Economist editorial, filled with lies, says Israel releasing ONLY 26 murderers is an insult

This Economist editorial is completely bat-sh*t crazy anti-Israel.

AS A measure of the seriousness of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the number of Palestinian prisoners released on the eve of talks, say pessimists, is a gloomy barometer. When the two sides sat down to negotiate two decades ago, after signing the Oslo accords in 1993, Israel freed 2,000 Palestinians in a single year. For the next couple of years it released, on average, around 1,000 a year. In later years that number slumped to a few hundred. Now, to coincide with the fresh round of talks that started in Jerusalem on August 14th, Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has freed just 26.

26 murderers! 

By the way, I am not certain about these numbers. In the wake of Oslo, Israel released many prisoners, but Israel also released 900  in 2005, 400 in 2007,  and several hundred more in 2008 to entice Abbas to make peace; nothing positive resulted from those "goodwill" prisoner releases.

Why doesn't the Economist mention those more recent gestures - and their lack of response?

Even this has provoked an outcry in Israel. Many of the 26 were convicted of crimes of violence, including murder, against Israeli civilians. Relations of the victims have carried black banners, accusing Mr Netanyahu of truckling to terrorists.

No. Every single one was found guilty of either murdering someone or was complicit in murdering someone. Every single one.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president who is leading negotiations for his side, has had an even rougher time trying to persuade his people that the Israelis earnestly seek a peace deal.

The Economist couldn't be bothered to mention that Abbas has been the one torpedoing peace talks for the past five years. Despite previous releases of thousands of prisoners to help him burnish his image.

Indeed, many Palestinians deride Mr Abbas for winning freedom for so tiny a share of the 5,071 Palestinians said to be behind bars for politically motivated acts of violence or subversion.

I haven't seen any such criticism in the Arab press. Not saying it doesn't exist, but from the tone of the article, this seems to be The Economist's opinion, not the average Palestinian Arab's.

Few issues stir Palestinian emotions as fiercely as the fate of prisoners. Almost every Palestinian has a relative in jail—or has been there himself. Human-rights groups estimate that 750,000 Palestinians have passed through Israeli prisons since the West Bank and Gaza were conquered in 1967.

This 750,000 statistic is a risible lie, obvious to anyone who knows basic arithmetic. The Economist believes these ridiculous statistics (from Addameer and others).

But as we have seen, fact checking doesn't exist when the writer is predisposed to believe the lies.

Some 2,300 Palestinians were detained in the first six months of this year alone.

I have no idea where this statistic comes from. I can say that PCHR tracks every arrest and lists the names of those arrested. The average has been about 40 arrests a week from some quick sampling, less than a thousand arrests in 7 1/2 months. And most of those do not go to prison, as B'Tselem's statistics on prisoners this year have been holding steady at about 4700 almost every month through June.

But catching The Economist lying- despite its pretense of objectivity above all - is old news here.

What Palestinians want as a sign of good intent, is the release of thousands, not scores, of their compatriots. The Israelis hint that they will see how the talks proceed—and let more prisoners trickle out if things go well.

Israel has said (against all logic) that they will release 104 prisoners, and these 26 were just phase 1. The Economist is implying here that Israel is not going to release them if the talks go nowhere. I would be happy if that was the case, but it isn't - they are as good as released, their names have been published, the US has put the pressure on, and the cabinet voted on it. The Economist knows this and pretends otherwise.

So this is just another heavily biased, chockful of lies, anti-Israel tirade in The Economist.

(h/t Elliott)

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8/16 Links Part 2: Falafel Furore at CIF, Fatah threatens Hamas,Egypt's siege of Gaza continues

From Ian:

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CIF Watch: ‘Comment is Free’ contributor: Israel sparks fury with its postcards of falafel.

While questions remain as to where precisely in the Middle East the deep-fried round patties (made from ground chickpeas, fava beans or both) originated, as Shabi surely knows, nearly half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi – descendants from Jewish communities in the Middle East. So, to suggest that Israelis are ‘colonizing’ the ubiquitous street food is not only petty, but ahistorical.
Oh, and if you think I’m reading too much into Shabi’s passage about Israeli ‘culinary incitement’, you should note that this isn’t a one-off for the CiF contributor when it comes to complaints about such Zionist theft:

IsraellyCool: Sweet Irony! Safer To Be An Islamist In Tel Aviv Than In Cairo

So in the evil, hated Zionist Entity, Islamists are free to protest in Tel Aviv, and you better believe that not a single one of them fears any kind of violent reaction from Israeli security or police personnel.
Personally, I think the irony here is almost too delicious to believe, my friends.

Fatah threatens ‘painful decisions’ against Hamas

Emboldened by the military coup in Egypt, a senior Fatah official is threatening “painful decisions” against Hamas in a bid to end the political divide that has separated Gaza from the West Bank since 2007.
Azzam Al-Ahmad, head of the Fatah delegation to reconciliation talks with Hamas, told Palestinian radio station Mawtini on Thursday that his movement “will not remain captive to Hamas” and has begun discussing “clear and painful moves” against the Islamist group, which he would not specify.

20,000 Palestinians working in settlements, survey finds

The survey also showed an increase in the number of Palestinians working in Israel and settlements.
The survey showed that the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip was 27.9 percent compared with 16.8% in the West Bank in the second quarter of 2013.
In both areas, the unemployment rate for women was 33.6% and 17.6% for men, the survey showed.
The public sector employed 22.5% of those in employment: 36.2% in the Gaza Strip and 16.4% in the West Bank.

Palestinians want FIFA to ban Israel over travel dispute

Palestinian sports supremo Jibril Rajoub has threatened to call for Israel's expulsion from world soccer's governing body after it denied a number of officials entry to the West Bank for a youth tournament on security grounds.
"At the next FIFA Congress, the Palestinian FA is planning to ask for Israel's expulsion in response to its violations against Palestinian sport," Rajoub said on Thursday before the planned start of an international youth tournament.

Hamas Uses Social Media to Crackdown on Dissent Amid Fears of Egypt Chaos Spillover

Hamas’s fears are not without precedent. On March 15, 2011, youth activists used social media to organize large rallies denouncing the rift between Hamas in Gaza and rival political party Fatah based in the West Bank.
The targets of the crackdown go beyond pro-active citizens and have included journalists who cover Hamas. Journalist Emad Drimly, the office director of the Chinese news agency Xinhua in Gaza, told Al-Monitor that he received a death threat after publishing what was perceived to be a message in support of deposing Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi to his Facebook account.

Gaza-Sinai Border Crossing Closed Indefinitely Following Unrest in Egypt

Mahir Abu Sabha, director of border crossings for the Hamas-run government in Gaza, said in a statement that the Rafah crossing would be closed heading in both directions “due to bad security conditions in North Sinai district,” according to the Ma’an report.

Suppose the German military had crushed the Nazi Party in 1936

Suppose the German military had overthrown the democratically-elected leader of Germany and massacred his loyal followers, say, in 1936? The world, presumably, would have condemned the blatant use of force against an elected leader even if, hypothetically, a third of the German population already had taken to the streets to demand Hitler’s ouster. The Muslim Brothera are Nazis bearing a crescent rather than a swastika.

Islamists march against military rule in tense Cairo

Tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters took to the streets Friday in several Cairo neighborhoods and other towns across Egypt in defiance of a military-imposed state of emergency following the country’s bloodshed earlier this week.
The protesters poured out of mosques after traditional mid-day prayers, responding to the Muslim Brotherhood’s call for a “Day of Rage” as armored military vehicles sealed off main squares in the Egyptian capital and troops with machineguns stood at the ready on key junctions.

Egypt: Obama remarks ‘strengthen’ armed groups

The Egyptian Presidency’s office issued a statement late Thursday in response to US President Barack Obama’s earlier remarks on the crisis, saying that the country was fighting “terrorist acts” and that Obama’s comments are not based “on the truth of matters” and could be seen as “strengthening the armed violent groups and encouraging them in their path.”
The response, issued by the office of interim President Adly Mansour, said that while Egypt “appreciates the American concern of the developing events, it would like things to be put in their correct context and the real facts of the situation on the ground to be understood.”

US issues travel warning to Egypt, scraps military drills

President Barack Obama scrapped plans for joint American-Egyptian military exercises Thursday, announcing the first concrete US reaction to the spiraling violence in and around Cairo but stopping well short of withholding $1.3 billion in annual American military aid.
The US State Department also updated its travel warning for Americans in Egypt, telling US citizens to defer travel there and urging Americans living in Egypt to depart. The travel warning stated that the political unrest stemming from the “change of government” showed little sign of abating.

Middle East countries split on Egypt support

Saudi Arabia, UAE maintain support for Egyptian army while Turkey, Iran and Qatar back Islamist protesters; Turkey's Erdogan calls on western countries to get involved, stand up for democracy.

Egypt Violence Is Not ‘Worse Than the Holocaust’

A quick way to turn public opinion against a valid and deeply troubling issue (in this case, the military’s violent crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) is to widely exaggerate the death tolls. Another way is to invoke the Holocaust without credibility. Today, a Muslim Brotherhood official did both, at least, according to the Daily Caller.

Egypt's UK envoy says protesters 'got what they wanted'

Egypt's ambassador to Britain said a crackdown on supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi was not excessive and that protesters had portrayed themselves as victims and had shot one another dead in some cases.

Sunni Group Issues Warning to 'Pig Nasrallah'

Shortly after news of the attack broke, an online video surfaced showing three masked men, two of them holding rifles, in front of a white flag inscribed with the Islamic profession of faith, reported AFP.
"You, the pig Hassan Nasrallah, we send you our second powerful message because you haven't understood yet," said one member of the group, which called itself the Company of Aisha Umm al-Muminin, the Prophet Mohammed's favorite wife.
Arab affairs expert Dalit Halevi said that the group also accused the Hezbollah chief of being “an agent of Iran and Israel."

Nasrallah not looking quite so smart now

It’s fair to assume that on Thursday night, too, Nasrallah was internalizing the scale of the mistake he made when he caved in to Iranian pressure and agreed to send his forces to fight alongside Assad’s in Syria. Thursday’s car bombing was only the beginning for those terror groups associated with al-Qaeda who see the Shi’ites — no less than the Jews and Christians — as their enemy.
Nasrallah may even be starting to realize that he is now at odds with the only people in the Middle East whose mindset may be even more pernicious than his own.

Insight: Iran's Arab minority drawn into Middle East unrest

Arab insurgents blew up a gas pipeline in Iran last week and dedicated the attack to their brothers in arms in Syria, highlighting how the Syrian civil war is spreading into a region-wide proxy conflict that could blow back onto Iran.
The blast, two days after new President Hassan Rohani took office, hit a pipeline feeding a petrochemicals plant in the city of Mahshahr in Iran's southwest, home to most of its oil reserves and to a population of ethnic Arabs, known as Ahwazis for the main town in the area.

French advocate for Nazi and terrorists dies at 88

A French publishing house says Jacques Verges, called the “Devil’s advocate” for his flamboyant courtroom defense of the likes of former Nazi Klaus Barbie and Carlos the Jackal, has died.

Anti-Israel Author Disinvited from University Event

The University of Michigan has disinvited author Alice Walker from giving a speech at the anniversary celebration for the university’s Center for the Education of Women.
According to Walker, the invitation was rescinded due to pressure from donors offended by her virulently anti-Israel views.

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28% of PA Arabs' wages come from Israeli employers. What would happen if that went away?

The latest Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics labor report just came out, and it includes some interesting numbers.

Between Q1 and Q2, the number of West Bank Arabs employed by Israelis (in Israel and the settlements) went up from 93,000 to 96,000.

The average daily wage for WB Arabs working for Israelis increased from 167.6 NIS to 172.1 NIS, which would be an annualized rate of over 10%. The average daily wage in the WB for these workers is 88.6 shekels, almost half less than what the Israelis pay.

When you account for the fact that Arabs work fewer days for Israelis than for other Arabs, it means that the amount of wages for Arabs in the West Bank every month is almost 1.5 billion shekels - and Israeli employers are paying over 28% of those wages.

Now, imagine two states with an international border between them, and no settlements to employ Arabs. Imagine the PA with a loss of 28% of revenue. Imagine the number of unemployed increasing from roughly 140,000 to 235,000, with the PA responsible to keep basic welfare services operating for them.  (I'm not even  including the influx of "refugees" that would want to move to a future PalArab state.)

Apparently, no one is thinking about how any Palestinian Arab state could stay above water without increased billions from the West propping it up. And the hundreds of thousands of unemployed, disgruntled Arabs that would result. And the self-immolations and violent protests against the government that would follow. And the Islamist groups that would try to take advantage of the resulting chaos. And what follows that.

Welcome to a successful peace process.

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Qaradawi: "Even the Jews never did a massacre like the Egyptians"

Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the antisemitic, terror supporting TV preacher who is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, decided to use the J-bomb in his criticism of the Egyptian crackdown on Islamists.

In a phone interview on Al Jazeera, he said that he never saw such a "massacre" such as the army in Egypt performed with the help of the police, "even from the Jews."

He claimed that they killed and burned thousands of demonstrators.

Qaradawi demanded that Egyptians go out "to defend the gains of the January revolution and the defense of the innocent martyrs."

Even worse than the Jews? How can such a thing be?

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8/16 Links Part 1: Hobson’s choice, Pollard Speaks, Palestinian Heroes, Would Norway Release Breivik?

From Ian:

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Sarah Honig Hobson’s choice – the Obama variation

The buzz about Obama’s alleged variation on Hobson’s choice might be altogether unfounded. In that case all we’d supposedly gain from going to the gallows is the hope that we can at the last moment avoid execution but in the meanwhile diminish our excruciating delegitimization abroad.
Our delegitimization, though, is inextricably bound with Obama’s perception that there’s no conflict with Islam and that peace on earth and goodwill to all men would be at hand… if Israel weren’t in the way.
With that in mind, can anyone seriously count on Obama to fight Israel’s fight? He hasn’t exactly been eager to fight America’s own fight. Hence the panicky evacuation of US embassies. Hence the preposterous resort to the YouTube pretext and the workplace violence charade.

Jonathan Pollard: Restoring Israel to greatness

The Land of Israel is eternal and the State of Israel has temporal stewardship over the land. The corrosive moral ambiguity that has brought us to this dreadful day is relentlessly eating away at the legitimacy of the state’s continued role as legal guardian of the land. The prognosis is dire.
Only a reawakening of national resolve and a rebirth of ethical politics rooted in national selfrespect, moral rectitude and courage of conviction can guarantee the future. No political process devoid of these fundamental values will ever end the agony or the fear for the State of Israel.
It is clearly time for an historic restoration.

Irwin Cotler: Israel and the United Nations

While Ban cannot control the actions of member states, he does have the power to give moral leadership and direction. Words matter.
In his public speeches on Friday, he should condemn the systematic bias perpetrated against the Jewish state by numerous UN agencies, in gross violation of the UN Charter’s guarantee of equal treatment to all nations large and small.
Mr. Ban should acknowledge that the UN Human Rights Council, meant to embody the organization’s highest principles, is a case study of such bigotry. Examples abound.

Netanyahu protests anti-Israel incitement at UNRWA camps

At a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to present proof of anti-Israel incitement in summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian children in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Videos show counselors at a UNRWA camp telling campers that the Israeli cities of Acre and Haifa will soon return to Arab hands and that all means of fighting Israel are legitimate, including jihad.

JPost Editorial: PA incitement

A documentary broadcast twice on official PA TV declared that the PA plans to destroy Western Wall Plaza, Judaism’s ultra-scared prayer site frequented by millions of Jews, and replace it with assorted edifices. The documentary stated that Jews worshiping at the Western Wall were “sin and filth.” No foreign statesmen or journalists were bothered in the least.
There is more here than an unspeakable double standard.
Ceaseless indoctrination of young, impressionable minds is an antithesis to peace. Its effects are lasting and pernicious. The PA has promised repeatedly to clean up its act but in reality has done the opposite with absolute impunity. Clearly in the eyes of the international community, Ramallah’s rulers are unassailable, which in itself constitutes a huge disincentive to compromise.

WSJ Editorial: Palestinian Heroes
Releasing murderers will not advance the peace process.

The Israeli decision to release the prisoners was shortly followed by the approval of additional construction permits for housing in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. The move elicited howls of condemnation from the usual suspects, as if building houses is more objectionable than murdering people in cold blood. Perhaps the larger question is why anyone should expect that a peace process that begins by setting murderers free is likely to result in peace.

Israeli envoy panned for comparing Palestinian and Norwegian terrorists

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden is drawing fire in Scandinavia after comparing Palestinian prisoners released earlier this week to a Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011.
Isaac Buchman told Swedish Radio on Tuesday that Israel’s freeing of 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of an agreement to launch peace talks was akin to Norway freeing Anders Breivik, a far-right activist who set off a bomb in Oslo and shot up a summer camp on a nearby island in one of the worst terror attacks in the Continent’s history.

Too Good to Last By David Pryce-Jones

Time to pay our respects to what was, and for European Jews to move elsewhere?
The European Union perceives nationalism itself as the cause of war, and seeks to deconstruct altogether the concept of the nation-state. Israel is the embodiment of the sense of proud nationhood that runs counter to EU ideology. With a logic all their own, EU policy makers oppose Israel while doing whatever they can to build a nation-state of Palestine. Jewish communities are unsettled to observe large-scale EU subsidies ending up in the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists, or measures like the boycott recently imposed on products, goods, and personnel coming from Jewish settlements beyond the pre-June 1967 borders.
If Jews do indeed abandon Europe, it will be to escape a situation in which their very identity is increasingly treated as a matter of suspicion and political contention. Should an emigration en masse come to be a reality, Gurfinkiel concludes, it would constitute “a profound blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people” as well as a shattering judgment on the “so-called European idea.” In the absence of living Jews, Europeans will have nothing but Holocaust museums and memorials on which to base the moral reckoning of their past.

Add Brussels to the List of Where Jews Need to Hide. Again.

For years there have been reports of Jews being warned not to wear items that identify them as Jewish in places where there are large or numbers are particularly aggressive anti-Semites.
People are told it is best not to wear Magen David necklaces outside their clothing, or kippot on their heads when visiting certain neighborhoods in France, in England, certainly throughout much of the Arab Middle East or in parts of North Africa.
But now a Jewish school in Belgium has issued an edict to its schoolchildren: do not wear kippot near the school until you are safely inside the steel-paneled fortified building.

'Israeli scientific research does not depend on Europe'

Professor Yisrael Aumann, Nobel laureate in economics, sits down with Israel Hayom to discuss peace talks, European boycotts and the Arab Spring: "Israel should say that it needs no favors, and make up the science budget in place of the Europeans."
The conflict between Israel and Europe has new manifestations and episodes. Quite a few powers are stirring the political pot; some of them hope for a buildup of European pressure to the point of a general boycott that will force Israel to give up the country's heartland. As one of the world's foremost experts on game theory, Aumann has a position on the issue both in terms of his behavior during these conflicts and as a high-ranking member of the scientific community in Israel and worldwide. Not surprisingly, his stance is different from the voices we've been hearing this week.

Visit to Joseph's Tomb in Shechem Interrupted by Stone Throwing

A riot broke out early Thursday morning as Arab men burned tires and threw stones at Israeli worshippers gathered at Joseph’s tomb in Shechem, reported Ma’an, a news agency based in the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Israeli forces escorted buses loaded with Jewish worshippers to the site at midnight and continued to provide security for them until prayers concluded early this morning.

Israel is model for world dairy industries

The Volcani Center is a government-run research institute that investigates everything related to the agriculture industry, including dairy cattle. Miron showed ISRAEL21c his cowshed laboratory, a high-tech outdoor facility that waters, protects, feeds and milks 230 milking cows in the village of Beit Dagan, about 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.
He shows us how 120,000 cows at Israel’s 1,000 dairies each produce about 11,500 liters of milk per year in an ecologically sound way mandated by law, says Miron.
Delegations from far and wide come to see the Israeli closed-loop cowshed ecosystem. In a typical month, you might see delegations of dairy farmers from Thailand, France, or Russia coming to the Israeli research center, which looks like a big farm.

Israel Tourism to Break Records in August; El Al Surges to Q2 Profit, Orders 6 New 737s

More than 70,000 passengers passed through Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday, August 9, 2013, an all-time high in passenger flow, Globes said. The passenger traffic record is expected to be broken again on Thursday, with Ben Gurion now on track to record the highest monthly passenger traffic numbers in its history for the current month of August.

Animation- Another Way to Tell the Story of the Holocaust

In the 70 years since the Holocaust happened, animation is now able to fill in pictures and videos of Holocaust related material and stand in place of words.
“It’s the first time that this subject, that used to be very heavy and sensitive, comes true in animation. Animators tried to reflect this trauma through the use of animation,” said artist and director Nissim Hezkiyahu.
He continued to stress that animation should not only serve as entertainment, but should also cater to serious topics like the Holocaust.

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Gaza could get lots more goods through Israel, but they choose not to

This week I had an email conversation with the COGAT Gaza spokeswoman about the precise process of how goods get transferred into Gaza.

Here is how it works. (These are mostly COGAT's words, I edited them from multiple emails):

When a Gaza businessman wants to order goods from Israel privately, his first stop would be at the PA offices. There, there's a committee that is in charge of integrating all the requests and putting them in order, the Civil Committee of the PA, according to the format that is familiar to both sides. After that, it is that committee's job to pass a list of trucks that are to cross the next day. The head of the civil committee is in direct contact with the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and they work with him closely every day, through phone calls and meetings, in order to make the work process efficient. The PA committee is the CLA's POC, but it is not the one ordering the goods.

When the lists are received at the Gaza CLA, they get to the approval process, and once they are approved they are passed to the CLA's representatives at Kerem Shalom, who are the first to receive the truck drivers the next morning.

As of today, the capacity of Kerem Shalom is 400 trucks per day. Due to the number of requests from the PA Civil Committee the number of trucks crossing per day never reaches 400. It can go up to 300 trucks on a good day.

Of course, if the Palestinian side would like to add more trucks to cross at Kerem Shalom, they're free to do so. The Israeli side will make its arrangements to meet the demands.

Unfortunately, many trucks are a no show at the crossing, for Palestinian personal matters. The trucks are coordinated, and are on the list, but every day the CLA sees a large number of blank forms for trucks that never crossed. That depends almost entirely on the Palestinians. Should they decide to cancel a truck for whatever reason, the CLA only knows about it at the end of the day, when they sum up the merchandise that went through. (It appears possible that the Israeli seller might renege sometimes as well, but that doesn't appear to be the normal case.)

The Palestinian businessmen do their coordination with Israeli private companies on their own. They only interact with COGAT (through the PA) when it comes to making sure the goods actually cross.

My comments:

While Kerem Shalom can handle 400 trucks a day, and perhaps 300 actually are hired typically, often dozens of the expected trucks never make it, for whatever logistical reasons that the Gazans canceled the delivery at the last minute. Last week about 10% of the expected trucks did not arrive.

The upshot is that Kerem Shalom is not being run at capacity - not even close. If Israel's "siege" was so painful, one would expect that the crossing would be over capacity and that there would be pressure to expand it. But even now that Egypt has cracked down on smuggling, Kerem Shalom is not close to its limit. It has increased transfers markedly, from 4700 in February to 6600 in July, but it can handle far more.

It seems apparent that Hamas prefers goods to be sent through Rafah than from Israel, for a number of reasons. One is that the PA is not involved in Rafah tunnels. Another is that Hamas can tax tunnel goods at will. Yet another is that fuel and some other smuggled goods are cheap because Egypt subsidizes them, so Hamas can buy things like construction material and diesel at a discount. And the fourth is that Israel happily ships goods to businessmen and to NGOs, but not to Hamas. (Also, dual-use materials are still restricted so Hamas has no choice but to smuggle those.)

People and businesses in Gaza don't need that many imports from Egypt - but Hamas does.

The simple fact is that if Gaza was suffering from a "crushing siege," Kerem Shalom would be operating at capacity. It isn't.

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Hizballah revealing an alleged military drone today

Arab media are reporting that Hizballah will unveil today the "Mersad-1" aircraft, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the 2006 Lebanon war. I'm not sure if they are saying that this is a new aircrapft or revealing that it was used in 2006, as Hassan Nasrallah said this week he will reveal secrets about that war.

Ababil UAV, circa 2004

According to the reports, The aircraft - which Hizballah claims to have manufactured itself - has the "ability to execute multiple tasks, including reconnaissance, and hitting targets with high accuracy, and stealth capabilities, and the ability to fly higher than 5,000 meters above sea level, and it is also able carry warheads of up to 30 kg."

This Lebanese website mentions the Mersad-1 in 2010, saying it is an Iranian UAV known as Ababil. Wikipedia has an article about it, saying it is probably the Iranian Mohajer 4.

Israel shot down 3 of the Ababils during the 2006 war.

All of this seems well known, so it is unclear what is being announced today. In fact, as early as 2004, Nasrallah mentioned the UAV, claiming then that it could hold 40 or 50 kg.

Sounds like Nasrallah is trying to misdirect the Arab world from his own problems much closer to home.

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Swedish royalty get conned to pose with anti-Israel keffiyeh

From YNet:

During a tour of Sweden to celebrate 40 years of the reigning royals, King Carl Gustaf and his wife, Queen Sylvia, visited the neighboring area of the city of Sundsvall. There they were approached by a man who identified himself as an Iraqi refugee, and who gifted them with hand made keffiyehs, the traditional Arab scarf, as a thank you for allowing him to start a new life in Sweden. He then asked them to pose for the camera with the scarves.

Unbeknownst to the royal couple, however, the keffiyehs were adorned with an anti-Israeli inscription: "Al Aqsa is ours and is not their temple." This fact that came to light only after the photo was published, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The pictures caused ripples of reaction throughout Sweden. Pro-Palestinian organizations expressed satisfaction with the support the royal couple showed with regards to the Palestinian right over Jerusalem, while others riled at the fact that the King and Queen—even unwittingly—served as a part of Palestinian propaganda.

"On their visits to various parts of the land, the royal couple meets many people," said Bertil Ternert, spokesperson of the Swedish royal house, to Yedioth Ahronoth. "In this case, the man placed the keffiyehs on the King and Queen so quickly, that there was no possibility to take the scarves off before the couple posed for the camera. Shortly after the photo opportunity the King and Queen took off the keffiyehs. We want to stress that the acceptance of this gift holds no political statement of any kind."

Here is an example of how clueless the EU intelligentsia are.

A Swedish newssite that reported this story can't figure out if the statement "Al Aqsa is ours and is not their temple." They even make it sound like the idea that of a Jewish temple is what is controversial:

Michael Schulz, Associate Professor of Peace and Development Studies at the University of Gothenburg says that there is often strife in the area.

- "Jewish religious nationalists are trying to establish a Jewish temple there, 1990, an offensive that resulted in gunfire and bloodshed," he says.

Even Michael Schulz believes that the text of the shawls is a political / religious slogan.

- It's hard to tell if the message is anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli. Most likely it is a mark against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Of course. Because the only problems any Muslims have with Jews is "occupation." That's the breadth of understanding of a professor of "peace and development studies."

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Dozens of churches, Christian businesses torched in Egypt

From CNN:

For 67 years, the Virgin Mary Church has been a peaceful refuge for Shenouda El Sayeh, much like the Giza province village of Hafr Hakim where it rests and where he has lived all those years.

But, as he swept its floors on Thursday, it was painfully obvious things had changed.

The night before, a mob -- chanting against Coptic Christians such as El Sayeh and calling for Egypt to become an "Islamic state" -- had torched and looted the Virgin Mary Church.

"I didn't expect this to happen," El Sayeh said.

He's not alone. Christians all around Egypt are cleaning up in the aftermath of a spate of attacks, which not coincidentally came on the county's deadliest day since the 2011 revolution that overthrew longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Bishop Angaelos, the Cairo-born head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said he was told by colleagues in Egypt that 52 churches were attacked in a 24-hour span that started Wednesday, as well as numerous Christians' homes and businesses.

Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told CNN he had confirmed attacks on at least 30 churches so far, in addition to the targeting of church-related facilities, including schools and cultural centers.

Those churches reportedly set ablaze Wednesday included St. George Church in Sohag, a city south of Cairo on the Nile River.

And the new day brought new attacks. Prince Tadros Church in Fayoum, which is southwest of Cairo, was stormed and burned Thursday night, according to the official Middle East News Agency.

CNN is trying to avoid blaming any group for the torchings, but Al Ahram explains who did it:

Incensed by the bloody crackdown that has claimed more than 500 lives, Morsi loyalists orchestrated nationwide assaults on Christian targets, wreaking havoc on churches, homes, and Christian-owned businesses throughout the country.

The Muslim expression "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people" is coming true in Egypt.
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8/15 Links Part 2: Treat Terrorists like Pirates, In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish, Jackie Mason on the Conflict

From Ian:

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Treat Terrorists like Pirates

International law today paralyzes civilized nations in their war against terrorism. In fact, Israel’s former Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak once bragged that “we fight against the terrorists with one arm tied behind our back.” But in my view, phony liberals who warn that we shouldn’t “sink to the level of the enemy” are pretentious, racist, and hypocritical.
Few among us understand that the most ancient foundations of international law are supposed to bolster, not weaken the war against terrorism. The historic parallel to today’s terrorist organizations are the pirates, those gangs of outlaws who instilled fear in the hearts of passengers on land and sea, and were defined as early as the time of the Roman Empire as “enemies of humanity.”

In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish

Over the weekend, four terrorists preparing a rocket attack against Israel were killed by a drone – probably Israeli – as they were getting ready to launch their lethal weapons. The group that took “credit” for preparing the terrorist attack is an Al-Qaeda affiliate calling itself “Ansar Beit al Maqdes”. Writing in response to my recent post on the origin of the name “Palestine”, my friend Ilan Pomeranc pointed out that this Jihadi group’s name witnesses to the Jewish status of Jerusalem.
“Ansar Beit al Maqdes” literally means the “Army of the Holy Temple”. Media outlets mistranslate the name as “Army for Jerusalem”, but Jerusalem does not appear in the name at all. In Arabic, “Jerusalem” is often called, in shorthand vernacular, “al-Quds”. What this term literally means is “the Holy”. “Quds” is merely an Arabization of the Hebrew “Kadosh” i.e., “Holy”. So if you put the two Arabic names for Jerusalem together what you get is “al-Quds al-Maqdes” which literally means “the place of the Holy Temple”.

UN-touchable

Paralyzed by fear of the UN, the project has either been simply ignored or transferred over the years from one government agency to the other. Even the small initial step of identifying alternative sites suitable to the UNRWA facility’s relocation has not been taken. So that at this very late date, Jerusalem, in dire need of new residential developments, lies in waiting.
Forty-six years have passed since the Six Day War, during which time the entire area surrounding the UNRWA compound, stuck here like a bone in the throat, has been transformed and modernized.
Isn’t it time we had that bone removed and correct this anomaly by completing this important urban area appropriately? A modicum of political courage can make a modern Jewish neighborhood here a reality.

Britain's diplomacy of hypocrisy

For years now Britain has been at the forefront of the global effort to return Israel to its 1967 borders. It is a historically loyal ally of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, who efficiently and doggedly seek to realize their phased plan to eventually end Israel, i.e. pushing the Jews to the "Blue Line," the Mediterranean Sea.
The academic boycott against Israel, similar to the boycott on Israeli goods from Judea and Samaria, are an expression of Britain's diplomacy of hypocrisy. Britain preaches morality to us day and night because of our grip on our national homeland, while it refuses to ease its grip on territories it conquered out of clear imperialistic ambitions. Britain should look in the mirror at its own flaws, and not try to force us, in the name of its hypocrisy, to commit suicide.

Jackie Mason on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict


17 Yemeni Jews secretly airlifted to Israel

The operation — a coordinated effort among the Jewish Agency and the Israeli ministries for the interior, foreign affairs and immigration absorption — was prompted by growing concern for the safety of the Jews in Yemen, according to the Jewish Agency. Anti-Semitic violence has been a growing problem since the 2011 ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The airlift brings to 45 the number of Yemeni Jews who have been brought to Israel this year and 151 since 2009.
Fewer than 90 Jews remain in Yemen, with about half of them living in a guarded structure in the capital, Sa’ana, Haaretz reported.

'Hidden' Polish Jews Embrace Their Heritage in Israel

In order to save their children from the clutches of the Nazis and their Polish accomplices, many Jews in Poland handed over their young children to sympathetic Polish families during the Holocaust era. Many of those children survived physically, but not as Jews.
As they grew up, many of these children raised their own children as Poles, and nominally if not actively Catholic. Nevertheless, many of them remained aware of their Jewish heritage, and in recent years their descendants – now themselves adults, many of them in their 20s and 30s – have come to find out about their Jewish heritage, and are interested in hearing more.

Merkel to become first German leader to visit Dachau

Merkel will lay a wreath at the site’s memorial, make a short speech, and will tour the camp, AFP reported, citing Merkel’s spokesperson.
Merkel will be joined on her visit by Holocaust survivor Max Mannheimer, director of the site, and by Bavaria’s education minister.
In 1992, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl turned down a request to visit the concentration camp, angering Jewish and Israeli groups. Seven years earlier, US President Ronald Reagan also refused to visit, saying that he and Kohl both agreed that it was unnecessary.

Online Hate Prevention Institute Denounces Holocaust-Denying Facebook Account, Calls on Social Media Companies to be ‘Socially Responsible’

“The Untold History” Facebook account was created on March 20, 2013. It mainly features pictures and collages of Holocaust imagery with captions suggesting that the photos were staged, or have been misrepresented by Jewish interests.
Practitioners of Holocaust inversion, a theme which is prevalent on the page, attempt to falsely portray “Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis,” according to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Israel builds world’s first fire forecasting system

Research Director Besora Regev and geographic systems information manager Shai Amram demonstrated Matash to interested delegates from countries including Spain, Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, South Korea and Kenya at a homeland security conference in Tel Aviv last fall. The system operates in English, so it could be used anywhere.
Strategizing how to fight forest fires is largely luck and guesswork because so many unpredictable or unknown factors affect how it spreads, from wind conditions to the moisture level of the vegetation.

2 Israeli researchers among Top 10 rising stars in Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Aviv Zohar and Dr. Ariel Procaccia — both PhD graduates of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – have been named among ‘AI’s 10 to Watch‘ by IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine. Published every two years, the list recognizes 10 researchers who are rising stars in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

Another billion-ish buyout: IBM buys Israeli security firm

Just months after a jumbo buyout of an Israeli start-up by a tech giant, IBM is acquiring Israel-based Trusteer, a maker of security software to protect data from phishing and other malware attacks, in a deal rumored to be worth between $800 million and a cool billion.
Now in the IBM orbit, Trusteer, with R&D in Israel and an office in Boston, will become the nucleus of a new IBM cyber-security research center that the multinational plans to establish here.
Trusteer was established in 2006 and has about 300 employees, and is one of the largest security firms working in the online banking space. Among its customers are institutions like Bank of America, Société Générale, INGDirect, HSBC, NatWest, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and more.

Israel Daily Picture: Another Photographic Treasure Found in a Far-Flung Antique Collection -- From a Jewish "Kiwi" Soldier's Album

Since crossing the arid Sinai Desert and its confrontation with a hostile Turkish enemy and, more often than not, a treacherous contact with Arab Bedu tribesmen - The Auckland Mounted Rifles agreed it was a joy to meet a people who had just been freed from Turkish tyranny. It was a land worked into agriculture and planted with fruit trees and vineyards. Not only were the men taken with the settlement conditions, the horses too were impressed and ate heartily of green feed, and enjoyed the soil firm under foot.
A few weeks later the Regiment remembered the village, the official history "Two Campaigns" reported: "On January 12, the brigade moved north to Rishon LeZion, the Jewish village near to Ayun Kara, and there tents were provided, and training and football again became the normal life."

Star of David Crop Circle Appears in British Wheat Field (VIDEO)

Here’s one for all the conspiracy theorists out there: a crop circle in what appears to be the shape of the Star of David was spotted this week in Hackpen Hill, near Broad Hinton, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.
Discovered on August 11th, photos were posted to the website crop circle connector, and speculation as to what the sign could mean was rampant on social media sites. On one Facebook page focusing on crop circles, one commented pointed to “The Sun, Star and 6 Spirals.”

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Spoons in underwear to help stop forced marriage

From AFP:

As Britain puts airport staff on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriage, one campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved some youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands.

The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain and the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be searched -- a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths.

The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people -- typically girls aged 15 and 16 -- being taken abroad on “holiday,” for a marriage without consent, the government says.

The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to someone they have never met in a country they have never seen.

The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honor-based abuse.

Based in Derby, central England, it fields 6,500 calls per year from around Britain but has almost reached that point so far in 2013 as awareness of the issue grows.

When petrified youngsters ring, “if they don’t know exactly when it may happen or if it’s going to happen, we advise them to put a spoon in their underwear,” said Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvana’s operations manager.

“When they go though security, it will highlight this object in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they're being forced to marry,” she told AFP.

“We’ve had people ring and that it’s helped them and got them out of a dangerous situation. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with your family around you -- but they won't be aware you have done it. It’s a safe way.”

The charity is working with airports -- so far London Heathrow, Liverpool and Glasgow, with Birmingham to come -- to spot potential signs, such as one-way tickets, the time of year, age of the person and whether they look uncomfortable.

“These are quite general points, but there are things that if you look collectively lead you to believe something more sinister is going on,” said Rattu.

People who come forward can be escorted out of a secure airport exit to help outside.

Marriages without consent, or their refusal, have led to suicides and so-called honour killings, shocking a nation widely deemed to have successfully absorbed immigrant communities and customs.

Officials fear the number of victims coming forward is just the tip of the iceberg, with few community leaders prepared to speak out and risk losing their support base.

One woman, whose identity was protected by Essex Police in southeast England, was forced to get married in India.

She said she was threatened by her father “because he said if I thought about running away he would find me and kill me.”

“I was shipped off with a total stranger.

“That night I was raped by my husband and this abuse continued for about eight and half years of my life.”

She eventually fled.

Last year, the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with some 1,500 cases -- 18 percent of them men.

A third of cases involved children aged under 17. The oldest victim was aged 71; the youngest just two.

Two?!?!

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Egyptian TV analyst: "Muslim Brotherhood acts just like Jews", plus a classic essay by John Derbyshire

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a statement by Ahmad Taha Al-Naqr, spokesman of the Egyptian Association for Change, which aired on ON TV on August 14, 2013.

Ahmad Taha Al-Naqr: I'd like to focus on the connection between the Jews and the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB have adopted the policy of the Jews, and they are implementing it to the letter, with respect to the invasion of the media, presenting an image of eternal victims…

They use violence and view others as Gentiles. The Jews always say that non-Jews are Gentiles and that it is permitted to kill them – Gentiles can be killed or banished, like they do to the Palestinians.

The [August 14] Rabaa massacre was orchestrated in the same style as the historical Masada massacre of the Jews, so that the MB would be able to continue to harp on about it, thus justifying foreign intervention in the affairs of Egypt. They actually demanded such foreign intervention. Anyone demanding intervention in his country's affairs is committing high treason. They simply clone and implement the image of the Jews.

The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, said that General Abdel al-Sisi's mother was Jewish.

So do we support the rabidly Jew-hating Islamists, or the rabidly Jew-hating secularists?

It reminds me of a great essay, written 11 years ago but that could have been written today, by John Derbyshire in National Review.

I recently got a long, carefully composed e-mail from a reader, who begged me to circulate it among "other opinion-formers." It laid out a plan for peace in the Middle East. The writer, obviously an intelligent and well-informed person, had composed the e-mail with great care. With some passion, too — he really wants to find a solution to the Israel-Arab problem. Here was a public-spirited person doing his citizenly best to promote an idea that, he fervently believed, would put an end to the horrors.

And what was that idea? In a nutshell: The U.S. should lean hard on Israel to abandon the Jewish settlements in Arab land — i.e. beyond Israel's pre-1967 borders. These settlements (my reader argued) were the root cause of all the strife. Closing them down would remove the main casus belli; and the good faith shown by this act would open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact that peace with Israel is possible. The logjam would be broken.

I don't know what to say to people like this. Obviously they are decent, good citizens. Obviously they are trying their best — trying to be constructive, to give some hope to the world. How do I tell them what I feel? Which is, that they are floating in orbit between Uranus and Neptune — inhabiting some place that does not touch the real world at any point.

Look: Possibly there would be some abstract justice in closing down the settlements, I don't know. I don't see it myself, I must admit. Why should Jews not live among Arabs? Lots of Arabs live in Israel, and do very well there. There are rich Israeli Arabs; there are Israeli-Arab pop stars and comedians; there are Israeli-Arab intellectuals, teachers, writers, businessmen, athletes. Why, when the whole thing gets sorted out, should there not be Jews living in Arab territory — as there were for centuries past? What, exactly, is wrong with the settlements? I don't see it.

But, okay, let's suppose there is some valid moral objection to the existence of the settlements; and let's suppose my reader's plan were to be carried out, and all the settlements were removed, their populations transferred back to metropolitan Israel, their buildings razed, their fields ploughed with salt. Does anybody think it would make a damn bit of difference? There was no such thing as settlements, no such thing as "occupied territories," before the 1967 war. There were no such things in 1960, for example, when Adolf Eichmann was abducted from his hiding-hole in Buenos Aires by Israeli secret agents, an event recorded by Saudi Arabia's principal government-controlled newspaper as: "ARREST OF EICHMANN, WHO HAD THE HONOR OF KILLING 6 MILLION JEWS".

The problem of the Middle East is not the settlements. It is not this piece of land or that piece. It is not the Golan Heights or East Jerusalem or Temple Mount. It is not oil, or land, or water, or history, or geography, or metaphysics. The problem is in plain sight. You know what the problem is, and so do I. The problem is that the Middle East hates the Jews.

I say "the Middle East" because I don't know any more precise way to say it. You can't say "the Arabs" (though of course the Arabs hate the Jews more than anyone), because the Iranians and the Pakistanis and the Berbers of North Africa hate the Jews too, and they are not Arabs. You can't say "the Muslims". That is a lot closer, I think, and there surely cannot be much doubt that institutional Islam is riddled with Jew-hatred. Still, Malaysia is a Muslim country, and they don't hate the Jews, except in a go-along, pro forma sort of way, to keep on good terms with the Saudis and Gulf Emirs.

And I am sure, before you write to tell me, that lots of people in the Middle East don't hate the Jews. Lots of Arabs, millions probably, don't hate the Jews. Probably lots of non-Arab Muslims don't hate the Jews, either. Yet it's hard to avoid the impression, from reading the MEMRI translations, from looking at the kinds of things taught in schools all over the Middle East (and in Islamic schools here in the U.S.A. — see below), from listening to the pronouncements of Middle East politicians (remember the Syrian foreign minister explaining to the Pope — to the Pope! — that: "When I see a Jew in front of me, I kill him"?) and from random conversations with New York cab drivers, that visceral, murderous Jew-hatred is awfully widespread among Arabs, Pakistanis, Iranians, and North Africans. Awfully widespread.

[...]
It is not too difficult to envisage a plan by which the spoken grievances of the Arabs against Israel could be addressed, and some compromise struck. The chancelleries of the world — including Israel's — are in fact full of such plans, drawn up with loving care by legions of diplomats, experts, politicians, ambassadors, scholars and private do-gooders like my reader, across decades of time. In an atmosphere of goodwill, and genuine desire for a solution, the Palestine circle could be squared. You'd just have to pull one of those plans down from the shelf, blow the dust off it, and say: "Let's take this for a starting point, shall we?" The circle is not going to be squared though — not by George W. Bush, not by my e-mail pal with his elaborate scheme to shut down the settlements, not by another round of "shuttle diplomacy," not by any amount of work on a "peace process". It isn't going to be, because there is no goodwill, and no real desire on the part of Israel's enemies for a solution. Or rather, there is a widespread desire for only one solution — the extinction of Israel and the driving out, or mass killing, of the Jews. That's what they want, the Middle East; that's all they want.

I don't think we should be sending diplomats to the Middle East. I think we should be sending teams of psychiatrists. This is a diseased culture, a sick culture. Go back to that disgraceful recycling of the Blood Libel in the Saudi press. Do you think anyone in that newspaper's readership thought there was anything odd about it, anything deplorable about it, anything untrue about it? I don't think so. To the newspaper readers of Saudi Arabia, it was routine stuff, a statement of the obvious. If MEMRI hadn't brought it to the attention of the civilized world, do you think the Saudi authorities would have bothered about it? Do you think, even now, they really have a clue what all the fuss is about? Of course the Jews use gentile blood to make their cookies. Doesn't everyone know that? We'd best pretend to be shocked, though. Those Americans are so-o-o sensitive!

We are dealing here with people who are, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. The Arabs, the Iranians, the Pakis, the Libyans: they are nuts, the great majority of them. Nuts. Not playing with a full deck. Not too tightly wrapped. One brick short of a load, one coupon short of a toaster. The smoke not going all the way up the chimney. Not quite 16 annas to the rupee. Nuts.

Is there anything we can do about it? Only what Peggy Noonan told us to do in her brilliant Wall Street Journal piece last week: Do what you do when you find yourself in a roomful of glittering-eyed lunatics down at the local funny farm. Keep smiling, talk softly, don't make any sudden moves, keep nodding and smiling, and keep a tight hand on the stun gun in your pocket. The Middle East contains three hundred million people, and most of them are crazy as coots. Glad I don't live there.

UPDATE: A tweeter sent out a series of messages excoriating me for republishing the essay of a person who apparently wrote a bigoted article that got him fired a while back. I don't follow pundits like they were rock stars and I had no idea about this, to be honest. This essay still holds up, but for people who are concerned about the source, you can discount it as you wish. You can read my FAQ to see my feelings about stereotyping Arabs and Muslims.

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