statements, except that it’s obvious Goldstone is trying to climb down from the dangerous perch he had built.

Finally, Yaacov Lozowick publishes an email exchange he had with an Amnesty International press officer, and in the thread Yaacov explains in a personal way why the Goldstone report is so fundamentally offensive to Israelis as well as why it is fundamentally flawed:

The findings as they were announced by the members of the mission, before anyone had had a chance to read them, were ridiculous. I apologize for being so blunt, but I see no softer way to say it. Their methodology was, a-priori, never tenable. The moment they allowed themselves to make statements about Israel's intentions, as against Israel's actions, they demonstrated their biases and intellectual shoddiness. The only way to know about Israel's intentions is by researching those intentions: the decision-making process, the plans drawn up, the orders given and so on. These things can't be inferred from the results, they can't be learnt from talking to Palestinians, and they certainly can't be deduced from ruins of homes which could have been knocked down by all sorts of things including Hamas weapons.

If the Israelis won't give you access, you can't say what they were thinking, not unless you have access. Sad, perhaps, unfair, perhaps, but true. Someday, 50 years from now, historians will be able to pore over the documents whether the authorities like it or not, because we're a democracy. At the moment, however, if the Israelis refuse to talk and to cooperate, there's no way to say what they were thinking.

Since Goldstone and his colleagues made clear from the moment of publication that they had found Israel had intentionally targeted the Palestinian population, at that moment their intellectual credibility was destroyed. The Israelis then followed up by reading the report and demolishing its findings, but the rejection didn't have to wait.

I suggest, Neil, that you stop and think about this before simply writing me off. I'm being very serious here, and I'm telling you something very fundamental, and that is that Israel did not have the intention of hurting the civilian population of Gaza, You don't know me, you certainly don't know my sources of information, but I assure you the reading of the Goldstone commission (which I'm slowly reading - it's ghastly) is factually wrong. It's not true. You can wave the report from now till doomsday; you can take comfort in the large numbers of people around you who agree with you; you can talk about international law and human rights to your heart's content - none of this can change the reality, which is that the basic finding of the Goldstone fact finding mission is a blatant lie. Since it was clearly stated up front, it's no wonder that the official Israeli responders, who do know the facts, sharply rejected it.

Remember: Israeli intentions are about Israelis. The Israelis had them, the Israelis decided upon them, the Israelis know what they were. Take a deep breath and count to ten before you tell us what we were thinking - as the Goldstone team so foolishly did.

[W]hen our government takes steps most of us thought it should take, that's us who is responsible. And it's we, too. Not to mention that when you talk of the IDF, that's us and we in the most simple meaning: it was I when I was young, it's my son right now (and in Gaza last January), and I guess it will be my grandsons in the wars we'll still be waging 30 years from now.

Finally, here's a thought for you. Over the years prior to the Gaza campaign, as the Palestinians shot more than 10,000 projectiles at Israeli citizens in the Sderot region,we did our best to look away. It was far from the large cities; doing something about it would have inevitably have included hurting Palestinian civilians because Hamas uses them as shields; doing something would have brought the rage of Amnesty and HRW and the UN and the BBC on our heads... so we dithered. Year in and year out we refrained from action. Eventually, we began to admit to ourselves, this callousness of ours was eating away at who we are, at those Kol Yisrael statements I told you about. It became harder and harder to look ourselves in the eyes, knowing that we were preferring the suffering of the few to the trouble to all.

Eventually, our patience broke, and we acted. WE acted. In OUR name. So far as WE can tell, most of the actions WE took were moral, legal, and justified; if there were minor exceptions, WE'll deal with them. At the moment, close to a year later, it even seems to have worked, and no-one, not Israelis nor Palestinians, are getting killed. And we're whole again.

Goldstone then and now

From Ma'an, June 9:

There were also problems in collecting information in Gaza, [Goldstone] said, explaining that Hamas-allied security forces accompanied his 15-member team during their five-day working visit to Gaza last week, potentially inhibiting the ability of witnesses to speak freely, according to AP.

Ma'an, September 16:

Goldstone insisted that "Hamas didn't follow us at all," much less "at every stage" of the visit. "They were nowhere near any of the interviews we held, and there was just no question; there was no issue."

He added, "Had they attempted in any way to do that, I would have found that objectionable and I would not have accepted it - but it just didn't happen."

Here's a link to the original AP article. It is a little less clear whether AP was quoting Goldstone or not:

A veteran U.N. war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas - which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups - is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group's actions.

Middle East Mickey Mouse Moments

Yesterday, Palestinian Arab prime minister Salim Fayyad said that Palestinian Arabs will not accept a state where they would not have essentially 100% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and a full military. He referred to a state that doesn't meet these demands as a "Mickey Mouse state."

Also yesterday:

During the session of the UN Security Council devoted to discuss the situation in the Middle East, Al-Malki said the Palestinian Authority was ready to look into violations of human rights and possible war crimes committed by the Palestinians side.

“We take the charges seriously,” he said, “We stress our willingness to abide by the rule of law and affirm our commitment to conduct investigations through local legal mechanisms to handle this important issue.”

De facto government forces in the Gaza Strip [Hamas] have also indicated their willingness to investigate allegations outlined in the Goldstone report, in an effort to ensure the document’s allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel during last winter’s war on Gaza are fully investigated.

In fact, Hamas leader Haniyeh said “We are for a serious, national effort ahead of dealing with this document and implementing its recommendations.”

Don't you dare refer to these nascent PA and Hamas probes as "Mickey Mouse investigations." I'm sure that they will be done with the utmost concern for legal process, not to mention the human rights of Israeli victims of rocket and other terror attacks.

Why would anyone think otherwise?

The antagonizing dance

Those Jews keep coming up with innovative criminal acts.

From Ma'an:

Last week a group of extremist Jews attempted to gain access to the compound housing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but were prevented from doing so by Israeli police. The group performed religious rituals in the streets adjacent to the site, using dance ceremonies to antagonize local shop owners...

I hope that this is placed front and center on the special UNHRC session today as the severe human rights violation it must be. Dancing by Jews in the area of the Temple Mount should be criminalized, of course, because (like their walking, prayer, meditation and breathing) it antagonizes a billion Muslims.

By definition, anything that Arabs or Muslims find offensive must be, in fact, illegal. That is certainly the premise behind the UNHRC, which seems dedicated to the elimination of just one such instance of this offensiveness.

Daily Goldstone 10/14

Alan Dershowitz notices what I noticed:

With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report’s conclusions—at least when he speaks to his Jewish audiences.

In an interview with Jewish Forward, Goldstone denied that his group had conducted “an investigation.” Instead, it was what he called a “fact-finding mission” based largely on the limited “material we had.” Since this “material” was cherry-picked by Hamas guides and spokesmen, Goldstone acknowledged that “if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” He emphasized to the Forward that the report was no more than “a road map” for real investigators and that it contained no actual “evidence,” of wrongdoing by Israel.

“Nothing proven!” No “evidence!” Only “a road map!” You wouldn’t know any of that, of course, by reading the report itself or its accompanying media release. In the text of the report itself, Goldstone neither sought to clarify nor explain what he now claims is the limited scope and legal implications of the report. The language of the report reads like a judicial decision, making findings of fact (nearly all wrong), stating conclusions of law (nearly all questionable) and making specific recommendations (nearly all one-sided). According to the Forward:

“…the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author. The report repeatedly refers, without qualification, to specific violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed by Israel and other breaches of international law. Citing particular cases, the report determines unequivocally that Israel “violated the prohibition under customary international law” against targeting civilians. These violations, it declares, ‘constitute a grave breach’ of the convention.”

It is as if there were two entirely different “Goldstone Reports.” The first submitted to the United Nations and the second to the Jewish community. In speaking so differently to different “audiences,” Goldstone is reminiscent of Yassir Arafat, who perfected the art of double-speak, by using bellicose language when addressing Arab audiences and more accommodating language when addressing western audiences.

Goldstone apparently lacked the courage to stand up to the other members and staffers of his commission and to insist that his clarifying language be included in the report itself. Nor did he have the courage to file a dissenting or concurring statement. Instead, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth, sending one message to those who read the actual report and a very different message to those who read his words in the Jewish Forward (and the New York Times for whom he wrote a more ameliorative op-ed on the day after the release of the Report). In doing so, he is trying to have it both ways.

Goldstone went so far as to tell the Forward that he himself “wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.” This is total nonsense. Goldstone has put his imprimatur—and his reputation—behind the reports’ conclusions. The only reason anyone is paying any attention to yet another of the serial condemnatory reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council is because Richard Goldstone—a “distinguished” Jew—allegedly wrote it and signed on to its conclusions. If he really doesn’t stand by its conclusions—if he doesn’t care one way or another whether they are true or false, proven or unproven—then no extra weight should be given to its findings or conclusions because of the “distinguished” reputation of its Jewish chairman.

But weight is being given by some to its “unproven” and uninvestigated allegations which Goldstone admits may be wrong. There have been calls for boycotts, divestments, war crime prosecutions and other forms of condemnation based on the conclusions reached (or not reached, depending on which side of Goldstone’s mouth one is listening to) by the Report.

If Goldstone stands behind what he told the Forward, then he must come forward and condemn those who are treating his report as if the allegations were based on “evidence” and “proven.” Don’t hold your breath, because such a statement would be heard by both of Goldstone’s audiences at the same time.

Even PalArabs are sick of their leaders

The Arab World Research and Development group (AWRAD) just released a surprising poll of Palestinian arabs that shows that when Hamas and Fatah fought over how to handle the Goldstone Report, they both lost support.

Some findings:

Only 21% are closely following the Goldstone report arguments between Fatah and Hamas, and only 3.5% say they are familiar with the actual contents of the report.

They were fairly evenly split over whether the report was "fair" (presumably to them.)

The surprising part, considering the huge amount of vitriol directed at Mahmoud abbas over the past couple of weeks, is that more PalArabs (33%) feel that the PA is handling the report issue well than the 22% who feel that Hamas is handling it well politically. The majority were very turned off by how Hamas and al-Jazeera were slamming Abbas and the PA over the report.

As a result of the public spat between the two, support for Fatah has decreased from 45% to 39%, while support for Hamas went down from 17.5% to 13.5%.

Even Palestinian Arabs are getting sick of their leaders.

Evolution of IDF on Hamas KidTV

Someone is posting a lot of Hamas' kid TV shows on YouTube (not translated.) It is interesting to compare how Hamas characterized the IDF during Cast Lead and how it does it now.

During the operation, Hamas showed IDF soldiers as hapless, bumbling and incompetent, as this clip shows of a fearful soldier who gets killed as he realizes he ran out of ammunition:

The only blood in that videoclip was Israeli, as opposed to how Hamas now shows the war to Gaza children.

Now, Hamas is changing its kiddie propaganda focus towards a heartless but very efficient IDF that targets hospitals, UNRWA schools and civilians. (The fighting starts at the two minute mark; I'd love to know the translation of the "Olmert" and "Livni" characters.)

Hamas member has a prophecy of doom

Firas Press reports that a Hamas member had a dream:

A member of the Qassam Brigades told those close to him the details of the vision he saw in a dream, that soon there will be a fierce battle with the occupation in which thousands of martyrs will fall, and thousands of homes destroyed, and that the [Hamas] army will be bulldozed and there will be destruction of entire regions off the face of the earth.

This vision has spread among the elements of the Qassam Brigades like wildfire, and became a hot topic at their meetings and gatherings. The vision has had a clear negative impact on the morale of al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas members, prompting their leaders to discuss the vision at the highest levels.

They are forming a commission of inquiry to uncover the circumstances of the vision, considering that it may have security implications, and that Israeli intelligence may be behind the promotion of this vision.

The group has also distributed several internal memos on this matter, demanding that the elements of al-Qassam to not spread such stories, and saying there was no signs on the horizon of the next war, and Israel has learned a hard lesson after the recent war in Gaza.

A new avenue for psy-ops! The Mossad should create a video of this dream and upload it to Arabic sites immediately; it would magnify the impact tremendously.

The latest Hamas martyr wasn't killed by Israel

From Ma'an:

The brother of senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri has died in an Egyptian prison as a result of torture, Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa television announced on Tuesday.

According to Sami Abu Zuhri, his brother Yousef Hamdan Abu Zuhri died of internal bleeding after being tortured during interrogation by Egyptian security forces.

Abu Zuhri said his brother was held in the Egyptian port city of Al-Arish in April on his way to Cairo from Gaza. Sami claims his brother was subjected to intense torture in an attempt by Egyptian authorities to extract information about Hamas in Gaza.

Egyptian sources said that Yousef was originally detained after he entered Egypt through a smuggling tunnel, and was taken by the security forces to Al-Arish.

Most interesting is that the Al Qassam Brigades website has already set up a (so far incomplete) page adding Abu Zuhri to their list of "martyrs." As far as I can tell, this is the first martyr who was killed by Egypt on that Hamas list.

Video of Hezbollah hiding weapons

From Israel's MFA:

On the evening of October 12, 2009 a large explosion took place in the house of a senior Hizbullah member which was being used as an arms cache in Tayr Filsay, a village approximately 15 km east of the coastal city of Tyre and south of the Litani River. During the explosion, a number of people were injured, including the home's owner, Said Issa.

Following the explosion, Hizbullah began to remove the remaining weapons from the cache, isolating the scene and preventing UNIFIL or LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) access.
Pictures taken by an UAV of the Israeli Air Force after the explosion of a Hizbullah weaponry warehouse on Monday (Oct. 12) in Tyre in southern Lebanon, show Hizbullah operatives smuggling Katyusha rockets and other weaponry out of the destroyed warehouse into another one in southern Lebanon.
The video filmed by the UAV that was directed to the location of the incident after the explosion, clearly shows a large number of people arriving at the scene and loading Katyusha rockets and other weaponry onto trucks. Afterwards they cover the weaponry in order to hide it and drive with it to another weaponry storage in the village of Dir Kanun A-Nahar, where they unload the weaponry. Later Lebanese army and UNIFIL forces are seen arriving at the site of the explosion.

UNIFIL=Useless.

UNHRC will meet on Goldstone this week

From Reuters:

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an extraordinary meeting this week on the occupied Palestinian territories, providing another chance for Israel's critics to discuss a Gaza war crimes report.

"The holding of the special session is at the request of Palestine," the United Nations said in a statement circulated on Tuesday in Geneva, where the 47-member body is based.

AP helpfully adds:

It will be the sixth time that Israel has been the subject of a special session by the Geneva-based council. Each previous session has resulted in a resolution critical of Israel.

Is there any chance the debate would say anything negative about Hamas? After all, the report does condemn Hamas rockets, right?

Of course not. Look at the UNHRC press release about the session:

The Human Rights Council will hold a Special Session on the "human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem" on Thursday, 15 October 2009, starting 3 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations.

The holding of the Special Session comes at the request of Palestine. The request is co-sponsored by the following 18 Member States of the Human Rights Council, namely Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

The session is only about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs, not the human rights of Jews who had been subject to years of terrorist and rocket attacks before Israel decided to put a stop to them.

For all of Goldstone's claims that he had the right to expand the mandate of the commission to cover all human rights abuses by all sides, it is obvious that the UNHRC is only interested in the parts that castigate Israel. This is why Hamas, the PA and their panoply of like-minded abusers of human rights are so keen on getting the Goldstone Report on the agenda of the UNHRC: because they know that this sham of an organization has as little interest in real human rights as they do.

Does anyone think that Goldstone will raise his voice to mention that Hamas violated human rights, too?

Syria's saber-rattling anti-Israel conference

There was a conference in Syria over the weekend called the Arab-International Golan Forum. Its purpose was pretty much to insult and incite against Israel as much as possible in a 48 hour period.

Among the charges leveled:

For his part, the liberated captive Medhat al-Saleh said that the Israeli occupation forces are applying a systematic killing policy against all the Arab prisoners through neglecting their health conditions.

"All Arab prisoners are subjected to solitary confinement and all forms of torture in the complete absence of the basic and minimum health and human conditions," said the liberated captive Amaal Mahmoud.

Head of the Mine Victim Rehabilitation Committee in the occupied Golan Omar al-Heebi pointed out to the high risk of the mines Israel planted in Quneitra before it was liberated, which caused lots of injuries and claimed many lives.

Israel steals around 800 million cubic meters of the occupied Golan water annually, and it has so far constructed 10 dams to transfer water to al-Naqab desert and Dimona reactor, thus making the amount of the stolen water exceed 31 billion cubic meters since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, said Arsan Arsan, director of Water Resources Department in Quneitra.

He also pointed out to the danger posed by the dams Israel has built on the rivers running towards the liberated part of the occupied Golan, particularly Ein al-Hamra dam and al-Mansoura dam 1 km to the west of Quneitra city.

They also accused Israel of contaminating Syria with nuclear waste, and the final resolution called on Syria to "liberate" the Golan via all means of resistance, meaning this Syrian sponsored conference called for war with Israel.

Needless to say, the world media ignored this.

One of the more interesting charges leveled against Israel was that it displaced a half a million Syrians since 1967. Given that the Golan had less than 200,000 people in 1967, this is a pretty amazing feat.

Perhaps more interesting is that these displaced people and their descendants are living in Syrian "refugee" camps over forty years later. Of course, displaced persons are not legally refugees, and there is nothing stopping Syria from building new towns for these people to live in.

Syria, like the other Arab nations, prefer to use people as political cannon fodder against Israel rather than helping them rebuild their lives. Syria's practice against this group is even more egregious and cynical, as these people are full citizens of Syria and should have equal rights. Syria chooses to let them fester so that they can whine about Israeli "ethnic cleansing" decades later.

It is instructive to compare the daily lives of these Syrian citizens with those of the Arabs who stayed in the Golan and now "suffer" under "occupation."

Abbas: Hamas leaders escaped Gaza in ambulances

Mahmoud Abbas, in a speech at the American University today, accused Hamas leaders of escaping Gaza in ambulances and hiding in the Sinai during Operation Cast Lead, according to Palestine Press Agency.

Abbas also said that the PA warned Hamas in Gaza a week before the operation that Israel was serious and that Hamas should extend the truce, and that Hamas ignored these warnings. Abbas says he then appealed to Hamas leadership in Damascus and was similarly rebuffed.

During the war there were a number of reports that at least one Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, had escaped to Egypt via an ambulance. Even two weeks after the war people were wondering where he had disappeared to.

The Goldstone Report, not very convincingly, says it found no evidence that Hamas used ambulances illegally during the war.