Egyptian "liberals" spin conspiracy theory around US medical research center

MEMRI summarizes an article from Egyptian Al Wafd daily:

On January 27, 2012, the Egyptian daily Al-Wafd published an investigative article on the Naval Medical Research Unit Three (NAMRU-3), a U.S. Navy biomedical research laboratory located in the Al-'Abbassia area in Cairo. The article, titled "NAMRU – The Pentagon's Unit for Killing Egyptians in Al-'Abbassia," claims that NAMRU handles pathogens that could "exterminate the entire Egyptian nation," and that it conducts research aimed at manipulating the Egyptians' genes in order to alter them and cause deformities. The article also alleges that NAMRU is conducting experiments on Egyptian children; that it might be responsible for an increase in infertility, impotence, retardation, and disabilities among the people; and that the data it collects is used to design harmful foods, seeds, and drugs that are developed in America and then sold cheaply to the Egyptians. The daily states that the unit operates freely in Egypt, with the approval of the authorities but without their supervision.

NAMRU's mission statement is to "Study, monitor, and detect emerging and re-emerging disease threats of military and public health importance; develop mitigation strategies against these threats in partnership with host nations and international and U.S. agencies in CENTCOM, EUCOM, and AFRICOM areas of responsibility."

Here are details from the Al Wafd article:

'Your health is in the hands of the American Department of Defense.' This is revealed by the following [facts], gathered from documents of the Pentagon's research unit NAMRU-3, which is the largest American military research unit in the Middle East.

Entering the NAMRU headquarters, you feel you have stepped into a horror film. The place is silent and shrouded in secrecy. Doctors and [other] employees [move about in] white robes, gloves, and caps, and sometimes also masks. The organisms they work with are a kind of bacterial biological weapon, which, if deployed, could exterminate the entire Egyptian nation, or any other nation.

Since the establishment of the NAMRU unit in Egypt, dozens of new and mutated viral diseases have been discovered. This indicates that these pathogens are imported. No research or medical [institute] has infiltrated Egypt to a greater extent than NAMRU, which controls the secrets of the viruses that are used in [weapons of] mass destruction and biological weapons...

NAMRU sees the Egyptian children as an opportunity to test new medicines. In its reports, it notes that the Egyptian children have the best immune systems, even in comparison with soldiers in the American army. NAMRU monitors our children when they are still fetuses by stationing American doctors and researchers in health centers in the [country's] villages, so they can come into contact with pregnant mothers, and the information [these doctors and researchers collect] is linked into NAMRU's network of databanks. [NAMRU] caused a stir when its doctors tried to conduct an experimental study on children in Al-Bahira, claiming they wished to develop a serum from diarrhea for a new vaccination. [As part of this effort,] gifts and money were handed out to the [children's] families in Farshut, Umm Al-Laban, Kum Al-Qanatir, and other villages in central Abu Homs, but the families adamantly refused to turn their children into lab rats...

This incident raised questions, which remained unanswered, over whether American hands in NAMRU were behind the increase in infertility, mental retardation, and disability among Egyptians born in recent years... as well as [instances of] impotence. [This, considering] the dangerous genetic information that NAMRU has collected on the Egyptians, especially patients in the Al-'Abbasia Hospital, and its ability to disrupt [the Egyptians'] natural genes and immune systems; [and also considering the fact] that it sends [Egypt] medicines, seeds, and fodder for animals, and is involved in all experiments [conducted in Egypt] in the fields of agriculture, livestock, water, food, etc.

NAMRU-3 controls the Egyptians' health, for better or worse, and has in its possession all the Egyptian genetic specifications and compounds and their hereditary traits, alongside an arsenal of components for lethal biological weapons, which it can hand over to Israel or any country hostile to Egypt if it ever becomes angry with the Egyptian people, in order to utterly destroy them.

As Barry Rubin notes in an excellent article, this bizarre conspiracy theory is not coming from the Muslim Brotherhood - but from the people considered "liberal" in the Egyptian elections! These people are the ones that Westerners were hoping would win because they supposedly reflect Western values.

In other words, the Egyptian "moderates" are almost as screwed up and anti-Western as the conservatives are.

And this does not bode well for the future of Egypt.

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US threatens to withhold aid to Egypt over NGO charges

From WaPo:

Nineteen Americans will face criminal charges as part of a probe of the funding of pro-democracy groups, Egyptian officials announced Sunday, a provocative move that could deprive Egypt of crucial aid from the United States and upend one of Washington’s most important bilateral relationships.

The development added pressure to an already strained relationship between Egypt’s ruling generals and the Obama administration. The targets of the investigation include well-connected American groups, among them one led in Cairo by Sam LaHood, son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Sam LaHood reportedly was among those facing charges.

U.S. officials have sternly warned Cairo in recent days that the roughly $1.5 billion in aid earmarked for Egypt this year could be withheld if the politically charged investigation isn’t resolved quickly. But the tone of Sunday’s announcement suggested the Egyptian government is doubling down on what has become a high-stakes diplomatic dispute.

Fayza Abul Naga, Egypt’s minister for international cooperation, who is widely seen as the mastermind of the probe, said Sunday’s announcement should leave no doubt about the “government’s seriousness about discovering some of these groups’ plans to destabilize Egypt,” the state-owned newspaper al-Ahram reported on its Web site. The minister is among the few Mubarak loyalists who remain in the Egyptian cabinet.

Egypt has banned a number of non-government organizations’ workers, including LaHood, country director for the International Republican Institute, from leaving the country. Fearing they could be arrested, at least three of the Americans under investigation have sought shelter at the U.S. Embassy.

In response to pressure from Washington, Egyptian officials have said in recent days that they were unable to meddle in a judicial matter.

Local news reports said that in addition to the 19 Americans, 14 Egyptians, five Serbs, two Germans and three Arabs will stand trial. Egyptian officials have not indicated when formal charges will be handed down, and no trial dates have been set.

Pro-democracy groups have worked openly in Egypt for years, although the government has long refused to grant them operating licenses. The groups were buoyed last year when the government allowed them to monitor parliamentary election, the first time foreign monitors were allowed to observe polls in the country.

Hopes that Mubarak’s fall a year ago would be a boon for pro-democracy activists were dashed on Dec. 29 when Egyptian authorities raided the offices of 10 NGOs and seized files and computers. The current investigation, led by two investigative judges who were state prosecutors, is predicated on a 2002 law that bars organizations from accepting foreign funding if they are not licensed by the state.

U.S. officials have long sought to make assistance to Egypt conditional on democratic reforms. Experts on the country said the ruling generals might be assuming that the latest threats from Washington will prove to be empty. Similar warnings linking reforms and aid, dating back at least two administrations, have not been pressed.

The Egyptian government has long seen its yearly aid package from Washington as payback for signing a treaty with Israel in 1978.

The generals don’t “see this aid as being aid,” said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert at the Brookings Doha Center. “They see it as their birthright. They see it as a bribe, and they feel they are undertaking their side of the pact.”

But LaHood’s involvement in the case could leave Washington little recourse, Hamid said. “Threatening to arrest and try the son of a top U.S. official is a red line, and they’ve crossed it,” he said.

Is it me, or is anyone else bothered by the idea that the US would only consider acting when one of those threatened is politically connected?

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Abbas declared "unity" prime minister, and what the NYT is missing

From NYT:

The leaders of the rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas announced on Monday that they have broken a long political deadlock and formed an interim unity government led, at least at first, by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank.

The announcement at a news conference in Doha, Qatar, which was broadcast live across the region, signaled a significant step toward reconciling the two movements as they prepare for elections.

Mr. Abbas, the chief of Fatah, and Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, met in Qatar at the weekend for talks on how to move forward with reconciliation efforts. Under an accord signed last May, the sides had agreed to form a government of independent technocrats to prepare for elections, but they had been unable to agree on a candidate for the post of prime minister.

News reports before the announcement said the two sides reached an agreement for Mr. Abbas to replace the incumbent, Salam Fayyad, as prime minister. It was not clear if Mr. Fayyad would also be a member of the new government.

The newspaper didn't mention the details:

1. The PLO, which runs the PA, will continue to be restructured, presumably to include Hamas (and probably Islamic Jihad) at its highest levels. This is why Hamas agrees to having a Fatah member as the head of the PA - because while the West thinks that the PA is the government, in fact the PLO is what calls the shots, especially in foreign affairs. Abbas, as head of the PLO, is agreeing to admit unrepentant terrorists into that organization.

2. There will be a meeting on restructuring the PLO in Cairo on February 18.

3. Abbas will head the "national consensus" government but his main job will be to set up the presidential and legislative elections. It is unclear if he will run for president - he had promised not to - and there are no credible Fatah candidates for that position, so chances are very good that Hamas will win.

4. Some more committees to address detainees, passports, travel between the West Bank and Gaza, and other provisions of the agreement last May that were never implemented despite dozens of meetings.

5. Starting work on taking the Central Election Commission out of mothballs. The implication is that the promised May elections will be delayed.

Hamas was against Abbas being the prime minister but relented under pressure from Qatar. Chances are that there was some unreported detail about the PLO restructuring that favors Hamas.

Fayyad said he welcomed the announcement.

Meanwhile, Gazans are complaining that they still cannot get passports, even after officials claimed that problem was solved.

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Simpsons products banned in Iran!

What would Bart say?

An Iranian government-affiliated agency has banned dolls of the Simpsons cartoon characters, who join Barbie and others on a toy blacklist, an independent newspaper reported on Monday.

The report said that the Simpsons were banned to avoid the promotion of Western culture. But Superman and Spiderman were allowed, because they helped the "oppressed."

"We do not want to promote this cartoon by importing the toys," Shargh daily quoted Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, secretary of policymaking at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, as saying.

He did not elaborate on what was wrong with the Simpsons specifically. But he noted that any doll on which genitals are distinguishable, as well as dolls of adults, are banned. So were toys with speakers that blare out the voices of Western singers, or toy kitchen sets that include glasses for drinking alcoholic beverages.

Farjoo said however that dolls of Spiderman and Superman were authorized for sale. "They help oppressed people and they have a positive stance," he said.

The agency is the same that called Barbie dolls a "Trojan horse" in 1996. In January, police said they closed down dozens of toy shops for selling Barbies.

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Possible new natural gas discovery off Israel's coast

From CRI:

An American-Israeli drilling consortium on Sunday announced the discovery of a new Mediterranean natural gas field about 120 km northwest of the Haifa coast.

The Noble Energy-Delek Group said in a statement that the find lies beneath 5,500 meters of sand and water, in 40-meter thick gas- bearing strata, according to the Globes business daily.

The report said the field may contain between 34 billion to 37 billion cubic meters of gas.

Noble's next step is to stabilize the borehole -- keeping it from collapsing -- in order to carry out a series of intensive seismic and electrical tests to further details the makeup of the rock and liquids in the strata, the report said.

The site is adjacent to the significant Israeli-owned Tamar and Leviathan fields, discovered in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Tamar contains an estimated 240 billion cubic meters of natural gas, while Leviathan, 450 billion cubic meters.

Officials told Globes that Israel's smaller Yam Tethys rig, located off the Ashkelon coast, is fast depleting as it is the country's sole source of natural gas. Israel decided to rely solely on the platform's flagging output, due to a dozen bombing attacks by saboteurs on the Egypt-Israel pipeline near el-Arish -- the latest overnight Sunday -- throughout 2011.

Uzi Landau, who heads Israel's Water and Energy Ministry, has made switching over from the Egyptian gas -- whose export came as part of the peace deal between the countries -- to its own resources, a linchpin of the country's energy development policy.

Together, the three finds could, potentially, change the strategic face of the region and turn Israel into an energy exporter.

However, a visiting energy expert told The Jerusalem Post that the country would likely not see a revenue stream before 2020.

"This is a developed economy," said Nick Butler, a former British Petroleum Group vice president of strategy, who was visiting here to attend last week's Herzliya Conference.

"Israel is not a banana republic that has to export its natural resources. I don't see why Israel could not develop gas grids in major cities to bring it to every business and every home. That is what has worked in most European countries, and there is no physical reason that cannot be done here," Butler said.

Meanwhile, the Israel Navy is preparing to significantly boost the security surrounding the country's natural gas rigs in the Mediterranean Sea due to growing threats of attack.

The army's high command recently tasked the navy's missile boat flotilla with securing the Tamar, Leviathan and Yam Tethys drilling platforms off the Haifa coast, the Ha'aretz daily reported.

The rigs are located some 22 km beyond Israel's territorial waters, but are within the country's "economic waters zone," an area that extends up to 130 km into the Mediterranean.

The plan would deploy the missile boats, which have already held protective training maneuvers in the seas around the rigs, to conduct patrols and secure future drilling platforms.

Israel's defense establishment is increasingly concerned about the dangers posed to the offshore rigs by militant groups or an armed conflict with neighboring states.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed last July that his organization would not allow Israel to encroach on what he said was Lebanon's maritime sovereignty and seize its oil, gas and water resources.

Getting these fields working cannot happen soon enough.

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Tunnel collapse!

The Al Qassam website says:

Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades (E.Q.B) the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, mourned on Sunday morning, February 5th, 2012, the death of the Qassam member Sameer Abdulrahman Al Ejlah,28, from Al Shujaeiah neighborhood east of the Gaza city.

The brigades confirmed in a press statement released on Sunday morning, that the martyr Sameer has accidentlly died, adding that he was martyred after a long bright path of Jihad, hard work, struggle and sacrifice

Al Qassam Brigades mourn the death of the Mujahed, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces.

How exactly did he die? According to Palestine Today, he died when a "resistance tunnel" collapsed.

Was this a smuggling tunnel? Actually, it doesn't seem to be. The tunnel wasn't in Rafah, but apparently in Gaza City.

So this was most likely a bunker where Hamas keeps its weapons and explosives. Or, possibly, a tunnel meant to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

UPDATE: Turns out there were two "martyrs" yesterday. One died in a "training accident."

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The UN rewrites its own history on how it refers to the territories

I have previously noted that the UN habitually describes all of the land beyond the Green Line as "Occupied Palestinian Territory," and their absurd logic in doing so.

When did the UN start to use that terminology?

It appears that the term started being used, informally, around 1989, and formally in 1998.

This memo from 1988 calls them "West Bank and Gaza" and "occupied territories."

In 1989, we see simply "occupied territories."

Even this 2000 Security Council resolution refers to "territories occupied by Israel."

While many PLO letters to the UN refer to "occupied Palestinian territory" the UNGA did not seem to give it that proper name, using capital letters, until much later - in 1998.

In December of that year:

At its 81st plenary meeting, on 7 December 1998, the General Assembly, on the proposal of Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Oman, Tunisia, Yemen and Palestine, A/53/L.65 and Add.1. requested that the Secretary-General should continue to use the term Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, when appropriate, in accordance with General Assembly resolutions, in relevant reports to the Assembly, including the report under the item entitled Assistance to the Palestinian people, bearing in mind the need to take account of future relevant Assembly resolutions and progress in the Middle East peace process.

So the term "Occupied Palestinian Territory," or "OPT," was only formalized in the UN in 1998 - well after Oslo.

Here is where it gets interesting.

The UNISPAL set of documents relating to Palestine gives titles to each memo that comes out of the UN. The titles in UNISPAL's index have nothing to do with the actual titles of the documents.

And whoever gave these documents their titles deliberately uses the term "OPT" in documents that were written many years before the UN adopted that increasingly incorrect term!

Some of them from 1980:

5/19/1980	S/13737/Add.18	Situation in OPT -summary statement - Secretary-General
5/14/1980	A/35/230	Situation in OPT - Letter from CEIRPP Acting Chairman
5/14/1980	S/13940	Illegal Israeli measures in the OPT/Deportation of Palestinian leaders - Letter from CEIRPP Acting Chairman
5/13/1980	S/13938	Situation in the OPT/Deportation of mayors, Sharia judge - SecGen report
5/12/1980	S/13936	Situation in the OPT/Deportation of mayors-Letter from Jordan
5/8/1980	A/35/206/Corr.1	Situation in the OPT - Letter from Yemen
	S/13922/Corr.1
5/7/1980	A/35/218	Situation in the OPT - PLO letter - Letter from Yemen
	S/13928
3/31/1980	S/13868	Situation in the OPT/Jerusalem - Letter from Jordan
3/26/1980	A/35/155	Situation in the OPT/Hebron - Letter from Egypt
	S/13861
3/25/1980	S/13859	Situation in the OPT/Hebron - Letter from Morocco
3/24/1980	S/13854	Situation in the OPT/Hebron - Letter from CEIRPP Chairman
3/10/1980	S/13737/Add.8	Situation in OPT -summary statement - Secretary-General
2/27/1980	S/13737/Add.7	Situation in OPT -summary statement - Secretary-General

Clicking on any of those links will show that not once is the term "Occupied Palestinian Territory" used in the documents themselves.

The UN is deliberately rewriting its own history to make it appear that the term "Occupied Palestinian Territory" has been used forever, when in fact it is of relatively recent vintage.

This is most unethical and an insult to people who want to use the UN site for historical research. It shows a blatant disregard for facts and history.

It is, effectively, a UN-sanctioned mass rewriting of its own records.

---

Another interesting find.

This 1983 resolution says:

Bearing in mind the provisions of the Geneva Convention,

Noting that Israel and those Arab States whose territories have been occupied by Israel since June 1967 are parties to that Convention,

Taking into account that States parties to that Convention undertake, in accordance with article 1 thereof, not only to respect but also to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances,

1. Reaffirms that the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, is applicable to Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem;

The UN is saying here that the Geneva Conventions apply because the Arab states whose territories are occupied are parties to Geneva, and therefore Israel is considered to be occupying them. Geneva only applies when both parties are High Contracting Parties of the Convention itself.

But if the territories are "Palestinian," and "Palestine" is not a party to the Convention, then that preamble makes no sense!

Indeed, the UN no longer uses that argument anymore, simply declaring the territories to be "occupied" by assertion.

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"Nakba" didn't originally mean what Arabs say it means

The first time that the word "Nakba" was used by an Arab in the context of the 1948 war was by Lebanese Arab nationalist Constantine Zureiq.

Barry Rubin notes:

Constantine Zurayk was vice-president of the American University of Beirut. His book was entitled The Meaning of the Disaster. Here’s the key passage:

"Seven Arab states declare war on Zionism in Palestine, stop impotent before it and turn on their heels. The representatives of the Arabs deliver fiery speeches in the highest government forums, warning what the Arab states and peoples will do if this or that decision be enacted. Declarations fall like bombs from the mouths of officials at the meetings of the Arab League, but when action becomes necessary, the fire is still and quiet, and steel and iron are rusted and twisted, quick to bend and disintegrate.”

This is the old style of Arab discourse. Zurayk openly acknowledged the Arab states rejected all compromise, made ferocious threats, and invaded the new state of Israel to destroy it. For him, the “nakba” taught that they needed to modernize and democratize their system. Only thoroughgoing reform could fix the shortcomings of the Arabic-speaking world. What happened instead was another 55 years of the same thing, followed by this new era opening last year which will probably also bring a half-century of the same thing. Nakba has become the opposite of what Zurayk wanted it to be: Blaming your opponent rather than acknowledging your own shortcomings and fixing them.

...The nakba concept of which Zurayk wrote was much broader, the Arabic-speaking world’s failure to embrace modernity, science, real democracy, an other such things. In that respect, every day is a nakba and 2011 was not the year of the “Arab Spring” but the year of renewing the nakba strategy. It is a self-inflicted nakba and the victims are the Arabic-speaking people themselves.

What did Zurayk think about Zionism and its triumph? Here’s what he wrote:

“The reason for the victory of the Zionists was that the roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life while we for the most part are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future, while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.”

“To dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.” Isn’t that precisely what the Nakba concept is used for today? To say: we cannot make a compromise peace because those horrible Israelis were so mean to us more than 60 years ago. We are victims. We want revenge. We dream of total victory.

And those dreams and that stupefying guarantees failure for the Arabs, and most of all the Palestinians, today.

If Zurayk were alive today he’d be an Arab liberal fighting radical Islamism. Zurayk wanted the Arabs to learn from their mistakes.

As usual, Rubin is right. The coiner of the term "nakba" had an entirely different meaning in mind. To him, "nakba" doesn't mean Israel's victory in 1948, but Arabs' failure to solve their problems. Here's how Nissim Rejwan summarized Zurayk's book in 1988:

Immediately following the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 a number of Arab writers and thinkers, profoundly shocked by the defeat the armies of five Arab states suffered at the hands of what the Arabs called "the Zionist bands," set out to analyze the causes and draw the lessons of the debacle. Foremost among these was Constantine Zureiq, a Lebanese professor of history and a prolific political writer with strong Arab nationalist leanings. His book on the subject, Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster), was published soon after the outbreak of the war— August 1948 — and was mainly a work of self-criticism. The battle against Israel, he wrote, will not be won "as long as the Arabs remain in their present condition." The road to final and complete victory, he added, "lies in a fundamental change of the situation of the Arabs, in a complete transformation in their modes of thought, action and life." Subsequently, writing in 1966. Zureiq was to observe that the Arabs still had a long way to go to attain their goals in Palestine. He also coined a new term, 'ilm al-nakba —the science of Catastrophe or, better still, catastrophology — adding that the Arabs must now approach their problems with Israel "in a scientific Way."

The word had nothing to do with refugees. It meant that, just as today, Arabs blamed others for their own self-inflicted problems.

I believe that the first time that the word "catastrophe" was used in reference to the refugee problem by Palestinian Arabs was in a letter from the Arab Higher Committee to the UN in May 1949, where they said:

The Arabs believe that the United Nations Organization which is the author of the partition plan, is responsible for the catastrophe that has befallen the Palestinian refugees. As such it is the duty of the United Nations to remove the injustice done to the Arabs. We submit that by removing the cause of the problem of the refugees, the United Nations will have substantially solved their serious problem.

Meaning that they wanted to UN to dissolve Israel, supposedly as a means to solve the refugee issue.

This is how the word is used nowadays - as a means to destroy Israel, not the way the coiner of the term intended it, as criticism of the Arabs.

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Egyptians bomb gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan yet again

From Egypt Independent (formerly Al Masry al Youm):

An explosion hit a gas pipeline running from Egypt to Israel Sunday, witnesses and state television reported.

The pipeline, which also supplies gas to Jordan, has come under attack at least 12 times since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011.

The latest blast took place in the Massaeed area west of the Mediterranean coastal town of Arish. Gas pumping was stopped after the explosion.

Residents in Arish told Reuters they could see flames from their town. Security forces and fire trucks raced to the scene, witnesses said.

Previous explosions have sometimes led to weeks-long shutdowns along the pipeline, run by Egypt's gas transport company Gasco, a subsidiary of the national gas company EGAS.

Egypt said in November it would tighten security measures along the pipeline by installing alarm devices and recruiting security patrols from Bedouin tribesmen in the area.

Egypt doubled the gas price for Jordan in October. Jordan said Monday it would raise electricity prices as of February to cover the rising burden of imported fuel costs after loss of regular Egyptian gas supplies.

The saboteurs are hurting Jordan more than Israel, but that doesn't matter - as always, they care far more about causing pain to Jews than to any collateral damage that might happen to their fellow Arabs. (The Al-Qaeda-affiliated group that took responsibility said it was in retaliation for the death of its leader in an Egyptian jail, meaning that they wanted to hurt - Egypt?)

I wonder whether Jordan will allow any gas imports from Israel when the gas fields in the Mediterranean go on-line...

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The LA Times slurs the IDF in article on the fake photo

The good news is that the Los Angeles Times blog took note of the fake viral photo supposedly showing an IDF soldier stepping on the chest of a poor Palestinian Arab girl.

But writer Batsheva Sobelman, while showing all the evidence that the photo was staged, still is not 100% sure that the photo isn't that of an Israeli soldier. Instead of accepting the clear proof that the soldier couldn't be Israeli, she writes "But the question remains: Is the soldier Syrian or Israeli?"

But that's not the worst part. Sobelman actually says:

There are some things in the photo -- other than the situation, which is not beyond the realm of possibility -- that are not quite right.

Sobelman thinks that it is possible that an IDF soldier would step on a little girl's chest and point a machine gun at her? Would she ever, ever say that about any other army in the world?

In that one sentence, the LA Times is showing that its regard for fairness in reporting is no better than the thousands of Facebook idiots that copied the photo as proof of Israeli crimes.

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Amnesty's mendacious use of language to demonize Israel

Amnesty International has published another broadside against Israel, this one in Huffington Post. It lists a long line of supposed Israeli crimes, without giving sources.

Here is just the first sentence:

As the Quartet celebrates the resumption of bilateral negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians in Jordan this month, a record number of Palestinians find themselves out in the cold this winter due to illegal home demolitions by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Lets examine this sentence.

Its main point - repeated in its press release from December, released along with some twenty other NGOs - is that "a record number of Palestinians " are displaced.

What is this record number?

The figures show that since the beginning of 2011 more than 500 Palestinian essential structures were destroyed in the OPT, with over 1,000 Palestinians displaced -- doubling the number displaced over the same period in 2010, and the highest figure since at least 2005.

Amnesty's definition of a "record" is apparently "the most in the last seven years." That is not what the word "record" means.

And note that they aren't saying 500 homes, but 500 "essential structures." These include illegally built wells - wells that threaten the entire region's water supply. Amnesty is claiming that Palestinian Arabs have the right to damage everyone's access to water, and Israel has no right to stop them in territory they define as "occupied."

But if Israel is occupying the territory, as Amnesty claims, then Israel's responsibility is precisely to administer natural resources according to the Hague Convention - which presumably includes water.

Certainly, under the laws of occupation, Israel would be obligated to continue applying Jordanian law that applied to the areas before 1967, and it seems difficult to believe that Jordan did not enforce any zoning laws in the territory it occupied or that it tolerated the wanton illegal construction of housing. Amnesty pointedly does not address that issue - can any (Arab) who desires build anywhere they want in occupied territory?

Now, are the people who previously lived in these illegal structures out in the cold? Are they homeless? The NGOs give no evidence in that regard. This is Amnesty's hyperbole meant to demonize Israel and they have no basis in fact.

The real fact is that in 2011, the Palestinian Authority built or was expected to build 33,822 dwelling units. In just that one year. Israeli "record demolitions" are less than one percent of the total new construction last year. (In fact, the PA constructed more new units than Israelis did -not in the territories, but in Israel itself!)

And yet again, Amnesty - along with the UN and every other NGO - refers to the territories as "Occupied Palestinian Territories."

When international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich spoke at NYU last month, I asked him a question afterwards about Jordanian and Palestinian Arab claims to the West Bank. He stated:

If you think that the competing claims to the West Bank are Israel and its previous occupant, Jordan, then you would think that Israel would enjoy undisturbed title, and then this group of Palestinians organized themselves to challenge that title, it would have to be  a retroactive challenge, which is the difficulty of it.

When Newt Gingrich said that the Palestinians were an "invented people," he was much criticized. Some people said, and I think quite rightly, that even if they are invented, it doesn't really matter, because you can invent a people - people can be invented. If a group of people decide to think of themselves as a nation, that can actually have real force. Who's to stop a people from inventing themselves?

I completely agree with that. There is nothing wrong with being an invented people; every people is in some sense invented.

The only question is: what's the date of that invention? If it is a post-'67 phenomenon, it seems hard to understand how that can make territory, whose status changed in 1967, "Palestinian Territory" retroactively.

I have never seen any real legal opinion that describes exactly how Palestinian Arabs can be described as the presumed legal owners of the West Bank. As with the UN, Amnesty seems to be using the term "Occupied Palestinian Territories" as a catchphrase, without any legal basis. It has become part of the discourse based on repetition and wishful thinking, not based on fact. Calling Area C and perhaps Area B "occupied" is defensible from a legal standpoint, but not calling them "Occupied Palestinian Territory."

This single sentence in the Huffington Post shows four separate examples of how Amnesty is less interested in truth than in demonizing Israel. For people who believe that Amnesty is the paragon of impartiality, this should be troubling indeed.

(h/t Erik)

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Iran threatens Samsung over Israeli cable TV commercial

Remember this funny commercial for Israel's HOT cable network? (English subtitle version has been pulled from YouTube)



Predictably, Iran wasn't pleased:

Teheran is considering a ban on Samsung to protest an advertisement for an Israeli cable provider that makes light of the war of words and mysterious explosions being waged between Iran and Israel, an Iranian lawmaker told the country‘s state-run Press TV on Saturday.

In the ad produced by Israeli cable provider HOT, a bored Mossad agent meets in an Iranian wasteland with three characters from the Israeli comedy series Asfur who are dressed in drag. Casting furtive glances at passersby, the agent shows off a Samsung Galaxy tablet, and said he kills time on assignment watching “on-demand” episodes of Asfur on the tablet.

At the end of the clip, one of the three Asfur characters (“Newton”, the show’s loveable moron) accidentally activates an application that detonates a nuclear reactor on the horizon. Moments later, one of the Asfur buddies (“Moti”, the series protagonist), swats a fly that lands on his neck, and curses “ya Khamenei!” at the insect.

Khamenei is the Israeli slang for Maladera Insanabilis, a beetle drawn to the light of Tel Aviv apartment building stairwells during the summer months. The winged pest beetle acquired the name because the species is believed to have been accidentally imported in Israel in the late 1970s by a traveler returning from Iran.

The tablet is offered as an enticement for prospective customers to sign up for the on-demand package.

The South Korean electronics giant said "Samsung Electronics is aware of a recent news report in Iranian media regarding an advertisement aired by HOT cable network of Israel. This advertisement was produced by HOT cable network without Samsung's knowledge or participation."

"As a member of the global community, Samsung is committed to demonstrating respect for all people and cultures around the globe," the statement added.

Al Arabiya is characterizing Samsung's statement as a "condemnation" although it doesn't sound like one.

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