Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies XVII

A heroic effort to arrest terrorists, unfortunately thwarted by the fact that the terrorists didn't want to be arrested. Better luck next time!

Hours after the attack, PA security forces tried unsuccessfully to detain a Jihad terrorist in Jenin. The man, who was not identified, was shot in the shoulder during the attempt to detain him.
Eyewitnesses said scores of Fatah and Islamic Jihad gunmen, backed by many civilians, foiled the attempt to apprehend the terrorist and take him to a prison in Jericho.
Local members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's armed wing, voiced support for the suicide attack, pledging to use force to thwart any attempt by the PA to detain Islamic Jihad officials. The group's commander, Zakariya Zubeidi, was among those who welcomed the attack, saying it was "a natural response to Israeli violations of the truce."
Another attempt to detain Jihad activists in the Balata and Askar refugee camps near Nablus also failed after dozens of gunmen drove back the PA security forces after pelting them with stones.

And I thought that stones were not harmful. Silly me.

Was Netanya a terrorist act? PA not sure

Mahmoud Abbas' pretend "condemnation" of the suicide bombing in Netanya included something unusual - an apparent description of the attack as a terror attack. (The fact that this is unusual speaks volumes by itself.)

From AFP:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack as an act of "terrorism" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"We severely condemn this terrorist operation in Netanya," a statement from his office said.

"President Abbas has ordered all the security services to catch whoever is responsible for this attack and bring them to justice."

From AMIN, where we see exactly why Abbas is condemning the attack (and it isn't because innocent Jews got murdered:)

Palestinian presidency spokesman said in a statement that President Abbas “has strongly condemned the terrorist operation which took place in Hasharon shopping mall in Netanya”.

The President issued strict instructions to arrest those involved in and responsible for the operation and bring them to justice.

"These operations against civilians cause the greatest damage to our commitment to the peace process, and the Palestinian National Authority will not show indulgence towards anyone who is found responsible for this operation," the statement said.

(As Soccer Dad noted, Abbas is quite capable of condemning a terror attack on moral grounds when he wants to. However, it is too much to ask him to actually pretend to be upset when Jews get killed.)

At any rate, he was careful to use the word "terror" this time.

But apparently the PA's International Press Center didn't get the memo, because they consistently put the word "terror" in scare quotes:

Israeli security sources said that the "Israel defense Forces" along with the secret services have started a campaign of multifarious activities to undermine the infrastructure of what they designated as "terrorism". And they added that the attention will be focused on the leaders of the Islamic Jihad.

The sources added they saw every prospect of long-lasting activities of such a kind.

Shaul Mofaz came out from the consultation session with all his recommendations ratified by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

The most important recommendations implied: a large-scale military operation in the north of the West Bank; placing Gaza Strip and the West Bank under a watertight curfew; and resuming the extra-judicial assassination against the Palestinian Factions' operatives.

Talks around operating the safe passage were frozen until further notice. In addition the VIP cards of the PNA senior officials were canceled.

Sharon said that these procedures will remain in effect until the Palestinian side proves a serious crack-down on the "terrorism".

He also, arrogantly, held Abbas responsible for the attack, arguing that he was engrossed by the elections instead of fighting "terrorism".

In its comment on the Islamic Jihad operation, Hamas said that the responsibility of the operation rest squarely at the Israeli shoulders, for the Israeli breaches of the truce and escalations were, as it is always, the reason behind the Palestinian retaliation.

Notice the complete absence of quotes when relaying the Hamas statement.

It sure seems as if the Palestinian Authority agrees with Hamas!

It appears that international pressure can make the PA pretend to act like they are a part of the human race, but in the end, they will choose blowing up Jews over accepting Jews having their own country any day of the week.

There really was once a Palestinian Arab state - sort of

A little-known footnote in history that could be an accurate indicator of how any future Palestinian Arab state would be:

In 1948, the Arab League was upset at King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan for his territorial designs on the West Bank. Under their prodding, the notoriously anti-semitic ex-Mufti of Jerusalem set up his own "government" in Gaza in September 1948.

Abdullah was adamantly opposed to this "Gaza Government" and the issue caused a major rift between Transjordan and the rest of the Arab world.

The actual wishes of Palestinian Arabs do not seem to have entered the equation for either party! (click all pictures to enlarge)

The democratic nature of the nascent nation was soon apparent...

Also look at King Abdullah's objection - that creating a Palestinian state was like accepting Partition! (Note also the article in the middle!)

And what is a country without a flag?

Tensions mounted between Transjordan and Iraq over this issue:

Alas, as soon as Israel launched an counter-offensive against Egypt later in 1948, the Gaza government ministers (who no doubt had a great love of the land) fled bravely to Cairo. And then their ministers started quitting, one by one. By March, the "government" was in tatters:

The New York Post published an interesting analysis on the situation back in October 1948:

Rift in the Arab Front

Abdullah and the British Are Isolated
in the Middle East

By OBSERVER

Behind the Arab front there is a rift. The Arab League has set up a government in Gaza comprised of the followers of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. Abdullah of Transjordan has not recognized this government. Hilmi Pasha, who commanded the Arab forces on the Jerusalem front, was elected head of the Gaza government. Abdullah then stripped Hilmi Pasha of his authority as commander on the Jerusalem front and placed the Old City of Jerusalem under a new commander. The Gaza government is on the territory occupied by the Egyptian army.

Abdullah’s legion has done more fighting than the forces of any other Arab state on Palestinian soil. Abdullah hoped to have the entire country for himself, but since Israel successfully defended its territory, he now counts on the annexation of at least the Arab part of the country to Transjordan. His rival is the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. They are carrying on an old feud.

* * *

The British planned that Abdullah’s legion—their own creation—should conquer all of Palestine for Abdullah, which means for them. So they supplied him with officers, money, ammunition and even spies.

The ex-Mufti planned that Abdullah should conquer the country for him. His own “Army of Liberation” under Kaukaji proved to be good only on the run.

Egypt is not at all interested in increasing the British sphere on its border; for many years the entire policy of Egypt has been directed toward getting rid of the British, in Egypt proper, in the Sudan, in the Suez Canal zone. The Egyptians think that if the British should dominate Egypt from the Negev, they would never leave the Suez Canal zone or the Sudan.

Egypt would therefore like to have southern Palestine for itself. Opposition to Zionism is artificially intensified; the Egyptians make war against Israel but they regard the British as their real enemy and Abdullah as a British stooge. Said one of the Egyptian delegates at the Paris Conference, quoted by the United Press correspondent in his dispatch of October 2: “Britain is now considered the Arabs’ number one enemy.”

The entire enterprise fell apart, without ever having governed anybody (but that didn't stop many Arab countries from recognizing it.) The cynical nature of the effort was emphasized in 1950, when the Arab League tried to resurrect the Gaza Government again for purely political gain, as is mentioned in this good overview from the Palestine Post then:

A few notes of interest:

The entire episode was so embarrassingly inept, no Palestinian Arab advocate today ever mentions this as an example of historical Palestinian sovereignty. They prefer the myth of a nation called Palestine to the reality of a short-lived aborted vanity enterprise.
Not once can I find that any of the parties showed the slightest interest in what is best for the Palestinian Arabs that they were pretending to help.
The "government" ran away and abandoned its supposed subjects at the earliest sign of fighting.
Should such a state have succeeded, it would have been just another Arab dictatorship - in this case a theocracy under the Mufti.

Arab pressure on Intel based on another lie

Intel is opening up a state-of-the-art chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, and the Arabs are mad.

No, Kiryat Gat is not in "occupied" territory. But the Arabs are claiming that it was built on the ruins of a town called Iraq al-Manshieh. They demand:

* Intel abandon its investments in Israel. The company’s proposed expansion site is located on land confiscated from the Palestinian village of Iraq Al-Manshiya.
* Israel forced out the original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the nearby village of Al-Faluja after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an armistice agreement sponsored by the UN and which Israel signed.

What really happened is that in the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Egypt and Israel, the Arab residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah and Al-Falujja were given a choice - either stay or evacuate. The pro-Palestinian site Cactus48 has the text of the agreement, although they seem to be incorrect as to whether the agreement was actually part of the Armistice or an adjunct.

At any rate, the implication from the terrorist sympathizers is that Israel forced the residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah to leave. But as is clear from the articles at the time in the Palestine Post, the Arab residents of the area all wanted to leave, the world was quite aware of their situation, the Arab League didn't want to take them in, and in fact the evacuees complained that the evacuations were too slow!

Not only that, but the Jewish community of Gath which Kiryat Gat was named after was not built on top of anything, but was under siege itself during 1948, and was evacuated under Egyptian fire - three months before the state of Israel was declared.

So you may want to email to Intel, the way that Al Oufok wants you to, but to thank them on their smart business decision to continue to create world-class technology in Israel.

As Al Oufok says:

Call and write to :

Craig R Barret, Chairman of the Board
Email : Craig.R.barrett@intel.com
Phone : 480-554-5977

Paul Otelline, President and CEO
Email : Paul.Otellini@intel.com
Phone : 408-765-5551

Please cc your correspondence to alerts@al-awda.org . I'm sure they'll be happy to read your emails!

Iran now embraces negotiation

Amazing how cooperative Iran can be when it is only months away from making the "negotiations" pointless.

TEHRAN, Dec. 5 (MNA) -- Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani said here on Monday that Iran has called for unconditional talks with the European Union.

“Setting conditions for talks will disrupt the process, and I don’t think either of the two sides would want to do that,” he told reporters.

He noted that the preliminary talks would be about the agenda and method of negotiations, in other words, formulating a model for talks.

The nuclear issue is not a complicated matter, he said, adding, “If we all try to reach a logical solution, an appropriate conclusion can be reached over the next few months.[Any guesses as to what that "appropriate conclusion might be? Anyone? - EoZ]

He said, “We are pleased that European states, Russia, China, and member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement have announced their readiness for talks,” adding that Iran regards Europe’s step to resume talks as positive.

“We will try to hold constructive as well as serious talks with the three EU countries (Britain, Germany, and France), and negotiations will continue in order to reach a logical and accessible solution.”

Larijani stressed that the talks would focus on the main points of contention, i.e., assurances that Iran’s nuclear fuel program would not be diverted toward weapons development and Iran’s right to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle on its soil.

“Iran views the future talks as a win-win game,” he said.

“We certainly have a positive view of the talks, otherwise we would never have wasted so much time on them."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Riza Asefi responded to recent Israeli comments that Iran's nuclear program was an unacceptable threat to its security, saying that 'Zionist authorities are well aware that if they make a foolish mistake against Iran, Iran's harsh response will be destructive and determined.'

But, hey, I'm sure that diplomacy will work wonders in defusing the crisis.

Jonathan D. Halevi (News First Class-Hebrew)
On the very day of a suicide bombing in Netanya, it has been reported that the chairman of the Palestinian Authority gave budgetary approval to assistance for the families of suicide bombers.

Each martyr's family will receive a monthly stipend of at least $250 from the PA.

The budget for families of martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded could reach $100 million a year out of an annual budget of over $1 billion.

Your tax dollars at work.

"I believe that this harms Palestinian interests and is another act to sabotage efforts to revive the peace process and to sabotage the Palestinian elections," Erekat said.

Once again, Palestinians say they "condemn" a murderous terror attack - but only in context of how it is counterproductive for their cause, not because it kills innocent people. (As if the most efficient way for Islamic Jihad to sabotage an Arab election is by killing Jews!)

In other words, if killing many innocent Jews would help the Palestinian Arab cause in any way, Erekat would be all for it.

Yesterday I posted how the director of the film "Paradise Now" strenuously tries to distinguish between suicide bombings in Israel and those in Bali, London, Madrid, Iraq, New York, Afghanistan and anywhere else in the world. He said, "Palestine is a different conflict. The Palestinians are being physically oppressed. We face 60 years of occupation. Maybe they use the same methods elsewhere, but to understand anything, you must understand the conflict, not just look to the action."

This is not a unique perspective. The fact that the film has gotten so many awards shows that much of the left, and much of Europe, also subscribes to the notion that Palestinian terror attacks are somehow more justified - and the inescapable conclusion is that they feel that when the victims are Jews, it is somehow more moral. The Palestinian Arab leaders themselves are often quick to condemn attacks such as 9/11 on moral grounds.

Which begs the question - according to the smug genteel Jew-hating intelligentsia of Europe, what could the Palestinians do that would be considered immoral? In other words, once blowing up shoppers in a mall can be justified because of "occupation," what cannot be?

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that a Palestinian terrorist decides to murder a baby girl, gut out her insides and replace it with explosives, sew her back up and throw the baby bomb in the middle of a Jewish kindergarten.

Or let's say that the Palestinian terror leadership decides that while bombing Jews is an effective method of terrorizing Jews, mass raping teenage Jewish girls and boys would also cause Jews to be scared and consider ceding land.

Once the "occupation" justifies terrorism, what does it not justify? There are no red lines anymore, as long as the "greater good" of Jews giving up land to Arabs is the potential result.

Or to put it another way, anyone who considers Palestinian suicide bombings at all justified in any way, shape or form is a completely and thoroughly immoral person, and any moral justifications that they find for their cause is the worst sort of hypocrisy.

And Saeb Erekat is one such person.

Calm down - Iran still months away from nuclear bomb!

Let's see how much further in the sand El-Baradei can stick his head.

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only 'a few months' to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would 'open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution.'

And we all know that a diplomatic Pandora's box would be much worse than hundreds of thousands of dead Jews.

Much better to continue with the effective negotiations that the West has pursued with Iran over the years. There will be a breakthrough, any decade now.

What passes for scholarship in the Arab world

I came across an amusing piece in Asharq Alawsat just now. The author is described this way:

Ghida Fakhry is New York Bureau Chief of Asharq Al Awsat and a weekly columnist for the newspaper. From 2002 to 2004, she was Anchor of Al-Hayat/LBC’s main evening news broadcast live from London. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, she reported on location from Kabul and Baghdad, and interviewed numerous senior US officials, including Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. During her journalistic career, she covered extensively the United Nations as New York Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera and for Abu Dhabi Television. She traveled on special assignments with Kofi Annan to the Middle East and conducted several in-depth interviews with the Secretary-General of the UN. She appears as a guest analyst on CNN, ABC News, NBC and MSNBC. Ghida Fakhry holds an M.A in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and an M.A. in International Relations from Boston University.

One would think that with such credentials she would have at least a passing familiarity with Middle Eastern history.

One would be wrong.

The United Nations marked last Tuesday the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" held every year on 29 November. Paradoxically, this is the day the General Assembly adopted in 1947 Resolution 181 on the "Future Government of Palestine" –a landmark if forgotten resolution that set forth the "Plan of Partition with Economic Union" that was to establish an "Arab State" in 43.5 percent of then British-occupied Palestine, a "Jewish State" in 56.5 percent of that territory, and an international enclave to include Jerusalem and its surroundings. In adopting the Partition Plan, the United Nations committed two sins. The first one, by paving the way towards the establishment of two States, the United Nations legislated a fundamentally artificial political segregation between "Arabs" and "Jews", as if an Arab could not belong to the Jewish faith and a Jew to the Arab world. It laid a barrier between communities that more often than not intersected, had more to unite than divide them. It was a conceptual distinction that pitted communities against each other that had coexisted peacefully for centuries and, aided by the migratory influx of European Jews into Palestine, fuelled hatred and deepened the sense of injustice. The second sin of the United Nations was to adopt a Plan and not ensure its implementation. To say the least, this is undoubtedly the international organization’s biggest blunder.

As the author well knows, there is no paradox to the date that the UN chose to annually condemn Israel and pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs. It was chosen on purpose.

As I have documented many times in the Palestine Postings blog, the life of Jews in Palestine was hardly peaceful (the 1929 massacres would seem to prove that), and to blame the UN for the Arabs' terroristic intransigence against allowing Jews to control any land in the entire Middle East is pretty funny. The separation between Jews and Arabs were wholly the fault of the Arabs who just couldn't stomach Jews in power.

But the funniest part of this poorly-written paragraph is that she is blaming the UN for not making sure that Resolution 181 was not implemented! The Jews accepted 181 wholeheartedly, it was the Arabs who rejected it unanimously - and tried to destroy the Jewish state that resulted.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ms. Fakhry knows these facts as well as anyone.

So the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this esteemed Arab journalist and scholar is simply a liar.

Which begs the question - why do CNN, ABC and NBC use easily provable liars as analysts?

Classic Jewish joke

Q: What did the 'Yekke' say to his wife before going to shul to daven on the night of December 4th?
A: "I'm going to be home a little late tonight, honey. "

(Indirect hat tip to JudeoPundit.)

Reuters' crocodile tears

AbbaGav points out some Reuters' photography bias.

An Israeli soldier (L) inspects a Palestinian man at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron on December 4, 2005. REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun

He notes:

You might think I'm just an oppressing Zionist with no empathy or sympathy. But believe me, I think I -- and indeed most Israelis -- can understand a little bit of the Palestinian's position, and then some. We go through the same checks countless times in our daily lives as well, just to get into the supermarket, the library, the swimming pool or our kids' schools. Nor do our spouses and kids just stand by watching the checks, they get checked too. And once we pass the security check we don't breathe a sigh of relief and hope the next guy gets off easier. No, we pray the security guard is as inconveniently intrusive with everyone else who follows, if not more so.

Haveil Havalim #47 released - another twofer!

I am really thankful that SoccerDad likes my blog, because whenever he hosts Haveil Havalim he always mentions me!

This time, as with #45, I am mentioned twice - for this news roundup from last Friday (which I considered pretty much a throwaway post myself) and for this post where the BBC blames Israel for the internal problems that the Palestinian "security forces" are having. (My "Palestinian Police Phunnies" series is a small sample of documentation that the Palestinian police problems are a little deeper than how the august BBC describes them.)

As I always say whenever I'm mentioned, it is an excellent roundup of the best of this week's JBlogosphere. (Although in the section entitled "Palestinian Democracy" I am at a loss as to why he didn't use scare quotes around the word "democracy.")

"Paradise Now" director shows his true colors

As the world heaps praise on the film "Paradise Now" as an even-handed and honest look at Palestinian terrorists as being just ordinary human beings who are pushed into blowing up Jews because they are forced to by Israel, it is interesting to read the articles where the reviewers are bending over backwards to say that the director, Abu Assad, is not making any judgments on the subject.

But as this article in the Toronto Globe and Mail shows, the director is hardly unbiased (and, frankly, his grasp of the politics is puerile.) A reporter destroyed everything the director claimed about the conflict, leaving only the idea that he just hates Israel's very existence:

By MICHAEL POSNER

I had intended to question director Hany Abu-Assad about his film Paradise Now, the story of two Palestinians, auto mechanics from the West Bank, who decide to become suicide bombers. It didn't work out that way.

When we met during the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, I began by telling Abu-Assad -- a tall, elegant, 43-year-old Palestinian who spends much of his time these days in Amsterdam -- that I considered the film provocative.

"Why provocative?" he asked.

Because it attempts to explain, and thus implicitly justify, the taking of innocent lives, I replied. And because suicide bombing is no longer a tactic that occurs only in Israel or even Iraq. In the current geopolitical climate, it could happen anywhere.

Abu-Assad disagreed. "Palestine is a different conflict," he insisted. "The Palestinians are being physically oppressed. We face 60 years of occupation. Maybe they use the same methods elsewhere, but to understand anything, you must understand the conflict, not just look to the action."

According to Abu-Assad, the despair that turns ordinary car mechanics and teenage girls into suicide bombers is the result of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (and until recently, the Gaza Strip).

But there was Palestinian militancy, even terrorism, long before the Six-Day War in 1967. Moreover, I countered, suicide bombing is not something generally organized by moderate Palestinians committed to finding a peaceful modus vivendi with Israel. It's the work of Hamas, which regards not just the West Bank, but all of Israel as occupied territory. In the film, the two bombers are trained and monitored by just such a shadowy, unnamed group. So where do you stand, I asked him.

Abu-Assad deflected the question. "It's not about where is Palestine and where is Israel. It's about denying the rights of Palestinians in their land. It's about the principle that both have to have equal rights, as individuals and as a nation. Hamas is no different than most of Israel. Most of Israel thinks it's all Jewish land. Hamas wants an Islamic state and Israel wants a Jewish state. So the same, yes?"

Well, no, actually. First of all, the vast majority of Israelis have renounced any claim to so-called Greater Israel. Indeed, the man who was once the chief proponent of that idea, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has become the grand architect of disengagement, handing back the Gaza Strip and a handful of West Bank settlements this summer.

"They have just made Gaza a bigger jail," Abu-Assad maintained.

But the logic of that argument leads to the Hamas position. Whatever land Israel returns, it will always be simply "a bigger jail" until the Zionist cause is finally abandoned.

Look, he said, "the issue is equal rights. Unless they are equals, you will have conflict. There is no other solution." But true peace, Abu-Assad added, can only be achieved if Israel severs its ties with the United States. "How can you survive in a place where you are protecting the interests of someone else?" he asked.

But why would Israel do that, "surrounded by 22 Arab nations, many of which are committed to its dissolution?"

Very simply, Abu-Assad said, "To survive. To be part of the Middle East." Besides, he added, "Washington's interests will diminish when the oil is gone, and what will Israel do then?"

Moronic nonsense, in black and white. He doesn't even try to maintain a consistent position, except that he hates the Jewish state - everything else is a smokescreen to make him sound more reasonable that gets shredded at the slightest questioning.

Which, come to think of it, is pretty much the Arab and leftist position regarding Israel to begin with.

Good news/bad news

Good news

Bad news

Israel Successfully Tests Arrow Anti-Missile System

Bolton proving his worth as UN ambassador

Muslims Defend Israel at Asian Conference

Economist: Israel Growing Faster Than Expected

Iran laughing at EU on nukes

Gaza: Newly Formed al-Qaeda Cell

Rice Envoy to "Monitor" Terrorists crossing into Gaza (and pressure Israel more)

Kill a Jew - Go to Heaven