Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 02, 2006

The "Starving Palestinians" meme

Just in the past few days, we see:

Egypt's largest Islamic group accused the world of "aggressive starvation" of the Palestinians Friday, as about 500 people demonstrated against Israel in Cairo's main mosque. - AP

"Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians into submission as the reward for having democratically elected the party of their choice." - OpEdNews, quoting Alexander Cockburn in The Nation in June.

"We are starving. We want a solution, or else there will be a big explosion here," said Imad Abu Sabri, an officer in the Palestinian presidential guard Force 17, who celebrated the Eid festival with hundreds of colleagues by blocking streets and burning tires to protest the government's failure to pay its employees. - SF Chronicle

Given his staunch opposition to the ‘militarization’ of the Intifada it is strange that Abbas is now the recipient of foreign arms shipments. More absurd is the fact that the generous suppliers of these weapons are the same governments that imposed crippling economic sanctions against the elected government in Palestine because it refuses to dismantle its military infrastructure. How cynical that western democracies should prefer to supply guns to a starving people instead of food. - Palestine Chronicle, completely ignoring the irony of Hamas acquiring tons of new weapons rather than food.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is defiant: "They used every conceivable act of inhumanity and cruelty, including starving our people and sowing divisiveness in our ranks, but have failed to bring this government down." - Al-Ahram Weekly

And here's one more piece of evidence of the unimaginable cruelty by the Zionists, especially the IDF:

The IDF meanwhile is stressing the importance of maintaining the flow of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

290 trucks carrying food staples and medicine entered the Gaza Strip from the Karni crossing over the last few days.

Some 400,000 liter of solar petrol, 100,000 liters of benzene and 15 tons of gas entered the Gaza Strip over the same period.

AFP accidentally explains the entire PalArab problem

Reading between the lines of this absurdly biased AFP dispatch, one can discern some real truths.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada will accept a third of some 150 Palestinian refugees stranded in a camp in "no man's land" on the Iraq-Jordan border for three years, a UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman said.

Most of the asylum seekers had moved to Iraq after the creation of Israel in 1948, then fled their new home after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but were denied entry into Syria and Jordan.

They have been "stuck in no man's land," living in tents in a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) camp just inside the Jordanian border ever since, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort told AFP.

Canada agreed to take in 63 of them, she said.

"They're undergoing security and medical clearance. If they don't meet the requirements, some might still be turned away," she said. "At least 30 have already been cleared."

The UNHCR stepped up efforts to relocate them this year, noting their living situation in an isolated desert with extreme temperatures, and an abundance of dangerous snakes and scorpions, has been "difficult," Van Genderen Stort said.

"Their plight was presented to various countries," she said.

Almost 300 Iranian Kurds, who fled to Iraq during Iran's 1979 revolution, were relocated from the camp to Sweden and Ireland, and some Palestinians have been moved to New Zealand, she said.

The Palestinians had received preferential treatment in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. After he was ousted from power by US forces, they faced "a backlash" from upset Iraqis who had been poorly treated by the former president.

Jordan and Syria turned them away, claiming they had already welcomed their quota of Iraqi refugees from the previous Gulf War and Israel was not warm to the idea of them returning to the occupied territories, she said.

"It's been a really sad situation because it's gone on for so long. We're extremely glad that countries have accepted some of these people," Van Genderen Stort said. "But, it will be difficult for those who stay behind."

Let's see what we can glean from this article:

A number of Palestinian Arabs fled in 1948 to Iraq. They were treated well, according to this article. They lived there for some 55 years. After Saddam Hussein's regime fell, the Iraqi Arabs were upset and made life difficult for them, causing them to flee Iraq and then they could not find any country that would accept them.

For all intents and purposes, these people should not be described as "Palestinian." They supposedly lived well in Iraq for five decades - yet for some reason they are still considered "Palestinian," not Iraqi. (AFP's "new home" comment is as inaccurate as journalism can be.) The percentage that have ever stepped foot in Palestine must be pretty small. And even though they were said to be treated well in Iraq, apparently they were never truly accepted as Iraqis, and it appears they were never offered citizenship.

In other words, even the Arabs that pledge solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs do not truly accept them as brothers. Even in the best of circumstances, they will be considered outsiders.

The people who are truly interested in helping this group of people do not come from any Arab nations, rather from New Zealand and Canada. You know - the immoral infidels.

The UNHCR is actually doing what a UN refugee agency is supposed to do - take care of the problem, so that the people in the refugee camps eventually manage to get settled. However, the UNHCR does not consider this a Palestinian Arab refugee camp - but an Iraqi refugee camp, as evidenced by the Kurds who live there as well.

Many Palestinian Arabs also live in camps, but not under the auspices of UNHCR. Rather, the UNRWA takes care of them. And instead of working overtime to find countries that are willing to take them, the UNRWA is doing everything they can to keep them in camps, generations after they lost their "refugee" status under any definition but the PalArab one. While UNHCR considers 3 years to be a long time for people to be stuck in camps, the UNRWA does not.

The AFP refers to PalArab refugees not being able to "return" to the disputed territories, when in fact the only place they could properly return to would be Iraq itself. Note that no one seems too concerned about the fact that Iraq is now hostile to Palestinian Arabs, to the point that they must flee. Rather than discuss ways to eliminate the prejudice and bigotry of the Iraqi people, the world simply accepts it as a way of life. (This happened on a much larger scale in Kuwait after the first Gulf War, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were kicked out. For some reason, that "refugee problem" did not take up any room in the UN docket.)

Similarly, note that the refugee camp was on the Jordanian side of the border. Yet Jordan refused to even give the basic humanitarian aid to their PalArab brethren.

Reading between the lines, one can certainly learn a lot from this article.

Chofetz Chaim's obituary in the NYT and Time

English Hebraica posted a story by Avigayil Meyer where she had heard that the New York Times had written an obituary of the Chofetz Chaim in 1933, and she dug it up on microfiche:

I just found that Time magazine, in its September 25, 1933 issue, also wrote a much shorter obituary, but it is still notable:

Died. Rabbi Yisroel Meier Ha' Cohen. 100, "The Chofetz Chaim," "uncrowned spiritual King of Israel," Talmudic scholar, venerated by the world's orthodox Jewry as one of 36 saints whose piety dissuades the Lord from destroying the world; in Radin, near Wilno, Poland. Thousands of pilgrims sought his blessing in Radin where he founded a yeshiva (Talmudic school). He was "The Chofetz Chaim" (Desiring Life) by virtue of his book of that name listing the forms of slander from which a pious Jew must refrain. A onetime storekeeper, he humbly closed his shop when his popularity diminished the trade of other storekeepers, lived the rest of his life in poverty.

Freedom of the press, PalArab-style

A Palestinian Arab magazine that is published by the PA-controlled Al-Ayyam newspaper has pulled its latest issue:

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Ayaam pulled the plug this week on the latest issue of a biweekly journal it publishes called Al-Haal ("The Situation"). The reason for the suspension of publication was an Al-Haal interview with an Arab who assisted Israel in its war on terrorism in the PA. Al-Ayaam said that the positive portrayal of the anti-terrorist PA resident was damaging to the newspaper's reputation and to its professional underpinnings.

In the interview, the PA dissident, identified as one of the greatest allies of Israel, brags that he advised the leaders of the various PA terrorist factions regarding their tactics. However, Al-Ayaam editors felt that the portrayal of the Arab counter-terrorist was too positive, even heroic. The chief editor of the Al-Haal biweekly said in response that the editors of Al-Ayaam actually opposed those sections of the interview that appear to include criticism of the status quo in the PA.

Either reason is censorship.

And remember, kids...the liberals who are so enamoured of everything "Palestinian" are the ones who scream the loudest about "free speech."

The busy life of Mahmoud Abbas

Judging from the Palestinian Arab News Agency, WAFA, Mahmoud Abbas is so busy doing important things that he can't be bothered to figure out how to pay his people.

Here were his accomplishments yesterday:

He met with a delegation from a religious dialogue organization.
He met with members of the German Christian Democratic Party.
He received a letter from a Lebanese member of parliament wishing him well for Eid and congratulating him for his wise leadership.
He received an Eid letter from the Turkish President.
And from the Uzbek president.
And from a country which may or may not exist (Tatarstan)
He expressed sympathy for the death of a member of the Youth Ministry.
He received an Eid telegram from the President of Comoros, looking forward to seeing Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Presumably he wrote this from his capital in Moroni.
Another telegram, this one from Yemen's leader.
He took a phone call from the External Relations Commissioner of the European Union.
He took a phone call from Qatar's foreign minister.
He sent a telegram congratulating Brazil's president on winning a second term in office.

All these hugely critical tasks must be quite a burden, but as the territories fall further and further into chaos, it is good to know that the PalArabs have such an effective leader.

Irrationality as policy?

Moshe Arens has an interesting column in Haaretz saying that just maybe, Olmert's choosing Lieberman as minister of strategic threats was a shrewd move.

He explains that, in game theory, an irrational player (Ahmadinejad) has a decided advantage due to his irrationality. Since no one can predict what he might do, he can expect the world to play it safe and give him a wide berth so he can pursue his plans.

Arens is saying that Lieberman is (almost) equally irrational and throwing him up against the Ahmadinejad problem may be more effective in making the madman from Iran pause before making his next threat or pronouncement.

There is something to be said for irrationality as policy, keeping your opponents off balance. I'm just not as convinced that Ahmadinejad is acting irrationally in the real sense of the word.

We've discussed before Iran's geopolitical goal: to become the world's superpower.

Ahmadinejad is a sincerely religious man, and his vision of the future is the vision of a worldwide Islamic 'ummah. The establishment of this universal caliphate can be accomplished a number of ways, all of which are happening simultaneously:

Demographically, by converting large numbers of people to Islam and by ncreasing the birthrate of Muslims;
Politically, by making Europe irrelevant and targeting the US and Israel exclusively; and
Militarily, by becoming a nuclear power.

Ahmadinejad is not acting as the head of state of Iran; he is acting as the putative leader of the Muslim world. He has that pesky Shiite/Sunni thing to overcome but for the most part he is ignoring the differences between Muslims and focusing on the commonalities.

His seemingly irrational statements about Israel, the Holocaust and the US make much more sense when one realizes that his audience is not Iranians but a billion Muslims. If he can unify them behind him, he effectively becomes the superpower.

His manipulations of the West may be somewhat attributable to studied irrationality, but I think it is more focused - it is clear that old Europe is so paralyzed with fear of confrontation that they are more than happy to believe anything conciliatory he says and ignore the outrageous parts. Also, any head of state, no matter how nutty, has the opportunity to frame debates, and since Ahmadinejad has started his "wipe Israel off the map" and "Holocaust is a myth" memes, both those ideas have been taken more seriously by the world, albeit in watered-down forms.

If Islam is what makes him act how he does, then coming up with a counterattack is much harder. The only reason acting irrationally works is if one of the possible irrational actions will hurt the enemy more than it helps him, and almost anything Israel (or the US) does would increase Ahmadinejad's prestige and power.

The best policy I can think of, as I've stated before, is a unilateral, severe economic boycott against Iran by the US - as well as against any country that trades with Iran. The main US strength is economic and it is a weapon that is not used nearly enough. It would send stocks into a tailspin but that is a hell of a lot better than a nuke.

Arens has a point, though - the fear of an Israeli first nuclear strike by the irrational Lieberman may slow down the Iranian program. I think a few well-placed rumors that the Iranian nuclear brain trust has been thoroughly infiltrated by Zionists can work wonders as well. (And don't forget how effective a single bullet can be.) But Israel's options are very limited, no matter how many "strategists" are elevated to cabinet positions.

PalArab chaos reigns as everyone is buying weapons

A very revealing article in the Arabic (and not the English) side of the Palestine News Network. (I am doing my own paraphrasiing of the Google auto-translation to make it easier to read):

Qalqiliya - Palestinians are acquiring weapons not only to fight the occupation, but also because of the family disputes and clan clashes that have become more prominent, as well as the use of arms by the warring factions. This is resulting in ordinary Palestinian people acquiring weapons for self-defense in light of the chaos of security problems, the law and the lack of control by the government.

PNN reviews this phenomenon which is entrenched in Palestinian society and diminishes the chances for stability and the rule of law, and replaces it with the law of the jungle.

The rest of the article talks about the black market in weapons, apparently from Arabs in Israel; how the price has gone up as demand has increased lately so guns now cost three times what they cost at the height of the Intifada. Palestinian Arab families are vying to have the best weapons, and bullets are easy to smuggle in from Israel.

Families that cannot afford guns are buying hunting rifles which are manufactured locally by PalArabs.

300 weapons have gone into a single small village in the northern West Bank in anticipation of the coming chaos.

This pretty much proves that PalArab society is doomed. Putting thousands of weapons in the hands of a people who are trigger-happy to begin with, in a place where it is not even conceivable that there will ever be an effective police force or a working judicial and penal system, is a recipe for any Palestinian-controlled areas to become Somalia, with warlords and clans killing each other forever.

The very idea that this could be the nucleus for an effective state is utterly idiotic. We have an immature people who have no discipline and no self-control being given deadly toys. It is a hundred times worse than the most lawless inner-city ghettos in American history.

Which brings up the obvious but little-discussed fact: Even if all the political pieces fell into place, even if the most dovish Israeli government would give all the territories to a PalArab government that pledged unequivocal peace, the resulting Palestinian Arab state would not be tenable. No possible PA government could impose order over the PalArabs without being extraordinarily repressive. Civil war may not be assured, but deadly chaos most certainly is.

It is inevitable that the daily lives of Palestinian Arabs in any sort of independent state are going to be miserable and far, far worse than under "occupation."

But on the bright side - they can always blame the Jews!

Dead PalArabs that I missed - we're up to 142

Since I found the Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group site, which also maintains a list of Palestinian Arabs who were violently killed by each other (or themselves), I am now compiling a list of deaths I had missed in my count since June 25. Here's what I have so far from late June to mid-September.

I am comparing these with names listed in PCHR, my sole source of PalArab self-deaths until I discovered other sources. It is possible that a couple of these are repeats and the names were spelled wildly differently, but I'm pretty sure I didn't record these deaths previously. In general PCHR records more than PHRMG but there are definitely some that PHRMG finds that PCHR did not record.

Tahiea Jirjawy Magazy Camp shooting 28/6/2006 dead cause bullet in the chest
Zaher Salman Mhareka 27 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in head from Tha'r Sleman Moadi when he was in barber and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Tha'r Sleman Moadi 26 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in chest from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Zaher Sleman 27 Salfeet shooting 2/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Basel Tha'r 40 Biet Lahia gun fire 1/7/2006 dead during family dispute
Tha'r Madi 25 salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Faiq Ata Madi 50 Salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Moatasim Qudeih Khan Younis Arm Clashes 16/8/2006 Killed in arm clashes between members of Fatah and Hamas activities.
Mahmoud Amin Awad Jaber 43 Kufur Laqif east of Qalqilia Misuse of Weapons 19/8/2006 Killed accidently by a bullet fired toward him
Wasim Nasim Salman El Masri 18 Khan Younis Police 28/8/2006 Killed by a bullet in the abdomen in Khan Younis
Ra'ed Al Natoor Nablus shooting 9/9/2006 Unknown gun men

So this adds 11 more to the count, which has now hit 141.

UPDATE: 142.

A 30-year-old woman was killed and her five-year old daughter critically wounded after being shot in their home in Kalanswa, Zaka reported Monday night.

The girl was evacuated to Beilinson Hospital for treatment.

Police speculated that the woman, Fatama Salama and her daughter, were shot due to an unpaid debt and that the father of the family was likely the target.

According to Israel Radio, a grenade was thrown into the family's home some months ago.

Israel "Not Eligible for Protection under International Humanitarian Law"

Anyone doubting the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Arab "human rights" groups need only to look at the description of (yet another) international conference about PalArabs:

PCHR and International Federation for Human Rights, in cooperation with a number of Palestinian, Israeli, Arab and international human rights organizations; civil society organizations; solidarity groups with the Palestinian people; and human rights lawyers, academics and experts, will organize a conference on international protection for Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the period 13-15 December 2006 in Geneva. The conference seeks to lobby the Swiss Government as Depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention to convene a meeting of the High Contracting Parties to task a strong international protection force within the OPT to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

The idea of organizing this conference emerged for two reasons:

First, there has been unprecedented deterioration in the situation in the OPT, under which crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians have dramatically increased to include killings, destruction of property and economic infrastructure and a total siege mainly targeting Palestinian civilians.

Second, the international community tasked a strong international force consisting of 15,000 soldiers, mostly European, in response to an Israeli demand to protect Israel after a 34-day war against Lebanon and Hizbullah, although Israel is a nuclear country, which has the fourth strongest army in the world, and it is not eligible for protection under international humanitarian law.

The amount of hypocrisy and falsehood here is stunning:

Even though the PCHR itself reports on PalArab infighting and security chaos in the territories, this conference that is supposedly meant to protect Palestinian Arabs completely ignores this major source of their misery. It would not be a good idea to tell the world that Arabs treat fellow Arabs worse than Israelis do.
For the "fourth strongest army in the world" that is supposedly "targeting" Palestinian Arab civilians, they sure do a bad job. Hell, yesterday Arabs killed more people in Iraq than the IDF killed in weeks.
The last paragraph quoted shows the sheer bigotry of these supposed defenders of "human rights." They are saying explicitly that Jews do not have the right to be defended according to their twisted interpretation of international law. Besides the absurdity of framing the UN as a pro-Israeli force in Lebanon that is solely meant to protect Israelis, these moral midgets make up their own arbitrary rules whereby, effectively, Jewish Israeli is allowed, or supposed, to be killed.

A corrolary to this is that Hezbollah has every right to target Israeli Jewish civilians with cluster munitions, according to the PCHR. Any defensive move Israel does is, by their definition, illegal.

In other words, these people who claim to be supporters of human rights are defining Jewish Israelis as being subhuman who do not enjoy any human rights at all.

Just because someone says they are part of a "human rights" organization does not make them moral. As we can see here, the most immoral and twisted thinking can find a pleasant home as it hides behind high-minded platitudes about "human rights" that are effectively not about human rights at all, but about the abrogation of the human rights of Jews.

Tale of two tortures

From the Iranian Radio Broadcast Service:

The human right groups have slammed U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s allegations in support of torture.
In a recent interview with one of the American TV channels, Cheney approved the worst kind of torture in which the prisoner practically struggles between life and death.

From the historic Washington Post archives:

CRUCIFIED BY THE ARABS
The Washington Post (1877-1954) - Washington, D.C.
Author: Special Cable to The Washington Post.
Date: Nov 30, 1911
Start Page: 1
Document Types: front_page
Text Word Count: 204

Rome, Nov. 29. -- A party of officers, surgeons, and reporters who have been searching the places in Tripoli retaken by the Italians on November 26 found many bodies of Italian victims of the fighting of October 23.... These bodies had been atrociously mutilated. Some of the victims had been crucified and their eyelids stitched so that they could not close them. Some had been buried to their arm pits, their hands lopped off and their eyes gouged out. The agonized faces of many of them suggest that they had endured awful torture before death came.

Car thefts = "resistance?"

I don't want to read too much into an auto-translated word, but an article in the Arabic "Palestine News Network" speaking about the rash of car thefts by Palestinian Arabs against Israelis, refers to the thefts as "resistance."

Both the Google and WorldLingo language tools translated it the same way.

As we've said before, PalArab leaders look at the conflict as a "zero sum game" while Israelis tend to look for solutions that are win/win. Now, we know that "resistance" is a keyword by the PalArabs to justify terror (as well as to justify why they treat their own people so badly). Given the zero-sum mentality, then petty crimes against Israelis become a low-level "resistance" as well.

This is just conjecture but it is plausible. I would appreciate it if someone who knows Arabic could translate the first paragraph for me at the original site.

Anti-semites can't stomach Neturei Karta

Too repulsive to post in full, too funny not to link.

A Jew-hating moron named Mark Glenn decides that the Neturei Karta's anti-Zionism is not authentic enough for him - because they still believe in the Talmud:

Then ‘the good Rabbi,’ (in typical self-absorbed Jewish fashion) not content with his 45 minutes of fame, decided that the remarks I made about his organization and about the Talmud would not be left out there as the last word, and thus, in typical Jewish fashion, –meaning nervy–got up there, and amidst a performance of lisping, spitting, and bobbing back and forth, actually tried to sell the idea to us stupid, illiterate Goyim that the Talmud was a book of ‘peace and love’.
…peace and love. The Talmud, with its scurrilous description of Jesus and Mary, the sanctioning of murder, lying, theft and genocide was a book of peace and love…

…and then, there it was waaaaay back there in the deepest recesses of the conference hall, like distant thunder or like a waft of air that carries with it the smell of something beautiful to behold, that wonderful word that needed to be said…

….’boooooh!’ followed by another and then another, and a few other comments such as ‘just sit down and shut up, we don’t want to hear it!’

And I smiled, not just with my cheeks, but with all of it, my wrinkling eyes, my bared teeth and all of my soul. He blew it. He let the cat out of the bag. Had he remained seated and took his beatings like a man instead getting back up there and trying to defend the indefensible in the typically Jewish way, meaning whiny, effeminate, and Woody Allenesque, then he might have had a chance.

But not now. He blew it and he knew it and we all knew it.

And when I came out of the men’s room wiping the tears away from my dark, semitic eyes, there they were, with their pale skin, reddish hair and bluish eyes, the Men in Black, the ‘good Rabbis’ from Neturei Karta, standing right in front of me, staring at me very intently. They both turned and began to walk away from the conference, and I could not help but notice something strange…Each of them struck at his breast with his fist, as if there were an imaginary knife that was not seen.

I had heard of something like this before, and I believe that it is something called ‘The Pulsa de Nura’ which is a curse within Talmudic Judaism that is hurled at those who are deemed as enemies of the Jews…

The sheer self-congratulatory air of Glenn, who fashions himself a Talmudic expert, is quite amusing, despite his clear and unadulterated hate which is only matched by his ignorance. But it is people like this who do more to disprove the "anti-Zionist is not anti-semite" chorus than any number of scholarly articles.

Of course, this bigoted ignorant hateful drivel was linked to by Google "News."

A 43-year old man near Nablus (not named) and 45-year old Sami Mutawe of Khan Younis were killed by more of those mysterious "unidentified gunmen" that seem to proliferate in PalArab areas.
A Hamas terrorist died while digging a tunnel to facilitate the murder of Jews.
A man was seriously injured from gunhots that were being fired to celebrate a wedding. Notably, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights was quoted in this article but the website itself has not been updated to mention any of the murders or injuries since October 19th. This means that they have not reported on at least 12 dead PalArabs that I managed to find out about through mostly Arabic sources. Which makes me wonder how many I have missed since I started the count.

Also, if this wedding victim dies, chances are pretty good I won't be able to find out about it.

Anyway, my count of PalArabs violently killed by each other since Operation Summer Rains is now at 129. And my count of NGOs, newspapers, wire services, charities, human rights organizations and Palestinian Arab ministries who keep track of these things remains at zero (PCHR being the exception that proves the rule.)

UPDATE: I did find another source that tries to count PalArabs killed by each other, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. But it is also woefully inadequate - they only count 73 in the same time period that I counted about 105. But it is another source to look at, as they do list names.

So there are two organizations that try to keep a count, but neither has updated their stats in a couple of weeks.

UPDATE 2: 130.

(IsraelNN.com) An Arab who was trying to steal at the site of the former Palestinian Authority (PA) airport near Rafiah was killed Sunday evening. PA sources claimed that Israeli soldiers were operating in the area and opened fire after PA police fired over the heads of the thief.

IDF spokesmen stated they know nothing of the incident and that Israeli soldiers were not in the area.

The Nation: Give terrorists a chance

Occasionally I make a quick foray to the Left and get really, really scared.

In an article just posted at The Nation, Stephen Glain waxes poetic about the wonderful Muslim Brotherhood:

Kemal Helbawy is a founding member of the Muslim Association of Britain and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian-based Islamist movement with chapters throughout the Islamic world, including Hamas in the Palestinian territories. It comprises the largest opposition bloc in the Egyptian parliament, with eighty-eight seats, and it administers a network of social services that is far more efficient and responsive than those provided by the state. Brotherhood leaders have been at the vanguard of Egypt's grassroots push for political reform, consistent with the Bush Administration's policy of democratizing the Middle East.
But on October 18, Helbawy found out what all that hard work and credibility is worth, at least as far as the White House is concerned. The London-based religious scholar was tightly buckled into his aisle seat on an American Airlines flight bound for New York, where he was to be the lead speaker at a conference on the Muslim Brotherhood. Within minutes after leaving the gate, the flight captain announced a departure delay and the aircraft was towed back. Helbaway was asked to come forward, where he was met by an official of the US Department of Homeland Security and informed he had been rendered inadmissible for entry to the United States without a visa issued by the US embassy in London.

It didn't matter to the agent that, as a British citizen, the 80-year-old Helbawy did not require a visa, nor that Helbawy had traveled frequently to the United States a decade ago as part of a university lecture series. Orders were orders, and Helbawy was escorted off the plane.

Now, what reason could the evil Bush administration possibly have for not wanting a member of this social-services organization to visit the US?

The State Department would not say why Helbawy was barred from the United States. Increasingly, however, the Bush Administration is using broad interpretation of the USA Patriot Act to keep out foreign scholars critical of White House policies. According to State Department documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the act's "ideological exclusion" provision may apply to anyone who "endorses or espouses" terrorism or who voices "irresponsible expressions of opinions."

Of course - it is because the Bush administration is fascist and does not allow people like Glain to make their opinions known!

Nothing to do with the fact that every major terror group is descended from the Muslim Brotherhood. Nothing to do with the fact that the "moderation" that Glain imagines the Brotherhood espouses is only in relation to people who explicitly call for genocide of Jews, while the Brotherhood is only implicit. Nothing to do with the fact that these Islamists want to establish a world under Shari'a law where Glaim's wife will be forced to cover up, where Christians and Jews pay a poll tax and where Israel will not exist.

In taking on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Bush Administration has aligned itself against the most powerful and authentic political movement in the Arab world. Established in 1928 in opposition to foreign occupation and Zionism, the Brotherhood is the closest thing to an established, centrist party in an Arab world that over the years has shifted rightward on a riptide of outrage. Egyptians are drawn in by the group's message of moderation and tolerance and by their contempt for US Middle East policy, which includes support of Hosni Mubarak, the country's brutal, secular president. The group renounced violence decades ago and has condemned Osama bin Laden and his acolytes as apostates. It is not on the US list of terrorist organizations and gets high praise from many Egyptians--secular as well as religious, Christian as well as Muslim--for its civic-mindedness.

No one is arguing that the Egyptian government is not corrupt, but to pretend that the Brotherhood is truly interested in democracy is absurd - shari'a is not compatible with democracy as we know it, but for Islamists to use it as a means to gain power is fine with them.

Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are all ideological descendents of the Brotherhood, and to willfully ignore that in order to pretend that the MB is a progressive, democratic movement is shortsighted and dangerous. It is also a little hypocritical to argue for "realpolitik" in dealing with the Brotherhood but to toss off the actual current leader of Egypt Mubarak as an evil despot that should not be spoken to. And the naivete involved in believing the MB when they say they are moderate is breathtaking.

To think that the mainstream Left in the US has these beliefs is more than frightening.

Evil settlers do another horrendous crime

The worst possible thing has happened to the PalArab cause:

Jews stepped in and bought ambulance supplies for a Palestinian Arab town in the territories that needed them desperately.

Not only that, but they did it when the Palestinian Arab so-called "leadership" told them that they can't help them and need to "find another donor."

Not only that, but the Jews who bought the equipment are "ultra-Orthodox."

Not only that, but they are ultra-orthodox settlers.

Here's the whole, sorry episode:

Thursday, residents of the Modeiin Elite settlement donated NIS 30,000 worth of medical equipment to an ambulance from the neighboring Palestinian village of Naleen.

The ambulance itself was purchased by village residents, but they didn't have enough money for equipment inside the ambulance. Resident Husseini Nafar said that they originally appealed to Palestinian Authority sources, who told them to "find another donor".

Their next appeal was made to head of Modeiin Elite's security Shuky Guterman, who remains in constant contact with village residents. "In the current situation, there's not much for the ambulance to do other than hauling dead people," he was told.

The ambulance did not even have a gurney and all of the drugs inside had expired. Town mayor Yakov Guterman, a charity organization, and residents of the settlement immediately took action to rectify the situation.

A ceremony in honor of the donation - coordinated by the IDF's coordination and liaison branch - was held at the Modeiin Elite fire station, which afforded village residents a view across the fence.

A delegation from Naleen, including village mayor Muhammad Srur, was escorted through the nearest crossing by IDF representatives.

Modeiin's mayor, the first speaker at the event, emphasized that "saving lives is important to both faiths and is mentioned both in the Torah and the Quran. We hope that the people in Naleen will have cause to use the ambulance for happy occasions such as births."

"Neither the left or right-wing can create discourse between us and our neighbors, particularly Naleen," Guterman continued, recounting that some thousand village residents work in Modeiin Elite, thus creating a daily connection between the villages.

Husseini Nafar, the leader of one of the village clans, also spoke and asked in his speech "to stop the building of the fence that will disrupt our life. We aren't willing to be separated from Hashmonaim and Modeiin Elite.

So folks who are routinely described as the most evil, racist people on the planet do more to help the PalArab people than their "leaders" do. The evil settlers employ a thousand of them, they give them medicines and medical equipment, and they treat them like respectable human beings.

It is only a matter of time before some PalArab terrorist, suffering from cognitive dissonance, will attempt to blow up the Jews of Modiin Elite for having the audacity to do such a shameful act that offends Arab honor.

If you think I am joking, look at the Fatah attack on the Efrat medical center in March, 2002. Efrat had raised thousands of dollars for its neighboring Arab villages to have decent medical care and was rewarded with a suicide bombing against the very people who helped the Arabs the most:

In January, without warning, Channel One of Moscow filmed footage in the Arab villages near Efrat, expecting to hear stories about the 'Israeli occupation' and tensions between the small Arab village and the 16 expanding Jewish settlements of Efrat and the Etzion bloc. However, the Russian TV crew heard the opposite message. They heard only praise for the people of Efrat and the Etzion bloc of settlements and seething anger against Arafat and the "PLO occupation" of their fellow Palestinian Arab brethren in the Bethlehem region. Family after family in these Arab villages told Russian TV that they were getting the best medical treatment possible from their friends in Efrat, while their families in Bethlehem had to bribe officials just to get the basics of treatment from the PA. They also spoke with pride about the school that Efrat had built for them.

All of this was aired on Russian TV Channel One very recently. It would seem that the PA was watching. The clear purpose of the recent suicide bombing attack was to disrupt the existing, proper relationship between the Jewish city and the nearby Arab villages. Yet, despite the threats to their lives from Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the people of the Arab villages near Efrat gathered in an emergency town meeting to issue a statement denouncing the attack in the strongest of terms.

It surprised nobody in those Arab villages that Arafat's police force took credit for the attacks.