Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

So does the UN support a unilaterally declared Palestinian Arab state?

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post seems to have been the first to report:

UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Negotiations Robert H. Serry expressed the UN's support for the declaration of an independent Palestinian state to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad while the two picked olives together on Tuesday near the West Bank village of Turmus'ayyeh, close to the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.

"All international players are now in agreement that the Palestinians are ready for statehood at any point in the near future," said Perry [sic]. He continued, "We are in the homestretch of your [Fayyad's] agenda to reach that point by August next year and you have our full support."

A few hours later, a reporter asked the UN spokesperson about this in their daily briefing:

Question: Robert Serry said yesterday to Salam Fayyad that the UN would support a declaration of the Palestinian State this… next summer… actually, next August.

Spokesperson: Said to whom?

Question: Said to Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. The 1995 Oslo Accords, for which the UN is sponsored, from which participation in the Quartet says that any such declaration should be a result of negotiation. The question is, does Serry… does the Secretary-General believe that Serry’s sentiment also supports a unilateral declaration of statehood or through the UN without consulting Israel, which is the current path on which the Palestinians are going?

Spokesperson: Well, Benny, let me check with Robert Serry’s office on exactly what was said. Okay, thanks. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. [He later informed the correspondent that Robert Serry had been quoted inaccurately, and that the paper writing about him had revised its story.]

As far as I can tell, the Jerusalem Post has not revised anything from what I just quoted above.

So what really happened?

Excitement in Yemen parliament over child marriages

The Yemen parliament debated a proposed law to set 16 years as the minimum age for girls to get married in that country.

The discussion deteriorated as the Islamists who oppose the law argued with its supporters.

The two sides started insulting each other and using profanity.

Then, one lawmaker raised his shoe to hit his opponent, and security broke up the scuffle. The session has now been postponed.

Al Watan, an Arab American newspaper reporting on the story, commented wryly in its headline: "Welcome to democracy."

By the way, I had never looked at the American Al Watan before. In Arabic, it links to at least one explicitly anti-semitic video.

Terrorist/butcher

Lizas Welt brings us an interesting photo of a butcher shop - in Brussels:

We knew he was a terrorist, but a butcher too?

Of course, the meat is Halal.

(h/t Silke)

Arab League still pushing boycott of Israel

The Arab League representative to "Palestine," Mohammed Sabih, spoke at a meeting of the regional boycott liaison office in Syria that it is the duty of Arab nations to adhere to the boycott of Israel.

Because of its violations against human rights.

Again...he said this in Syria.

He is encouraged by the worldwide BDS movement, which regularly announces successes but has in fact failed spectacularly.

I do not know whether the Arab League encourages the PA to stop all trade with Israel, or to demand that Gaza stop its imports of humanitarian aid and consumer goods from Israel.

The Arab boycott of Jewish businesses in then-Palestine started as early as 1909, some 39 years before the state of Israel was established.

It is notable that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have officially ended their boycott - the Saudis to enter the World Trade Organization and Bahrain to take advantage of a free trade agreement with the US. Nevertheless, the Saudi boycott is still in effect.

Despite this, there is trade between Israel and Arab countries worth tens of millions of dollars annually.

Wikipedia, quoting UPI, mentions an earlir boycott conference in Syria.

On May 16, 2006, after four-day conference of the Arab Boycott Bureau in Damascus, Syria, a "source close to the conference" reported that "the majority of Arab countries are evading the boycott, notably the [Persian] Gulf states and especially Saudi Arabia. ... The boycott deteriorated a lot, regressed and even almost collapsed... We should not lie on each other, because the boycott is quasi... paralyzed.

Islamic Jihad has responded to the controversy over publishing pictures of Turkish "peace activists" from Viva Palestina who visited Islamic Jihad and posed for commemorative photos with machine guns and RPGs.

Completely clueless about why the concept of peace activists proudly brandishing weapons is an oxymoron, Islamic Jihad stated that the pictures were "commemorative photos of solidarity" and emphasized that the activists were in no real danger at any point during their photo shoot. They emphasized that they didn't bring them to any border areas, for example, where they would have been at risk.

In other words, trying to get into Western heads as to what the problem is, they assumed that it was a safety issue!

They additionally said that the Turks were "motivated by an innate natural human solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people exposed to murder, genocide and torture at the hands of the Israeli occupation that kills children and abuses prisoners and burns the holy sites and traps civilians. These visits of solidarity are primarily of sympathy with the besieged and with the Palestinian right with the resistance."

They added, "This is systematic Israeli propaganda against peace activists."

Gaza rockets suffering quality control problems

The GANSO website that I mentioned earlier has bi-weekly reports of various dangerous things that happened in Gaza.

One interesting thing that they mention in these reports are the number of rockets and mortars that either explode prematurely or that fall short in Gaza.

According to their figures, over the past month, Gaza terror groups fired 19 rockets (that these NGO's call "homemade") and 14 mortars towards Israel. Out of those, 8 rockets and 8 mortars fell short or exploded prematurely.

That's a 42% failure rate for rockets, and 57% failure rate for mortars.

No wonder Hamas and their NGO partners want to import more raw materials into Gaza. The quality of weapon components they are getting from the tunnels is abysmal!

NGOs admit how they help Hamas

GANSO is the Gaza NGO Safety Office, run by CARE International, to help NGOs in Gaza stay safe.

Their website describes incidents that jeopardize the safety of internationals in Gaza, both from IDF incursions and from militant actions (like mortars or rockets that fall short.)

Last February, there was an (apparently Islamist) attack on a Red Cross convoy in Gaza, and GANSO wrote a special report about the ramifications.

This report describes, incidentally, how much the NGOs in Gaza help Hamas, and it makes clear that this is considered a desirable political goal.

Here's how NGOs in Gaza think - in their own words:

The presence of the international community in the Gaza Strip is vital to the stability of the de-facto government; over 60% of the Gazan population is food insecure, according to UN sources, and unemployment surpasses 50%; thus, a majority of the population is either partially or entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. The assistance provided by the international community, particularly by UNRWA and WFP. eases the burden on the de-facto government of managing the needs of its impoverished and dispossessed population, enabling the de-facto government to achieve a modicum of legitimacy. Thus, even the partial reduction or suspension of humanitarian aid activities in the Gaza Strip as a consequence of a disintegrating internal security environment would have devastating consequences for both the population and the de-facto government's legitimacy.

The presence of the international community in the Gaza Strip is also a major political benefit to the de-facto government. The willingness of international governmental and non-governmental organizations to send diplomatic delegations and expatriate staff into the Gaza Strip demonstrates a level of trust in the security infrastructure of the de-facto authority.

Moreover, the presence of expatriate staff in Gaza implies that expatriates do not feel threatened by the de-facto government itself a boon to the credibility of the Hamas movement in the international arena, in which the movement has for years been labeled as a terrorist organizationh by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

The skepticism of regarding Hamas as a terror organization is evident in this report, as well as the pride in how NGOs prop up Hamas as a political force.

In other words, NGOs in Gaza are acting at odds with EU and US policies by knowingly and eagerly propping up Hamas' Islamist rule in Gaza.

AP promotes stereotypes of fanatic settlers acting illegally

I had just noticed this - but the Balfour Street blog beat me to it.

From AP via Al Arabiya:

In a spat last week, Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, which helps Palestinians harvest their olives in the West Bank, confronted [Erez] Ben-Saadon and accused him of using land owned by Palestinians.

Ben-Saadon said he was farming on land given to Jewish settlers by the Israeli military. He said he had no ownership papers -- but needed none.

"Our land deed is the Bible," Ben Saadon said.

This perfectly fits in with the meme of fanatic, religious settlers disregarding the law to grab land that belongs to Palestinian farmers - a meme that is so widespread as to be axiomatic among many.

Yet, Ha'aretz reported on this same incident last week - a bit differently:

Near Har Bracha, a verbal confrontation erupted yesterday between Jewish farmer Erez Ben Sa'adon and Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the head of Rabbis for Human Rights. Ascherman claimed Ben Sa'adon was harvesting olives that belonged to Palestinians from nearby Karyut. Ben Sa'adon, whose nearby vineyard had been destroyed by unidentified parties the previous night, said he had leased that plot for the past 12 years and the olives were his.

Civil Administration officials were called to resolve the dispute, and they summoned the mayor of Karyut - who admitted that the trees belonged to Ben Sa'adon.

It certainly looks like the AP reporter read the Ha'aretz story and purposefully omitted the part where Ben Sa'adon was proven to be the rightful owner of the olives, and Arik Ascherman proven wrong.

This is not an innocent mistake. This is AP being mendacious to adjust the facts to pre-determined conclusions.

(I sent messages to the author of the AP piece and to Erez Ben Saadon, asking for comment. I have yet to hear back from them.)

Tuesday afternoon quickies

From comments, emails and other various sources:

Secret Israeli-Arab study program sparks anger - YNet:

Academic normalization with Israel is very dangerous, since he sees it as an attempt to perform a "Zionistic brainwash".

UN Rep backs unilateral declaration of PalArab state - JPost:

United Nations Special Middle East Peace Negotiator Robert H. Serry told Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday that the UN will a support the declaration of an independent Palestinian state. Serry spoke to Fayyad while the two picked olives together near the West Bank village of Turmus'ayyeh, close to the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.

Hezbollah supply route revealed: (Now Lebanon)

According to “confidential reports,” the French Defense Ministry has information about Hezbollah’s arms supply route to Lebanon through Syria, French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Tuesday.

More pictures of that Turkish "peace activist" having fun with his Islamic Jihad friends and their weapons.

Terrorists who threw grenades near Western Wall praised as "heroic prisoners" by PA TV (PMW)

Qatar - deadbeat supporter of Palestinian Arabs

From Foreign Policy:

In the weeks following Operation Cast Lead, Israel's air and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 and 2009, the rich oil sheikdom of Qatar and other Persian Gulf governments vowed to dig deep into their desert robes to help Palestinians rebuild. Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, pledged $40 million in February, 2009, to fund humanitarian relief operations by five U.N. agencies, including $30 million for U.N. humanitarian operations in Gaza and an additional $10 million for a U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) set up to respond to humanitarian emergencies anywhere in the world. The office of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon greeted the pledge with effusive praise.

But the money has never arrived.

U.N. officials say that their repeated requests to Qatar to honor its commitment have been met with vague responses indicating that it is facing what it has described as "unforeseen circumstances." Steve O'Malley, the chief of the CERF secretariat, said simply: "We followed up with the Qataris and they are following up back in Doha."

The Qatari mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

Qatar's Gaza pledge illustrates one of the truisms about international aid: Faced with conflicts or natural disasters that capture the world's attention, states make generous pledges. But getting them to actually cut a check requires a sustained diplomatic effort by the United Nations. The problem has been particularly acute in the Arab world, where governments have consistently fallen short of their commitments to the Palestinians, according to U.N. officials.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is responsible for assisting more than 4.7 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, has been hit especially hard as a result of a global financial crisis.

The agency is facing an $80 million funding shortfall, and will not be able to pay salaries beyond November, according to UNRWA officials. The agency's largest donors -- the United States, Britain and the European Commission -- have continued to fund UNRWA, providing 95 percent of its operating budget, according to agency officials.

But they say efforts to convince Arab governments to meet their commitments have fallen short. "UNRWA faces an unprecedentedly serious financial situation this year," Andrew Whitley, the director of UNRWA's New York office, told Turtle Bay. "Certain donors have not kept up with their promises while others have been pressured to cut back because of the financial crisis."

"Our biggest donors have maintained, and in some cases increased, their contributions slightly," Whitley added. "But our efforts to broaden the donor base to non-traditional donors, particularly Arab governments, have not borne fruit."

In September, at a conference of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo, Filippo Grandi, UNRWA's commissioner general, said that Arab countries needed to address the crisis or they would face the prospect of greater political insecurity in the region.

We once again see how deep Arab commitment is to helping out Palestinian Arabs in their everyday lives.

It is paper-thin.

UNRWA distances itself from the truth

A couple of days ago, an outgoing UNRWA official said something that was actually useful, for once:

Andrew Whitley, due to soon leave his post as director of the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency’s New York office, told the National Council for US-Arab Relations’ annual conference that...Palestinians must start acknowledging that the refugees will almost certainly not be returning to Israel, so that they can improve their situation.

Palestinians have long maintained a “right of return” to Israel and the homes they – or their ancestors – fled during Israel’s 1948/49 War of Independence. The issue has been one of the most difficult to resolve in peace negotiations.

“If one doesn’t start a discussion soon with the refugees for them to consider what their own future might be – for them to start debating their own role in the societies where they are rather than being left in a state of limbo where they are helpless but preserve rather the cruel illusions that perhaps they will return one day to their homes – then we are storing up trouble for ourselves,” he declared.

Whitley acknowledged that few Palestinians or even officials in his own organization have been willing to publicly discuss the issue.

“We recognize, as I think most do, although it’s not a position that we publicly articulate, that the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent,” he said.

“It’s not a politically palatable issue, it’s not one that UNRWA publicly advocates, but nevertheless it’s a known contour to the issue.”

So how predictable was this? From UNRWA:

UNRWA unequivocally distances itself from the statements made by the Director of its office in New York, Andrew Whitley, at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington on 22 October 2010. These statements in no way reflect the policies or positions of the Agency and are the personal views of Mr Whitley.

Because it is better to pretend a problem doesn't exist than to tackle it.

Amna Naseer, female professor of religion and philosophy at Al Azhar University, claims that the burqa is not an Islamic precept - but started out as Jewish law that was taken by ignorant Muslims.

She was speaking at a seminar held by the network of Egyptian human rights groups about the rights of women in monotheistic religions.

While Judaism teaches the importance of modesty, nowhere does Jewish law demand that women cover their faces. Apparently, Naseer - obviously against the burqa, as Al Azhar University altogether is - feels that associating it with Judaism will get Egyptians to abandon the practice.

In fact, the Talmud indicates that the face veil was an Arab custom that predates Islam (BT Shabbat 65a) and Jewish women in Arabia adhered to that local custom. (Rashi comments there that Arab women customarily cover their heads and faces, except for the eyes, and the garment was called "re'ul" or "re'ula" in Arabic.)

Do Gazans hate UNRWA this much?

The "Commission on the Rights of Refugees" in Gaza says they polled 2500 random Gazans who live in camps about what they thought of UNRWA.

Their results are fishy.

They say that :

85.8% of those polled are suspicious about how UNRWA teaches their kids about human rights;
87% say that teaching about human rights is like poisoning the kids' minds, and undermines the role of the Resistance;
79% think UNRWA is trying to normalize Arab relations with Israel;
70% demanded that UNRWA stop allowing kids to visit Western nations because it goes against their traditions;
80% think that mixing boys and girls in UNRWA programs cause social and ethical problems.

The complaints are not new, but I have serious doubts about the organization that created this poll. Googling the name in Arabic only finds this poll and nothing else.

It is possible that a conservative Islamic-oriented group asked very leading questions of people as they were leaving mosques (for example) creating both a self-selecting sample and a sample that would invariably answer questions the way the "pollsters" wanted them to.

It is also possible that this organization was created just to garner headlines for a fake poll to pressure UNRWA to change its policies.

Hamas: Israel booby-trapping cars imported to Gaza

From Ma'an:

The Hamas-led government in Gaza has warned officials and leaders of Palestinian factions to avoid buying the new cars that have been entering the Strip over the month, according to media reports late Monday.

"A note has been circulated to all concerned parties, warning them of the new cars the Israeli occupation has allowed in Gaza before they undergo special tests by security services," a Gaza security source said according to one report.

Gaza Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Al-Ghussein confirmed the report, saying " ... it is still a possibility that the occupation fixes tracking devices to the cars or even booby-traps them."

So let's wait for ordinary Gazans to buy them and see if they get blown up!

By the way, it isn't cars that are booby trapped. It's coriander.

Saudi woman, 29, was in jail for disobeying her father

From Arab News:

Samar Badawi, the 29-year-old Saudi woman who was incarcerated for not obeying her guardian (mahram) following a lawsuit by her father, was freed Monday.

Samar has been in prison for seven months after her father filed a case against her accusing her of disobedience.

Abdullah Al-Othaim, the head of the District Court in Jeddah, told Arab News that a warrant stating that Samar Badawi is free has been issued.

“Samar’s uncle (from her father's side) will now take care of her, being now adjudged her male guardian,” he said.

Samar was sent to Briman Prison in Jeddah on April 4 after her father lodged a complaint against her accusing her of disobedience. The father filed the counter-suit after Samar had lodged a legal complaint accusing her father of preventing her from marrying. Samar is a divorced woman with one son.

Samar accused her father of abuse and fled her family home in 2008 to live in a shelter. Samar's mother is deceased. Samar fled the shelter last year after learning that her father had instituted the case against her.

Under Saudi law a woman who has no guardian or who is in dispute against her guardian becomes a ward of the state who can face imprisonment for refusing to stay in authorized women's shelters.

There's more in the article, but there is only so much bizarre 8th century thinking that the human brain can absorb at one time.