Peaceful PalArab weekend

Not as many deaths as you might expect, but plenty of shootings, bombings and kidnappings. From PCHR:

In the past 3 days, a person was killed and two others, including two children, were wounded in the Gaza Strip in the context of the state of lawlessness and proliferation of weapon prevailing in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR:

At approximately 19:30 on Thursday, 1 March 2007, Yasser Fathi Zannoun, 17, from al-Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah, was wounded by a bullet to the left foot when he was checking a gun inside his house.

At approximately 21:00 on the same day, Zuhair Sa’id al-Hilu, 14, from Nusairat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, was wounded by shrapnel from a bullet he had played with.

At approximately 22:30 also on Thursday, unknown gunmen opened fire from a traveling car that had no registration plate at Hussein Mustafa Abu Karsh, 18, when he was neat his house in al-Shati refugee camp in the west of Gaza City. He was wounded by a number of bullets to the left foot.

At approximately 02:00 on Friday, 2 March 2007, unknown gunmen fired at a house belonging to Ashraf Mohammed al-Ghaffari, 37, a member of Fatah movement, in Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. No casualties were reported.

At approximately 16:30 also on Friday, chaos prevailed during a football match in Khan Yunis and sounds of shooting were head in the area. The Palestinian police intervened to end the chaos. As a result of the indiscriminate shooting in the area, Fayed ‘Ali ‘Ashour, 42, was seriously wounded by 3 bullets to the right leg. He was evacuated to the hospital, but he died from his wound at approximately 22:30.

At the same time, unknown gunmen traveling in a civilian car kidnapped Shadi Mohammed Hmaid, 30, when he was near his house in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City. Later, the kidnappers dumped him into the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis after having wounded him with several bullets to the feet.

At approximately 22:40 also on Friday, Tariq Shaheen Shaheen, 27, a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces, from Nusiarat refugee camp, was brought into Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as he sustained bruises throughout the body. Shaheen was kidnapped by unknown gunmen from al-Jalaa’ Street. The gunmen violently beat him and then dumped him into al-Nafaq Street in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

At approximately 09:00 on Sunday, 4 March 2007, 4 persons were wounded during an exchange of fire between members of Hamas and Fatah movements:

1) ‘Abdul Rahman Mohammed Msabbeh, 18, wounded by a bullet to the abdomen;

2) Jamal Husni Abu Yousef, 35, wounded by a bullet to the right foot;

3) Maher Ahmed Msabbeh, 20, wounded by shrapnel to the buttocks; and

4) Nidal Jamal Msabbeh, 25, wounded by shrapnel to the hands.

In addition,

Gaza - Ma'an - Palestinian security sources have announced that two Palestinian citizens were abducted by unidentified armed assailants on Monday morning in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip.

The sources added that Yasser Basiouni and Mohammad Wishah were kidnapped at 1.40 am and taken to unknown destination.

Also in the Gaza Strip, at about 4am, an explosion was heard in the area of Khan Younis. The explosion resulted from an explosive device planted at the entrance of a video shop. The shop was destroyed but no casualties were reported.

This is all very surprising for two reasons.

One is that now that there is a "unity government" that everyone is so excited about that will make sure that Hamas/Fatah clashes are a thing of the past.

The other is that both Hamas and Fatah keep on adding more and more and more "security forces" to their bankrolls. With all those armed policemen, all those RPGs and machine guns, all those people dedicated to the noble Palestinian Arab cause - wouldn't you think that the streets would be safe?

It's a real puzzle, I tell ya.

(My counts of how many Palestinian Arabs have been violently killed by other Palestinian Arabs are now at 336 since Summer Rains and 131 since January 1.)

UPDATE: A 24-year old killed while he was trying to build a bomb near a house in southern Nuseirat, Gaza. 337 and 132.

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Conditions improve slightly in Syrian prison camps for PalArabs

For reasons only known to Syria and the UNRWA, there are still tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs living in so-called "refugee camps" in Syria, in very poor conditions. Every once in a while a token gesture is made to make it appear that Syria actually cares about its resident Palestinian Arabs, and today was one of those days:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, (UNRWA) has appealed for US$26 million to improve the living conditions of some 18,000 Palestinian refugees living in Neirab camp near Aleppo, Syria.

Launching the appeal in Amman on Sunday morning at a regular meeting of UNRWA’s Advisory Commission, Commissioner-General, Karen Koning Abu Zayd, said: “The Neirab project represents a prototype that will empower Palestinians to secure their livelihoods, meet their needs and address their concerns”.

Neirab camp originally housed World War II troops. Six decades later, Palestinian refugees still live in the original barracks and no renovations or rebuilding has been conducted to accommodate the refugee population that has expanded over the years. This has led to overcrowding and unsafe building structures that pose health and safety hazards.

In 2003, UNRWA started a project to relocate 300 families from Neirab to new houses constructed on a plot of land made available by the Syrian government in the nearby camp of Ein Al-Tal. This represented Phase I of the project, but it remains necessary to improve the conditions in Neirab camp.

Phase II will utilize the newly available space in Neirab to reconstruct the camp and develop housing units and community facilities.

The project reflects the co-operation between the Syrian Arab Republic, UNRWA and donor countries, to provide better services to Palestinian refugees. So far, the Syrian Government has been the biggest contributor to the project, donating US$6.5 million.

Hidden from this self-congratulatory claptrap are a few salient facts:

• Palestinian Arabs who have been born and raised in Syrian territory over the past six decades are not allowed to become Syrian citizens - by law. The Syrian Citizenship Law #276 of 1969 states that any Arab who lives in Syria and demonstrates financial independence can become a citizen of Syria - with the exception of Palestinian Arabs. (This is true of almost all Arab countries who adopted the 1965 Casablanca Protocol.)
• Palestinian Arab men must enter the "Palestine Liberation Army" under Syrian command.
• Palestinian Arabs are not allowed to own farm land in Syria.

While there is freedom of movement, clearly Palestinian Arabs are treated in a discriminatory way in Syria and Syria is the major party responsible for the fact that so many still live in camps that have not been updated in decades. So while Syria tries to score political points by saying that they built a few hundred houses over the past four years, it is barely a ripple in the ocean of discrimination that PalArabs suffer in the lands of their supposed defenders and brethren.

The Casablanca Protocol explicitly says that the reason that Palestinian Arabs cannot become citizens of their host countries is to ensure that they "maintain their Palestinian nationality." Even though for centuries, Arabs did not have any national identity and freely moved between areas of the Middle East without any real hindrance, in this one special case the Arab nations got together and said to this one class of Arabs who might want to immigrate to their states - tough luck.

The value of keeping Palestinian Arabs languishing in these camps was unconsciously betrayed by a principal of a Palestinian Arab school in Lebanon, when talking about the need to balance the students' identities as "Palestinian" as well as Lebanese:

"The camps, although they are misery, they keep the identity of the Palestinians," he says.

The Arab states are telling the PalArabs: You, the Palestinian Arabs and their descendants, are more valuable to us as outsiders, as "refugees," as people that we can use as pawns in our war against the Jewish state. If you would become one of us, we have fewer propaganda points. If we allow you to become citizens - even though from all accounts, Palestinian Arabs are harder workers and better educated than most other Arabs - then it means that we may have to concede that we actually lost the war in 1948 and that we have to accept Israel as a reality.

Much better to keep you suffering. Forever.

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Why is there sewage in Gaza streets? Because PalArabs build rockets with sewer pipes.

From The Christian Science Monitor lastweek(via Reliefweb):

The dispute over Gaza's crossings underscores the tradeoff between Israeli security needs and the Palestinian need for the passage of people and commercial goods. In an affidavit submitted to the court, the Palestinian water utility said Gaza's main north-south highway has been flooded by sewage because Israeli authorities haven't let through the needed pipes. An Israeli army official, said that the pipe infrastructure has been dug up by militants and used in Kassam rockets to fire into Israel.

Which story sounds more truthful?

From JPost:

A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, who worked as a metal merchant at the Karni Crossing, was arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) earlier this month for allegedly selling pipes, which he would buy in Israel, to terror groups who used them to manufacture Kassam rockets, it was released for publication on Sunday.

On February 9, the Shin Bet arrested Amar Zak, 37, at the Erez Crossing. During his interrogation, Zak confessed to purchasing metal pipes from Israeli companies and then selling them to Hamas and other terror groups for the manufacture of Kassam rockets, fired almost daily at Israel. In 2006, 1,700 rockets were fired at Israel.

The pipes that were sold to Zak were intended for civilian use, and specifically for the construction of a sewage system in the Gaza Strip.

The Shin Bet arrested Zak after it received numerous reports in 2006 according to which hollow pipes made in Israel were being used in Gaza to manufacture Kassam rockets as well as shoulder-launched missiles.

During its investigation, the Shin Bet revealed that most of the raw materials used to manufacture Kassams originated in Israel. The Israeli companies, the security service said, were used by the Palestinian terror groups without their knowledge.

Here is example number 1634 of how Palestinian Arabs hurt their own people in order to kill Jews - and then they blame the Jews for their suffering. And "humanitarian aid" organizations like ReliefWeb will readily agree with the Palestinian Arab narrative.

At what point will the world community tell the coddled, babied Palestinian Arabs that it is time for them to finally take responsibility for their own actions? At what point will the world realize that much of their money meant to help the PalArabs is being directly used to try to destroy Israel instead?

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Those horrible Zionists

In yet another instance of Israeli neo-colonialism and imperialism, rabid extreme right-wing Zionists secretly arrived in Somalia today to extend their hegemony over the African continent:

An delegation of Israeli volunteers, masking their Jewish identities, arrived at a Somali refugee camp on the Kenyan border Sunday.

The volunteers arrived at the camp on behalf of the Jerusalem AIDS Project, an Israeli organization which promotes education for HIV/AIDS prevention, public health, training, and counseling.

The refugee camp is populated by an overwhelming majority of Muslims, and only camp administrators were aware of the fact that the envoy was Israeli.

The organization’s Executive Director Hanni Rozenberg joined the envoy, which aimed at assessing the urgent needs of the refugees, who were struggling to survive in the dire conditions.

“It was 45 degrees yesterday and the conditions are hard to bear. There are a large number of refugees here who have AIDS, malaria, polio, and various fevers, and they cannot leave here,” Rozenberg explained.

“There is terrible malnutrition here, its like landing on another planet. There is so much to be done,” she continued.

The organization began by distributing clothing for infants and toddlers, who spent their days in worn out rags before the envoy arrived. But the lack of clothing, and widespread malnutrition, were not the only problems at the camp.

Rozenberg, a nurse, was shocked at the local birthing rooms, which she says did not even have basic equipment. She also expressed concern over the fact that such a large part of the camp’s population was sick, and only five doctors were available to them, two per shift.

“We came here to see what basic equipment is needed, as well as medical training, health education, and medicine, in order to help the Muslims to reduce AIDS,” Rozenberg explained.

“Awareness here is very low, people don’t use condoms and the number of carriers rises. Girls aren’t allowed to leave the huts after sundown because there is fear of rape. We are hoping we can help, and get Israel involved. That’s why we are in contact with the foreign ministry and the local embassy,” she said.

Rozenberg said that after needs were evaluated, the organization would meet with IsraAID, an Israeli NGO focusing on AIDS awareness and prevention, in order to begin purchasing equipment.

Rozenberg also said that volunteers would be trained in cesarean-sections, infant operations, and health education.

“It’s a bottomless pit. Whatever they can bring is welcome. Only someone who is actually here can understand how horrible it really is,” Rozenberg concluded.

Once again, these Zionists (with names like "Rosenberg") are using the pretext of "humanitarian aid" to gain a foothold in a strong, free Muslim area that doesn't need or want their help with the aim of expansionism and colonialist adventures. By their own admission they are going in secretly and slyly, as only Zionists can.

It takes a special kind of evil to do something so sick and to try to pretend that it is a good and wholesome undertaking.

Write to your Congressman and ask him to stop this Israeli aggression against the good Muslims of Somalia.

(And for the inevitable tiny minority that thinks I'm serious - have a great Purim!)

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New blog design

I am testing out a new blog design. Nothing major, just some font changes and other small adjustments.

Try it out and see how much you like it.





...And have a wonderful, freilechen Purim.

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The appeasers of Shushan

We all know, in the story of Purim, that Mordechai refused to bow down to Haman. We can also infer from this that the other Jews did indeed bow down to Haman.

How did the Jews who violated Jewish law and bow to Haman treat Mordechai? The answer is not surprising - according to the Gemara, they castigated him, telling him that he was going to get them all in trouble.

After the evil decree to murder all the Jews of the Persian Empire came down, one can imagine how the other Jews felt. They blamed Mordechai for their troubles. If only he wouldn't have been so stubborn, the Jews could have gone on to live happy lives as minorities in Persia where no one would bother them. He single-handedly gave the Jews a death sentence.

We all know who was right in the end. And we can also deduce what would have happened to those intellectual and practical Jews of Persia had Mordechai not done what he did - the second Temple would never have been built and the Jews would have disappeared as a people. Whether it would have been another Haman doing it with genocide or simple assimilation, the outcome would have been the same.

It remains to us to ask ourselves, honestly - whose side would we have been on had we lived in Shushan?

The Jews today who want to abandon Judea and Samaria have the same compelling argument that the Jews of Shushan had - a tiny number of "extremists" are rocking the boat and endangering everyone. Self-interest almost always drives how people act, and it is very easy to find logical arguments to support one's conception of self-interest.

Mordechai did not have a logical argument for acting as he did. In most moral systems, he would be considered to be in error. It is easy today to say that he was right and that he was a hero, but at the time it seemed obvious that he was dead wrong.

Do we have the conviction today to be like Mordechai?

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Purim - time for tzedaka

PizzaIDF - will deliver Mishloach Manot to IDF soldiers
Yad Ezra VeShulamit - delivers food to the poor in Israel; has Matanot Le'Evyonim program
Yad Eliezer - also delivers food baskets in Israel; last year gave out $220,000 on Purim day
Ezras Yisroel - gives to the needy in the US
Carmel Ha'ir - soup kitchen in Jerusalem
Ezrat Avot - provides support for the elderly poor in Jerusalem
Hazon Yeshaya - provides soup kitchens in Eilat and (soon) Ashkelon
Lema'an Achai - Comprehensive solutions for poor people in Israel
Eizer L'Shabbos - help for Jews of Tzfat; recommended by A Simple Jew

If you have any other charities that have specific Purim programs, let me know and I will add the information.

Purim will be celebrated this coming Sunday (Monday in Jerusalem.)

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12 weeks in a row and counting

The "Palestine Center for Human Rights" has a weekly, exhaustive report of how terrible Israel is, listing deaths, injuries, arrests and so on, with no context, all for the singular purpose of demonizing Israel to the world. Certainly human rights is not their aim because while they will mention some of the PalArabs killed by each other, it is far from their focus.

I just checked their numbers against my counts of how many Palestinian Arabs were violently killed by each other for the durations of each of their weekly reports.

For each of the past 12 weeks in a row, more Palestinian Arabs have been killed by other PalArabs than by Israel. (This week, Israel killed four - 3 on purpose and one accidentally - and the PalArabs themselves killed 10 of their own.)

Over that time period, the ratio of Palestinian Arabs killed by each other to those killed by Israel is over 4-1 (about 170 to 40.)

There are many organizations, both Arab and Western, who claim to care about Palestinian Arab civilians, but for some reason none of them are publicizing these numbers. It certainly appears that they don't love Palestinian Arabs as much as they just hate Israel.

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More honor killings, plus an attempt at one

In another Arab honor killing in Israel, a 25-year old woman was murdered, apparently by both parents whose clothes were bloodstained.

This comes in the wake of a family in Ramle that has killed 8 of its women, for the same reason.

Meanwhile, the first Druze beauty pageant contestant in Israel was also the target in a murder plot, according to police. Two cousins were arrested.

One wonders what kind of a society "honors" women so much that they want to murder them.

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Hi, I'm Satan. Glad to meet you!

My powers keep on growing unchecked.

I used to be only the leader of the International Zionist Web, but today I got promoted:

TEHRAN -- Zionists are the "true incarnation of Satan," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in his latest verbal assault on Tehran's arch foe Israel, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Thursday.

"Zionists are the true incarnation of Satan," Ahmadinejad told a meeting of Sudanese Islamic scholars late Wednesday on the first day of his state visit to Sudan. "The Zionist regime was created by the British, brought up by the Americans, and commits crimes in the region with their support," he charged.

"The Zionist regime is the symbol of hedonism and the incarnation of the soul of the oppressive powers," added Ahmadinejad, whose comments were greeted by shouts of "God is Great!" by the scholars, IRNA said.

Wouldn't you like to be a Satan too?

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What a difference a day makes for Hamas

Yesterday:

Russia's foreign minister said on Tuesday the "obvious" progress achieved during recent talks between rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas warranted the lifting of the economic embargo on the Palestinians.

"Progress is obvious... We are convinced that the progress is enough to mitigate the economic restrictions imposed on the Palestinians," the minister, Sergei Lavrov, told a news conference in Moscow.

Lavrov, who earlier held talks with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal, said the two sides "identified the aspects most important to paving the way for a settlement of the Middle East conflict," he said.

"The Mecca accord proved that consolidation of all Palestinians was possible. The Mecca accord is a move towards implementing the demands of the Quartet of international mediators," he said. He pledged to continue work on Hamas.

Speaking at a separate news conference, Lavrov said Hamas has pledged to stop missile attacks on Israel.

"Hamas must use all its authority on the Palestinian territories to stop firing Kassam rockets at Israel. We have been assured that such steps will be taken," he was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

And today:

Earlier Wednesday, six rockets fell on southern Israel, causing no injuries but damaging a security fence. The rockets came despite promises by Hamas leaders to halt the attacks.

Also today:

Abu Obaida, the spokesman of the Qassam Brigades the armed wing of Hamas Movement, on Wednesday vowed an "earthshaking reprisal" to the Israeli occupation's crimes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The spokesman affirmed that the Palestinian people never accepted "oppression", and stressed that the Palestinian resistance would "teach the enemy a bitter lesson".

He said that IOF practices in Nablus and Jenin, the murder, siege of hospitals, arrests, closure of schools, terrorizing and starving civilians were part of the "Zionist terrorism against the Palestinian people" that would entail devastation on the "Zionists themselves".

He charged that Israel wants to drench the Palestinian arena in a pool of blood and to create chaos in a bid to hamper the implementation of the Makkah agreement that brought calm back to that arena.

I wonder if Lavrov has withdrawn his recommendation to fund these lovely people yet.

One valuable lesson that Palestinian Arabs have learned very well: while lies repeated often enough do indeed become thought of as the truth, you only have to lie once to people who want to believe your lies.

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Martyr matters at Ma'an

Palestinian Media Watch came out with a report yesterday comparing the reporting done by the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News in English and Arabic, and accusing Ma'an of using the terminology of terror in Arabic but not in English:

Ma'an releases in Arabic include the hate ideology espoused by the terror organizations that deny Israel's right to exist, express reverence for suicide terrorists and justify terrorist murder as "resistance." But when translated into English, the same stories go through a sterilization process to hide from the English readers – and possibly from the two Western countries, the Netherlands and Denmark, who give them funding – the terrorist ideology Ma'an is helping to propagate.

They go on to give two examples.

Ma'an News responded to the charges. One of the points they made was of interest:

When Ma'an was established at the beginning of 2005, Ma'an News Agency hosted media experts from all over the world, including Israel, in order to discuss the terminology. Among the guests were the Israeli journalists, Miron Ropot and Zvika Yehezkely, along with dozens of media professors from Britain, Iran, Europe and the United States. All agreed that each language has its own terminology and special meanings, and that Ma'an will not stop using terms such as "martyr", "resistance" and equivalent terms, in Arabic.

Philippa N., chief English editor, said: "We have never tried to hide the fact that we cater to a different audience and therefore need to employ a different language. The most important thing for us is to deliver the facts and to portray the full extent of the harsh reality of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, without causing incitement. The coverage is more important than the language. In regards to our choice of terminology, we aim to stick as close as possible to UN-accepted terms, while maintaining our Palestinian perspective."

Compared to every other PalArab media outlet, English or Arabic, Ma'an is the one that adheres closest to accepted journalistic standards. This is not to say that it has reached that level but within its own framework it is the fairest.

However, as can be seen in the quotes above, being better than the usual Arab media crap is not the same as being satisfactory.

The chief English editor admits that Ma'an has an agenda, and that agenda is not truth but propaganda -"to portray the full extent of the harsh reality of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation." So while Ma'an has more stories about Palestinian Arabs killing each other than any other PalArab media outlet, it will devote most of its stories on Israeli actions even though they have been resulting in far fewer deaths this year (the latest ratio is roughly 130 PalArabs killed by their own this year versus 23 killed by Israel, a ratio that is simply not reflected in Ma'an's articles.)

Beyond that is a more fundamental problem. They assert that "each language has its own terminology and special meanings," and this is undoubtedly true. But when the terminology itself becomes a means of incitement, then it becomes problematic. The fact that a supposedly secular, neutral news source refers to dead PalArabs as "martyrs" and refers to suicide bombers as part of a "resistance" doesn't just mean it is reflecting normal use of the terms - it is influencing its readers to think that blowing themselves up is a noble deed. To hide behind the "everybody's doing it" defense is a cop-out.

The other statement that "the coverage is more important than the language" is simply false, for the same reasons. The language helps dictate the coverage.

Saying that these are "UN-accepted terms" is very interesting. I only found one case where a UN document referred to martyrs in English, and it was indeed a translation from an Arabic attachment to the report on the Jenin operation in 2002:

The present report contains a number of eyewitness accounts by casualties who survived the massacre and close relatives and friends of martyrs, inhabitants of the camp, volunteers who participated in the relief operations and journalists.

This seems to indicate that the UN itself may use the same terror terminology in its Arabic documents, which would be a much bigger story than just what a Palestinian Arab newspaper does.

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