Robert Fisk says Hamas more moral than Israel

In what may be a new low for Robert Fisk, which hardly seems possible, he starts off his latest screed this way:

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).

You get that? Fisk is saying, sarcastically, that Hamas is more moral than Israel by over a hundredfold because of the casualties of Operation Cast Lead, a war that Hamas started! As if Cast Lead occurred in a vacuum, where Israel just decided out of the blue to slaughter 300 children for no reason whatsoever. Rockets, terror, Shalit, weapons tunnels, not to mention years of suicide bombings - nope, none of that is in Fisk's calculus of blame.

But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes?

Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution".

Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to happen?

Fisk then outdoes himself, implicitly blaming Israel for Afghan casualties!

Israel, by the way, has been praised for its "logistics" help to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato.

The Israeli Chief of Staff visited NATO only a few months ago. Yet Fisk wants to retroactively blame Afghani civilian deaths on his visit in March? (Forgetting the fact that Israeli logistics is almost certainly being used to reduce civilian casualties by NATO, not to increase them - another perversion that Fisk purposefully ignores in his zeal to demonize and delegitimize Israel.)

Fisk doesn't go down this path of extreme illogic, because if he did, he would find himself tied in a rhetorical knot that would upset his focused anti-Israel agenda.

If NATO is killing more Afghanis than Israel is killing Palestinian Arabs, and if the definition of immorality is a pure death count, then isn't NATO more guilty of war crimes than Israel is? And if it is, then why is Israel's participation in NATO any more objectionable than, say, Great Britain's? Why is he not campaigning to have British generals arrested as war criminals? Why is he not saying that Hamas, by only killing a handful of Israelis in a three week period in 2009, is more moral than his own country and continent? Why is he not calling on Israel to arrest NATO leaders when they visit the comparatively moral state of Israel, using his own definition of immoral?

If he was to be consistent, that would be the logical outcome of his fevered thesis. But since his target is Israel, he would rather try to imply that somehow Israel is behind NATO's "immoral" war against the Taliban, and somehow the Europeans are helpless victims of a sophisticated  "Zionist" mind control game that only he is wise enough to see through. That's why deaths by NATO are not the EU's fault - because the sinister Zionists are really the ones behind those deaths as well.

No, Hamas would be a better partner for the EU and NATO. Let's throw Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad into the mix as well. After all, when all is said and done, only one entity is truly immoral in Fisk's mind, and the facts must be twisted in whatever way necessary to make sure that the world understands his deep wisdom.

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Demonizing Israel is bad for Palestinian Arabs (JPost)

An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post by a Jordanian Palestinian who argues that the focus on Israel is actually counterproductive for Palestinian Arabs:

Amazingly enough, the international media, and particularly the Western ones, pay very little attention to the conditions of the Palestinians living in Arab countries, despite the extreme oppression they have been enduring for decades in most Arab countries.

This tendency to blame Israel for everything has lead to the development of numerous myths about the situation of the Palestinian there that have provided an excuse to purposely ignore and compromise the human rights of the Palestinian in many Arab countries.

THE EXAMPLES for that are plentiful and sometimes cross the line into tragic comedy. While the world is crying over the Israel-imposed blockade on Gaza, the media, for some unknown reason, choose to deliberately ignore the conditions of the Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon.

Lebanon, a country with some of the most hostile forces to Israel, has been holing up Palestinians inside camps for almost 30 years. Those camps do not have any foundations of livelihood or even sanitation and the Palestinians living there are not allowed access to basics such as buying cement to enlarge or repair homes for their growing families. Furthermore, it is difficult for them to work legally, and are even restricted from going out of their camps at certain hours. Compare this to the fact that Palestinian laborers were still able to go to work every day in Israel while Hamas was carrying out an average of one suicide bombing per week a few years ago, and until recently launching missiles daily on southern Israel. Not to mention the fact that Israel allows food items and medications into Gaza if handled through the Palestinian Authority.

The Lebanese atrocities toward the Palestinians have been tolerated by the international community, not only by the media. Today, while some Israeli military commanders have to think twice, in fear of legal consequences, before they visit London or Brussels, well-known Lebanese leaders who had directly participated in mass killings of Palestinian civilians, during and after the Lebanese civil war, are becoming world-respected political figures – Nabih Berri, for example, the leader of Amal Shi’ite militia who enforced a multi-year siege on Palestinian camps, cutting water access and food supplies to them. The Palestinians underBerri’s siege were reported to be consuming rats and dogs to survive. Nonetheless, he has been the undisputed speaker of the Lebanese parliament for a long time. He travels frequently to Europe and criticizes Israel for its “crimes against the Palestinians” on every occasion.

MANY OTHER Arab countries are no different than Lebanon in their ill-treatment and discrimination against the Palestinians. Why do the media choose to ignore those and focus only on Israel? While the security wall being built by Israel has become a symbol of “apartheid” in the global media, they almost never address the actual walls and separation barriers that have been isolating Palestinian refugee camps in Arab countries for decades.

...The demonization of Israel by the global media has greatly harmed the Palestinians’ interests for decades and covered up Arab atrocities against them. Furthermore, demonizing Israel has been well-exploited by several Arab dictatorships to direct citizens’ rage against Israel instead of their regimes and also to justify any atrocities they commit in the name of protecting their nations from “the evil Zionists.”

This game has served some of the most notorious Arab dictatorships, and still does today, as any opposition is immediately labelled “a Zionist plot.”

This model had served Gamal Abdel Nasser in ruling Egypt with an iron fist until he died, and was the main line for Saddam Hussein, who was promoting that “Iraq and Palestine are one identical case” in his last years in power.

The global media must be fair in addressing the Palestinians’ suffering in Arab countries and must stop demonizing Israel. It should start focusing on the broader conditions of the Palestinians in the Middle East region.

There is much to see.

(h/t Zvi)

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Israel TV names top Hezbollah member as suspect in Hariri murder

From JPost:

The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon is reportedly set to announce that Mustafa Badr al-Din, a senior Hizbullah operative and close relative of the former Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, is the main suspect in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

According to an Israel TV report on Thursday night, Hariri’s son, the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, asked the tribunal to postpone releasing Din’s name, because of the potentially incendiary implications for Lebanon of such an announcement.

Zvi comments:

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This man was no "undisciplined element. [as Hezbollah leader Nasrallah hinted in a recent speech about possible Hezbollah involvement in the assassination.] " He was very, very well connected within Hezbollah.

Mughniyeh himself was arguably Hezbollah's most important military/terrorist figure, and was THE liaison between Hezbollah and Iran. It is inconceivable that in the strictly controlled Hezbollah organization, the assassination of an enemy would occur without the active participation of either the "head of the security section" (Imad Mughniyeh) or the organization's top leadership (Nasrallah and his cronies).

Is Hezbollah really tightly controlled? Of course it is. Hezbollah members don't even fire off the odd random rocket into Israel. They don't engage in random gun-battles in which they kill each other. When the Hezbollah leaders say "attack," they attack suddenly, showing a great deal of preparation. When the Hezbollah leaders say "vanish," they vanish. Contrast the tight control under which Hezbollah members operate with the chaotic laxity of Fatah or the "zeal" and lack of control displayed by Hamas. Nobody in HA assassinates the prime minister without instructions from above, and ultimately without obtaining either instructions or permission from Tehran.

The Saudi king and Bashar al-Assad visit Lebanon and encourage the Lebanese to appease Hezbollah and unite, in the traditional pan-Arabist fashion, around hatred of Israel. The UN coordinator thinks that this idea is just peachy:

The joint communique by Assad and King Abdullah urged Lebanese parties to "pursue the path of appeasement and dialogue and to boost national unity in the face of outside threats," referring to Israel.
...
"The visits of these Arab heads of state will be enormously important and beneficial for Lebanon's stability and future," Michael Williams, the UN's special coordinator to the country, said in a statement.

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Meanwhile, Hezbollah's political allies are aligning behind that group to pre-emptively slander the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, calling it the worst insult they can: Zionist.

House Speaker Nabih Berri who has been very quiet over the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) joined Hezbollah in denouncing the court on Saturday and stressed that Israel is aiming to exploit STL in order to create internal strife in Lebanon.

During the reopening of the Bint Jbeil hospital in southern Lebanon, Berri said: “Israel has nothing better to do than create division between the Lebanese.”

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Palestinian history quiz, part one - before 1948

1. Where did the Yaman and Qais tribes, who fought a bloody feud for hundreds of years in Palestine, come from, respectively?

A. Ancient Canaan and Philistia
B. Yemen and Northern Arabia
C. Syria and Transjordan
D. Yemen and Egypt

2, According to John MacGregor, who visited Palestine in the 1870s, what was the worst insult that an Arab could hurl at another Arab?

A. Dog
B. Pig
C. Monkey
D. Jew

3. What was the year of the first organized Arab attack against a Jewish settlement?

A. 1852
B. 1886
C. 1921
D. 1929


4. What was the year of the first official Arab boycott of Jewish businesses in Palestine?

A. 1909
B. 1921
C. 1936
D. 1946


5. In the early 1930s, tens of thousands of people from what country illegally immigrated into Palestine because of a severe drought?

A. Russia
B. Poland
C. Syria
D. Egypt

6. Who gave a live radio broadcast to the attendees of the Palestine Pavilion in the 1939 New York World's Fair?

A. Hajj Amin Husseini
B. Winston Churchill
C. Fawzi al-Qawuqji
D. Chaim Weizmann

7. Two teams of Nazis parachuted into Palestine in 1944. Each team included one person who had what in common?

A. Jews who bargained their lives to avoid death camps
B. Arab ringleaders of the 1936 uprising who fled to Nazi Germany
C. British Nazi-sympathizers
D. Iraqi collaborators

8. What were "boycott bombs"?

A. Bombs against Arab businesses by Jews
B. Bombs against Jewish businesses by Arabs
C. Bombs against Arab businesses by Arabs
D. Bombs against Arabs by Jewish victims of the Arab boycott

9. Who collaborated with the Arab side in the 1948 War of Independence?

A. Escaped Nazi prisoners of war
B. WWII French Resistance fighters
C. Members of the British Union of Fascists
D. Soviet spies

10. Who were the first refugees forced to flee their homes in the days leading up to the 1948 War?

A. Jews from Jaffa
B. Arabs from Deir Yassin
C. Arabs from Jaffa
D. Jews from Jerusalem



Answers with links:
1. B
2. D
3. B
4. A
5. C
6. D
7. B
8. C
9. A and C
10. A  (Palestine Post pageviews gone at the moment)

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PA continues to embrace terrorism

What other conclusion can be derived than that the PA continues to embrace terrorism when you read that again they named a summer camp after one of their most horrific terrorists?

"The Ministry of Social Affairs in Ramallah opened yesterday in El Bireh the fourth integration camp for people with special needs, and in Bethlehem the second Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi camp [opened]... The second Dalal Mughrabi summer camp was opened in the headquarters of Light of Generations' youth association in Bethlehem, with support from the National Committee for Summer Camps and the One Voice Palestine organization in Ramallah. It aims at training young leaders in the eastern countryside of Bethlehem District. Present [at the opening] were... the Secretary of Fatah's Bethlehem branch, Yusuf Al-Aref, ..., Chairman of the [Light of Generations' youth] association, Ibrahim Mubarak, Muhammad Khalil - camp director... 70 young girls from the Dar Salah village and neighboring villages participated." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 29, 2010]

Dalal Mughrabi keeps on being glorified by Fatah, while she is (with others) responsible for the deaths of 37 Israelis (among which 13 children).

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Poverty-stricken Gazans have a lot of computers

A new statistical study released today that I quoted earlier has some interesting figures for the West Bank and Gaza.

Here's one:

	West Bank	Gaza
Percentage of households with a computer	51.1	45.6
Percentage of households with an Internet connection	27.2	30.9

The mind reels at so much poverty.

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Gaza unemployment facts

Palestinian Arabs released some statistics about the West Bank and Gaza on the occasion of World Population Day.

One of the statistics was that unemployment for the first quarter of the year was at 33.9% in Gaza and 16.5% in the West Bank.

While the Gaza number is very high, giving Gaza one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, there is an assumption made that this high rate is because of the Israeli closure of Gaza.

This is not quite the case.

Gaza's unemployment rate before Israel's closure was at 32.3%.

It is true that the unemployment rate had soared to perhaps as high as 45% at one point, but right now it is not much worse than it was before the closure.

Looking at the unemployment trends in both the territories, there is one huge spike - where Gaza's unemployment rate jumped from 19% to 34%, and West Bank unemployment from 12% to over 21%.

That year was 2001.

So when people complain about Israeli policies that are causing such economic problems for Gazans, keep in mind the single event that devastated their economy more than any other over the past four decades: their decision to start a terror war against Israel.

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Friday linkdump

Khaled Abu Toameh discusses why many Arabs would prefer to live and work in Israel than in any Arab country.

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi points out the irony of how Hamas, supposedly yearning fro independence, is fighting tooth and nail to keep Gaza "occupied."

Mustafa at "Horses and Definitions" updates a post about how the Arabs rejected Israel's offers to return the Sinai and the Golan after the 1967 war, pointing to a recent interview of Shimon Peres by Benny Morris.

Israellycool continues his series on photos from Gaza that look pretty attractive, with a view of the Islamic University of Gaza.

Here's the latest Latma:

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"Reporters Without Borders" silent on Hamas crimes

Gaza's Journalists Union has condemned a break-in at their headquarters today, in which a computer was stolen.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, another Gaza journalist was held by Hamas in solitary confinement for six hours and needed to be hospitalized.

At the Reporters Without Borders website, nothing has been written about any press freedom issues in Gaza or the West Bank since early May, even though there have been numerous published reports of actions against journalists as well as other relevant stories there in that timeframe.

In that same time period, no less than seven articles were written about problems with Israeli press freedom.

Is there any wonder that the media is disproportionately focused on demonizing Israel?

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Hamas still smuggling in weapons. Not that the media will mention it.

Today, a Grad rocket was shot from Gaza into Ashkelon and two mortars were also shot into Israel from Gaza.

Grad rockets are smuggled into Gaza, not manufactured there.

In the past day, Egyptians have uncovered three more smuggling tunnels. Also, today they announced that they found a weapons storehouse and explosives south of El Arish that were earmarked for delivery into Gaza.

Oh, and an IED exploded on the Gaza border.

The media does not find these sorts of stories to be newsworthy.

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The "direct talks" farce

The world is abuzz over the supposed fact that the Arab League has given Mahmoud Abbas the green light to hold direct talks with Israel.

From what I can tell, that is not what happened.

Abbas has been adding pre-condition upon pre-condition for months, saying that he cannot agree to direct talks until he gets specific, written concessions from Israel in advance. He has demanded a complete and permanent halt to settlement building (not just a freeze,) a pre-condition of progress in the indirect talks (which were in themselves something that he only agreed to after massive US pressure,) a newer pre-condition of Israel accepting the 1949 armistice lines as the basis of talks and then a condition that Israel accept an international force to guard those borders.

It must be understood that all of these conditions are a violation of the status quo. Abbas had negotiated with Israel directly in the past, as did his predecessor Arafat.

Both Arafat and Abbas, when given real (and foolhardy) peace proposals that would have resulted in a Palestinian Arab state, rejected them when they did not get their maximal demands. They have consistently refused to compromise, which is of course what negotiations are meant to do. They have played a waiting game for the world to pressure Israel to make every concession but have never come forward with their own plan that would take into account any of Israel's legitimate concerns besides empty promises.

Abbas is no fool. He knows that his biggest weapon is the myth of Israeli intransigence, even over decades of Israeli and Jewish offers of peace. But he also sensed that he must give the illusion of flexibility to keep world public opinion on his side.

So he added a new card on the table. He demanded concessions before real negotiations can start. Now, if he agrees to negotiate, he can appear to have given a concession himself - a completely inconsequential agreement to an Israeli demand that has no bearing on the final status of the relation between the two sides. Abbas has turned the idea of direct negotiations into a proxy for real concessions.


This is a tricky game, because he needs to save face for the Palestinian Arabs. He cannot simply say that all his conditions are now out the window. But he can use the Arab League as window dressing to move towards this illusory concession, making the Western diplomats/wishful thinkers ecstatic that they have achieved a "breakthrough" and then they would ask Israel to give up something real in return.

Look at what the Arab League really said:

Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani, who chaired a meeting of foreign ministers and representatives, spoke in response to a question about whether they had given Abbas a green light to start talks.

"I'll be clear. There is an agreement but with the understanding of what will be discussed and how the direct negotiations will be conducted. And we will leave the assessment of the position to the Palestinian president as to when the conditions allow the beginning of such negotiations," he said.

Arab League chief Amr Mussa said at the press conference that written guarantees were required for direct talks.

There "must be written guarantees ... and the negotiations should be serious and final status talks," he said.

The Arab League isn't pressuring Abbas to negotiate. They are providing cover for his position which hasn't changed. If he decides to cave to pressure from Washington, he now knows that the Arab League will not denounce him - which is significant - but he can make it appear to be a huge concession on his part.

The fact is that Palestinian Arab statehood was never the goal. Palestinian Arab nationalism was never a positive movement for the liberation of a people. Since its inception, it has been a reaction and a weapon against Zionism and Jewish self-determination, not a desire to see a Palestinian Arab nation emerge. The idea that Jerusalem is a necessity for such a state proves the point - if a people yearn for freedom, they should eagerly accept a state being handed to them. Only if the goal of the state is to weaken and ultimately destroy another state does this entire farce make any sense.

A people yearning for independence would pressure their leadership to accept that independence as quickly as possible, not to wait for years for more and more concessions. A people yearning to be free would be working on real state-building. They would be demanding that their brethren be released from the UN-administered camps in their very midst. They would be insisting that their people who are stuck in neighboring countries be either given equal rights in those host countries - or allowed to emigrate into their "promised land."

None of this is happening. Instead, the world is sidetracked and distracted by these silly games of "direct talks" and "written guarantees" which are simply smokescreens for the fact that Palestinian Arabs have been screwed by their own and other Arab leaders for decades. They were pawns in 1948 and they are no less pawns today, for the exact same reason - to enable the Arab nation to pressure, weaken and ultimately destroy Israel.

Instead of allowing the world to see this reality, the facts are hidden by layer upon layer of obfuscation, distraction, misdirection, false history, propaganda, and baldfaced lies. "Direct talks" is merely the latest of this ever growing list.

The entire framework is an elaborate game in which the rules have been rigged by its creators, a game within which Israel cannot possibly win but only delay its own ultimate destruction. After a Palestinian Arab state would be established, the next round of demands will bubble up from those who didn't accept these terms, and over years the next set of demands will become more reasonable sounding by dint of their very repetition and acceptance by plenty of Westerners who claim to only yearn for "peace."

(h/t Daled Amos for the list of Abbas preconditions)

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Hymen restoration covered by UK healthcare

From The Daily Mail:

Increasing numbers of Muslim brides are having taxpayer-funded ‘virginity repair’ operations before marriage.

There were 116 hymen replacement operations carried out on the NHS between 2005 and 2009. The total for 2009 was 30, up 25 per cent from 24 in 2005.

The health service figures echo a trend reported by private clinics, which are seeing a huge surge in demand for the procedure from Muslim women paying up to £4,000.

One Harley Street clinic said that demand for its half-hour procedure had tripled in recent months.

Doctors say patients are under pressure from future husbands or relatives who insist that they should be virgins on their wedding night.

During the hymenoplasty procedure – viewed by some as invasive and degrading – the hymen is stitched or reconstructed so that it will tear again and bleed on the woman’s wedding night.
In some cases, the vaginal lining can be used to create a false hymen. A blood capsule can then be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the membrane is broken.
Consultant gynaecologist Dr Magdy Hend performs hymenoplasty under local anaesthetic at his Regency Clinic on Harley Street. He charges £1,850 for the half-hour procedure and says that most of his clients are Muslim women.

He said: ‘In the past, we would do one or two hymen reconstruction operations a week. Sometimes now, we get two or three women a day. Demand has tripled.

‘Our Muslim clients worry about having had sex, and their fiance and family knowing that they have been touched before.

‘It is more cultural rather than religious. If the bride is not a virgin and does not bleed on the wedding night, it is a big shame on the family. There have been honour killings in extreme cases.

‘It is simple surgery that takes only half an hour. They can have it done at lunchtime and do not have to give their real names and addresses.’

There have been calls for a ban on NHS surgeons carrying out the operations for women wanting to marry as virgins.

But a Department of Health spokesman insisted that hymen repair operations take place on the NHS only to ensure a patient’s physical or psychological health.

She said: ‘The NHS does not fund hymen repair operations for cultural reasons. All operations on the NHS are on the basis of clinical need.

‘Operations to repair the hymen are only carried out exceptionally to secure physical or psychological health.’

And by sheer coincidence all of these "non-cultural" hymenoplasties are being done for women who share the same culture.

Not that I am against this being paid by public funds. The potential cost to the British taxpayer for an honor killing - investigation, prosecution, incarceration -would be much higher.

Hymen removal is a prophylactic medical procedure to avoid being slaughtered.

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