Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Late night open thread

As time available for blogging continues to dwindle, I have to create more and more open threads to pick up the slack...

Feel free to post any cool links or messages. Here's one from yesterday.

Abbas happy Obama pressuring Israel

An incredibly depressing editorial in the Washington Post sheds light on Obama's New Middle East, where old agreements are scuttled and ignored, and where America pressures Israel while Palestinian Arabs have no responsibilities:

On Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.

Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."
What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.

Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' "

Of course, Abbas did close to nothing that was required from him while the US leaned on him. Even then, his strategy was to wait - until Bush was gone.

He's excellent at doing nothing and being praised for it.

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.
Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

You mean, Israel hasn't choked the Palestinian Arab lives in the West Bank? The settlements haven't caused them to be squeezed out of life? The roadblocks haven't forced thousands of people to die trying to get to hospitals? Israel's oppressive policies are having no effect on their daily lives? They can go to work and raise their families and go out to eat and visit other countries even though they don't have their own state? Those years of pressure by the US didn't hurt their people? People living under the dreaded "occupation" are living normal lives??

It's almost as if years of articles by Palestinian Arabs about their horrible plight were all a bunch of lies! Say it ain't so, Mahmoud!

Doonesbury treats Obama better than God

For reasons I cannot fathom, I still read Doonesbury some thirty years after Garry Trudeau stopped being funny.

Last week, he finally answered the question of how a legendary satirist and dedicated liberal could make fun of the most liberal President in history - and the answer is, he cannot (click to enlarge):

The entire week of strips was about Obama's inability to be funny.

He has no problem making fun of the Jewish God (click to enlarge):

...but some things are sacred!

One reason the PA cannot survive

Yesterday, the Palestinian Authority sentenced a man to a lifetime of hard labor for "collaborating" with Israel:

A Palestinian Authority court of first instance in Ramallah sentenced a man to lifetime penal servitude after he was found guilty of treason on Monday.

Knowledgeable sources told Ma’an that the convict, who was referred to only by the initials “HA,” was found guilty of violating articles 11 and 112 of Palestinian penal law number 16 of the year 1960. He was told he could appeal the verdict.

...Israeli intelligence appointed him to spy on several wanted Palestinians including Naji Arar from the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, helping Israeli intelligence to capture Arar and others.

The convict also admitted in court that he reported to Israeli intelligence about Palestinian resistance fighters either by mobile phone or through a woman from Ramallah, or by meetings held with intelligence officers at a military base near Ar-Ram checkpoint, or another near the Israeli settlement of Bet El.

Also yesterday, in the wake of the gun battle where the PA police were trying to arrest Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, killing two of them, Hamas issued a statement:

Mushir al-Masri of the Hamas parliament made an unprecedented attack on President Mahmoud Abbas and called him a "Zionist" and "American," asserting that Fatah does not have a genuine will for dialogue.

Mushir al-Masri said to President Abbas, "You are more Zionist than the Zionists, and you are more American than the Americans."

Now, who sounds more like a "collaborator" - the PA police or the man sentenced for treason? What argument does the PA have to answer when Hamas accuses them of collaborating with Israeli intelligence, the Americans and the IDF as they clearly have been?

The hypocrisy of taking a tough line against people who do exactly the same thing that the PA does does not go unnoticed by Palestinian Arabs. All political groups tend to allow their agendas to be set by those who are tone deaf to nuance, but Arabs more so than most - and the nuance of public denunciations of "collaboration" while engaging in much more explicit forms of the same "crime" is lost on practically all Palestinian Arabs.

When the ultimate battle between the PA and the Islamists occurs, only one side will have a consistent and defensible position that would appeal to the excitable masses. This is what happened in Gaza and this is what will happen in the West Bank, no matter how much Western money is brought in to prop up the PA.

Many or most Palestinian Arabs just want to live their lives and raise their families in peace, with the Islamic extremists probably still a minority. Yet it is exactly that attitude that causes them to not be passionate about the PA. Passionate people are targets, passionate people get killed, passionate people cannot be expected to become grandfathers. Pragmatic people play it safe and keep their heads down. As a result, the passionate people will win the battle between Hamas and the PA - the people who care most about their families are the ones who will stay out of the fight.

And they are the PA's base.

Of the rest of the people, Hamas' positions are clear, mostly consistent and attractive. Those are the people who are willing to die for their positions. No amount of money can alter that fact.

UNRWA chief slanders Israel

From Ma'an:

The UN’s director of relief operations in Gaza told Palestinians in Gaza that they had not been defeated by the Israeli military on Sunday.

“The Palestinians were not defeated by Israeli army in its latest offensive against the Gaza Strip, and they proved to be capable of resuming their life anew despite all their hardships,” said John Ging, the director of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which serves hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

This means that the official UNRWA position is that Israel's goal in Gaza was to defeat the "Palestinians," not to stop rockets or deter Hamas.

The only way to interpret Ging's statement is to say that he believes that this was a war whose goal was genocide, and the Israelis failed in their attempts to eradicate all Arabs from Gaza.

This is a slanderous and sickening statement. But it is not a surprising one.

Every Israeli town is a "settlement"

This cartoon from Palestine Today shows what Palestinian Arabs really consider to be "settlements."

And it is hardly limited to the West Bank.

And here is how "moderate" Firas Press looks at "settlements:"

The clear implication is that the idea of Jews living in supposedly Arab territories is inherently aggressive. The logical conclusion of that mindset is that to kill all Jews in the territories is considered "self defense."

Put the two cartoons together and you have the Arab justification for genocide against all Israelis.

Another sighting of Zionist Pigs

This Zionist Pig article from Palestine Today is notable because it doesn't merely accuse "settlers" of unleashing these wild boars on Palestinian Arab crops, but now the IDF and the Israel Nature and Natural Parks Protection Authority are part of the conspiracy!

And they have "witnesses!"

Wild pigs spread in the territory of the town of Arraba, south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, and caused serious damage to agricultural crops.

...Witnesses in the town of Arraba affirmed to the news agency that the Israeli occupation forces and the so-called Israeli Nature Protection Service brought a tanker full of pigs inside the town, under the protection and guard of military patrols of the army of occupation, and placed them on Arraba-Ya'bad street in a garbage dump near the town of Arraba.

Ya gotta love Arab witnesses.

Click to read previous Zionist Attack Zoo postings.

Hamas, PA forces battle; 6 dead

From Ma'an:

Six Palestinians were killed on Sunday morning in clashes between Palestinian Authority security services and gunmen affiliated to Hamas in the northern West Bank city of Qalqiliya.

According to the medics, three security officers and two Hamas fighters were killed, in addition to the owner of the building where the Hamas men had stationed themselves.

A couple of observations:

The PA police are incredibly incompetent, even after months of US-backed training, to lose three policemen in a gun battle with only a handful of Hamas terrorists.

While the PA has all but given up on controlling Gaza again, Hamas has clearly not given up on controlling the West Bank. One must look at the "unity talks" in that context.

When Ma'an talks about PA officers killing Hamas terrorists, they are "killed." When the IDF kills a single Hamas member while trying to arrest him, it is an "assassination."

In other Hamas/Fatah news, Hamas arrested a Fatah-leaning reporter in Khan Younis. These arrests have been increasing on both sides, with each side accusing the other of torture.

Together with a four-year old boy who was killed by "his father's weapon," the 2009 PalArab self-death count rises to 92.

Arab deja vu

Here is a report from AP, showing Arab displeasure at US arms supplies to Israel as well as Israel's declaration of Jerusalem as its capital.

Guess when this happened?

The report is dated September 12, 1966. Yes, the Arabs were complaining then that the US was not being fair in its policy of maintaining a balance of power between Israel and the Arabs. To them, the US should have allowed them to obliterate Israel.

Even more interesting is their statement on Jerusalem. Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital - and even though there are no Muslim or Christian sites of any import in the western part of Jerusalem, the Arabs still said that this was a threat to the holy sites - that they still controlled! (And that they banned all Jews from visiting!)

Chag Sameach!

Tonight starts the holiday of Shavuot, so I will not be blogging until, probably, Sunday.

And my blogging will be lighter than usual for the next few weeks as I have major projects both at work and at home that need to get finished.

I wish all my Jewish readers a Chag Sameach!

The 500-character challenge

I just saw yet another article in the Saudi Gazette about how important it is for other Arabs to feel sympathy for Palestinian Arabs and to boycott Israel.

The feedbacks for the article are limited to 500 characters, so as a personal challenge I wanted to craft a response that fit within those limits.

Here's my reply (not yet posted):

It is interesting that Arabs don't seem to notice the institutionalized bigotry that they have against Palestinians - namely that they do not, by law, allow Palestinians to become citizens of their countries.

It is much easier to blame Israel for all the Palestinians' problems rather than notice that Arab policies have left them stateless and miserable for 61 years.

And this bigotry is justified in the name of "unity."

Why not give the Palestinians the option to become citizens if they want?

Maybe I'll work on a 140-character tweet, next....

Terrorists getting money

Creeping Sharia noticed that Congress has just allocated billions of dollars to, shall we say, questionable "allies."

Anne Lieberman emailed many bloggers and journalists about these stealth appropriations:

I would wager that few among you know - I certainly didn't - that Congress appropriated almost a billion dollars to the Palestinians last week. And what's worse is that they specified about a third of it to go to Gaza (Gaza = HAMAS).

I thought it was illegal to fund terrorists.

These expenditures were in that Supplemental Appropriations bill where Congress didn't give Obama the money he wanted for closing Gitmo since he didn't have a specific plan (big news for a day or two). So I guess they did read this bill, some of it anyway.

It was passed in the House May 14, and the Senate passed it a week later... a week ago today, May 21 (my fellow West Virginians will note that Senators Byrd and Rockefeller didn't vote).

So when you see Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) coming to the White House today, just know that he's picking up a big fat check. Know also that he is a terrorist, Arafat's right-hand man for decades and the financier of the Munich massacre (when Palestinians murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics in 1972). He's also a Holocaust denier and his term in office at the so-called "Palestinian Authority" ran out in January. So he has no real position and leads a country that doesn't even exist. But now I'm nit-picking. What's a billion dollars, one way or the other?

The money, much of which is above and beyond what Obama requested, includes:

•West Bank and Gaza: $665 million in bilateral economic, humanitarian, and security assistance for the West Bank and Gaza.

•Jordan: $250 million, $250 million above the request, including $100 million for economic and $150 million for security assistance.

•Egypt: $360 million, $310 million above the request, including $50 million for economic assistance, $50 million for border security, and $260 million for security assistance.

USAID goes into detail of where the money for the PA is allocated. Here's a small part:

Peace and Security ($109 million)

This supplemental request fulfills existing security assistance requirements and responds to new
opportunities in the Palestinian Territories, supporting efforts by the Deputy Envoy for Security,
LTG Dayton. The bulk of the request is to sustain and accelerate the critically important and
effective effort to train, equip, and garrison the Presidential Guard and Special Battalions of the National Security Forces to crackdown on terrorism and bolster and backstop the efforts of the Palestinian Civilian Police to maintain law and order. In addition, the request contains funds to begin developing new programs that the European Union and other donors are not supporting, but have been identified by the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, Senator Mitchell, as critical to the overall effort to create a competent and professional Palestinian Authority Security Force. Accordingly, the principal areas of focus for supplemental security assistance will be to fully develop two more National Security Force Special Battalions; train a second Presidential Guard battalion; train, equip, and support civil defense first responders; sustain and expand security and law enforcement-related specialized training; develop a border integrity capability; and augment program development and support funding to address expanded logistical, administrative, and related requirements of the program.

This supplemental request also provides law enforcement-related training and equipment to enhance border integrity along the Gaza border. This assistance is intended to help further stabilize and control this border following the Gaza conflict. Funding would be used for training in a full range of border integrity disciplines and will provide non-lethal equipment to these trained forces.

I don't understand the last paragraph at all - who exactly from the PA is controlling the Gaza border? Or is this for Egypt?

I wish I had known about this when I went to Washington last week....