Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 29, 2005

It's easy to lie when you're wearing a tie

The era of suicide bombing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be over and the culture of violence is changing in the region, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview aired on Sunday.

Abbas, who was in Washington last week to meet U.S. President George W. Bush, said Palestinian-Israeli violence was down 90 percent in the past four months and he was optimistic for the future.

Asked in an interview with ABC's 'This Week' whether the era of suicide bombing was over, he said: 'I believe it is over.'

'We have started to deal with the culture of violence, we stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop.'

Reading this, one would be surprised that someone on Palestinian television called for genocide of all Jews two weeks ago!

More surprising news from the former culture of violence:

Three members of a Hamas cell were killed and two were wounded seriously Sunday evening when a car exploded in the Sagiyah neighborhood in Gaza City, Palestinians said.

Israeli security officials said that Israel had nothing to do with the explosion and assessed that it had been caused by a device that exploded prematurely, Army Radio reported.

And yet more peaceful news:

A Hamas member was killed in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as he tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at nearby Israeli targets, the Israeli Army said.

Clueless Muslim letter-writer says we nothing to fear

I just ran across this from, presumably, a Muslim intellectual printed in a Boston newspaper:

To the editor:
About abusing the Qur'an. Very disturbing to any Muslim (which I am), Christian or Jew (Hindu or Buddhist).

But Christians and Jews, labeled in the Qur'an as the 'People of the Book,' don't have to fear the worst - that the Muslims will flush their holy book, the Bible or the Torah, down the toilet just to be mean. Muslims, not even the most hateful of the bunch would ever do that. I guarantee it. Why?

Because Muslims believe in the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms of David, the Gospel of Jesus. Believing in one God, the Books of that one God (revelation), the Prophets of that God, the Angels, and the Day of Judgment, are the five articles of faith in Islam. So, no. The unimaginable, no matter how mean-spirited, barbaric, or ignorant the West (following the leadership of GW Bush) persists on being, we can all rest assured, the worst won't happen.

Mary Lahaj
M.S. Islamic Studies
Boxborough

Wow. Where to start?

First of all, Mary, the "worst" is not that a Bible will be desecrated by Muslims. The worst is that human beings will be slaughtered by Muslims. I wish you could guarantee that this wouldn't happen as easily as you can guarantee that no Muslim would possibly flush a Bible down the toilet.

And since Muslims are slaughtering other human beings daily, I can't imagine such a guarantee.

But Mary, you certainly haven't been following the news. Muslims have not only flushed Bibles down the toilet - they've flushed Korans too! And Saudis destroy thousands of (non-Wahhabi) Korans and Christian Bibles as well. They have also famously destroyed Hindu temples, churches and the Buddhist statues.

In fact, it is difficult to find anything that fanatic Muslims have not destroyed when given the chance - buildings, people, societies, peace, religious symbols, each other.

No, Mary, I'm not staying up nights worrying about Muslims destroying Bibles. If that was the worst that they did, the world would be a better place. For a Muslim (MS no less) to call the West "mean-spirited, barbaric, or ignorant", without mentioning a word about the depravity of a Muslim world that makes heroes out of the 9/11 hijackers, makes one wonder about the quality of your education.

Daughter of Ziyon updates her blog

The beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon has finally updated her blog with the provocative entry: "Stupid oblivious girls."

Israeli unemployment at 5-year low

Very good news, showing better than anything that the intifada didn't do the damage that the Arabs hoped.

Unemployment in Israel in the first quarter of 2005 has fallen to its lowest level in five years, before the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000. The unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 9.1% in the first quarter, down from 9.8% in the preceding quarter and 10.9% in the first quarter of 2004, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today.

Cancer treatment in Israel saves Arkansas boy

A Cabot family is back home tonight after more than three months in Jerusalem. 14-year-old Dakota Hawkins and his family went there so he could be treated for a rare blood cancer.

After hospitals in the U.S. exhausted treatment options, the Hawkins found out about a procedure in the Middle East not approved by the FDA. Two weeks ago we told you Dakota was suffering complications, but doctors finally decided he was strong enough to make the trip home.

Dakota underwent cell transplants that fought the leukemia. His mom and brother were the donors. And the results, they say, can only be called a miracle. Today Dakota is cancer free.

But friends and family wouldn't rest until they saw Dakota themselves. They waited at Little Rock National Airport Thursday evening. His cousin, Bethany Cameron says, "I don't want to let go when I see them, I’m just so excited.” “It feels like part of our hearts has been missing. It's been the longest three and a half months in our lives,” adds Dakota’s aunt, Donna Cameron. Dakota's cancer treatment came with no guarantee, so the reunion is an emotional one.[...]

Dakota will continue to see doctors and may need to return to Israel for one more cell transplant. The family also expressed disappointment the treatment that saved Dakota’s life is not approved by the FDA. It took hundreds of thousands of dollars for the family to travel to Jerusalem and get the procedure done. They are thankful to the community in Cabot who helped raise that money.

Barry Rubin: Peace is hopeless if the aim of the Palestinians is total victory

It is interesting that this was published in the Lebanon Daily Star. (hat tip to JihadWatch)

Although he is not too explicit about this, the broad implication is that Palestinian leaders would prefer that their people remain pawns and weapons against Israel than for them to live in peace alongside Israel. Which is not much of a "leadership," is it?

The central question of the Arab-Israeli - or at least the Israeli-Palestinian - conflict is whether it is a "normal" struggle over territory or an existential battle set by religion, identit, and other factors much less susceptible to resolution through compromise.

Many observers, drawing analogies from other issues without properly examining the specifics of the Arab-Israel case, conclude that it is a normal conflict and, consequently, can be easily settled if only the right formula is found. In fact, though, for much of the Palestinian side the question has remained one of total victory, in which only Israel's extinction and replacement by a Palestinian Arab, and perhaps Islamic, state extending between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is the acceptable solution.

This is not to say that all Palestinians think this way. Indeed, one could well argue that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his closest allies understand how impossible and dangerous this kind of thinking is for the Palestinians themselves. This does not mean, however, that they can change this thinking in the face of militants, gunmen, Fatah hard-liners, propagandists, opportunists, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other forces. To challenge this basic self-definition of the movement too openly or decisively would be political suicide as well as being dangerous to their personal security.

Only the continued priority that the movement places on total victory, no matter how long it takes, rather than on getting a state and easing immediate Palestinian suffering can explain the course of events. The ultimate failure of the peace process in the 1990s was due to this orientation. In 2000, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat turned down both the opening and later best offer of Israel and the United States as even a framework for a negotiation in which he would have no doubt received more.

The basic rejection of agreeing to end the conflict in return for an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem was due to the view that a long struggle would bring about Israel's collapse and total Palestinian victory. The same can be said of the demand for a "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which would provide a tremendous opportunity to subvert Israel from within. In private conversations, and now openly with the revival of the call for a "one-state" solution, we encounter the Palestinian refusal to accept a peace in which their state lives alongside Israel.

The methodology of terrorism, the continuing demonization of Israel on a daily basis by the Palestinian Authority and its media, the insistence, even in 2005, of officially mourning Israel's original creation, and many other practices, reflect this world view. A more subtle aspect is putting the priority on violence and agitation rather than on building the infrastructure of a future state. In pursuit of total victory - or at least keeping the door open for its pursuit - the Palestinian movement has squandered international goodwill and the huge financial aid it received in the 1990s.

In making peace, then, the problem is not the precise delineation of borders or the status of every square centimeter of East Jerusalem, but this basic conceptual issue. How can there be compromise if Palestinians are daily taught that Israel is doomed and that they will ultimately win? Why else would it not be obvious to the Palestinians that their interest lay in making a post-occupation Gaza Strip into a showcase that would bolster a comprehensive solution as the next step?

This situation is in large part the legacy of Arafat, who never sought to transform the Palestinian struggle into a normal movement for a state. Even in the 1990s he refused to foreclose a permanent "revolution until victory." He made hardly a single speech designed to move his people toward a compromise peace.

Now, ironically, the rise of Hamas to the point of seizing control over the Palestinian movement toward statehood - or at least having veto power over its diplomatic positions - is based on the foundation that Fatah has built. The nationalist leadership told the people for years that Israel would collapse, that Palestinians had a right to all the land, that violence was the only tactic that worked, and that compromise was treason. For decades, including the last one, Palestinians were told that the measure of legitimacy was with those who killed the most Israelis and took the most intransigent line.

This is not to ignore the many other factors involved in creating this situation, from Israel's own positions in negotiations to the corruption of Fatah. But the point is that this history has been funneled through a hegemonic Palestinian conception of the conflict that has not fundamentally changed.

If the Palestinian people were really offered a bold alternative by a credible leadership, they could be convinced to take a different road. But this has not happened. Now, Hamas and a new generation of Fatah militants threaten to lead the movement openly back to where it was in the 1970s. Such an outcome would be a tragedy of monumental proportions on top of what already is one of the greatest political tragedies of the last century, guaranteeing additional decades of futile struggle.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. His latest book, "The Long Road to Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East," will be published by Wiley in September. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter that publishes contending views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

AUT reverses boycott; Palestinian teachers show how "peaceful" they are

Rare good sense from British academics....and more of the usual idiocy from Palestinian academics.

British Lecturers overturned their decision to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities in a vote on Thursday.

Britain's 40,000-member Association of University Teachers voted last month to boycott the academic institutions for actions that it said undermined Palestinian rights and academic freedom.

It also referred a motion to its executive committee to boycott the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The association said last week it would reconsider the boycott.

Meanwhile, Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh, who last week urged an end to the boycott, has been under attack by many Palestinians who have been calling for his dismissal from his job as president of Al-Quds University.

Several Palestinian political and academic groups issued statements strongly condemning Nusseibeh, accusing him of normalizing ties with Israel and acting against the interests of the Palestinian people. (Normalizing ties is a crime, after all.)

Leaflets distributed in some areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip branded the widely respected Nusseibeh a "traitor" and "collaborator." (I see they stopped just short of calling him a "Jew.")

Nusseibeh, along with Menahem Magidor, president of Hebrew University, made the statement in a joint declaration in London at an international gathering of scholars debating human rights.

The two criticized the British boycott against the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University, describing it as "wrong and unjustified." They said "problems should be resolved through dialogue, not through sanctions."

"Our position is based upon the belief that it is through cooperation based on mutual respect, rather than boycotts or discrimination, that our common goals can be achieved," they said in their statement.

"Our disaffection with, and condemnation of, acts of academic boycotts is predicated on the principles of academic freedom, human rights and equality between nations and among individuals."

The Palestinian Union of University Teachers and Employees published a statement on the front page of the Palestinian Authority's daily Al-Ayyam in which it accused Nusseibeh of "normalizing relations with the Sharon government" despite the prime minister's policy of "bullying the Palestinians and stealing their land."

"This constitutes a strong blow to the Palestinian national consensus against normalization with Israel," the statement added.

Umm, if there is a Palestinian consensus against peace, doesn't that indicate a much bigger problem?

Israeli researchers: Empathetic people understand sarcasm. Yeah, right.

Israeli scientists locate sarcasm in the brain

Don't you just hate it when you delivery a zinging putdown line to some annoying person, and it goes right past them?

Well, it turns out that they're not necessarily dense, or ignoring you. Israeli researcher have discovered that the ability to comprehend sarcasm depends upon a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills based in specific parts of the brain.

The research details an 'anatomy of sarcasm' that explains how the mind puts sharp-tongued words into context. The findings appear in the May issue of Neuropsychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The findings could provide vital clues to the best way of helping people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, as well as those with some forms of brain damage, to improve their communication skills.

Simone Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, and colleagues at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and the University of Haifa who conducted the research explain that for sarcasm to score, listeners must grasp the speaker's intentions in the context of the situation. This calls for sophisticated social thinking and 'theory of mind,' or whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. As an example of what happens when 'theory of mind' is limited or missing, autistic children have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls.

'To detect sarcasm, irony and jokes, and to better understand what people mean when they talk, we must have empathy,' said Shamay-Tsoory.

Suuuuuuuuuuure.

A 15-year-old Palestinian was arrested at the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus on Tuesday afternoon after he was discovered carrying two pipe bombs inside a black bag.

On Sunday, a 14-year-old Palestinian wearing a belt with two pipe bombs strapped to it was arrested, also at the Hawara checkpoint.

Security officials noted that since the beginning of the year, 52 Palestinian minors were caught wearing explosives belts or attempting to smuggle weapons through checkpoints in the West Bank.

Even Amnesty International seems to have noticed this, although for some reason they missed 49 of the attacks. And, of course in the end of the same article (not quoted here), in an amazing display of cognitive dissonance, they have to make it "evenhanded" by blaming Israel for arresting kids and without sources, they claim Israel tortures them.

Amnesty International reiterates its calls to Palestinian armed groups to put an immediate end to the use of children in armed activities.

"Palestinian armed groups must not use children under any circumstances to carry out armed attacks or to transport weapons or other material", Amnesty International said.

On 22 May 2005 a 15-year-old Palestinian child carrying explosive was arrested by the Israeli army at the Huwara military checkpoint, at the entrance to the West Bank town of Nablus.

This is the third such incident this year in which Palestinian children have been arrested at Israeli military checkpoints while carrying explosives or munitions. On 3 February a 17-year-old was arrested at the same checkpoint while carrying explosives and bullets, and on 27 April two 15-year-olds also carrying explosives and bullets were arrested at a military checkpoint at the entrance of the West Bank town of Jenin.

Several Palestinian armed groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an offshoot of the ruling Fatah party, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), have used children to transport explosives and munitions, thereby endangering their lives. In some cases these groups have sent children to carry out suicide attacks.

On 1 November 2004 a 16-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank town of Nablus carried out a suicide bombing which killed three Israeli civilians in a Tel Aviv market. He was the youngest Palestinian to carry out such an attack. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the attack. The boy's family condemned those who used their child for the attack.

Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly shown total disregard for the most fundamental human rights, notably the right to life, by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and by using Palestinian children in armed attacks. Children are susceptible to recruitment by manipulation or may be driven to join armed groups for a variety of reasons, including a desire to avenge relatives or friends killed by the Israeli army.

The missing Hawranites

South of Damascus, in what is now southwest Syria, is the area known as Hawran. (It is a Biblical name.) Although there is not much that can be found about them nowadays, it seems that the people who lived there had been there for many centuries, at least since the Crusades. They had interesting architecture (buildings made out of lava) and a very fertile, although treeless, land.

There was a major famine in the early 1930s that made life difficult for Hawranis. Guess where they went? (July 5, 1934)

And they were not alone: (November 22, 1933)

11/23/33:

8/1/34

My email to Condoleeza Rice

Subject: Democracy versus Freedom

Dear Madame Secretary:

I read with interest your comments about the importance of democratic institutions to be developed in Palestinian areas before true peace can occur.

I am afraid that I've been seeing too many people in the administration substitute "democracy" for "freedom." Democracy is not a panacea; after all, Hitler was elected democratically. What needs to be stressed, as Natan Sharansky has been saying and writing, is that the existence of a free society is a necessary precondition to true democracy.

It is apparent that terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah would do quite well in democratic elections, but their being voted in does not make them less terroristic by one bit. Unless true freedoms have a chance to take hold in Arab societies, unless women and minorities can walk around without fear, unless the culture of hate disappears and is replaced by a culture of life - only then can elections be meaningful and fruitful. Until then, I am afraid that elections would just be a smokescreen for more terror with a dignified veneer.

Thank you.

Email to the State Department:
http://contact-us.state.gov/ask_form_cat/ask_form_secretary.html

Article about Rice's speech:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3089434,00.html

May 24, 1936 Palestine Post: Response to Arab riots

Note the "peaceful" protests of the Arabs to the existence of Jews owning land in Palestine. Notice how even then, the Jews stress how they want to live in peace.

Another point mentioned is that Arabs at the time were moving to Palestine "in the thousands" as a result of Jewish hard work in making the land a paradise. And they were specifically moving to the most Jewish areas. A significant percentage, perhaps most, of today's "Palestinians" are descended from these thousands who did not live in Palestine before the 1920s.

Some 2,500 Palestinian Hamas members, unmollified by a now-retracted magazine allegation that US soldiers desecrated a copy of the Koran, streamed out of mosques in the West Bank city of Nablus Friday chanting, 'Death to America, death to Israel.'

They sound like reasonable people who can be trusted if they are elected in the democratic process.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was forced to issue an official apology to the Indian Embassy, after Knesset security personnel prevented Indian legislators clad in orange from entering the Knesset.

The incident occurred yesterday, when members of India's largest opposition faction, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), visited the Knesset while wearing orange scarves. Orange is their party's official color - but the Knesset guards were not impressed. Apparently told to prevent the color orange from being brought into the Knesset because of its association with the anti-expulsion protest campaign, the guards immediately informed the visitors that they could enter - but without their scarves. The scarves were returned to the lawmakers at the conclusion of their visit.

'I found it to be ridiculous not to allow a piece of cloth,' one of the Indian delegation members told Army Radio. 'Those are messages of intolerance. Today it's cloth, and soon it could be ideas that are barred.'

I wonder when the government will apologize to Jews who are not allowed to practice free speech and wear orange - Jews who elected this government to begin with?

I try very hard to run this blog with Jewish unity in mind, and I try not to dwell on inter-Israeli politics and disputes. But when a government that prides itself on the freedoms given its citizens, and on being the only democracy in the Middle East, acts in ways that are the antithesis of freedom and democracy, it is proper to mention it.

No matter what your position on disengagement is, what the government is doing now to curb peaceful protests and free speech is completely against what Israel stands for. For more details, go to disengagement.org.

January 22, 1939 - The more things change... (updated)

I have long held that there is a common denominator in the Arab side of the Israel-Arab conflict: the fact that Arabs do not want Jews to own land in the Middle East.

It is not that they don't want any Jews there, because historically there have been Jews in Arab lands. It is simply that they cannot abide Jews owning land in the area, no matter how legally it is acquired. I believe this is because the Arab Muslim psyche is so heavily invested in the idea that Jews are weak dhimmis, as they acted this way for centuries, and this was some sort of validation of the supremacy of Islam. But for whatever reason, land is the single factor that can explain every Arab action vis a vis Israel since the beginning of modern Zionism. It explains 1948, it explains 1973, it explains Camp David (where Sadat said that he'd rather have war than lose a single grain of sand of the Sinai), it explains the Intifada, the infamous "stages" plan of Arafat, and it explains the entire existence of the Palestinian people as the pawns they became and remain. It also explains the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah.

This fact must be recognized and addressed before any real peace can occur. And, frankly, this would require a complete turnaround of a century of Arab opinion and incitement, something that will not occur any time soon.

Read between the lines: At this point in time, Jews only lived on land they legally bought.

Every single "demand" of the Arabs mean the same thing: Jews should not own land in then-Palestine.

And the doubletalk at the end of the article is well-known to anyone who follows the news: Only when Jews no longer own land will Palestine have "tranquility" again. As in today, those the Arabs declare to be enemies don't actually have to do anything to cause problems - they just have to exist, and when Arabs riot as they did in the early 1930s, it is the fault of the Jews for owning land.

SoccerDad brings this up to date:

The PA passed legislation in 1998 making Israeli ownership of Palestinian real estate a "harm to national security" that constitutes a "crime of high treason" punishable by death. ³³ The murders of five Palestinian land dealers who sold property to Israelis indicated that the Palestinian Authority was not simply using rhetoric.

And an even more egregious example happened quite recently:

The Greek Orthodox church in the holy land, already mired in financial and political scandal, has been accused of secretly selling off a prime Arab area of Jerusalem's old city to Jewish settlers.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, has ordered an investigation of the sale of land and buildings in Omar Ibn al-Hitab square, next to the Jaffa Gate, a sensitive area because its future is uncertain in any negotiated settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr Qureia said he suspected the deal was part of a broader strategy by Jewish groups to buy up property and force Arabs out, "all with the goal of making Jerusalem Jewish".

"It is dangerous and a clear indication of the Israeli plan that targets the holy city," he said.

Notice that no one is accusing Jews of buying the land illegally...just the fact that Jews want to buy land in Jerusalem is enough to drive Arabs crazy.

How can anyone think that a true peace is possible when Arabs clearly do not accept the idea of Jews owning or buying the tiniest bit of land in the area?