Friday, October 14, 2005

  • Friday, October 14, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon

Just remember, Mahmoud Abbas is the leader of Fatah.
On Wednesday, a Fatah gang kidnapped two Western journalists while they were traveling in a car near Khan Yunis.

The two, Jerusalem-based American correspondent Dion British photographer Adam Pletts, were on assignment for Knight Ridder newspapers when six gunmen seized them at gunpoint and forced them into a yellow Mercedes, which sped off toward Rafah.

The two were released unharmed later in the day. PA security sources said the kidnappers, who belong to a Fatah gang calling itself Black Panther, were demanding jobs and money.

PA Civil Police Chief Ala Hosni told reporters that the kidnappers were members of the al-Najjar family, one of the biggest clans in Khan Yunis. He said they wanted jobs in the Palestinian security forces and higher ranks for the clan's members who are already serving in these forces.

In another sign of growing lawlessness, a Palestinian man was killed and two others injured in armed clashes between rival Fatah gangs in the town of Kabatya near Jenin. The victim was identified as Ala Sabaneh, a policeman who was wanted by Israel for his role in terror activities. Residents said the gunmen were local members of rival factions of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
Meanwhile, other PA agencies don't want to get left behind in the terror game:
Israeli security personnel revealed that Arab terrorists, including a high ranking PA intelligence officer, threatened to kill a 14-year-old boy if he did not carry out a suicide bombing.

Wanted Tanzim terrorist Rabi'ah Abu Alil originally tried to employ the boy as a suicide bomber after he and his father quarreled over money. The boy refused, and was taken to an apartment by Abu Alil and another wanted Arab terrorist, Jamal Tirawi. Tirawi is also a high ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer, the IDF said.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

  • Wednesday, October 12, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
If I offended you during this past year, I ask forgiveness.

I wish you all an easy fast.

May we all be sealed for a good year: a year of life, a year of peace, a year of prosperity, a year of unity for all Jews.
  • Wednesday, October 12, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
From MEMRI:
Alongside the numerous documents posted on Islamist websites on how to prepare various types of explosives, 'An Encyclopedia for the Preparation of Nuclear Weapons' has recently appeared on such websites. The 'Encyclopedia' was posted on October 6, 2005 on the Islamist forum Al-Firdaws [1] ('Paradise'), by someone whose nom de guerre is Layth Al-Islam ('The Lion of Islam'). A link to a slightly different version appeared on October 9 in a Yahoo! discussion group called ' mujahedon.' [2]

The 'Encyclopedia,' which contains nine lessons in approximately 80 pages in Arabic, was published under the title 'The Nuclear Bomb of Jihad and the Way to Enrich Uranium' and was presented as 'a gift to the commander of the Jihad fighters, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, for the purpose of Jihad for the sake of Allah.'

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Arutz Sheva reports:
The PA demands the release from Israeli prison of Marwan Barghouti, accused of murdering 35 Israelis. So says PA official Saeb Erekat. Barghouti wants to run in the upcoming PA parliament elections.

Erekat told Army Radio today that the PA also demands the release of Hizbullah murderer Samir Kuntar. Kuntar and three other terrorists infiltrated into northern Israel by sea in 1979, abducted and murdered Danny Haran and his young daughter Einat, and killed policeman Eliyahu Shachar. Danny's 2-year-old daughter Yael was also killed in the attack.

The fact that the PA always demands the release of their murderous terrorist hero Barghouti is not surprising, because in the twisted world of Palestinian Arab terror supporters, he is seen as a potential leader.

But just once, I'd like to see the media ask some simple questions:

Why does the PA, supposedly trying to build a nation, want to see the release of those who killed children? Why are people who make such outrageous "demands," like Saeb Erekat, considered moderates who have no problem appearing on news talk shows as if they were respectable? Why does no reporter ask Erekat to explain his history of lies and terror support? Why, when the PA is supposedly trying to plan for its future as a peaceful member of the world community, does it place such a high priority on the release of murderers? Why, in Palestinian society, are baby-killers considered heroes worthy of emulation?

And are the PA's actions more consistent with an organization that is busy with nation-building or with an organization that is consumed with destroying another nation?
  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Melanie Phillips prints Jerusalem Post quote of EU Parliamentary President Josep Borrell Fontelles:
The EU, which provides the Palestinian Authority with half of the $1 billion in European aid, is not an altruistic player in the Middle East, said Borrell. With its growing Muslim population, Europe is finding that violence in the Middle East leads to unrest within its own borders, he said. 'The conflict in the Middle East is dangerous for us. We are not just here, as the good guy who says, please do not fight between you. We need this conflict to be finished because of its impact on life in Europe. 'As European society faces the problem of xenophobia, it can destabilize our society,' said Borrell explaining that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels anti-Semitism, 'Islamophobia,' and anti-globalization feelings.’


As Phillips points out, "In other words EU support for the Palestinians, which has played quantifiable part in legitimising terror and demonising its Israeli victim, was a kind of blood money, paid to appease a threat which, as is now all too apparent, has merely grown instead.".

Not to mention the incredible shortsightedness of such a policy, because of its ineffectiveness, its naivete and its ultimate outcome of supporting those who support terror.

(Links to the JPost site have been screwy this week, so I could not find the original article.)

  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here is an Israeli who invented a revolutionary light armor made with ceramics that is useful for everything from bulletproof vests to protecting trucks, planes and helicopters from armor-piercing munitions.
With years of suicide bombings and roadside attacks providing 'real life' experience, the Light Improved Ballistic Armor (LIBA) invented by Dr. Michael Cohen at his company Mofet Etzion, has been proven to be highly effective at saving lives. So much so that the company has recently been awarded a contract to provide the armor for over 1000 US Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles (EFV) - the army's main form of transportation in hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.
[...]
LIBA is already being used on Marine vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the Stryker and the Pandur.

"One of the biggest problems facing American troops now in Iraq is the issue of IEDs - improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. The problem is the type of explosive is not very standard - every bomb maker adds his own input. As we know form suicide bus bombings, in addition to TNT, or mortar, items like nails are added to make it more devastating," said Taube.

"The LIBA is able to defend against this kind of threat. There aren't many kinds of armor - outside of 12 inch thick chunks of steel which are prohibitive due to weight - that can make that claim."

"What differentiates our armor from other types - and the main reason why Dr. Cohen's discovery is so important - is that he was able to discover armor that can stand up to armor piercing. With this feature, we have a special niche, and that's why General Dynamics became interested in us. As terrorists have developed more threats that can achieve a projectile that will pierce regular armor, everything's been pushed ahead. It's like musical chairs," he said.
  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
The progressive Hamas movement can elevate women to high positions, if they have the right skills! No glass ceiling there!
Among the numerous people recently detained by security forces is a young woman from the Gaza Strip suspected of being Hamas' first female bomb maker.

Samar Sabih, 22, was sent by Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to train new explosive experts.

Hamas in Gaza is believed to have taught Sabih, of the Jabalyah refugee camp, how to make bombs.

A few months ago she submitted a request to the Israeli authorities asking them to let her live in Tul Karm so that she could marry her fiance, who lived there.

The defense establishment permitted her to do so, as she had no record of security breaches.

When Sabih arrived in Tul Karm, she married her fiance and contacted Hamas activists from Ramallah. Shin Bet sources said she gave bomb-making lessons to Ali Kadi, one of the organization's members who later took part in the abduction of Sasson Nuriel. Sabih also allegedly trained her husband to prepare explosives, so that he could replace her in training others if she were caught, the sources said.

Note also that it appears that the entire reason she got married to someone in the West Bank was just so that she could move there to help kill Jews.

Now, that's true love.
  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
This is part of an interview of James Woolsey, former CIA director, from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He gives an interesting comparison between Wahhabism and Al Qaeda.

RFE/RL: What do you think of the impact of the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Muslim communities around the world and do you think it’s possible to reform Shari'a, or Islamic law?

Woolsey: I think the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has some importance but that in reality it is much further down the line of causes of the current support for terrorism and so forth that one sees in some parts of the Muslim, principally the Arab world, than people suggest. I think you could have an Israeli-Palestinian settlement tomorrow, and the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia would still be fanatically anti-Shi'ite, anti-Sufi, anti-Jewish, anti-democracy, anti-Christian, anti-female, anti-music and so would Al-Qaeda be. Indeed the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and the Islamists Jihadis such as Al-Qaeda pretty much agree except on one thing -- who should be in charge. Should power and respect be focused on one state, Saudi Arabia, or should it be the case that anyone who wants can go off on jihad flying airplanes into buildings in New York and the like. That somewhat mirrors the dispute in the 1930s between the Stalinists and the Trotskyites. The Wahhabis are sort of the Stalinists, they believe in allegiance to one state. The Islamist Jihadis such as Al-Qaeda are sort of like the Trotskyites believing in moving against revolution in all parts of the world now, but they are both totalitarian and that totalitarian movement is not going to go away just because there is a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I would say that the Wahhabis and the Islamist jihadis such as Al-Qaeda are not at all true representatives of Islam, we do not need to take their word for that any more than that the world needed to take the word of Torquemada in the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century that they were true representatives of Christianity -- they were not, they were totalitarian bastards. And the Wahhabis and Al-Qaeda are the modern equivalents.
  • Tuesday, October 11, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
A textbook case of how bigots can and do use political correctness as a cover for their hate.
A teacher working at an adult education center who has been told to stop wearing a Star of David because it 'provokes the many Muslim students at the school' in 2004 is now considering legal action against the ban, the Norwegian television network NRK has reported.

School head Kjell Gislefoss, said he thought that the Star of David can be seen to represent the State of Israel and is fearful of offending the school's Muslim students, citing immigrants from the Palestinian territories.

'The Star of David would be a symbol for one side in what is perhaps the world's most inflamed conflict at the moment.'

'Many have a traumatic past that they have escaped and then we feel that if they are going to learn Norwegian then they can't sit an at the same time be reminded of the things they have traveled from,' said Gislefoss.

But Telhaug has vowed to stand up for his right to wear the Star and has hired lawyers ahead of a possible legal battle.

Inge Telhaug told NRK that his right to freedom of speech was violated by the banning.

'I can't accept this. It is a small star, 16 millimeters (0.6 inches) that I have around my neck, usually under a T-shirt. I see it as my right to wear it,' Telhaug told NRK.

Telhaug, who is not Jewish, teaches the Norwegian language and culture to new immigrants at the school.

'I see it as the oldest religious symbol we have in our culture, because without Judaism there would be no Christianity,' he said.

The decision to ban the Jewish symbol from the school was slammed as 'unacceptable' by head of local Education Association, Heidi Hauge Uldal.

Norway's education minister, Kristin Clemet, said last year that she had no intention of banning the wearing of hijabs in Norwegian public schools.

'It is typically Norwegian clothing that has caused more problems in Norwegian schools,' she said.

Monday, October 10, 2005

  • Monday, October 10, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
As we are in the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it seemed to me a good idea to post a list of primary sources of Jewish learning available on the Web in English and Hebrew. I am not interested in listing every site that has divrei Torah, as there are hundreds of them already - just places where you can find source material. It is listed on the sidebar as "Source Materials for Jewish Learning;" here is what I have so far:

If you have any other primary sources appropriate for learning, please let me know; I'll be happy to maintain this list.

G'mar chatimah tovah!
  • Monday, October 10, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
For a short time this afternoon, a thick cloud cover seemed to cleanly chop off the lower Manhattan skyline. Here's what it looked like:
  • Monday, October 10, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
I just added this link to my Reference section in the sidebar.

It is mind-boggling. Over 2700 separate worldwide Islamic terror incidents since 9/11 are documented there.
  • Monday, October 10, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
Sometimes I run into an article that defines a basic issue in such a way that it should be used as reference material. This is such an article. I decided to reproduce it whole, because the URL requires a (free) password, but a significant number of people find this blog by keyword searches and articles like this should be able to be found from search engines.



The UN’s Palestinian
Refugee Problem

ARLENE KUSHNER

In the aftermath of World War II, when it became apparent that millions of destitute refugees were not going to be attended to by existing organizations, the United Nations saw fit to establish an agency–the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)–to coordinate assistance to them. The UNHCR worked in accordance with the binding parameters and regulations of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted in Geneva in 1951. In the decades that followed, as the problem of refugees increasingly took on a global dimension, the need arose for a global organization dedicated to their assistance. Thus did a relatively small and specialized agency expand into an organization with offices in over 100 countries, an annual budget of $1 billion, and the ability to provide both legal protection and emergency relief. Today, the UNHCR’s makeshift blue tents have become immediately recognizable symbols of humanitarian assistance to millions of displaced people around the world. Combined with measures such as monitoring national compliance with international refugee law, the UNHCR takes as its ultimate goal the attainment of long-term or “durable” solutions to refugee crises, such as voluntary repatriation or resettlement in countries of asylum or “third” countries. To date, the UNHCR has helped over 25 million people successfully restart their lives.

There is one group of refugees, however, for whom no durable solution has been found in the more than fifty years since their problems began: Palestinian Arabs who fled Israel in the period 1948-1949 as a result of its War of Independence. Originally numbering between 500,000 and 750,000 persons, there are today more than 4 million refugees, the majority of whom live in or near one of 59 camps in five areas, making for one of the world’s largest and most enduring refugee problems.1 There is no practicable solution to their situation in sight.

The plight of the Palestinian refugees is, at first glance, fairly surprising. Whereas the rest of the world’s refugees are the concern of the UNHCR, the Palestinians are the sole group of refugees with a UN agency dedicated exclusively to their care: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates independently of the Convention on refugees. The differences between the two agencies are striking: In addition to classifying Palestinian refugees by a distinct set of criteria, UNRWA, through an international aid package of several hundred millions of dollars a year, serves as the main provider of healthcare, education, relief, and social services for its client population–the sort of assistance UNHCR usually devolves to refugees’ countries of asylum. Moreover, while the UNHCR actively seeks durable solutions to refugee problems, UNRWA has declined to entertain any permanent solution for the Palestinian refugees, insisting instead on a politically unfeasible “return” to pre-1967 Israel.2

By operating outside the norms accepted by the international community, UNRWA has succeeded in perpetuating a growing refugee problem. By establishing its own definition of a “Palestinian refugee” and actively encouraging resettlement in Israel, UNRWA not only has failed to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue, but has also lost sight of its original humanitarian goals, subordinating them instead to the political aims of the Arab world. Moreover, by hiring from within its own client population, UNRWA has at best created a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regard to terrorist activity in its midst, and at worst has become so enmeshed in the terrorist population as to be effectively held hostage by it. In the final analysis, UNRWA’s handling of the Palestinian refugee issue is both antagonistic to the achievement of peace in the Middle East and detrimental to the plight of the refugees themselves.

Given these failings, and in light of the existence of an entirely separate and far more successful UN strategy for dealing with refugees under the aegis of UNHCR, a serious reconsideration of the value of UNRWA’s continued existence seems in order.

UNRWA, the first UN agency charged with the task of aiding refugees, was established by General Assembly Resolution 302 on December 8, 1949. The agency was tasked with directing relief and works programs for the Palestinian Arab refugees of Israel’s War of Independence, who had fled into the neighboring Arab regions of Gaza (then under Egyptian control), Judea and Samaria (then controlled by Jordan), Jordan proper, Lebanon, and Syria.

From the outset, UNRWA was granted an extraordinary degree of autonomy, largely due to pressure from the UN’s Arab bloc. Unlike most other UN agencies, for instance, the appointment of UNRWA’s commissioner general does not require any approval or confirmation from the General Assembly, but is rather left to the discretion of the UN secretary general, in consultation with UNRWA’s ten-member Advisory Committee. In addition, UNRWA’s Advisory Committee wields no executive or operative authority.3 Bound by no existing statute or international compact, it was free to set its own definitions and guidelines–definitions which differ markedly from those used by UNHCR. Thus, it described “Palestinian refugees” as

persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.4

The use of this definition is remarkable in itself, not least because its very short residency requirement–just two years–allows the inclusion of a great number of people who had recently arrived in Palestine, and were thus newcomers to the region; indeed, many of the people who fled Israel at that time had only just arrived from neighboring Arab countries in search of work.

Contrast this with the definition provided by the UNHCR, established just two years later and charged with functioning within the parameters of the UN’s Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR was bound by the Convention, the universal standard for refugee status and the only definition recognized by international law. In this version, a refugee is someone who

is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution.5

By emphasizing “country of nationality or habitual residence,” the UNHCR clearly intends to exclude the kind of transients– for example, a new arrival to the area in question for the purpose of employment–embraced by UNRWA’s definition.

This is not the only way in which the two definitions differ. The UNRWA definition also encompasses many other persons who would otherwise be excluded by the UNHCR. The latter, for example, outlines in detail the conditions under which the status of “refugee” no longer applies, stating that formal refugee status shall cease to apply to any person who has

voluntarily re-availed himself of the protection of the country of his nationality; or having lost his nationality, he has voluntarily re-acquired it; or, he has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality; or… he can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has been recognized as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality.6

By excluding people who have found legal protection from established states, or who have refused to do so when offered, UNHCR has sought to prevent expansion of the definition in ways that would encourage the improper use of UNHCR’s services for political ends. UNRWA, however, has done just the opposite: Not only has it declined to remove the status of refugee from those persons who no longer fit the original description, such as the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been granted full citizenship by Jordan, but it confers indefinitely the status of refugee upon a Palestinian refugee’s descendants, now entering the fourth generation. As the organization’s official website explains: “There are several groups and categories of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs): UNRWA-registered 1948 refugees and their descendants, unregistered 1948 refugees and their descendants, internally displaced Palestinians in Israel, and persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 war and their descendants.”7 When UNRWA was first conceived, it did not explicitly include the descendants of Palestinian refugees; however, as its refugee population entered the second generation, UNRWA relaxed the definition of the term “Palestinian refugee” altogether, explaining that “for the purposes of repatriation or compensation… the term ‘Palestinian refugee’ is used with a different, much less restrictive meaning as compared to UNRWA’s need-based definition.”8

Certainly, despite these distinctions in their respective definitions of a refugee, a strong case could have been made for enfolding UNRWA into UNHCR once the latter agency had been established. Indeed, once a broad-based refugee agency had been created, there would seem to be no reason for an additional UN agency charged with the task of assisting a specific group of refugees, with all the bureaucratic redundancy it implies, to continue. Once the UNHCR was created, however, Arab states insisted that Palestinian refugees receiving assistance from UNRWA be excluded from UNHCR’s mandate. As the UNHCR’s website explains, Arab states “feared that the non-political character of the work envisaged for the nascent UNHCR was not compatible with the highly politicized nature of the Palestinian question.”9 Since the Arab states would have had to consent to be signatories for the Convention to have achieved any effectiveness with regard to the Palestinian Arab refugees, the matter of an organizational merger never progressed very far. Ultimately, the Convention exempted those refugees who were under the protection of or receiving assistance from another UN agency. Thus was the anomalous situation of UNRWA firmly established: The sole international agency dedicated to a single group of refugees was permitted to continue independently, marching to the beat of its own drummer.

Whether UNRWA’s autonomy has been beneficial to the Palestinian refugees, however, is a separate question. As the UN acknowledged in its decision to undertake responsibility for the protection and assistance of refugees worldwide, the situation of the refugee involves profound suffering. Without a country to call their own, refugees are denied the basic social, economic, and political rights that most civilians take for granted, and without which a citizen’s ability to lead a productive and fulfilling life is nearly impossible. For this reason, the UN has always sought to end a person’s status as refugee as quickly as possible.

UNRWA’s handling of the Palestinian refugee issue, by contrast, has done just the opposite. For implicit in UNRWA’s decision to expand its already problematic definition of a Palestinian refugee to include a mounting number of descendants is the guarantee that the problem remains an ongoing, ever-growing, and thus ever-worsening one. For some Arab leaders, this may be precisely the idea: So long as the Palestinian refugee problem remains visible and acute, Israel remains a convenient scapegoat on which the region’s political, social, and economic ills may be blamed. Yet for the Palestinian Arabs who have remained refugees for decades, and for their children, brought into the circle of dependence, the fact of UNRWA’s granting special refugee status has for the most part made their situation only worse.

If the difference in the two agencies’ respective definitions of refugees seems indicative of different goals–one humanitarian and the other essentially political–their records over the last half century affirm this in a glaring fashion. Since the UNHCR’s establishment, it has always worked toward the achievement of two fundamental aims: The protection of refugees, which includes ensuring respect for a refugee’s basic human rights and disallowing the involuntary return of a refugee to a country where he fears persecution; and the resolution of refugee crises. This latter goal can be achieved through several methods, each of which depends on the specific circumstances of a given refugee population. Nonetheless, precluding the existence of prolonged refugee situations–for the sake of both the refugees themselves and their countries of asylum–has always been of supreme value to the UNHCR.

So, too, did the General Assembly resolution establishing UNRWA intend its mandate to be temporary: It sought “the alleviation of the conditions of starvation and distress among the Palestinian refugees” with “a view to the termination of international assistance for relief” at an early date.10 The provision of direct relief was originally set to end no later than December 1950; yet its mandate has been renewed by the General Assembly every few years, and its current term now runs through June 2008. This begs the question: If UNRWA was set up as a temporary agency, why is it still operating more than half a century later?

One reason, again, lies in its singular definition of a refugee: By conferring the status of refugee on descendants, UNRWA has ensured an ever-growing population in need of its services. Yet a more significant reason has to do with its policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: UNRWA refuses to consider any resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue other than that demanded by the Arab world–the “right of return” to Israel. As explained on its website, UNRWA claims its services to be necessary until repatriation, “as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948,” is enacted.11 While the legitimacy and applicability of resolution 194, which states that refugees wishing to return to their original countries of residence under certain conditions should be permitted to do so, can be, and is, debated ad infinitum, the fact remains that by staunchly adhering to this resolution, and actively encouraging its beneficiaries to do the same, UNRWA is denying the Palestinian refugees the one thing that the UNHCR takes as its essential purpose for existence: An end to their unwanted status.

Now, it should be noted that by considering a permanent solution the ultimate goal of its agency, the UNHCR is not insensitive to refugees’ preferences. Certainly, the UNHCR recognizes that most refugees forced into exile would prefer to return to their countries of origin. The UNHCR thus encourages voluntary repatriation when conditions permit, such as the cessation of conflict. By providing transportation, financial incentives, and practical help, such as building materials and farming equipment, the UNHCR has successfully enabled the repatriation of such recent refugee populations as the Angolans, millions of whom fled their war-torn country for Namibia, Zambia, and Democratic Congo during the 1990s, and the Sri Lankans, some 300,000 of whom have been able to return to their towns and villages since a Norwegian-brokered truce between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels was enacted in 2002.12

When the threats that caused refugees to leave their homes in the first place do not disappear, however, the UNHCR looks to resettlement–whether in a refugee’s country of asylum, or a neutral, third country–as an alternative solution. Often, these two options are the only means of fulfilling the UNHCR’s stated goal of enabling refugees to restart their lives and, ultimately, of ending their status as refugees altogether.

The UNHCR’s record in the area of refugee resettlement is impressive: Since the early 1970s, the organization has undertaken several large-scale resettlement operations, each with successful results.13 In 1972, for instance, when President Idi Amin of Uganda expelled most of the country’s Asian minority, the UNHCR, along with several other international humanitarian organizations, resettled some 40,000 Ugandan Asian refugees in a matter of a few months to 25 countries. Likewise, following a military coup in Chile in 1973, refugees from neighboring countries found themselves faced with a hostile regime in their country of asylum. The UNHCR quickly established “safe havens,” or camps in which refugees who wished to leave the country could receive assistance and protection pending their departure to third countries of asylum. By the following year, thousands of refugees had been successfully resettled to 19 different countries.14

Nor is the Middle East a stranger to the policy of resettlement: In 1992, the UNHCR sought to resettle some 30,000 Iraqis from Saudi Arabia after efforts at voluntary repatriation and local integration were deemed a failure. Between 1992 and 1997, nearly 21,800 Iraqis had been accepted for resettlement; currently, almost all the Iraqi refugees have found new homes.15

For the Ugandan Asians, the Chileans, and the Iraqis, as well as many other populations for whom resettlement is the only option, the process may entail transporting refugees thousands of miles across the world, and helping them adapt to societies in which the culture, language, and social structure are dramatically different. Despite these obstacles, however, the overwhelming number of refugees, particularly young ones, successfully overcome such challenges in order to restart their lives in their new countries. It is remarkable, then, that the Palestinian Arab refugees–many of whom are currently residing in countries whose culture, language, and social structure are identical to their own–have never been offered resettlement as a durable solution to their situation in light of the political unfeasibility of a return to the State of Israel. Indeed, it is widely accepted among the international community–with the exception of the Arab nations–that an influx of over four million Palestinian refugees into Israel is neither a realistic nor an acceptable goal. For this reason, the resettlement of these Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries offers the only realistic hope for a resolution to their decades-long status as refugees.

While it is true that most of Israel’s neighboring Arab countries (with the notable exception of Jordan) have continually denied citizenship to Palestinian refugees and their descendants–many of whom have been born and raised in these countries–it is also true that UNRWA itself has at no point sought to promote resettlement among the refugee population; nor has it attempted to pressure Arab countries into complying with their responsibilities toward these refugees under international law. Instead, by insisting that “the Agency will continue to serve them [the Palestinian refugees] pending just settlement of the refugee problem,”16 UNRWA has taken up the Arab bloc’s mantra as its own, putting political considerations before humanitarian ones. While a “just settlement” could easily be interpreted to mean, as in the case of the rest of the world’s refugees, local integration or resettlement with an aim toward building a new, productive life, for UNRWA the phrase “just settlement” has consistently and solely been interpreted as repatriation to Israel–a solution which, for obvious demographic reasons, would in effect mean the end of the Jewish state, and which therefore is extremely unlikely to happen so long as Israel remains committed to its Jewish character. This has, in effect, ensured the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem indefinitely.

It should be noted here that the assimilation of Arabs who fled from Israel into surrounding Arab populations could have been readily accomplished; repatriation was, for many of the original refugees, not the only, or even desirable, course of action. Early reports, such as an article in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Hayat in 1959, claimed that the “refugees’ inclination–in spite of the noisy chorus all about them–is towards immediate integration,” and Emanuel Marx, writing in The Jerusalem Quarterly in the late 1970s, noted that by 1968, most of the refugees had found work, “were involved in the economy of the host country,” and “had become urbanized in the process.”17

Even today, UNRWA’s unrelenting approach stands in sharp contrast to the natural inclination of the Palestinian refugees to “get on with their lives.” In 1997, badil, a Palestinian non-governmental agency that promotes the right of return, released a report about the refugee camp of Balata in Nablus that expressed concern with UNRWA’s development programs and their potential impact on the right of return. According to the report, Musallam Abu Hilu of the Jerusalem Open University ventured the opinion that “it may well be that development programs have an adverse effect on the refugees’ demand for return; such programs might lead to gradual and unconscious refugee integration and resettlement.”18

Nonetheless, the goal of repatriation has been a cornerstone of UNRWA’s practices and policies. It was thus, in fact, that the Arab nations, when the mandate for UNRWA was drawn up, pushed through a reference to Paragraph 11 of General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948), which states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date….”19 This single phrase has since been offered as the basis of the claim that the Palestinian Arab refugees have a right, often described as “inalienable,” to return to Israel. This reliance on a single clause of a resolution of the UN General Assembly–which as such has no binding status in international law–has been the basis of UNRWA’s consistent refusal over half a century to work towards the resolution of the refugees’ plight in their host countries, and instead to insist upon their so-called “right of return.” The insistence on resettlement within Israel, for example, has guided its policy of preserving pre-1948 communal structures and reinforcing the refugees’ collective attachments to their places of origin, in an effort to ensure the refugees’ lasting commitment to return. Almost immediately after its founding, for example, UNRWA established a register of refugees that assigned every family a number. This number included a five-digit code of origin in “pre-1948 Palestine.” As a report by badil describes it, “the village structure, as it existed prior to the 1948 war, has thus been preserved by virtue of the registration system.”20 Indeed, the Palestinian refugee camps, first established in 1955, were set up according to those villages left in 1948, with neighborhoods and even individual street names replicated, reinforcing the dream of return.21

The message of repatriation is reinforced in other ways as well. In the summer of 2000, for instance, bus tours were offered for the residents of the refugee camp at Deheishe so that they might visit the homes they left in Jerusalem in 1948. And in 2001, a Palestinian group called the Higher Committee for the Return of Refugees was permitted by UNRWA to enter its schools in order to sharpen students’ awareness of the “predicament of refugees” and to bolster “their sense of belonging to the homeland.”22 Thus, while UNHCR aims to encourage integration into one’s new country of residence, UNRWA strives to do just the opposite: To instill in Palestinian refugees a sense of impermanency, and to nurture their narrative of loss.

Finally, it should be noted that, over the years, groups of Palestinian refugees have been offered opportunities to move into permanent housing–opportunities that have almost always been thwarted. In 1985, for instance, Israel attempted to move refugees into 1,300 permanent housing units constructed near Nablus with the support of the Catholic Relief Organization–without, it must be stated, demanding that they relinquish the “right of return.” Yet the UN intervened to prevent such an occurrence.23 In response to Israel’s attempts to provide housing, a General Assembly resolution was passed asserting that:

measures to resettle Palestine refugees in the West Bank away from the homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right of return… [the GA] calls once again upon Israel to abandon its plans and to refrain from… any action that may lead to the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees in the West Bank and from the destruction of their camps.24

Put simply, if UNHCR struggles to bring an immediate end to the plight of refugees through any means available, UNRWA’s entire efforts are geared towards a single “solution” which is both extremely unlikely ever to happen and not in the best interests of the refugees’ humanitarian needs. Rather it is in the interests of their political leaders’ aims.

The difference between the two organizations is felt also in the respective services they provide and the extent to which they are willing to place a burden of assistance on sovereign states. The UNHCR aims to provide basic material assistance only as necessary, and with the expectation that host or new countries of residence will cooperate as far as they are able in providing for refugee needs. The Convention states clearly that UNHCR is “charged with the task of supervising international conventions providing for the protection of refugees,”25 and the UNHCR website maintains that “UNHCR’s main role in pursuing international protection is to ensure that states are aware of, and act on, their obligations to protect refugees… and cannot be considered as a substitute for government responsibility.”26 UNRWA, by contrast, has been providing material assistance to Palestinian refugees for over fifty years in the form of “educational services, including general and higher education as well as vocational, technical and teacher education” and “a wide range of health services, including disease prevention and treatment, health protection and promotion and environmental and family health programs”–services far beyond the scope of “emergency relief” envisioned by UNHCR as a temporary measure on the road to self-sufficiency.27 Indeed, Palestinian Arabs provided for by UNRWA are the only refugees in the world to have guaranteed health care, primary education, and welfare benefits–as befitting a quasi-governmental body aimed at nurturing a people over the long haul rather than providing humanitarian relief. Not surprisingly, in the course of providing these services, UNRWA has developed an extensive bureaucracy–according to its website, UNRWA’s staff currently stands at 24,324 members28–with one staff person per 164 refugees (compared to one staff person per 2,803 refugees in UNHCR), and 99 dollars spent per refugee annually (compared with the UNHCR’s 64 dollars per refugee).29 The result is a kind of mutual dependence: The Palestinian community has become dependent on UNRWA’s services, support, and employment; and UNRWA has become dependent on its clients for its own survival and operational growth.

In short, by introducing broad parameters of inclusion, UNRWA has inflated the original numbers on its rolls; by declining to exempt those refugees who subsequently acquire citizenship elsewhere, it has sustained those large numbers over the years; and by counting successive generations, it has succeeded in indefinitely expanding the number of refugees. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, by encouraging the expectation of and desire for a “return” to Israel that is in all likelihood impossible, UNRWA has done a grave disservice to the refugees themselves–in effect, subordinating the humanitarian aims of refugee assistance to the political aims of Arab leaders. Unlike other refugees, who have been helped to regain some measure of autonomy, the Palestinian refugees remain mired in a sense of helplessness and frustration, condemned to an existence as stateless, displaced persons.

Of all the problems inherent in UNRWA’s policies, however, the practice of hiring from within its own client population is perhaps the thorniest. Of the approximately 24,000 persons in its employ, all but the roughly 100 “internationals” in executive positions are Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority of whom are themselves refugees.30

UNRWA claims that hiring refugees ensures a greater degree of sensitivity on the part of employees toward the problems facing their client base. Yet there is a general rule of thumb that it is not appropriate for an agency to do large-scale hiring of staff from the population it serves. No other UN agency does this; the UNHCR, for example, maintains by design a certain distance from its client base. The reason for this distance is clear: Employers who share the situation of their clients are vulnerable to conflicts of interest. UNRWA staff naturally share the passions and perceptions of their fellow refugees, and can easily be led to act on them inappropriately. In some cases, this means turning a blind eye to beneficiaries of UNRWA services engaged in terrorism; in others, it means outright involvement in terrorist activity itself.

Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence of such involvement. Incidents like the one on July 6, 2001 are not uncommon: The terrorist organization Hamas convened a conference in an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza with the full participation of school administrators and faculty. Students were addressed by Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who spoke about the “liberation of Jerusalem.” He was then joined by Saheil Alhinadi, UNRWA’s representative from the teachers’ sector, who praised the Hamas students who had carried out suicide attacks against Israelis in recent months. “The road to Palestine,” he orated, “passes through the blood of the fallen.”31

It is also common knowledge that Hamas-affiliated workers control the UNRWA union in Gaza.32 Within the teachers’ sector of the union, for example, all representatives are Hamas-affiliated, and Hamas candidates constitute the union’s entire executive committee, as well. Moreover, an organization called Islamic Bloc, ideologically similar to Hamas, has been charged with furthering the goals of Hamas within UNRWA schools; it prepares the next generation of Palestinians for the “liberation of Palestine” by organizing special events and distributing printed materials. Retired IDF colonel Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, explains how radical Islamic movements have come to dominate the refugee camps: “As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or pelp [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine],” he says, “they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…. Who’s going to check up on them to see that they don’t? UNRWA? They are UNRWA.”33

The full extent of the terrorist infiltration in Palestinian refugee camps was revealed during the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield, mounted in the spring of 2002 in response to an unprecedented wave of terror attacks inside Israel. The evidence gleaned from that operation is both irrefutable and damning: Hardly innocent residential areas, the UNRWA-run camps which the army entered were riddled with small-arms factories, explosives laboratories, Kassam-2 rocket manufacturing plants, and suicide-bombing cells. The camp in Jenin, site of the most intense fighting, provides the most dramatic example of the terrorist takeovers of UNRWA camps. A letter written by Fatah members in Jenin to Marwan Barghouti in September 2001 grants some insight into the situation:

Of all the districts, Jenin boasts the greatest number and the highest quality of fighters from Fatah and the other Islamic national factions. The refugee camp is rightly considered to be the center of events and the operational headquarters of all the factions in the Jenin area–it is, as the other side calls it, a hornets’ nest. The Jenin refugee camp is remarkable for the large number of fighting men taking initiatives in the cause of our people. Nothing will defeat them, and nothing fazes them. They are prepared to fight with everything they have. It is little wonder, therefore, that Jenin is known as the capital of the suicide martyrs.34

It should come as no surprise, then, that the IDF found a number of wanted terrorists hiding inside UNRWA schools; that a large number of youth clubs operated by UNRWA in the camps were discovered to be meeting places for terrorists; and that an official bureau of the Tanzim, or Fatah-affiliated, militia was established inside a building owned by UNRWA. UNRWA’s donors might be surprised to learn that funds intended for humanitarian relief sometimes end up serving the goals of Palestinian terror: In an interview with CNN in February 2002, PA Minister of Labor Ghassan Khatib remarked that every young man in UNRWA’s Balata refugee camp has his own personal weapon, since the local steering committee–an official UNRWA body–had voted that charitable donations received would be used for guns rather than food or other relief. UNRWA’s role in the terrorist activity of the Palestinian refugees is not only a passive one. Rather, UNRWA employees themselves sometimes engage in terrorism. According to the 2003 report by the United States General Accounting Office,35 for example, UNRWA employees were arrested and convicted by Israeli military courts of throwing firebombs at an Israeli public bus; possession of materials that could be used for explosives; and transferring chemicals to assist in bomb-making. Also, the IDF demonstrated that UNRWA ambulances have been used to transport terrorists and firearms in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, himself saw shahid (martyr) posters on the walls in the homes of UNRWA workers during a visit to Jenin in April 2002. “It was clear,” he said in a December 2003 interview, “that UNRWA workers were doubling as Hamas operatives.”36

Rather than confronting these problems, however, UNRWA has stonewalled. UNRWA’s then-deputy commissioner general Karen AbuZayd (she has since been promoted to commissioner-general), in response to the charge of terrorism in the camps, told The Jerusalem Report in August 2002 that “We just don’t see anything like this. These things are not visible to us.”37 And when recently retired commissioner general Peter Hansen submitted to the General Assembly his mandated annual report for the period of July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002–which covered the period during which Operation Defensive Shield occurred–he failed to mention, even in passing, what had been exposed regarding the terrorist apparatus in the Jenin camp. A little more than a year ago, in fact, Hansen, speaking at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, insisted that charges of terrorism are “all made up to delegitimize UNRWA’s work.”38 He did, however, admit in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll,” but added, “I don’t see that as a crime.”39 Others would disagree: Canada, like the United States and the European Union, lists Hamas as a terrorist organization, and makes no distinction between its “political” and “militant” factions.

Whether UNRWA is afraid to interfere with terrorist activity in its camps, or has become so entrenched in the terrorist infrastructure as to be effectively indistinguishable from it, the evidence is clear that an agency mandated to serve a humanitarian purpose has been drafted to further a militant political agenda. Yet complicity in terrorist activity is only the worst element of an entire UNRWA regime structurally aimed at advancing the Palestinian cause rather than relieving Palestinian suffering.

As its original, noble objectives have been lost, and its policies are now geared to perpetuating rather than solving the problem, one might rightfully wonder what positive value UNRWA’s continued existence may serve. The present situation, indeed, benefits no one: Not the UN, whose reputation as the guardian of international law and guarantor of international peace and security is tarnished by UNRWA’s links to terror; not Israel, whose hopes for peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors are thwarted by UNRWA’s unswerving promotion of the “right of return”; and finally, not the Palestinian refugees themselves, who have been denied the opportunity to create new lives, and thus to break the cycle of dependence, frustrated hopes, and perpetual victimhood. In light of these facts, it seems clear that if one is to take seriously the standards of international law set out by the United Nations with respect to refugees, and the aims of its agencies in helping refugees around the world, one must also conclude that UNRWA is not only unhelpful to the Palestinian refugee issue, but in fact detrimental to it.

UNRWA has failed the Palestinian refugees. This failure is the product of half a century of overwhelming politicization of a humanitarian effort. Fortunately, another UN agency exists to deal with the problem of refugees, one with a successful record of resolving their problems around the world. Those nations interested in finding a genuine, viable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem–a sine qua non for peace in the Middle East–should be encouraged to support the end of UNRWA’s regime and the application of the policies of the UNHCR to the Palestinian refugee issue.

________________

Arlene Kushner is the author of Disclosed: Inside the Palestinian Authority and the PLO (Pavilion, 2004) and has written reports on UNRWA for the Center for Near East Research.

Notes

1.The exact number of Palestinian Arabs who fled the region in the period 1948-1949 and the reasons for their flight remain an issue of much contention: Israel puts the number of refugees at approximately 550,000; Arabs claim it was 750,000 or more. UNRWA’s registry put the number at approximately 914,000 in 1950. The fact that more than 100,000 of those ultimately registered as “refugees” by UNRWA were indigents, migrants, and others in need of assistance, but not actually persons who had fled Israel, has further complicated the issue. For UNRWA’s historical statistics of registered refugee numbers by country, see: www.un.org/UNRWA/refugees/pdf/reg-03.pdf.

2.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries,” at www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.

3.Emanuel Marx and Nitza Nachmias, “Dilemmas of Prolonged Humanitarian Aid Operations: The Case of UNRWA,” The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (June 22, 2004), at www.jha.ac/articles/a135.htm.

4.The term “Palestinian refugee” as used by UNRWA was never formally defined by the United Nations. The normative version of the UNRWA definition, described here, is applied to those Palestinian Arabs who took refuge in one of the countries where the UN provides relief.

5.Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Chapter I, Article 1A.

6.Convention, Chapter I, Article 1C.

7.UNRWA Overview, Frequently Asked Questions, “UNRWA’s Beneficiaries,” at www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.

8.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries.”

9.UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford, 2004), ch. 1: “The Early Years,” box 1.2, at www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/template?page=publ&src=static/sowr2000/toceng.htm.

10.United Nations General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV): Assistance to Palestine Refugees.

11.“UNRWA’s Beneficiaries.”

12.UNHCR, Helping Refugees: An Introduction to UNHCR, 2004, pp. 12-13, at www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/basics/opendoc.pdf?tbl=basics&id=420795964.

13.www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3bb2eadd6.

14.UNHCR Resettlement Handbook, ch. 1, “Resettlement: A Virtual Instrument of International Protection and an Element of Comprehensive Solutions,” November 1, 2004. Chapter 1, p. 9, at www.UNHCR.ch/cgibin/texis/vtx/protect/opendoc.pdf?tbl=PROTECTION&id=3d464b239.

15.www.UNHCR.org.uk/resettlement/home_office_scheme.html#whatisresett-lement.

16.UNRWA Overview, Frequently Asked Questions, History and Establishment of UNRWA, “UNRWA Assistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” at www.un.org/UNRWA/overview/qa.html.

17. Emanuel Marx, “Changes in Arab Refugee Camps,” The Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer 1978), p. 43.

18.www.badil.org/Publications/Other/Refugees/Workshop/wkshop2.htm.

19.United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), Palestine: Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator.

20.Terry M. Rempel, “The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and a Durable Solution for Palestinian Refugees,” badil Information and Discussion Brief no. 6 (July 2000), at www.badil.org/publications/Briefs/Brief-No-06.html.

21.Jeannie O’Donnell, “Shu’fat Camp: Life on the Edge for Jerusalem Refugees,” The Jerusalem Quarterly File 6, 1999, at www.jqf-jerusalem.org/1999/jqf6/odonnell.html.

22. Mohammed Daraghmeh, “Teaching the Refugee Issue at UNRWA,” The Jerusalem Times, June 22, 2001.

23.Israel launched a “build your own home” project in the 1970s that allotted a half dunam of land “to Palestinians who then financed the purchase of building materials and, usually with friends, erected a home. Israel provided the infrastructure: sewers, schools, etc. More than 11,000 camp dwellers were resettled... before PLO, using intimidation tactics, ended the program.” Israeli authorities contended that had the program been allowed to continue apace, “within eight years every camp resident could own a single-dwelling home in a clean and uncongested neighborhood.” Joel Bainerman, “Permanent Homes for Palestinian Refugees,” Christian Science Monitor, May 26, 1992.

24. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 40/165, Article J: Palestinian Refugees in the West Bank.

25.Convention, Preamble.

26. UNHCR Basic Facts, Protecting Refugees–Questions and Answers, at www.UNHCR.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/basics/opendoc.htm?tbl=BASICS&id=3b0280294.

27.Organization of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Secretary General’s Bulletin, Article 2.1(b).

28.www.un.org/UNRWA/organization/staff/html.

29.Figures drawn from the respective agencies’ websites. UNRWA cites 4.1 million refugees, although in practice it attends to a smaller number than this; the UNHCR claims 17 million. UNRWA cites a budget of $408 million for the year, while the UNHCR budget is $1.1 billion.

30.www.un.org/UNRWA/employment/organization.html.

31.“In the Second Ceremony for Exceptional Students Organized by the Islamic Bloc in Northern Gaza, Sheikh Yassin: The Current Palestinian Generation is the Generation of Liberation and the Struggle Continues Regardless of Our Sacrifices” [Arabic], Palestine Information Center, July 7, 2001, at www.palestine-info/arabic/palestoday/dailynews/2001/july01/7-7/details.htm.

32.In the 2003 elections for representatives of the UNRWA union in the Gaza Strip, Hamas-affiliated candidates–formally identified with the Islamic Bloc–gained 23 out of 27 seats. These victories made it possible for Hamas candidates to fully constitute the executive committee of the union. Hamas Scores Sweeping Victory in UNRWA Elections,” Palestine Information Center, June 10, 2003, at www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/article_1214.shtml.

33.Allison Kaplan Sommer, “UNRWA on Trial,” Reform Judaism (Winter 2002), p. 42.

34.Yagil Henkin, “Urban Warfare and the Lessons of Jenin,” Azure 15 (Summer 2003), p. 53; Ronen Bergman, Authority Given (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2002), p. 266. [Hebrew]

35.From the 2003 report of the US General Accounting Office, detailing an investigation of UNRWA operations.

36.Interview with the author, December 14, 2003. Gold was serving as a consultant to the IDF at the time.

37.Isabel Kershner, “The Refugees’ Choice?” The Jerusalem Report, August 12, 2002, pp. 24-26.

38.Peter Hansen, “The Response of Western Governments and the U.N. to the Humanitarian Crisis and Its Political Implications,” The Politics of Humanitarianism in the Occupied Territories, conference at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, April 20-21, 2004.

39.“Canada Looking at UN Agency over Palestinian Connection,” CBC News, October 3, 2004, at www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/10/03/UNRWA041003.html.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

  • Sunday, October 09, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
In yet another example of the writers for the mainstream media being utterly clueless, we have this:
Israel has offered Pakistan assistance in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, Israeli officials said Sunday, in the latest sign that relations between the countries are warming.

Now, relations between Israel and Pakistan may or may not be warming, but Israel's offer has nothing to do with that. Remember in 2004 when Iran was hit by a major quake, Israel offered assistance and Iran refused?

And even after this refusal, Jewish and Israeli groups still went out of their way to help the victims anyway?

I suppose that the mainstream media cannot even fathom that Israel could possibly want to help disaster victims without a selfish angle.

Friday, October 07, 2005

  • Friday, October 07, 2005
  • Elder of Ziyon
A neat little tidbit from the AP:
A previously unknown group on Friday said it had kidnapped three Hamas officials in the West Bank, accusing the Islamic terror group of putting itself above the law.

Palestinian security officials confirmed the kidnappings of Bassem Abeido, in Hebron, Hassan Safi in Bethlehem and Riad Abdel Karim al-Raz in Tulkarem. The three men, all local leaders of the Islamic militant group, were abducted by gunmen late Thursday, though Karim was released early Friday.

A group calling itself the Omar bin al-Khatab Brigades claimed responsibility for the abductions. 'Hamas doesn't care about the Palestinian law,' the group said in a leaflet."

That'll teach 'em!

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