Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 15, 2014

06/15 Links: Three Teens, One an American. We are All Israelis; IDF: Kidnapped Teens, Alive in Hevron

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: Three Teens, One an American. We are All Israelis

They are: Gil-ad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. It has been confirmed that one of these students is also an American citizen; we have not been told who that might be. Two are students at Makor Chaim yeshiva. The third is a student at Shavey Hevron yeshiva in Hebron. Perhaps the IDF hopes that releasing this information will help witnesses come forward or that humanizing the boys may lead to sympathy for them.
Last night, hundreds prayed for them at the Western Wall. Their fate was discussed at every Sabbath table including my own and in many synagogues around the world.
Since 9/11, truly, we are all Israelis. What used to happen only to Jews or mainly to Israeli Jews (hijackings, suicide/homicide bombings) remained unchecked by the world and now that same style of hatred and violence has increasingly been unleashed against civilians everywhere. We are all at the mercy of merciless, maniacal Jihadists.
When an Israeli civilian—essentially a teenager--is kidnapped, it is always an act of evil, a statement of vulgar anti-Semitism, and a rejection of the entire Western enterprise. Please bear in mind that Israel lives in a neighborhood that has exiled Jews from Arab lands, has denied that this is the case, and wishes to exterminate Jewish Israel. Read the Hamas charter, it is quite chilling.

Netanyahu: We ‘know for a fact’ Hamas behind abduction

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday afternoon dismissed Hamas’s denial of involvement in the abduction of yeshiva students Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel, and Gil-ad Shaar, saying Israel knew “for a fact” that Hamas was responsible.
“Hamas denials do not change this fact. And this attack should surprise no one because Hamas makes no secret of its agenda. Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and to carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians – including children,” he said.
Netanyahu had announced Sunday morning that Hamas was behind the kidnapping of the three teenagers in the West Bank on Thursday night, allegations that were swiftly shot down by a spokesman for the Gaza-based organization as “stupid” and “designed to break Hamas.”

IDF: Kidnapped Teens Are Alive and in Hevron Area

A senior IDF official told reporters Sunday afternoon that in the army's estimation, the three kidnapped teenagers taken Thursday night by still-unidentified captors are still alive, and are being held somewhere in the Judean Hills.
“We are not acting blindly and without guidance,” the official said. “The IDF is thoroughly familiar with Hamas' infrastructure in Hevron. Those involved in the kidnapppings were prisoners in Israeli institutions and were released,” which gave Israeli authorities insights and information on their terror activities.

Kidnapped teen’s parents ‘optimistic’ he will come home

The parents of one of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West Bank Thursday expressed optimism Sunday that their son and the two other captives would return home safely.
“We are optimistic, with God’s help, He will see the combined effort of the prayers and solidarity, and we will embrace Naftali, Eyal, and Gil-ad here,” Racheli Frenkel, mother to 16-year-old Naftali Frenkel, said outside her Nof Ayalon home Sunday afternoon.

Return of the Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism (Michael Lumish)

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.

When I look at my numbers over at Israel Thrives I see that the material that received the most attention within the last few years is my Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism series.

According to Google stats, The Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism: Political Islam, has been the most popular individual piece of writing at Israel Thrives with over 5,000 unique readers

I have to say, I find that gratifying.

It is important to know, and to acknowledge, the failure of the progressive-left to speak up in favor of the plight of women in the Middle East, the plight of Gay people in the Middle East, and the plight of all non-Muslims in the Middle East.

The Jews are under siege, but are holding up nicely, thank you very much. Christians throughout the region are under the gun and being run out entirely. Gay people stand no chance unless they remain firmly in the closet. And, frankly, women are merchandise and it is one of the great shames of the western left today that it refuses to speak up for its own alleged values, as professor Phyllis Chesler, one of the pioneers of Women's Studies, would certainly argue.

I write within a niche within a niche and understand that 5,000 views for a bit of writing is a "spit in the ocean," as my dear old ma might have said, but I take my small victories where I can gather them and hope to convince people that my point of view has some merit.

As a Jewish apostate from the progressive-left, my initial criticisms are toward the left, itself, but also secondarily, toward the Jewish left. Those criticisms are the ones that receive the most backlash.

The Elder of Ziyon has been kind enough to offer me a little bit of his Sunday afternoon real estate which, I have to tell you guys, I appreciate very much. As someone who has been laboring in the backwaters of the Jewish blogosphere - lo, these many years - there is no question but that the Elder's home represents a clearing house for information that no one who cares about the Jewish people, or the Jewish State, can ignore.

I think that so long as he is willing to indulge me, I want to go back to my roots because, as I have always insisted, the entire point of writing about the Arab-Israel conflict (or the Long War Against the Jews of the Middle East) is to meditate upon what we have gone through as Jews and as friends of Jews and to figure potential paths forward.

Our criticisms must start with ourselves.

Thus I want to argue that diaspora Jewry, particularly of the left-wing variety, of which I am one, has made a number of significant mistakes since the Six Day War and the rise of the New Left in the post-Vietnam Era of American politics.

The first of those big mistakes is outlined in the brief piece below and is, quite simply, the failure of progressive-left Jewry, including myself not that long ago, to stand up clearly and directly in opposition to political Islam.

The Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism: Political Islam

The first way in which progressive-left Zionism is failing is in its ostrich-like reluctance to acknowledge, and seriously discuss, the rise of the Jihad throughout the Muslim Middle East. This failure is exceedingly dangerous because the Jews of the Middle East represent something like 1/70th of the total population there and much of that total is moving toward genocidal Islamism. Just as progressive diaspora Jews were basically silent during the rise of Nazi Germany, so they are silent now. We cannot know what the rise of political Islam will mean to the Jewish people in the long term, but we do know that this particular trend is anti-Semitic, and genocidal, to the core.

The failure of progressive-left Jews to address this issue represents a very dangerous form of cowardice and / or ideological blinkertude.

Throughout the 1990s and the Bush II era, I did not give much credence to Republican or conservative concerns about terrorism or, as they might say, "Islamofascism." During the Clinton years I assumed that Islamist terrorism was a bogey-man and during the Bush years I resented what I took to be the using of the so-called War on Terrorism to cynically move funds in various directions and to bolster the political careers of prominent conservatives and Republicans.

It is this, by the way, which represents the backdrop for progressive Jewish unwillingness to understand that times have changed. And times have changed. When I was still a Democrat, the radical Jihad was pretty much limited to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Qaeda, and the Taliban. One country and a number of fringe organizations, one of which gave us 9/11.

Now we have Iran, Hez, Hamas, Qaeda, the Taliban, and increasingly, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, Nigeria, and Sudan. When progressive-left Jews ignore the Jihadi fruits of the so-called "Arab Spring," or explain it away as "the blessings of democracy," as Obama does, they are veiling the fact that the entire Middle East is going through an Islamist awakening, not a democratic one. The Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with an historical provenance that goes to Nazi Germany, is finally taking over Egypt.

The American president does not mind and, sadly, neither do progressive-left diaspora Jews.

I would suggest that this is a major problem, but the question is "why?" Why do progressive-left diaspora Jews absolutely refuse to acknowledge, and seriously discuss, what is perhaps the foremost geo-political happening since the demise of the Soviet Union? How is it possible that, just as with the rise of Nazi Germany, progressive-left Jews are failing to acknowledge what is before their very eyes? The answer is cowardice and ideological blindness. They are afraid to say anything, or even really think anything on this question, not out of fear of Jihadis, but out of a social fear of their fellow progressives for whom any reference to political Islam is taken as a form of "Islamophobia." The Jews of the Middle East are increasingly surrounded by a vicious political movement which would see them dead, yet progressive-left diaspora Jews close their eyes and turn away because they do not want to be called mean names by their fellow progressives.

They are, in a sense, swapping Political Correctness for the well-being of the Jewish people. The best that they will do is go after safe, but largely irrelevant, targets like fringe-right Skin-heads or Klansmen, wherein their fellow non-Jewish progressives will give them a nice kitsel behind the ear.

This represents the first, but not the only, sad failure of contemporary progressive-left Zionism.

{They might as well be mutes.}

Muslims freak over music video calling for Jews to pray on Temple Mount

This music video, released last week by Orit Arfa, is making waves on Muslim websites.

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today, quoting the Waqf, describes the video as "calls for intensifying the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform Jewish prayers and Talmudic rituals in it. ...The song includes clips from break-ins, and movements and dances in different parts of the compound."

Official Palestinian and Fatah media praise kidnapping of Jewish teens

This cartoon was published in Al Hayat al Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority. It modifies the World Cup Brazil logo to show the three hands holding three people, with the caption "Khalil" - Hebron.

This image, from Fatah's official Facebook page, evokes both the two-finger "Victory" sign and the Muslim Brotherhood's four-finger gesture, with the caption "For your interpretation." The commenters understood it quite well.

H/t Palestinian Media Watch, which also notes that the PA has long supported a hostage-taking strategy.

The Ministry of Information of the PA says that the IDF actions in Hebron to retrieve the boys are a "flimsy pretext" to continue "aggression on our people" and that Israel has "kidnapped an entire people."

Good to know that the "unity government" of ineffectual, harmless technocrats happens to support terror.

Israellycool has a large collection of cartoons and photos and tweets showing Palestinian Arab glee at the war crime.

Silence of the hypocrites

You know how anti-Israel activists love to claim that Israel is immoral because they claim it is violating international law?

Have you seen even one of them condemning the kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers yet?

You know...kidnapping which is flatly prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention art. 34,.

So how are the anti-Israel activists stacking up?

As this JPost article shows, they are positively giddy over the idea of kidnapping minors. (Some are now backtracking, pretending that they didn't know they were minors when the news came out, which is ridiculous because the initial news stories said that explicitly.)

This cartoon by Omar Radwan turning the boys into vermin is getting play on Facebook - including Fatah's official Facebook page.

And, of course, some Palestinians are handing out sweets in celebration.

More damning than the reported happiness is the complete absence of any Arab or anti-Israel activist voices condemning the kidnappings. Not on message boards, not on Facebook, at least as far a I could find. On the contrary, Palestinian Arabs are being told to actively hinder any Israeli attempts to investigate, by destroying evidence.

And the world blames Israel for the lack of peace?

Besides the glee from the overt Israel haters, we are hearing nothing but silence from the more covert haters. While Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and other organizations closely monitor and immediately condemn Israel for perceived wrongs - even before any evidence is in - they haven't yet said a word about the kidnappings that occurred over 48 hours ago.

Apparently, "international law" only applies to certain people, and only in certain ways.

06/14 Links: The kidnapping is a casus belli; Australian lesson for US; UNESCO’s missing ‘hot potato’

From Ian:

The kidnapping is a casus belli

This kidnapping is a casus belli. Those who quote Rabin’s remark that “peace is made with enemies” leave out something important. Peace is made with defeated enemies, because undefeated ones are trying to kill you, or worse, your children. That’s what an enemy is.
Those who think that the whole idea of enmity is outdated and atavistic, an ugly remnant of tribalism that the human race should leave behind may be right, but if you have to deal with people who live in that world, you can’t ignore them. You can’t unilaterally disarm, physically and psychologically. If they are trying to kill you, you can’t stand above it and look down tolerantly on those people who are not as advanced as you are.
You have to fight them and kill them. When you have killed enough of them, they’ll give up. Then you can start making peace.

Gaza residents celebrate at news of missing Israeli teens

Residents of Gaza celebrated the presumed kidnapping of three Israeli teens, after Hamas slammed the Palestinian Authority for cooperating with Israel to find the youths.
Led by families of Palestinian security prisoners, candies were handed out in a protest tent set up in Gaza by families to express solidarity with prisoners serving time for security related offences in Israel, and residents praised the "operation in Hebron", calling for additional kidnappings. (h/t Jewess)

Melanie Phillips: Australian lesson for US

The mendacious charge that Israel is in ‘illegal occupation’ of east Jerusalem and the territories is constantly levelled by the UK and European governments (the US uses a more weaselly form of words). It underpins the equally mendacious and poisonous suggestion that Israelis have no right to live in these areas.
This in turn has fed the monstrous campaign against Israel, which has seen it demonised and delegitimised for exercising its legal rights to land it is fully entitled to settle but which Arab propaganda has falsely persuaded the west (including many Jews) belongs en bloc to the Palestinians.
Now the Australians have raised the banner of truth, what’s needed is for other friendly leaders to follow suit by stating loud and clear that Israel stands for law, justice and historical reality which its enemies are trying to destroy – and in doing so, to put Obama to shame.

Palestinian diplomat summoned to Ramallah over Jewish state recognition

In an article published Thursday in Fathom, a quarterly devoted to Israel and the Middle East, Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, wrote that in order to truly achieve a lasting peace agreement, the Palestinian leadership must officially recognize Israel as a Jewish state and heavily revise current demands for a full-fledged right of return for Palestinian refugees. But he said Friday that he had been “tricked” over the article.
“Ramallah was very angry with this statement,” Amal Jadou, the head of the Palestinian Authority foreign ministry’s European desk said, according to the Daily Telegraph. Jadou said Hassassian would have to clarify his stance on the matter.
Hassassian said that his views had been misunderstood and that the article had been published before he had a chance to review its final version. (h/t cisjew)

06/13 Links Pt2: Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburger; Dershowitz: BDS is an immoral movement

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburger

Last year, I wrote an article about the indigenous status of the Jewish people. At first, a lot of Native people were really upset, because for almost 47 years they have been told that the Arabs are the indigenous people AND NOBODY EVER CHALLENGED IT. You see, for the Left, and this includes most indigenous people, men like Chomsky and Said have been Sacred Cows. They were glib, well read, and could turn a phrase very well. So nobody ever delved very deeply into their claims of Jews being settler colonists from Europe who were stealing Arab land. I was actually told by one Indian “Dude, Chomsky says the Arabs are indigenous, you are just an Indian from Paddle, you can’t argue with people like Chomsky.” I laughed and then brought out the big guns. First I asked that person if white people were indigenous to Canada because they have been here for almost 5 hundred years now. Of course he said “No of course not.” I then asked him if his people were no longer indigenous because they were not actually from the far North but had been transplanted there and thus displaced from their own ancestral lands. He responded “No, being displaced doesn’t remove our rights as indigenous people NO MATTER HOW LONG WE ARE DISPLACED FOR.” It was at that point I simply said “If people do not lose their indigenous status through being displaced, and people do not subsume indigenous status through conquering indigenous people and “replacing them,” then the Arabs are not indigenous to the ancestral lands of the Jewish people. Jews have been there for three thousand years and everything that makes them Jews began there.” It was an epiphany for him because he now posts and reposts stuff supporting the Jewish state of Israel, because he realizes that the same arguments used to attack the indigenous rights of Jews, are the same arguments used to attack ours.

'Muslims are the new Jews' is Another Excuse for Islamists by HuffPo's Mehdi Hasan

On May 29th, Huffington Post UK 'Political Director' Mehdi Hasan published another piece about Islamophobia. It came in the wake of alarming gains made by far-right parties in the European elections. As acknowledged by its author, it also came in the wake of a shooting at a Jewish Museum in Brussels in which an Israeli couple and a Belgian woman were shot dead. A fourth victim, critically injured during the shooting, succumbed to his injuries as I was drafting this post.
The only suspect in the shooting, an Islamist jihadi and French national named Mehdi Nemmouche, was not identified and arrested until the day after the publication of Hasan's article. However, similarities to the shooting carried out by Mohammed Merah at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 were already apparent, as was the attack's probable anti-Semitic intent.
Nevertheless, Mehdi Hasan thought that now would be good time to say this:
"In some respects, Muslims are the new Jews of Europe. The vile shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on 24 May, in which three people were killed, might make this statement sound odd. Anti-Jewish attacks are indeed on the rise in Europe, which is deplorable and depressing, but thankfully anti-Semitism is now taboo in mainstream political discourse in a way in which Islamophobia isn't. These days, most anti-Semitic attacks are carried out by second-generation Arabs and are linked to anger over Israeli policies."
For whatever it's worth, I do not believe that Mehdi Hasan is himself an Islamist. By which I mean that I have seen no evidence that he wishes his own freedom to be subject to the demands of State-imposed Islamic Law of any kind. That said, he displays a disturbing readiness to endorse Islamist arguments and talking points, the chief function of which is to re-describe the victimisers as victims.

Alan Dershowitz: BDS is an immoral movement.

Dinner party anti-semitism (The Spectator)

From Rowan Dean in The Spectator:

‘I hate f-—ing Jews!’ screeched one dinner guest, his face contorted in rage only millimetres in front of mine. It was quite an unexpected spray; delivered with the added impetus of several large droplets of beer-flavoured spittle landing on my face. I instinctively recoiled, from the phlegm as much as the intensity of the sentiment. I’ve always believed that free speech means you may permit such vile comments to be expressed, but if you do not share them it is your duty to counter them, or at least to attempt to, no matter how belligerent the tone of your interlocutor.

But beware. The cost of tackling such prejudice will not only ruin the evening, it often destroys the friendship as well.

Greg Sheridan recently identified the sickening rise of anti-Semitism throughout the world, and broke it down into three distinct strands; official Arab denigration of Jews and Israel, the re-emergence of old-fashioned Nazi anti-Semitism in Europe and the modern Left’s energetic attempts to delegitimise all things Jewish/Israeli. As Sheridan pointed out: ‘Several currents of this noxious, moral poison are operating simultaneously.’

With respect to Mr Sheridan, I’d like to add a fourth stream to his list: dinner party anti-Semitism.

Dinner party anti-Semitism crosses all political boundaries, age groups, geographical and socio-economic divides, and is just as likely to occur in a trendy inner-city restaurant, at a western suburbs barbeque or within the elegant confines of a plush North Shore dining room.

...A typical discussion with a DPAS involves a bizarre dance of seven veils, where as soon as you think you have revealed what is really troubling them, that particular prejudice is whisked away and replaced with another. Always, the hatred tries to dress itself in prettier clothes.

Concern for the ‘plight’ of the Palestinians is a fave, although no such concern, apparently, is necessary for those whose lives are a living hell in the rest of the Arab world. Contempt for the ‘apartheid’ of the West Bank and Gaza is another, allowing the DPAS to draw fatuous comparisons with South Africa. A sickening and utterly false moral comparison between the Nazis and modern Israeli soldiering techniques is another. Even circumcision gets thrown into the mix.

Don’t even bother trying to point out that successive Israeli governments have offered virtually the entire West Bank back to the Palestinians if only — is it really such a big ask? — they remove the bits in their charter calling for the annihilation of the Jews. Your DPAS isn’t remotely interested.

Mercifully, these days you rarely hear intelligent people rant on about ‘abos’, ‘niggers’ or ‘slopes’ during a polite dinner, but I’ve lost count of the number of times a perfectly pleasant social occasion has seen some idiot launch into an equally irrational attack on Jews. I normally respond by attempting to engage in some form of debate, on the basis that it is best to counter such beliefs with argument and persuasion. Sadly, the deeper one wades into such rants, the more treacherous Mr Sheridan’s currents become, and the conviviality of the evening gets swept away in a tide of bile.

Invariably, there reaches a point where the DPAS comes out with something that is so ludicrous, so grotesque or so wrong-headed that it’s time to call for a cab.

Intelligence is irrelevant. One such conversation I was a party to, with a woman who was completing her Masters at Sydney University, concluded on her absurd claim that: ‘There must be something wrong with the Jews. Otherwise why would so many civilisations have tried to wipe them out?’

This concept defied any rational response. (If you can think of a good one, let me know!) The conversation had begun quite innocently, as they always do. But then comes the inevitable muttered comment, heavy sigh or rolling of eyeballs, usually at some innocuous mention of Israel, the Middle East or something (or somebody) Jewish.

Another dinner party debate, at a friend’s birthday in a restaurant, turned ugly when it descended into a lengthy and passionate debate by an otherwise engaging and intelligent bloke in which — forgive me if I don’t get this quite right, but I think I’ve got the gist of it — the Jews engineered the GFC in order to drive up the price of gold in order to cover up the fact that they brought down the twin towers in order to bankrupt America in order to create a banking monopoly in order to bring on an attack on Iran in order to fulfil the Old Test…

‘Your cab’s here, sir.’

‘Thank God.’

Can anyone imagine a Palestinian helping Israel get the boys back?

Today, Israel is in an uproar over the disappearance and possible kidnapping of three teenage yeshiva students.

One of the three teenage yeshiva students who went missing and were feared kidnapped in the West Bank Thursday overnight is a dual Israeli-American citizen, according to Israeli media. US Ambassador in Israel, Dan Shapiro, was briefed on the situation.

Israel’s security forces were continuing their large-scale operation Friday to locate the three teenagers, and roadblocks were set up around the West Bank to prevent the possible transfer of the three to the Gaza Strip, Channel 2 reported Friday.

Palestinian prisoners in Israel were celebrating the news of the feared kidnappings, according to Channel 2. Over 100 Palestinian prisoners have been on hunger strike to protest their detention without charge.

No Palestinian organization has yet claimed responsibility. A senior Islamic Jihad official on Friday called on Palestinians to kidnap Israeli citizens, arguing that Israel had proven in the past that it was willing to negotiate the release of Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the lives of its civilians.

Even though they are 16, Hamas is calling them "soldiers" and "usurpers."

Now, just imagine that a random Palestinian family lives next door to a place that appears to be where the boys are hidden. Or an Arab woman overhears a rumor that the boys are in the next village.

Can you imagine any of them, without outside incentive, telling the authorities about it?

These are minors. Kidnapping them is reprehensible, a war crime that is about as severe as anything in the Geneva Conventions. A normal person would be disgusted at this act and ashamed to be associated with it.

What percentage of Palestinian Arab society would be against it? How many would publicly say, unprompted by outside considerations (like politicians trying to keep the flow of Western money,) that kidnapping Jewish boys is to be condemned?

You don't have to ask. Just look in the talkbacks and comments in Arab articles or message forums. You will find very few Palestinian Arabs who are outraged, or even uncomfortable, with such an act.

06/13 Links Pt1: Why the US supports Hamas; 88 US Senators: Hamas-Abbas a “Setback to Peace”

From Ian:

So Much for Arab Nationality; Ditto for "Occupation"

Rejection of Jewish nationalism from the 1920s, attempted to prevent the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine by violence and defiance of any form of Jewish political power; including any plans to share stewardship with Arabs which crystallized into the expression of Palestinianism.
No other positive definition of an Arab-Palestinian people has surfaced. This point is admirably illustrated in the following historic incident:
“In 1926, Lord Plumer was appointed as the second High Commissioner of Palestine. The Arabs within the Mandate were infuriated when Plumer stood up for the Zionists’ national anthem Hatikva during ceremonies held in his honor when Plumer first visited Tel Aviv.
When a delegation of Palestinian Arabs protested Plumer’s ‘Zionist bias,’ the High Commissioner asked the Arabs if he remained seated when their national anthem was played, ‘wouldn’t you regard my behavior as most unmannerly?’ Met by silence,
Plumer asked: ‘By the way, have you got a national anthem?’ When the delegation replied with chagrin that they did not, he snapped back, “I think you had better get one as soon as possible.”
But it took the Palestinian Arabs more than 60 years to heed Plumer’s advice.

Why the US supports Hamas, and why it may help Iran

Why is the US supporting the PA? Ostensibly because it is the most likely candidate to take over in the territories that the US so passionately wants Israel to vacate. But negotiations between the PA and Israel broke down because the Palestinians were unable to accept the existence of a Jewish state between the river and the sea with any borders. Now with Hamas in the government, an agreement is even less likely.
What will it take for the administration to understand that a) the only acceptable deal with the Palestinians involves Israel’s suicide, and b) Israel isn’t suicidal?
I suspect that the US fears that even Hamas is better than the more radical Sunni Islamists out there. But if it wants stability, why doesn’t it simply support Israeli sovereignty over the territories?
That would be too logical, apparently.
If the prospect of Israel and the US on opposite sides of a war feels strange, the situation in Iraq is equally strange. The prospect of ISIS overthrowing the al-Maliki regime in Iraq has the US contemplating intervention of some kind — which would put it on the same side as Iran.
This is happening very rapidly — as I write — so a decision will have to be made soon.

PA prime minister admits he has no power, but NYT misses context

From the New York Times:

The Palestinian Authority has had a new government for 10 days now, but the prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, acknowledged on Thursday that he still lacked any authority in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and that nothing had yet changed on the ground.

Though the new government was approved by both of the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, Mr. Hamdallah offered no plan for disarming militants, integrating the two sides’ security forces, or even getting Gaza’s 1.7 million residents to start paying taxes and electricity bills.

In an hourlong interview, Mr. Hamdallah laid much of the responsibility for reconciling the West Bank and Gaza after seven years of schism on two committees, one of which has yet to be formed. He repeated political platitudes about Palestinian unity, but offered no practical program to deliver it.

Asked when he would visit Gaza, Mr. Hamdallah was silent for a long moment and then said, “We haven’t set a time for that.”

“You have to be realistic — we’re not in control,” said Mr. Hamdallah, 55, a former university president. He noted that German reunification started a quarter-century ago, and that “up until now, they are still working on that, so don’t expect we’ll do it all in 24 hours.”

The new government has already weathered one crisis, a dispute over the payment of public-sector salaries in which the Hamas-affiliated police in Gaza shut the territory’s banks for a week and even confiscated credit-card readers from some supermarkets. But Mr. Hamdallah said it was public pressure in Gaza and the intervention of a monetary official that got the banks reopened, not him or his ministers.

There is no plan to avoid a similar clash next month. Mr. Hamdallah said that the Palestinian Authority would not pay the 40,000 employees of the former Hamas government in Gaza, and that it had not secured a commitment from Qatar or other countries to do so.

In Gaza, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, stepped aside, but his picture still hangs in government offices. The streets are patrolled by Hamas forces. A rocket was fired Wednesday into Israeli territory. The Rafah border crossing into Egypt remains closed, and Mr. Hamdallah said negotiations with Egypt to reopen it had not begun.

“I wish I could open it yesterday,” he said, “but this is not in our hands.”

Mr. Hamdallah said his cabinet had appointed a five-member committee on Tuesday to tackle administrative, financial and legal issues surrounding integration. One task is to reverse a decree Mr. Abbas signed years ago exempting Gazans from taxes and other payments because Hamas had taken over there.

Security issues, including disarming Hamas’s military wing and other groups, will be left for a high commission that Mr. Abbas has yet to name, Mr. Hamdallah said.

This entire article doesn't mention the PLO once.

Without understanding the relationship between the PLO and the PA, none of this makes sense.

The PA reports to the PLO. It is sort of like the interior ministry of the organization that is really responsible for all decisions out of the West Bank areas. Hamas remains in power in Gaza. The "unity government" is a joke - it is not a government in any sense of the word.

Just for fun, go to the "State of Palestine"'s Ministry of Justice website. It has exactly two articles, one from 2012 and one from 2011. Most subsections are blank. It's a charade. I can't remember the last time I read a story in the PalArab media about a trial. (A quick search in Ma'an since the beginning of the year for any stories with both the words "trial" and "judge" finds 21 results - all of which refer to events in Israel or Egypt.)

The Ministry of Social Affairs page has not updated with the name of its new minister. They have a "Ministry of State" site which mostly complains about Israel and doesn't even have a logo. The "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" site actually is updated, but, while everyone has heard of the PLO's spokesman Erekat, can anyone actually name the Foreign Affairs minister? It is only a ceremonial position because all foreign affairs are done by the PLO!

In the sense that the PA is technocratic and has no Hamas members, this is true. In the sense that it has no power over Gaza, that is true as well. But the larger picture is missing - the entire "government" is not a government in any sense of the word. The real government is Hamas and the Fatah-dominated PLO, and it will remain that way. They make all the decisions - sometimes together, usually apart.

The difference is that Abbas is representing it as a government for which Hamas and Fatah are jointly responsible. He wants all the benefits of "unity" without any of the responsibility. He wants to allow Hamas to do whatever it wants but to pretend to be an ally. He is trying to have it both ways. But the entire system is untenable, as Hamas will not give up real power in Gaza and will only act in self interest (perhaps allowing the PLO to man the Rafah crossing, for example.)

Unfortunately, the world is buying into the charade, and the NYT blew an opportunity to say the obvious - that the "government of Palestine," no matter how "technocratic," is a toothless construct that was chosen and run by a bunch of unelected terrorists and terror supporters, some from Hamas and some from Fatah.

"Palestine" officially threatens Australia

From AFP:

Australia could face trade sanctions by Arab nations over its decision to stop using the term "occupied" when referring to East Jerusalem, the head of the Palestinian delegation to Canberra warned Friday.

Izzat Abdulhadi said Australia's new stance on East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in a move never recognized by the international community, was a "substantial policy shift."

"We think that it's very provocative and unuseful, and it's not appropriate," Abdulhadi told AFP.

His comments came after 18 diplomats from countries including Indonesia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia protested to Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra on Thursday.

Australia said last week it would no longer refer to East Jerusalem as "occupied" because the term carries pejorative implications and was neither appropriate or useful.

"It is important, as far as you can, not to use loaded terms, not to use pejorative terms, not to use terms which suggest that matters have been prejudged and that is a freighted term," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

"The truth is they're disputed territories."

The comments sparked fury in the Arab world, with the Jordanian and Palestinian governments summoning Australia's diplomatic representative in protest. Israel hailed the move as "refreshing."

"We asked the government to reverse this position," Abdulhadi said of the diplomatic protest.

He added that trade sanctions could be put in place against Canberra if the government persisted with its stance, which he said left Australia isolated.

"It depends on the reaction of the Australian government," he said, adding that the issue could also be taken to the United Nations General Assembly.

"Unfortunately I think there will be negative consequences for the (Australian) government."

Abdulhadi was a bit more explicit on a TV interview:

"I'm afraid this will really cast a lot of shadows, negative shadows, over relations between Australia and the Arab world, and there will be a sort of negative consequences. We need Australia to change this position again to be more compatible with international law and United Nations resolutions," Izzat Abdulhadi, head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, told ABC.

Abdulhadi stressed the government's decision will affect trading between Australia and the Arabs.

"There are a lot of exports of meat to the Arab world and now also we're talking about the wheat. I think ... the interests of Australia is to work with the Arab world," Abdulhadi warned.

National Farmers' Federation President Brent Finlay saw the issue unfortunate as the Australia-Middle East trade relations had been ongoing smoothly through the years. Australian exports to Arab's 22 member states is worth approximately $3.5 billion, exports to Indonesia is now worth $4.7 billion.

"We are very concerned about it and we are working closely with the agriculture minister. It is an unfortunate hiccup," Finlay said.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce refused to address the issue arguing his main responsibility is to ensure trading for agricultural products.

"I will leave all that wondrous stuff on foreign affairs to those who are on a vastly better pay scale and smarter than I am. My job is to make sure we get product moving," Joyce said with sarcasm.