Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, stunned the Palestinian delegation to the UN Human Rights Council when he called out the PA's human rights abuses of their own people.
The PA delegation reacts with shock as Hassan Yousef calls the PA the “greatest enemy of the Palestinian people,” in a video posted by UNWatch.
“If Israel did not exist, you would have no one to blame,” he declared.
AMBUSHED: U.N. Heads Turn in Stunned Disbelief as PLO Lies Exposed by Palestinian Hero
Fatah does not cease to promote terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi as a role model for Palestinian youth. During a visit by Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki to Fatah's Al-Asifa Pioneers Summer Camp in Hebron this August, girls paraded with two flags: one, the official Palestinian flag, and the other had the image of terrorist Mughrabi. Mughrabi led the bus hijacking and murder of 37 civilians, 12 of them children, during what is known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978.
The picture of Mughrabi on the flag holding an automatic rifle is a well-known photo, often used by Fatah when praising her as a "role model" and "Martyr." For example, when members of Fatah's Central Committee celebrated the attack and praised the female terrorist on the anniversary of her attack, the photo was displayed on stage at the event.
Palestinian Media Watch reported last month on another Fatah summer camp which was named after Dalal Mughrabi earlier this year.
While visiting the Al-Asifa Pioneers, Zaki "reviewed the significance of the role of the male and female youth in the Palestinian revolution, since its outbreak." [Facebook page of Fatah Spokesman in the Southern Hebron District Maher Namoura, Aug. 8, 2017]
The prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand will visit Israel next month to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
The 1917 attack on the Ottoman forces in the city, which was led by British general Edmund Allenby, enabled the British Empire to take control of southern Palestine after months of inconclusive fighting in Gaza and continue its advance towards Jerusalem.
Mounted units of soldiers from both Australia and New Zealand played key roles in the fight for the city.
The ceremony will be held on October 31 at the Beersheba Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, where more than 1,000 commonwealth soldiers are buried, including the over 100 troops who died during the Battle of Beersheba. The Foreign Ministry said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will arrive in the country on October 28, while New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English will land in Israel a day later.
It did not say whether the two will hold meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any other Israeli officials while in the country.
Netanyahu last met with Turnbull in February during his trip down under.
Some Iraqis are calling for closer relations with Israel, feeling a common bond of past persecution and a desire for peace and stability. Many people might find two factors cited in this change quite surprising: Iraqis' guilt, and some resentment of Palestinians.
"There is a dramatic shift that has changed [Iraqi] public opinion [toward Israel] as a result of the Palestinians' involvement in supporting the [late Iraqi] dictator Saddam Hussein and thus getting involved in terrorist operations," writer and political analyst Ali Mared al-Asadi told Al-Monitor recently by phone.
"Most Shiites in Iraq have a sense of guilt because they did not support the peaceful Jewish community with whom they lived for hundreds of years in peace and harmony in one homeland, but who were persecuted and displaced during the monarchy [1958-1963] and the Baathist regime [1968-2003] eras.”
Much of the fanaticism and hostility toward Israel appears to have declined in central and southern Baghdad, where the majority of people are Shiite.
On Sept. 9, Asadi wrote, “It is not in the interest of Shiites to antagonize Israel. Shiites and Jews ought to reach understandings based on common humanitarian grounds that guarantee peaceful coexistence in the Middle East.”
It is an important point: Just because Iran is Shiite doesn't mean that Shiites hate Israel. After all, Iran used to have good relations with Israel before the revolution.
Asadi told Al-Monitor by phone, “If we put the influence of Iran and the remnants of the Baathist culture aside, Iraq would have no excuse to keep officially antagonizing Israel, especially since the majority of the Arab states, [even] the Palestinian state itself, hold relations with Tel Aviv.”
But it isn't only Shiites:
Many Sunnis also seem to favor closer ties. Political analyst Maher Abed Jawdah told Al-Monitor, “Even Iraqi Sunnis are in tune with Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf countries in establishing good relations with Israel, mainly because they are driven by the same hate toward Iranian Shiites, who are very hostile against Israel.”
But:
As for Iraq’s official position, Maher said, “The Iraqi state rejects relations with Israel. The influential, Iran-backed Shiite factions in Iraq would not allow any friendlier official stance toward Israel.”
...
Shuruq al-Abayji, an Iraqi parliamentarian, told Al-Monitor, “There are many individuals in Iraq calling for establishing relations with Israel, though they don't represent the official state position. However, Israel is seeking to galvanize these individual views through special agendas.”
Mithal al-Alusi, a former Iraqi parliamentarian and longtime outspoken advocate of normalizing ties with Israel, sees communication as the key to achieving that goal.
“The need to communicate and have dialogue with everyone at the level of states, parties and individuals, including Israel, is the way to solve problems in the region and achieve a secure future for all peoples,” he told Al-Monitor. "The current communications revolution means everyone has become able to express their opinion freely, regardless of the official stance of a government or a state. Many positions and stances have [become] pro-Israel.”
Linda Menuhin, a Jewish writer and former journalist born in Baghdad and based in Israel, told Al-Monitor by phone of her experience with the issue. “Many of the Iraqis I am in touch with encourage good relations with Israel. Many of them also want to visit Israel and even settle there.”
Aziz, who studied public administration in the United States, added, “I think relations between Israel and Iraq will flourish in the future, and I hope by then I will be the first Israeli ambassador to Iraq."
This is an incredible sea change of Arab public opinion that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
This is how peace could and should be achieved. But Iran's political influence over Iraq will only grow, as it has a clear agenda of Iranian influence to the Mediterranean. Public opinion can only go so far in these circumstances.
Still, this is significant.
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On Twitter, Palestinian American journalist Daoud Kuttab accused UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nicolay Mladenov of not knowing international law when he implied that the Har Adar attack was terrorism:
Attack against soldiers in occupied territories next to illegal settlement is not "terror' @nmladenov check the UN charter re terminology
Kuttab, a former professor at Princeton who has won journalism awards, is wrong.
Two of the victims of the Ha Adar attack were two security guards - civilians under international law. The injured person was a civilian. The other victim was a member of Israel's Border Police, which reports to the Israeli Police and not the IDF. Normally police are considered civilian although an argument could be made that the Border Police could be considered combatants under international law given some of their operations.
But clearly three of the four people shot were civilians and this was a terror attack.
Kuttab, of course, was informed of this - and refused to issue a correction. Because, to this pseudo-journalist and academic fraud, propaganda is the entire purpose of his "journalism."
(h/t Soccer Dad)
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She was just 17 years old when she came to the educational center where I was volunteering as an English teacher. The head teacher asked her mother to choose the teacher who would instruct her daughter. But her daughter intervened. She pointed directly at me. I knew that would be the beginning of a love story.
Over the next eight months, she and I finally fell in love. Her family knew, but mine did not, because I knew my family was not financially ready for a marriage. Immediately, I realized the mistake I had committed by allowing such a deep attachment to grow.
I am my parents’ eldest son. They want me to marry so they can enjoy being grandparents, but they know that I don’t have a apartment to live in or a stable salary that would allow me, my wife and them to survive on. My father has been unemployed since 2005 when he, along with thousands of other Gazans, could no longer work inside Israel after its withdrawal. He became one of the 80% of all Gazans who depend on social assistance and international aid.
My girlfriend's parents loved me so much that they said they could not live without me. "If you ever leave us, you will kill our souls," her mom once told me. Her words made me cry for hours, because I already knew marrying her daughter would never happen.
I felt trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. I was afraid to be realistic and to tell her family that financial difficulties prevented me from marrying their daughter, and I was also scared to promise the girl and her family to wait for me, and for my situation to improve, because I did not want them to wait for years.
Between fear and hope, the relationship lasted for about two years, and she was almost 20 years old when her mother asked to meet me alone. I knew what her mother wanted to talk about. I met her in a restaurant in Gaza, popular with families, and she started talking about the social culture of Gaza and how people regard young women when they pass the age of 20.
In Gaza, and in most of the Arab world, families consider girls over 20 as irredeemable spinsters. That means many have no chance of marrying - for several reasons. There is a gender 'surplus' of young single women because so many young men immigrate to the West looking for jobs, because men disproportionately lose their lives in combat, and because men don't have the financial means to get married.
"You know my daughter will soon be 20, and I still don't know if you're intending to marry her." Her mother started her prepared speech. "You know we can wait for you for years, but your family should know and I need guarantees that you will indeed marry her!"
It was her right to say that, and that day I felt the most guilty and oppressive person on earth. I realized how much her family was attached to me, and how much they needed me to be one of them. I couldn't give my answer there and then. I asked her mother to give me a few days to think.
Gaza's difficult financial conditions, including an unemployment crisis that exceeds 45%, one of the highest in the world, stifle the chances of hundreds of marriages ever taking place. That has led to the proliferation of organizations that facilitate weddings. Their main role is to help people who don’t have the financial means to marry. Because every wedding in the Gaza Strip costs at least $8000, these organizations provide grooms opportunities to pay in comfortable installments over two or three years.
I thought of going to register at one of these organizations, but I was very hesitant. I knew that everyone in the neighborhood would know I married through them, and that it's considered shameful. I didn’t want anyone to talk badly about me. Moreover, I would not be able to pay the installments back, so I would fall in a dangerous financial trap; I would likely default, and I might even go to jail. So I eradicated the idea of marriage from my mind.
I called her mother, and told her that I would not let her daughter or her wait for me. I would not be able to marry for years. She cried over the phone several times, but I still felt I did the right thing.
That was two years ago. Until now my ex-girlfriend has refused every marriage proposal suggested to her. Her mom once called me and said that her daughter was suffering psychological difficulties. That day, I understood what living in the Gaza Strip means.
I don't want to dump on a person whose pain and love is real.
But listen to what he is saying. He is saying that his sense of shame at the idea of taking charity to afford a wedding is strong enough to ruin the life of the young woman he loves.
Even the article notes that around half of the people in Gaza are poor in one sense or another (even though there are quite a few social safety nets there - no one is starving and no one sleeps on the streets.) Gazans have no shame whatsoever about accepting hundreds of millions of aid from the West.
But this young man - who loves and is loved by this young woman - is willing to let her become a spinster and to be alone the rest of her life because of his selfish, perrverted sense of shame.
The article is blaming Israel for his own selfishness and his conscious decision to abandon a wonderful woman and sentence her to a life of pain. Which is, when you think about it, the way the entire Arab world looks at Palestinians - choosing to hurt them and to use them to blame Israel.
It doesn't have to be this way. Another young couple in Gaza who couldn't afford a wedding swallowed their pride, ignored the shame that permeates their society and crowdfunded their own wedding. They are the exception that proves the rule.
The Arab shame culture that the West is so keen on ignoring underlies every decision made in that world, from the personal to the national. And (in the way it is manifested in the Arab world) it is inherently inferior to the guilt culture of the West that emphasizes personal responsibility. This article unwittingly illuminates what can only be described as a sick way of thinking that holds an entire society back. Instead of saying that he and his love can work together, help each other and swallow some pride in order to have the companionship and support and love that they need, he is saying that he is willing to destroy his love's life - because he is so afraid of the temporary shame of not being able to afford a stupid wedding that for some other stupid shame reason must cost $8000.
This is indeed "what living in the Gaza Strip means" and what living in the Arab world means. It is a perverted way of life that ensures generations of immature young men and young women are doomed to blaming the results of their self-destructive decisions on others.
They are the architects of their own misery - but they will always blame the neighbors.
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Today, the party passed the rule change making antisemitic abuse and harassment by Labour members a punishable offence. The Guardian reported:
“The rule change proposed by the Jewish Labour Movement, which has been backed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s national executive committee, will tighten explicitly the party’s stance towards members who are antisemitic or use other forms of hate speech, including racism, Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia.”
Yet this change is worse than meaningless. Yes, it enables the party to expel antisemites. But crucially, it leaves unresolved the definition of what antisemitism actually is. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Labour will never, ever accept that demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel is the contemporary form of the oldest hatred.
How could it accept that? Its members overwhelmingly subscribe to it – even though many of them haven’t the faintest clue that what they believe to be the truth about the Arab-Israel conflict is in fact a pack of lies from start to finish.
In maintaining this fictitious distinction, Labour wields what it believes to be the ultimate weapon: the anti-Zionist Jews who offer themselves as human shields to protect those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonisation and delegitimisation.
The assumption is that no Jew can be an antisemite; so if Jews say Israel is a Nazi apartheid racist murderous colonialist state committing unspeakabke atrocities, that cannot be antisemitism.
But that’s rubbish. Antisemitism has unique characteristics, including double standards applied to no-one else but the Jews, systemic lies and falsehoods, imputation of a global conspiracy to harm the world in their own interests, blame for crimes of which they are not only innocent but are the victims, and so on. All these characteristics that make antisemitism a unique collective derangement apply to the demonisation of Israel.
And of course, there have always been Jews who have done the antisemites’ dirty work for them. The fact that such a high proportion involved in this latest manifestation of the oldest hatred are people of Jewish descent merely demonstrates the tragic fact that there’s no disorder quite so pathological as when a Jew turns against his or her own identity at the deepest level. Jews are a people like no other; the hatred directed at them is a hatred like no other; and when Jews turn on their own people, they behave in a way that is replicated by no other.
When I first heard about Mudar Zahran, I thought it was too
good to be true, that people are way too gullible. I shook my head. How could
it be that an Arab would take our side in this way?
I asked this not just as a rhetorical question, but to
people in the blogging world, people on my same side, the right side of Israeli
politics.
I was referred to the Jordan is Palestine Facebook page,
where Zahran held forth before a captive and adoring Jewish audience, protesting
his ardent love for the Jewish people and for Israel. Zahran's plan was and
still is, to bring down King Abdullah and install himself, Mudar Zahran, as
prime minister of Jordan.
The beauty of this is that Israel wouldn't have to give away
any more land. The solution would be the solution that already is. It's the
British Mandate for Palestine solution. You know, the one in which 78% of the
Mandate was carved away from what Balfour promised the Jews and given to the
Arabs to be their national homeland, Transjordan, the Palestinian state.
All we needed to do is get that durned Hashemite, Abdullah, off the throne.
Could it really be that Arabs and Jews might bring peace to
the region via this Arab initiative? It was a wild concept. But all the right
people were telling me Mudar was the real deal.
We'd get peace for doing absolutely nothing at all!! We just
had to support this guy, the self-described "putative prime minister of Jordan" and spread the word.
But what happened next was ugly. I found out the guy was a fake,
but in a way that hurt me. I mean really hurt me. I'd lost my innocence
in a deep and profound way.
I wrote up the entire story in a blog piece for the Times
of Israel I called: My Lost Arab Hope. I called Mudar "M."
I would link to the piece here, except that the Times of Israel removed the
piece Tuesday, some four years after I wrote it, subsequent to this post on Facebook.
Here are some excerpts from that 2013 TOI piece:
I ask if I can
interview him for a blog. We agree on a time for a Skype call. I wait. M
doesn’t show.
Days later M
apologizes, reschedules. Again, he is a no-show. He mentions something about
being on the run again, more death threats.
Finally, we
manage our Skype call. We get through a number of my questions. At one point, I
think I hear a toilet flush. I pretend I don’t hear it. We agree he’ll answer
the rest of my questions by email.
I wait. M doesn’t
follow through.
Then one day, he
sends me a link to a webpage all in Arabic. I can’t read Arabic. He swears up
and down that the webpage is an anti-Israel article written by a well-known
Arab Israeli journalist. One I respect.
The article, M
tells me, was written many years ago. He swears up and down that it says what
he says it says and that his sources are very high up.
It doesn’t sit
right with me. I tell him I want to have someone translate the piece into
English, so I can verify what he tells me.
M is offended. He
makes me feel guilty for spurning his offer of truth. Is he not my friend, M
asks? Would a friend lie to a friend?
I hem and haw,
and hurt, he lets me go.
I look for
someone to translate the article and find someone. He’s busy, perhaps tomorrow.
Before my
translator friend can get to the work, M writes: it was all a huge mistake. The
journalist he smeared the day before is a prince among Arab men.
I am gobsmacked.
And offended.
Had I spread the
slander to my contacts, my credibility would now be in tatters. I would be
reviled for sloppy work and for besmirching the name of a respected journalist.
I log on to
Twitter and confront M’s tweet: “[Respected journalist M smeared the day
before] is a prince among Arab men.”
It lights my fuse
to read this. I tweet, “Funny. That’s not what you said yesterday.”
M messages me on
Facebook. “My contacts misled me. I apologized to [said journalist]. It’s all
been worked out. Please remove your tweet.”
I do so.
One week later, M
messages me, “Dear precious varda, it was a moment of weakness and treason from
someone I trust, I care for you much, and respect the wonderful things u ve
always said and done.......I did injustice to [said journalist], and it was
because of a sleeper who abused my trust......forgive my dear and I truly hope
we start a new page at least as fellow zionists!”
And I see M has
unfriended me.
It is a spear to
the heart.
I try to reason
with him. People who are “dear” and “precious” aren’t written off, I tell him.
M will not budge.
He writes something a bit firmer, more hurtful, and blocks me.
. . .
M unblocks me. He
sends me a friend request. He makes it seem chivalrous: he thought my actions
showed I no longer want his friendship.
We chat. I tell
him I’m not like him. I am no good at flowery language. My people are from
Lithuania, renowned for being cold and unemotional.
M writes,
“Ukraine has beautiful people, yet they hate Jews in such a strange fashion. I
remember how when the Nazis arrived the locals took the initiative to round up
Jews. Amazing, why so many people hate Jews.”
And suddenly I
hear it. Not the error in geography. The trope.
The words trip
off something essential inside me, turning my veins to black ice. Now I know
him. Now.
Had he said,
“Some of my best friends are black,” I would have laughed, would have
appreciated the joke. But suddenly I know. I know it in my gut: M hates Jews
absolutely.
Why is any of
this at all interesting now? Because after all these years, the Jews are still being
duped by Mudar Zahran, a man who claims to be a political refugee. The Jordan branch of the HSBC bank, meantime, published this advertisement shortly after Zahran left Jordan and arrived in London. The bank did this because Mudar owed the bank 47,000 Jordanian Dinars (the rough equivalent of
$66,000), and his whereabouts were unknown.
This is no
secret. It's all on the web.
Mudar's
own father very
publicly and repeatedly condemned and disowned him. This too is easily
found on the web. Now think what it means in the Arab culture when a father
condemns a son, a culture most concerned with honor. It means that Mudar is an
outcast. Since he is an outcast, no one can claim damages against his family. And
this outcast has the stupid Jews duped that he could rule Jordan!
What
I didn't say in my Times of Israel piece (because it hadn't yet happened, duh)
is that approximately one year after I'd severed all contact with Zahran,
someone purporting to be Israeli and Jewish threatened me in a private message
on Facebook. I thought of going to the police, but did not. I'm told now that
Zahran creates fake Jewish profiles on Facebook and threatens people. One of
those people he threatened is way smarter than I, because that one person did
file a police report.
Aside from what people tell me and the threat I experienced, I've seen with my own eyes the abusive comments and obnoxious threats directed at a friend of mine, with Zahran calling her Abu Toameh's girlfriend, because she takes him to task for his libelous comments.
What I don't get
is how the guy continues to have so many followers when people like Ruthie Blum,
Caroline Glick, and Harold Rhode are saying it straight out: HELLO-O. This
guy's a fraud.
Excerpt from Caroline Glick's longer Facebook post
I mean, Gatestone
Institute deleted his entire archive. GATESTONE INSTITUTE. You know, the Gatestone
Institute of which Ambassador John Bolton is chairman? They deleted Mudar
Zahran's archive. There must have been a good reason.
Khaled Abu
Toameh, on the other hand, is an honest journalist for whom no one has a bad
word—except for Mudar Zahran who has some kind of bug in his psychotic ear
about the guy—is it jealousy??? Abu
Toameh is one of the few writers I seek out when looking for something good,
something real to read, knowing that whatever he writes will be the truth.
There's no bias, no slant in his work. He's straight up. A professional. Which
is why he won the 2014
Daniel Pearl Award. When Mudar ripped into Khaled, that's when the jig was
up for me. It just did not pass the smell test.
Award-winning journalist Khaled Abu Toameh
Mudar's Jordan is Palestine Facebook page is rife with posts attacking Khaled Abu Toameh, to the point that it is practically an all-Khaled, all-the-time page. It's some kind of obsession with Zahran.
Happily, not everyone is duped.
And if you read Arabic, you can see that some Arabs are none too happy with the way Zahran manipulates information. For instance, Zahran uses photos from various Jordanian events, and pretends they are connected to his upcoming conference. That's a classic example of deception. The photos are obviously for illustrative purposes only. Zahran, however, creates a false impression that the people you see in the photos are connected to his conference and are his supporters. In Arabic he claims that Jordanians have been invited to the conference.
The comments are hot. There is much cursing and talk of suing the website, believed to be managed by Zahran. Zahran is accused of forgery and termed a deceiver.
Note that Zahran is posting his anti-Khaled screeds mostly under aliases with fake Facebook accounts, some of them "Jewish." Michael Ben Avraham and Michael Ben Abraham are, by the way, two of the names Zahran uses to fake people out about his Jewish support. You might have seen blogs by these Michaels, such as this one.
Abu Toameh says that Mudar's friend Rachel Avraham helps him with these aliases. Avraham posted a slanderous article under the byline Michael Ben Abraham for Jerusalem Online (JOL) where she was, at the time, an editor. The article was swiftly removed by her seniors and Abu Toameh was informed that Rachel Avraham had been relieved of her duties at JOL. After this, more slander-filled articles appeared, with a slight change in the spelling of the byline (Michael Ben Avraham). Abu Toameh' s lawyers are now preparing a libel suit against Rachel Avraham and JOL despite the removal of the article.
Both Rachel Avraham and Mudar Zahran continue to claim that Michael Ben Abraham is a real person and that he's a Republican Jew and lobbyist named Michael Ross.
Moving right along, here's some irony for you: what Mudar has done is to create a Jewish conspiracy in the flesh.
He has the Jews trying to help him overthrow the King of Jordan! And the Arabs
are talking about this! In
Arabic. They see the upcoming "Jordan is Palestine" conference
(slated for October 17) as part of a wider Israeli-Jewish conspiracy against
Jordan.
The Arab media is
mocking the fact that Zahran is affiliated with "extremist right wing
Jews" who believe he can be the president of a Palestinian state in
Jordan. The Arabs are saying: the Jews are helping Mudar Zahran overthrow the
king (except they aren't, because no one in the Arab world takes Mudar Zahran
seriously). Not a one of them supports him or would vote for him. But those
stupid Jews. . . oh how they are throwing money at him to do this thing. It's a
crazy Zionist conspiracy!
It's true what
they say: the Jews supporting Zahran are some of the most right-wing, most religious
Jews I know, and these
oh-so-right-wing Jews are helping Zahran plan this foolish going nowhere Jewish
conspiracy. They're helping him plan that conference. The only problem is
financing it. To that end, a Gofundme
campaign was initiated 18 days ago by the International Jewish-Muslim
Dialogue Center (IJMDC).
If you Google the International Jewish-Muslim Dialogue
Center (IJMDC) you'll find a Facebook page and this
spammy-looking website with some dude named Michael Ross listed as
"Executive Director" but who is actually the only member of the board
listed under the plural heading "Board of Directors." There is no biographical
information offered about this Michael Ross, no link, nothing. The Facebook page of the
IJMDC, meanwhile, is all about Mudar Zahran and carries two reviews, one of
which was written by Mudar Zahran.
In other words,
the Gofundme campaign is organized by none other than Mudar Zahran. The good
news is that in 18 days, he's only managed to raise 461 pounds (as of this
writing) out of 18,000 pounds. Not going well at all. Tsk. That conference may
have to be canceled.
But never mind, because
really, what could Zahran viably bring to such a conference? The photo for the
Facebook account of his "Shadow Secretary for Homeland Security" Naseem
Gheewan, for instance, is of an U.S. pilot who died ten years ago.
At this point I want to shake my right wing fellow bloggers
and friends who still support this nothing burger of a man, Mudar Zahran, and
say to them, "What the hell is wrong with you??"
UPDATE: Reader David Fink reminded me that nothing ever disappears from the 'net. My Times of Israel article, My Lost Arab Hope, can be accessed HERE.
UPDATE (EOZ): Mudar Zahran is threatening to sue me (not for the first time), claiming everything Varda says here is a lie. So for the record - he disagrees with this post. He says he doesn't hate Jews. He says there was no toilet flushing. He gave me a laundry list of what he says are lies.
I'm sure that there are some Jews he likes. After all, some of them have been supporting him. Outside of that, for the record, I believe Varda more than I believe him. I also believe Khaled Abu Toameh more than I believe him. And if he wants to sue me, go ahead.
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Gaza City, September 27 - A new fighter for the militant Islamist group that governs this coastal territory confessed today that given the prominence of jumping through flaming hoops that had characterized his training, his duties in resisting Israel since entering active duty has featured a surprising absence of any such displays.
Muhammad Nur, 17, of the city's Suja'iyya neighborhood, now serves in a unit dedicated to excavating and maintaining a network of tunnels snaking under residential buildings in the city and connecting various Hamas positions with ammunition storage dumps and other military resources. In the recruitment materials that attracted him to the Izzedin al-Kassam Brigades, he encountered video clips and still photographs of athletic recruits making acrobatic dives through rings that had been set alight, to cheers and applause from onlookers. However, Nur's responsibilities have yet to include jumping through a single flaming hoop, let alone being applauded for it.
"Most of what I do involves schlepping," he lamented. "Sometimes I get to do some training and we crawl along the ground and shoot at cardboard silhouettes of Israelis, but most of the time I'm checking on ventilation systems and carrying replacement parts for pumps and lighting, and looking for cracks in the concrete of the tunnels. I doubt there would even be enough room down there to jump properly through a hoop. That's a shame. I was really looking forward to it being part of my job."
In his spare time, Nur still practices his flaming-hoop jumping, to keep his capabilities sharp in case the Zionists suspend burning rings larger than a man's hips between him and where he intends to reach. "You know you can't be too prepared for this. I'll be ready when the time comes."
A Hamas commander who declined to be identified by name acknowledged the discrepancy between the exciting clips of young Palestinians leaping through fiery hoops and the grim drudgery of using the Gazan civilian population as human shields above the tunnels. "Listen, everyone indulges in a bit of embellishment for marketing purposes," he explained. "You think every fighter is going to march triumphantly on Jerusalem? I'm under no illusion any such thing will happen anytime soon, no matter what our propaganda screams. But you have to make things look compelling or exciting, or the young people just won't want to be a part of it."
"I mean, what are we supposed to do - stop trying to kill Jews? Don't be ridiculous," he added.
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Former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson repeated the well-worn narrative that Jewish neoconservatives promoted the invasion of Iraq - and are beating the drum for a conflict with Iran. Of course, most Jews are not neoconservatives, and most neoconservatives are not Jewish. In any case, it was two influential non-Jews, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who played the central role with President Bush in deciding to invade Iraq in 2003.
When I began working in the Pentagon during President Jimmy Carter's administration, there was an unspoken but unmistakable assumption: If you were Jewish, you could not work on the Middle East because you would be biased. However, if you knew about the Middle East because you came from a missionary family or from the oil industry, you were an expert. People with these backgrounds were perceived to be unbiased, while Jews could not be objective.
Secretary of State George Shultz tried to change the culture of the State Department during the Reagan administration. Shultz was more interested in your knowledge than your identity. He made me and Daniel Kurtzer members of the small team working with him on Arab-Israeli diplomacy.
Tweeting that Jews are pushing for a new war is the definition of prejudice. How can it not be when you label a whole group and ascribe to all those who are a part of it a particular negative trait or threatening behavior? And once you have singled out groups, the leap is small to imposing limits on them, quarantining them and rationalizing violence against them.
Israel handed a replica of a frieze from the Arch of Titus to the head of UNESCO, using the monument commemorating Rome’s victory over Jerusalem for a not-so-subtle critique of the organization’s resolutions that ignore Jewish links to the holy city.
The idea originally came from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization passed a resolution last year that used only Muslim names for the Jerusalem Old City holy sites.
The replica will be exhibited in UNESCO’s Paris headquarters as a “greeting from the historical truth about the existence of two Temples on the Temple Mount,” said Carmel Shama-Hacohen, Israel’s ambassador to the agency.
Shama-Hacohen handed the replica to UNESCO’s outgoing director-general Irina Bokova, who, in her speech, offered a more subtle critique of one-sided anti-Israel resolutions passed routinely by her organization’s member states.
“2,000 years ago the Romans destroyed the Temple and removed it from the Jewish people. And today, UNESCO is trying to destroy and remove the history of Jerusalem from the Jewish people,” Shama-Hacohen said at the event.
“When the executive board of UNESCO adopts every six months a resolution that denies the connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount, they are not only adopting a political resolution, they are adopting a resolution that negates the right of the State of Israel to exist and the Jewish people’s right of self-determination,” he said.
Furthermore, such resolutions “pave the way for spreading anti-Semitism and terrorism,” Shama-Hacohen went on.
I call on the Arab countries to cooperate with the Palestinians and with us to advance an economic peace. An economic peace is not a substitute for a political peace, but an important element to achieving it. Together, we can undertake projects to overcome the scarcities of our region, like water desalination or to maximize its advantages, like developing solar energy, or laying gas and petroleum lines, and transportation links between Asia, Africa and Europe. Address by PM Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University, 14 Jun 2009
“It is no secret that our approach to these discussions departs from some of the usual orthodoxy – for after years of well-meaning attempts to negotiate an end to this conflict, we have all learned some valuable lessons,” he said.
“Instead of working to impose a solution from the outside, we are giving the parties space to make their own decisions about their future.
Instead of laying blame for the conflict at the feet of one party or the other, we are focused on implementing existing agreements and unlocking new areas of cooperation which benefit both Palestinians and Israelis.”
President Donald Trump. Source: Wikipedia
This follows on the heels of Greenblatt's visit in July, when he praised 2 Israeli-Palestinian agreements, increasing the water supply to the Palestinian Authority and the power supply to Jenin, as examples proving “cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians that will lead to economic improvement in the lives of the Palestinians.”
i24News news anchor Eylon A. Levy explained this "radical new" approach to peace:
But if this new approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace sounds familiar -- it should.
The International Monetary Fund had concluded that the West Bank’s economy improved dramatically in the last year
Israel's US ambassador Michael Oren pointed out in a Wall Street Journal editorial that six thousand new jobs had been created since 2008, trade with Israel increased 82%, tourism to Bethlehem increased 94%, and agricultural exports were up 200%
According to Foreign Affairs, as opposed to "armed struggle" and peace negotiations, the Palestinian Prime Minister had come up with a third path:
Fayyad's strategy is one of self-reliance and self-empowerment; his focus is on providing good government, economic opportunity, and law and order for the Palestinians -- and security for Israel by extension -- and so removing whatever pretexts may exist for Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. Fayyad's aim is to make the process of institution building transformative for Palestinians, thereby instilling a sense that statehood is inevitable.
Some gave Fayyad credit for the approach and called this strategy and its implementation "Fayyadism."
former Prime Minister Salem Fayyad. Credit: Wikipedia
Not only was there debate over who deserved credit for the plan, there was disagreement over whether the plan had even begun to make a difference:
Prior to the elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented his program for "economic peace," which he said would improved the quality of life for Palestinians in the West Bank. However, 100 days after having formed his coalition government, there is no practical progress on economic projects.
The main reason for this is the refusal of senior Palestinian Authority officials to cooperate with Netanyahu and Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, who has been assigned the task of promoting the "economic peace" initiative.
For the first time since the second Palestinian uprising broke out in late 2000, leading to terrorist bombings and fierce Israeli countermeasures, a sense of personal security and economic potential is spreading across the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority’s security forces enter their second year of consolidating order.
The International Monetary Fund is about to issue its first upbeat report in years for the West Bank, forecasting a 7 percent growth rate for 2009. Car sales in 2008 were double those of 2007. Construction on the first new Palestinian town in decades, for 40,000, will begin early next year north of Ramallah. In Jenin, a seven-story store called Herbawi Home Furnishings has opened, containing the latest espresso machines. Two weeks ago, the Israeli military shut its obtrusive nine-year-old checkpoint at the entrance to this city, part of a series of reductions in security measures.
Whether all this can last and lead to the consolidation of political power for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, as the Obama administration hopes, remains unclear. But a recent opinion poll in the West Bank and Gaza by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, a Palestinian news agency, found that Fatah was seen as far more trustworthy than Hamas — 35 percent versus 19 percent — a significant shift from the organization’s poll in January, when Hamas appeared to be at least as trustworthy.
...The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says it shares the goal of helping Mr. Abbas, which is why it is seeking to improve West Bank economic conditions as a platform for moving to a political discussion.
Read that entire article and you'll notice that Fayyad is not mentioned even once.
But the fact remains that in the US, Fayyad was given credit for the economic peace plan.
At the moment, the most promising idea comes from Mr. Abbas's prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who has vowed to build the institutions of a Palestinian state within the next two years, with or without peace talks. Negotiations between the current Israeli and Palestinian leaders could provide indirect support for that initiative, even if there is little progress. But the administration would do well to refocus its efforts on supporting Mr. Fayyad.
Just as credit for the resurrection of the plan will go to Trump.
But in the end, whether it was called Netanyahu's economic peace plan or Fayyadism, the fact remains that the plan fell apart, leaving the question of whether it will work now.
Government circumventing democracy. The unaccountable governing process that Fayyad has had to invent is not just postponing a democratic system—it is actively denying it.
Isolated successes do not create rule of law. The increasing number of cases seen and submitted to the courts indicates growing efficiency and confidence, but security services continue to act outside the law under the guise of cracking down on Hamas.
Lack of institution building. While Fayyad’s cabinet has managed to make a few existing institutions more effective and less corrupt, there has been regression in other governing bodies. Palestinian civil society is showing signs of decay as well. Ironically, there was more institution building and civil society development under Yasser Arafat than there has been since the West Bank-Gaza split in 2007.
Disillusionment increasing among Palestinians. Popular support for Fayyad is growing but he still has no organized base. And Palestinians are increasingly cynical about the prospects for long-term development.
Fatah is in disarray. The party remains bitterly divided. Party leaders recently forced Fayyad’s cabinet to cancel local elections when Fatah could not organize itself on time.
Have the Palestinian Authority and Fatah made any progress since then?
Is there more democracy?
Is the government less corrupt?
Are the Palestinian Arabs lets disillusioned or cynical?
Is Fatah, especially with Abbas aging with no clear successor, any less in disarray?
...However, there are several features to the Israel-Palestinian conflict that seriously hamper the applicability of the economic peace theory to this particular conflict. First, the theory asserts that economic integration reduces the probability of states to start a violent conflict, but does not necessarily apply to protracted conflicts. Second, the theory considers economic interdependence between states, and not a situation of asymmetric relations and dependence of one party on the other, such as exists in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [emphasis added]
Again, both reasons still apply today.
Whenever there is talk of renewing peace talks, there is criticism of trying again what has failed so many times before. Yet, regardless of the similarities to the previous "economic peace" plan, the concept itself is fairly new and for that reason alone -- and because automatically restarting peace talks is being rejected -- there is reason for patience, if not a bit of hope, that some progress can be made.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
One of the most stunning and perplexing things about Monday's non-binding referendum on Kurdish independence was the opposition to it - from the US, EU and UK, on the same side as Turkey and Iran.
The official reason given, in the words of the UK Foreign Office, is "The referendum may increase instability in the region, at a time when the main attention should be paid to the victory over ISIS."
But there will always be risks with doing anything productive. And there will always be strong opposition to any national movement.
The UN Charter speaks about the importance of “equal rights and self-determination of peoples” and later declarations elaborated on it:
By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.
Every State has the duty to promote, through joint and separate action, realization of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter, and to render assistance to the United Nations in carrying out the responsibilities entrusted to it by the Charter regarding the implementation of the principle, in order:
To promote friendly relations and co-operation among States; and
To bring a speedy end to colonialism, having due regard to the freely expressed will of the peoples concerned;
and bearing in mind that subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a violation of the principle, as well as a denial of fundamental human rights, and is contrary to the Charter.
Every State has the duty to promote through joint and separate action universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with the Charter.
The establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.
The UN doesn't say that people's right to self-determination should be pushed off indefinitely if it might upset other people.
The supposedly enlightened and liberal world suddenly thinks that these words no longer apply - when it comes to Kurds.
Why?
The real reason is that the world regards the Kurds the way it regards Israeli Jews. It knows that those who oppose both Kurdish and Jewish nationalists are irrational, terror supporting states who can threaten the West with terrorism. And the Kurdish and Jewish nationalists (except for the PKK in Turkey) are not going to start setting off bombs in Western cities.
That's really it. Terror has become the most successful political tool on the planet, because it causes Western nations with supposedly liberal values to suddenly throw out all their principles - and justify that hypocrisy after the fact. An irrational, violent actor gets its way while the rational ones who seek peace but true justice are asked, sometimes nicely and sometimes not so nicely, to stop being so demanding.
We've seen this hypocrisy many times before.
Maybe it is time to repeal the UN Charter, or to modify it to say "all of these principles only apply when it doesn't inconvenience anyone too much."
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Priceless! Antisemites Eating Their Own: Part One
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[image: Priceless! Antisemites Eating Their Own: Part One]
Here are some of the "beefs" I have noticed among the antisemites, which
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Iran Moves Into Somalia
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*And the terrorists can thank Rep. Ilhan Omar.*
After six months of Iran using its Houthi Jihadis to impose a blockade near
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UPI Continues to Act as PR for Terror Organizations
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It’s not often that a mainstream media outlet publishes a piece so full of
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Muslims bury one of the last Jews in Yemen
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Just when we thought that the last Jew in Yemen was Levi Salem Marhabi, who
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Hamas and the Nazis: Disturbing Parallels
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Fathom just published a shorter version of the article I post below. At the
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Guest Post by Netivotgirl
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*Some of you may remember the wonderful posts my dear friend aka
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The Elder Scrolls 6 - everything we know so far
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we've not heard much of anything since it was revealed over five years ago.
Aside ...
Durham University should hang its head in shame
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What should have been a celebration of free speech during an evening of
rigorous debate at Durham University, turned into a tale of cowardice,
intimidati...
An Excess of Democracy
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The State of Israel is more endangered today than at any time since 1948,
including 1973. She is tied down in Gaza while her enemies wait their turn
in Leb...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
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Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
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‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
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Thursday, September 28, 2017
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