Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Ken Roth of @HRW reveals his contempt for Israel again

A new tweet from Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch:

Israel should ensure it has no weapons and then let the ship into Gaza with humanitarian aid. http://t.co/elkOMKsQjZ pic.twitter.com/rGcvQM9x06
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) May 13, 2015

The article he links to:

A trawler left Sweden on its way to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip 5,000 nautical miles away.

The Marianne of Gothenburg departed on Sunday evening and is the first ship in the Freedom Flotilla III to leave for Gaza, according to the website of the Ship to Gaza Sweden campaign.

The boat, which was purchased jointly by the Ship to Gaza Sweden and Ship to Gaza Norway, is carrying solar panels and medical equipment, according to Ship to Gaza Sweden, along with five crew members and eight passengers.

The Ship to Gaza organization is calling for an immediate end to the naval blockade of Gaza; opening of the Gaza Port; and secure passage for Palestinians between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Sweden officially recognized the state of Palestine last October.

Among the passengers are Israeli-born Swedish citizen Dror Feiler, a musician and spokesman of Ship to Gaza; Dr. Henry Ascher, a professor of public health and pediatrician; Lennart Berggren, a filmmaker; Maria Svensson, pro tem spokeswoman of the Feministiskt initiative; and Mikael Karlsson, chairman of Ship to Gaza Sweden.

The boat is named after Marianne Skoog, a veteran member of the Swedish Palestine Solidarity movement, who died in May 2014.

Roth is suggesting that Israel allow the ship into Gaza, just to allow the tiny amount of humanitarian aid to get in.

However, what he is really saying is that he wants Hamas to be able to import weapons via the sea.

Because Israel allows medical equipment, and yes, solar panels, into Gaza. In previous attempts to bring pathetic amounts of "aid" into Gaza, Israel offered to have the ships brought into an Israeli port from which the ships could have the goods unloaded and sent to Gaza - and the people on board refused.

Roth knows that the purpose of the ship is not to bring in aid, which is only limited by Israel for items that have a possible military dimension. The purpose of the ship is to end Israel's legal blockade of Gaza.

The people behind the movement say this explicitly, calling it "a peaceful, nonviolent action to break the ... blockade of the Gaza Strip" - not to bring in aid.

If Israel lets the ship through, the legality of the blockade - a legality that even the UN recognizes - becomes weaker, making it easier for Hamas to eventually import weapons via the sea.

Here is a brief list of criteria for a blockade to be legal:

In order to be legal, several conditions have to be fulfilled. The first is the requirement to give widespread notice when a blockade is applied and to make sure that any ship that is stopped knows that there is a blockade. Nowadays the problem of notification is much easier than in the past because of the great improvement in communications.

Another condition for the legality of a sea blockade is effectiveness. It is not enough simply to declare a blockade. It has to be enforced, otherwise it is not valid and legal.

According to a further condition, a blockade should not cut off an unrelated foreign state from access to the sea. In the case of Gaza, the blockade does not prevent Egypt from reaching the sea.

Furthermore, a blockade has to be based on equality: It must apply to everybody. Of course there is always the possibility that the blockading party may give special permission to certain neutral ships to go through, but these are exceptions.

A blockade has to permit the passage of humanitarian assistance if needed. However, the San Remo Manual includes two conditions (in Article 103): first, the blockading party may decide where and when and through which port the assistance should reach the coast. In addition, the state may require that a neutral organization on the coast should control the distribution of the items. For instance, in Gaza, does it reach the civilians or Hamas?

Finally, there is the condition that a state may not starve the civilian population (San Remo, Article 102). This conforms also to the general principles of the laws on armed conflict.

It is obvious that the Marianne of Gothenburg is not a humanitarian aid ship. It is a political statement. If Israel allows ships whose sole purpose is political to enter Gaza, then the blockade crumbles, because it is no longer enforced equally. By forcing the ships to land in Ashkelon and from there bringing the aid in, Israel is maintaining a blockade that is necessary for the safety of Israeli citizens from Hamas weapons.

Ken Roth, by pretending that the Marianne of Gothenburg is an aid ship, reveals yet again his loathing for Israel.

He shows that he wants the legal blockade of Gaza to be destroyed.

He shows that he supports people whose sole purpose is to destroy Israel, not to bring in aid to Gaza.

He shows that he shares the goals of these anti-Israel activists, wanting to use the facade of "humanitarian aid" as a lever to isolate Israel politically.

And he shows his hypocrisy, because this tweet shows that Roth's concern for the human rights of Israelis within range of Hamas weapons is nil.

Roth's tweet shows yet again what a contemptible person he is, under the guise of human rights.

05/12 Links Pt2: Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension; International Hummus Day!

From Ian:

Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension, Issue New Rules for Others Living in West Bank

The spokesperson said that the woman shouldn’t be penalized since she didn’t know the consequences of her actions, but said that her government would “soon publish a modified policy regarding pension beneficiaries in the territories occupied by Israel.” She indicated that the policy would only apply to new cases.
The Dutch foreign minister was one of 16 EU foreign ministers who last month signed a letter to Federica Mogherini, the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, “urging her to move swiftly to ensure the labeling of settlement products.”
The report last week of the 90-year-old survivor prompted former Labour MK Colette Avital, who heads an organization that supports Holocaust survivors, to say, “It is hard to accept such harassment of survivors, whose welfare needs to be sacrosanct in the eyes of the Dutch authorities.”

When the ICRC Feels It Must Apologize for Telling the Truth

The ICRC has produced its share of Israel-haters, but De Maio certainly isn’t one of them. Not only does he realize that Israel isn’t the Great Satan it’s generally portrayed as by “human rights” activists, but he’s even willing to say so occasionally – which makes him far braver than many of his colleagues. Yet even this braver-than-average member of the human rights community feels so intimidated that whenever he does say something positive about Israel, he feels the need to apologize. So you get astounding statements like this tweet from last November: “It may seem provocative, but I would contend that humanitarian access in Israel & OT is, comparatively, outstandingly good.”
The mind simply boggles. It’s “provocative” to state the simple fact that Israel, like any Western democracy, allows humanitarian aid groups relatively unfettered access? In his next tweet, De Maio added, “I can think of no other context where we operate worldwide where access for humanitarian organizations is as good as it is here.” Yet if that’s the truth, why should it be “provocative” to say so? Shouldn’t it be as natural for human rights organizations to praise countries for enabling their access as it is to criticize them for not doing so?
But of course, when it comes to Israel, it isn’t. After all, in the “human rights” community to which De Maio belongs, the loudest voices are people like Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, who famously criticized Israel last month for sending the world’s largest medical team, 30 percent of all foreign medical personnel, to help victims of Nepal’s earthquake. In a world where “human rights activists” slam Israel even for providing humanitarian relief – though Roth has yet to explain how he thinks the world would be a better place had Israel failed to do so – it’s clearly not a given to praise it for enabling humanitarian access. So De Maio apologizes for telling the truth. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues choose the easier route of not telling it at all.
Nor is it Israel alone that pays the price for their silence – something else De Maio understands quite well. “Why is there so much more focus on Israel than on Syria [and] other places where many more civilians are dying?” he demanded in December. “In other ongoing wars, more civilians die in one week than in Israeli wars in a full year.” Yet even the braver-than-average De Maio made that statement at a conference in Israel, the one place it’s relatively “safe” to say such things. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues will never say it at all.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Using Bedouin issue as an anti-Israel propaganda tool

The discussion of the Bedouin issue is legitimate. Different countries have dealt in different ways with the recognition of native populations' rights. The Scandinavians had the Sami people (the Lapps), the Australians had the Aboriginal people and the Americans had the Indians. Each democratic state adopted its own solution.
One thing is clear: The arrangement offered by Israel is probably the most generous and decent arrangement, compared to other countries. Israel is offering every Bedouin family in one of the unrecognized communities generous solutions, which include both a piece of land and infrastructures.
But the coalition of incitement and deception – which includes Adalah, Balad, rights movements and the Islamic Movement – is unhappy with these solutions. This coalition also has the Haaretz newspaper, which is fanning the flames, at its service.
It should be clarified that there is a huge difference between a critical stance against the state's conduct and major deception, which has one result: Lies and incitement. There is no need to mention that the coalition of incitement and deception chose the second option – not a battle for the Bedouins, but another opportunity for an anti-Israel campaign.

How This Jordanian Arab Became an Ardent Zionist

Abe Haak, an Arab born in Irbid, Jordan and raised to hate Israel, has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 37 years. He has now become an ardent Arab Zionist.
His parents back in Jordan don't know how far he has wandered. But they will soon, as he 'comes out' for Israel and expands his speaking engagements.
An adjunct instructor in Arabic and in Arab journalism, Haak has residences in both Minnesota and New York, where he teaches at NYU. He studied international studies in Vienna, Austria, and is married to a German Lutheran woman, who is raising their child as a Christian.
“I am unaffiliated - I am a seeker, not a believer,” Haak told the Jewish Review during an extensive interview following his appearance at the University at Buffalo last week. It was sponsored by the Paul Dosberg Foundation and Stand With Us, which helps Jewish students deal with anti-Zionism on college campuses.
“I have not arrived at a doctrine that I can announce that I believe in at this point,” he continued. “But I believe I see God's works in the world, and Israel is one of those works. The rebirth of the State of Israel is one of the greatest miracles I have seen. It is not only a spiritual miracle, it is a physical miracle.”
After moving to America as a teenage, Haak had not met an Israeli until attending a Christmas party with friends at the University of Chicago in 1977.

Human rights under PA, Hamas rule the worst in years

From AP via Daily Star Lebanon:

OCCUPIED RAMALLAH: A leading Palestinian advocacy group says human rights for people living in the Palestinian territories are at their "worst" in years.

The annual report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said hundreds of people were tortured by authorities in Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas, and in the West Bank, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

It says several people died in Hamas detention and one died while incarcerated in the West Bank. It also says Hamas took 16 prisoners from their jail cells and killed them during the war with Israel last year.

Commission chief Ahmad Harb said other violations include bans on peaceful gatherings. He said rights violations "increased in volume" over the past four years.

Kudos to AP for reporting what is generally unreported.

And brickbats to practically every major subscriber to AP for not bothering to choose this story.

I found this in very few sources; a few Israeli papers and this Lebanese one, plus some generic news aggregators. But when stories about Israel are instantly reproduced in thousands of news sites within minutes, it is very telling that something like this gets all but ignored.

Also, it is interesting that while the original AP story uses a dateline of "Ramallah," the Daily Star says "Occupied Ramallah." I wonder if AP allows subscribers to change their datelines for political purposes.

(h/t Yenta Press)

Al Aqsa preacher says to fight all infidels who don't convert or pay jizya

From MEMRI:

In an Al-Aqsa Mosque address, posted on the Internet on May 1, Sheik 'Issam Amira said that polytheist enemies should be given three options: "They must convert to Islam, or pay the jizya poll tax, or else, you should seek the help of Allah and fight them." "You should fight them even if they do not fight you," Amira stressed.

Following are excerpts:

Issam Amira: Today, our honorable Islamic scholars talk about defensive Jihad. "Fight for the sake of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress, for Allah does not like transgressors." In other words, you should always be polite, never go against anyone, and never point your weapon at anyone, unless someone attacks you. In all other cases, everything must be peaceful. No!

When you face a polytheist enemy, you should give him three options: They must convert to Islam, or pay the jizya poll tax, or else, you should seek the help of Allah and fight them. You should fight them even if they do not fight you. Seek the help of Allah, and fight them. Let the scholars hear this: You should seek the help of Allah and fight them. Only when they fight you? No! When they refuse to convert to Islam, and refuse to pay the jizya. In such a case, it is meaningless [to let them] keep enjoying their life in this world, eating from the sustenance bestowed by Allah, yet disbelieving in Him. No! against their will, we shall subjugate them to the rule of Allah, without forcing them to convert to Islam.

Of course, there was an immediate outcry and denunciations from the moderate Muslims upon hearing about this.

Just kidding!

Amira once taught in UNRWA schools. He became involved with Hizb ut-Tahrir and now preaches at a mosque in Beit Safafa, but often preaches at Al Aqsa.

“Yesterday we heard the Leader of the [Labour] Opposition [Harold Wilson], its spokesman on foreign affairs, and the leader of the Liberal Party [Jeremy Thorpe] urging our government [prime minister Edward Heath’s Conservative one] to supply arms to Israel, when the Israeli Army is fighting 125 miles inside Egypt and over 20 miles inside Syria,” R.G. Cookson, FRS, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southampton – apparently an ideological antecedent to today’s monstrous regiment of anti-Israel academics – wrote from his Winchester home to The Times newspaper in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. “When will they think Israel has conquered enough territory – or do they support the Zionist ideal of a state stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile?”

At the London headquarters of the very proper and rather patrician Anglo-Jewish Association, a body steeped historically in anti-Zionist or at least non-Zionist sentiment, its Council, anxious to avoid the accusation of “dual loyalties,” chose its words carefully in arguing the opposing view in the same venerable publication. The eleven men and one woman settled upon the following text:

“We … express our distress at the violation of the ceasefire by Egypt and Syria.

With our sympathy for Israel reinforced by a shared historical experience, we believe that this onslaught sustained by Soviet equipment must inevitably damage the strategic interests of Britain, the country of our allegiance.

We therefore call on His Majesty’s Government not to persist in an embargo on arms for Israel which will inevitably and unfairly injure Israel in her struggle to survive.”

It bore the signatures of Victor Lucas (businessman and multi-faceted communal heavyweight), (Sir) Leon Bagrit (industrialist), (Sir) Isaiah Berlin (political philosopher), Maurice Edelman (MP, Labour), (Sir) Louis Gluckstein (ex-MP, Conservative), Toby Jessel (MP, Conservative), David Kessler (Jewish Chronicle proprietor), Ewen Montagu (judge and famous wartime intelligence officer), Frances Rubens (wife of prominent Judaica expert Alfred Rubens), Neville Sandelson (MP, Labour), Harold Sebag-Montefiore (Greater London Council official and judge), and Harold Soref (MP, Conservative).

Although derided in less squeamishly and more overtly pro-Israel quarters as fustily cautious in its wording, the AJA’s statement was a welcome addition to the robust Jewish communal protest against the Heath government’s embargo – which although imposed upon all combatants in the war was in practice disadvantageous only to Israel, and extended even to a ban on supplying spare parts for that country’s British-made Centurion tanks.

Meanwhile the usual anti-Israel propaganda was at work on other fronts, for example in an obnoxious letter to The Times (19 October) by Sir Kennedy Trevaskis (1915-90), a Foreign Office Arabist who, as his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography regarding the Aden phase of his diplomatic career notes, “was back in an environment, essentially Muslim, where his experience, personal qualities, and sympathies were at home”. In short, a typical member of the Foreign Office “Camel Corps” that is still going strong today: consider Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Sir Oliver Miles, Sir Vincent Fearn, Frances Guy, James Watt, and many others.

Trevaskis’s jaundiced claptrap, with, among other points, its nasty reference to “immigrants from Europe” displacing the “indigenous” inhabitants, was ably refuted by D. M. (David Malcolm) Lewis of Christ Church, Oxford, whose letter appeared in The Times of 22 October. Lewis – subsequently Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, and well versed in Jewish, Persian and Greek antiquity – wrote, inter alia:

“I must say that Sir Kennedy Trevaskis does not inspire much confidence in the command of the facts enjoyed by British Arabists. I can attach very little precise meaning to his assertion that nine-tenths of the indigenous population of Israel has been expelled from its home …. Apart from the Israeli-born Jewish population, the total of Jewish immigrants to Israel from Asia and Africa between 1948 and 1970 was 723,073. The vast majority of these came from Arab lands, leaving their homes and possessions of centuries behind them. No doubt this fact would be more clearly recognised if they had been left in refugee camps.”

He added:

“I certainly have sympathy for Palestinians, but we should nevertheless realise that part of what has gone on in the Middle East in the past 25 years has been a massive exchange of populations. If philhellenes were still agitating for the return of the Greek population of Asia Minor, they would universally be regarded as stupid and dangerous.”

I’ll continue this issue of British reactions to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in my next column, but right now I want to draw attention to what the British Labour MP Richard Crossman, a staunch and enduring friend of Israel, had to say regarding the issue of the arms embargo. For in so doing so he made a withering indictment of Foreign Office Arabism which appears as relevant today as it did then. His op-ed in The Times (17 October 1973), under the heading “Arabists hold all the cards at the FO” – which had prompted Trevaskis’s sour little outburst commending the Arabist outlook – commenced:

‘The official British attitude to the Arab-Israeli War is odious – but not more odious than usual. Ever since in the mid-1920s the Foreign Office discovered that in backing Zionism, Lloyd George had acquired not a Jewish goldmine but a political liability, the Foreign Office has been politely anti-Zionist. Every time an Arab-Jewish crisis breaks out, the officials concerned work out a policy which can be shown in legal terms to be strictly fair to the Jewish side but which also provides some undercover material advantage to “our friends the Arabs”.

It was absurd to hope that in this crisis the Foreign Office would suddenly acquire a genuine impartiality between Jew and Arab, and a sense that a commitment to the Jews should be honoured even when it pays to get rid of it. No – the policy which evolved within a matter of hours was one which in legal terms would be strictly fair but in military terms would be of enormous benefit to the Arabs.’

In order to achieve that aim, he continued, the Foreign Office had advised Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home that three things were necessary. First, that Sir Alec “should send a telegram to [Britain’s] representative at the [UN] Security Council making sure that at the very first session he should propose a ceasefire though there was not the slightest chance of anybody paying attention”. Second, that Sir Alec should state publicly, as he duly did, that “as the proponent of a ceasefire, Britain must impose on herself a quite unusually severe form of neutrality”. Third, that “having made this statement, he should coolly assert that this new and severe neutrality required a total embargo on arms to both sides”.

The effect, Crossman went on, “is to deny to the six Arab states we have been supplying with arms a small amount of the superfluity of ultramodern weapons systems they have been acquiring from us, among others. For many months they will not feel it, and if they do the Russians will fill the gap”. In sharp contrast, however,

“The arms embargo we have imposed on Israel is of an entirely different dimension. For many years we have divided with the Americans the responsibility for providing a very large part of the armaments used by the Israeli army. The navy has come to rely on us for certain kinds of vessels – submarines, frigates, torpedo boats. Even more important, we have become a main purveyor to the army of a vast amount of military hardware – a huge list with, right at the top, artillery, armoured cars, and tanks plus spares and ammunition.

Quite deliberately, the Americans left this side of the job to us. As a result, when the Russians began to pour arms into the Arab side and the Americans began to redress the balance, our high-minded statement that in pursuance of our policy of trying to obtain a truce we must at once embargo all kinds of British arms exports to Israel meant that the deadly imbalance as regards this aspect of the war would not be rectified. The spare parts and ammunition for the armoured divisions in the desert are not to be sent: Sir Alec Douglas-Home, with the strict impartiality which has inspired British foreign policy in the Middle East for 50 years, has imposed an arms embargo which leaves the Arabs almost unaffected while it stabs the Jews in the back.”

Not that Sir Alec had acted very differently from a Labour Foreign Secretary in the circumstances, conceded Crossman, although more of an objection would have been made had Michael Stewart, let alone George Brown, held that portfolio. “Whatever politician is in charge of Britain’s Middle East policy, the Foreign Office is unbeatable.”

“We have had real Foreign Secretaries whose presence in that august office made a real difference to British policy in other parts of the world,” Crossman observed.

‘But in this one area, a tight little group composed of the officials at home and the ambassadors abroad, has always managed to impose its will on the politicians. These, of course, are the “Arabists” who monopolize the Middle Eastern department and regard the Middle Eastern embassies as theirs by right. Lesser mortals can be sent to an area where the language is new. An Arabist can hope that once he has been through his special linguistic training and established his special pro-Arab reliability, he can spend a lifetime either sitting at an Arab desk in the Foreign Office or sitting in a British Embassy in an Arab state.’

Crossman recalled that, when he was a minister in Harold Wilson’s government, he had witnessed “the Arabists’ techniques”. Denis Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, Crossman explained,

“was going into business in a big way as an arms merchant trying to cut his ministry’s cost by upping its sales. It was the time when the Chieftain tank was being developed. The Centurion was marketed as the best tank in the world and the Chieftain as one better. The Arabs were biting and the Israelis began to show an interest. So a long dialogue took place in the course of which two prototypes were sent out for testing and development by the Israeli army, which had had much more battle experience than ours.

My Israeli friends were proud of the new example of Anglo-Israeli cooperation and certain they would get the contract. I was sure they wouldn’t, and tried to show them that Britain is not the right place to buy military hardware, since in any Jewish-Arab crisis, when the Arab pressure was applied we would let Israel down whatever promises we had made.”

He attempted to persuade the Israelis to buy their artillery from Sweden. He warned them that in reality they stood no chance of obtaining Chieftain tanks, since as soon as news leaked that such a deal with Britain was in the offing, the UK’s Arabist diplomats would unleash their mischief on the government, claiming that British embassies in the Middle East were in danger of being torched by angry demonstrators – and, consequently, the Israelis would be out of the running.

“Of course, I was right,” his op-ed concluded.

“But what I did not foresee was this total arms embargo in the first week of a war. But I should have known. One of the rules of the unique kind of strip poker they play is that a British Arabist is entitled to have an extra ace up his sleeve.”

Daphne Anson is an Australian who under her real name has authored and co-authored several books and many articles on historical topics including Jewish ones. She blogs under an alias in order to separate her professional identity from her blogging one.

05/12 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: A Tale of two blockades; Palestinian Authority's "Crimes of High Treason"

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: A Tale of two blockades

In Gothenburg, Sweden, a ship has set sail to run Israel’s blockade of Gaza, in a reprise of a now common activist tactic. At the same time, an Iranian ship has set sail from Bander Abbas to relieve the Saudi coalition’s blockade of Yemen, which has half the country on the brink of starvation.
Both blockades arise in what much of the international community regards as “non-international armed conflict” (NIAC). [The reasoning for both characterizations as NIACs is quite strained, in my view.]
In a new post at OpinioJuris, I discuss the legality of the Saudi blockade, showing that much previously neglected state practice supports the use of blockades in NIACs. Indeed, the only time it has been argued that such actions are illegal is in relation to the Gaza blockade. But the international community’s acceptance of the Yemen blockade (though not necessarily the particulars of its administration) shows that any potential anti-blockade norm has failed to materialize.
One wonders whether the new Gaza flotilla will meet a different response from the international community, now that it has remembered that blockade is legal. One also wonders whether the Yemen blockade, which by Oxfam’s description of it has turned it into what one would elsewhere call “the world’s largest open air prison” will manage to get half the international attention as the Gaza one.

Eugene Kontorovich: Libya’s shelling of Cook Islands ship gives New Zealand its own Maersk Tigris moment

The Libyan Navy has attacked a civilian ship off that country’s coast, as it was apparently bringing supplies for an Islamist rival militia, which Turkey has been accused of backing. The Turkish-owned ship was shelled from the shore and then attacked from the air. It caught fire and was towed to port, with at least one crew-member killed.
Some quick observations:
1) The vessel was flagged out of the Cook Islands, a Pacific nation with much the same defense relationship with New Zealand as the Marshall Islands have with the U.S. While under the former relationship, the Cooks must formally ask for assistance, it is unlikely that Wellington would brave the Barbary Coast to release the captured vessel.
It is quite a historical moment when the security benefits of being a New Zealand protectorate are indistinguishable from those of being an American protectorate.
2. It is unclear from news accounts if the ship was in territorial waters, but given the resulting loss of life, this is a matter of international note. One wonders how long it will be before the U.N. creates special commissions to investigate, as has been its past response to the violent loss of life on Turkish vessels.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority's "Crimes of High Treason"

Hamas is at least being honest about its intentions to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. But the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank continues to deceive not only its people, but also the international community, with regards to the refugee problem.
By sponsoring, funding and encouraging Palestinians to take to the streets to "mourn" the establishment of Israel and remain committed to the "right of return," Abbas and his officials in Ramallah are not being honest with their people. They are undoubtedly afraid of telling their people that Israel would never allow millions of Palestinians into its borders. They are even more afraid of admitting to the refugees that Arab and Palestinian leaders have been lying to them since 1948 by asking them to stay in their camps because one day they will return to non-existent villages and homes.
If and when the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ever resume, PA leaders will not be able to make any concessions on the refugee issue. They will not because they know that their people would not accept any kind of concessions on this matter. Once again, the PA leaders will have only themselves to blame for having radicalized their people over the years to a point where Palestinians consider any concessions to Israel as a "crime of high treason." This stance not only applies to the refugee issue, but also to other matters, such as the two-state-solution, the status of Jerusalem and the future borders of a Palestinian state. Neither Abbas nor any future Palestinian leader will be able to reach a compromise with Israel when the Palestinian Authority itself continues to promote such anti-Israel sentiments.

Palestinians really hate not being the center of attention

The Camp David summit between the US and six Gulf states plans to address "the integration of ballistic missile defense architecture, more military exercises to address maritime, counterterrorism, air and missile defense challenges and government infrastructure against cyber hackers."

Obviously even if the official agenda didn't mention it, Iran will also be a major topic. The participants will make sure of that.

Poor Saeb Erekat. Among all the articles written about this summit and its political implications fo rthe entire Middle East, no one is talking about Palestinian Arabs. And his job is to make sure that the world always keeps the Palestinian issue front and center.

So Erekat issued a press release:

Executive Committee of the PLO member Saeb Erekat confirmed that the Palestinian issue will be present at the Camp David summit, which will bring together US President Barack Obama and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Erekat stressed in a statement "that the Palestinian issue in all its aspects is the central issue of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and all Arab countries," stressing that ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem is the key to security and stability in the Middle East.

Funny how none of the Arab leaders mentioned the word "Palestinian" in relation to this summit. In terms of priorites, it is dead last.

Erekat, acting in the same fashion that we have seen the Palestinian Arab leadership use so often, is like a toddler at a dinner party interrupting his mother's conversation by saying "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

Unlike the Palestinian issue, he US relationship with Israel is cause for concern among the Gulf states:

To quote the informal and unattributable words of a prominent Arab diplomat recently: “We always suspected that the United States would sell us out to Iran, but we thought we had a safety net with Israel. The Americans, we thought, would not sell Israel out, but now we see that they are selling us all out together.”

Last week:

Washington on Thursday called Israel’s approval of building 900 apartment units in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem “damaging and inconsistent” with its commitment to a two-state solution.
The condemnation of the move by the State Department came less than a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of a new governing coalition.

“This is a disappointing development, and we’re concerned about it just as a new Israeli government has been announced,” US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said at a press briefing. “Israel’s leaders have asserted that they remain committed to a two-state solution, and we need to see that commitment in the actions of… the Israeli government.”

Rathke said that the US government would “continue to make our position clear that we view this as illegitimate.”

Of course, the EU piled on:

Israel's determination to continue its settlement policy despite the urging of the international community, not only threatens the viability of the two state solution but also seriously calls into question its commitment to a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians.

A simple look at where the construction is planned shows that in no way, shape or form does building at Ramat Shlomo hurt the two state solution.

Here is Peace Now's map of the planned construction at Ramat Shlomo, in red, when 1500 units were planned:

Here is the same area from satellite:

The new construction is on the southern end of Ramat Shlomo, towards the Jewish neighborhoods of Sanhedria, Har Hotzvim and Ramat Eshkol - that are mostly within the Green Line.

In other words, there is no possible way that the land that is being built on would ever, in any universe, not remain in Israeli territory. Not under any peace plan ever promoted by any serious group. Never.

Even the far left Geneva Initiative, one of whose members was PA minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, included major Jewish neighborhoods much further to the north than Ramat Shlomo as remaining in Israel:

When the US and EU say that Israel cannot build anything at all for Jews in Jerusalem who live in areas that everyone agrees would be part of Israel forever, they are saying that Jerusalem must remain static and unchanging They are also saying that the rules for Israeli Jews are different than for Israeli Arabs, who have moved into Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and whose additional construction approval do not get condemned by the EU or US.

This is not helpful to "peace." It just signals to Israel that it is alone, and that its opponents have bought the extreme anti-Israel positions of the Palestinians, and that their rules are particularly against Jews.

Which in turn makes Israel less likely to negotiate over other areas, since the third parties that want to be part of the solution have already signaled their extreme bias against any Jews - and only Jews - living in any part of Jerusalem that happen to live across what was meant to be a temporary armistice line.

Who wants to negotiate their own destruction? Who wants to negotiate under the friendly auspices of people who have loudly announced their bias against you?

Arab writer admits Arabs must take their share or responsibility for "Nakba"

Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar has an article by Majed Kayali that is highly unusual in the Arab world.

While it of course blames Israel for the "nakba" in 1948, this is the first time I've seen an Arab columnist admit that Arabs must take some responsibility for the Palestinian Arab situation today.

Excerpts:

Since the beginning we have regarded the Nakba as the product of a Zionist colonial act, and this is true, but it is not the whole story, or does not explain the truth of what happened.

In particular, the Nakba didn't happen suddenly, but it came within the framework of a series of events and developments, related to the establishment of the Zionist movement, and directing Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the establishment of the nuclei of political, military and economic and educational entities to Israel, before 1948.

The talk about the Nakba raises the question year after year, as to how the Arab reality not only could not do anything for the Palestinians, but for that very reason the Nakba continues. With all due respect to talk about the centrality of the question of Palestine, the love of Palestine, this has not translated in a practical way that makes it easier for the Palestinians, who have been the subject of all kinds of discrimination and extortion and being used in the Arab world.

In addition to all the above, the Arab system is responsible for preventing Palestinians from statehood. Arabs aborted the "All-Palestine Government" [puppet government in Gaza in the 1950s], and they annexed their land, which did not fall under Israeli control, namely the West Bank and Gaza.

Under the Arab system, Palestinian refugees have no rights, no power, under the pretext of maintaining their unity.

So you can not talk about the Nakba without a critical review of history, because history is written recounted a particular story, focused on the creation of Israel, and history is withholding of stories on the responsibility of Arab nations for the Nakba, within which they facilitated the migration of Jews from Arab countries to Palestine / Israel to the extent that this State doubled its population within three years, and 80 percent of Jewish immigrants came from Arab countries.

UNRWA spokesman pathetically trolls for compliments (update)

I missed this bizarre tweet from UNRWA PR flack Chris Gunness:

He is trying to pretend he has a sense of humor about his crying on air last year and by making that bad Photoshop* from an old TV show, but his desire to have people tell him that they like him is real.

And pathetic.

But if Gunness really wants to insert himself in a TV show, here's one that might work:

UPDATE: Gunness didn't make the first poster above; it was done at Israellycool.

05/11 Links Pt2: Behind Breaking the Silence; St. George was a Palestinian?; The Holy Land in 4K

From Ian:

Swedish trawler leaves for Gaza in attempt to break naval blockade

A trawler left its port in Sweden to travel some 5,000 nautical miles in order to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The boat, named Marianne of Gothenburg and purchased jointly by Ship to Gaza Sweden and Ship to Gaza Norway, left on its journey on Sunday evening. It is the first ship in the Freedom Flotilla III to leave for Gaza, according to the website of Ship to Gaza Sweden.
The Marianne will stop at ports in Helsingborg, Malmö and Copenhagen, as well as other ports that will be announced later, according to the website.
The boat does not have room for a significant cargo, but will be carrying solar panels and medical equipment, according to the organization.
It is carrying five crew members and eight passengers. Among the passengers are: Israeli-born Swedish citizen Dror Feiler, a musician and spokesperson of Ship to Gaza; Henry Ascher, a professor of Public Health and pediatrician; Lennart Berggren, a filmmaker; Maria Svensson, pro. tem. spokesperson of the Feministiskt initiative; and Mikael Karlsson, chairperson of Ship to Gaza Sweden.

Swedish deputy PM compares migrant crisis to Holocaust, apologizes

Sweden’s deputy prime minister has apologized for comparing the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean to the horrors of the Holocaust.
In a televised party leader debate Sunday, Asa Romson deplored the desperate situation of migrants trying to make the perilous and often deadly crossing to Europe, saying “we are … turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz.”
Critics, including Jewish leaders, called the comparison to the Nazi death camp misguided and offensive. About 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz during World War II.
Romson, who represents the Green Party, apologized Monday on Twitter, saying “It was wrong to make the comparison with Auschwitz.”

Swedish expo on WWII White Bus rescue mission made Judenfrei

An exhibition on Sweden and Denmark’s “White Bus” operation to rescue people from concentration camps at the end of World War Two has been vandalised, officials said Saturday, with the perpetrators cutting out a large chunk of text concerning the Jews who were saved.
“They have consciously cut out the part that concerns the Jews, nothing else was touched,” Reverend Mikael Ringlander, one of the organisers, said of the attack that occurred overnight to Saturday.
“We held a ceremony in the synagogue yesterday. It must have angered someone,” he said, adding the incident has been reported to police
The weekend exhibition in Gothenburg had been staged to mark 70 years since Sweden’s Red Cross together with the Danish government in the spring of 1945 sent hundreds of buses to German-occupied territories to rescue people imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

"Saudis attacking Houthis because Saud family is Jewish"

Syria-based DamPress has an article saying that the entire reason Saudi Arabia is attacking the Houthis in Yemen is to defend Jews.

The article is called "A war for Israel" by Ali Abboud.

The cartoon says "Jerusalem is that way!" as the Saudi fighter goes towards Yemen. (The words on the garment are a derogatory reference to the Saudi royal family.)

According to the article, the Saudi leaders know that Houthi slogan, "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam." The phrase that makes them upset is "Damn the Jews."

Abboud says that without understanding this "fact," one cannot explain why the Saudis are bombing the Houthis.

According to this article, Israel is most concerned that a Houthi-dominated Yemen would close the Mandeb Strait between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, so the Saudis are defending Israel from that possibility.

Why is Saudi Arabia so concerned over Israel? Not because they are Zionist.

It is because, you see, the Saudi royal family is really Jewish!

Jews who were fleeing persecution ended up in the Gulf and pretended to be Arabs, according to his version of the legend. They prayed with Muslims and buried their dead in Muslim cemeteries.

But those crafty Jews, who took over Arabia, created the Wahhabi faith in order to destroy Islam from within.

This idea that the al-Saud family is really Jewish has been around for a long time.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)