Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 28, 2006

My best of 2006 (streamlined)

This was an interesting exercise. I tried going through all my posts and found dozens that I liked - it is much harder to pick only a few than I expected.

It was worthwhile, though - because looking at my posts from months ago, many of which I had forgotten about, allowed me to evaluate my posting style a little more objectively and I must say that I am proud of this blog. I found relatively few posts that look incorrect or silly in retrospect - on the contrary, I think almost all of my longer essays could be posted today with little loss of relevance.

So I am arbitrarily choosing only some posts that people created trackbacks to in their own postings.

Thanks for reading!

The most moral army in history
Some of those female prisoners
The problem with the BBC
The perfect weapon
Using Israel's morality as a weapon
Building an economy under fire: The Jews of 1939

Olmert recognizes an Arab Palestinian State

Some details on the meeting Olmert had with Abbas, from the Forward:

The meeting — long expected, oft postponed and arranged in secrecy — was the first between the two since Olmert became prime minister. Strikingly, Olmert made a point of treating Abbas as a head of state. A red, green, black and white flag waved next to the blue-and-white Israeli one in the parking lot of Olmert’s residence — the first time the Palestinian banner has been displayed at an Israeli institution. Olmert greet Abbas as “Mr. President” — dropping the Israeli insistence on the lesser title “chairman” for the head of the Palestinian Authority.

The symbols were aimed at announcing that Olmert regards Abbas as a negotiating partner. “The prime minister stated very clearly that he is reaching out to those in the Palestinian Authority who support a two-state solution and achieving [it] through dialogue,” Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin told the Forward this week. “We are trying… to show the Palestinian people that there are more benefits to non-violence.”

And we all know how non-violent the past month was!

And we all know how committed to peace Fatah is!

Jameel is right - they tell jokes about Israel in Chelm.

Let's hope that Israel can find leaders who aren't quite as funny.

Morning links

Judeopundit opines on Hezbollah perfume.
Jameel at the Muqata has the best title of the morning.
Omri elaborates on a past Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Smooth enlightens us to another source of PalArab terror funding.

Where a month ago is ancient history

Let's all jump into the Wayback Machine and travel far, far back into the shrouded and mysterious past. Let us unearth the words and deeds of the previous generations and try to learn from the ancients.

Yes, let's decipher the yellowed and crumbling newspaper known as Ha'aretz from November 27, 2006:

Olmert said Sunday during a visit in the Negev that "the State of Israel is so strong that it can allow itself some restraint in order to give a chance to a cease-fire."

"All of these things ultimately could lead to one thing - the opening of serious, real, open and direct negotiations between us," Olmert said. "So that we can move forward towards a comprehensive agreement between us and the Palestinians."

"Even though there are still violations of the cease-fire by the Palestinian side, I have instructed our defense officials not to respond, to show restraint, and to give this cease-fire a chance to take full effect," he said during a ceremony at a high school in the Bedouin town of Rahat, adding "the government of Israel will not miss this opportunity for calm."

Palestinian Authority security forces began deploying along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel on Sunday, in order to prevent Palestinian militants from firing Qassam rockets at Israel in violation of the cease-fire.

A short time earlier, Abbas ordered the heads of Palestinian security forces to ensure that Gaza militants respect the truce, Palestinian officials said.

Three Qassam rockets hit Israel in the first few hours after a truce between Israel and Palestinian militant factions in the Gaza Strip went into effect, causing no damage or injuries. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said all major militant factions in the Gaza Strip had reaffirmed their commitment to the truce, Reuters reported.

It was not immediately clear whether there was an explicit order by Abbas to use force to stop rocket fire by militants.

A senior official in Jerusalem said Israel would wait several hours to see if the attacks were isolated breaches or a full-scale violation of the agreement before deciding whether to respond.

Despite the claims of responsibility for the rockets, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Ghazi Hamad, said all the armed groups had committed to the agreement, and any violations were rogue acts.

"There is a 100 percent effort to make this work, but there is no guarantee of 100 percent results," Hamad said.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday morning that any attempt to fire into Israeli territories would be considered a breach of the cease-fire and treated with severity.

According to Peretz, Israel is interested in quiet, but would not accept attacks on its citizens.

PICCR: 34 PalArabs killed by each other in December so far

WAFA reports on the latest PICCR ("Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights") monthly report, which inexplicably is not on their website (neither is last month's.) But their numbers track pretty closely to mine, so assuming overlap that means I missed at least one and my count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other since late June stands at 203.

PICCR breaks it down to 28 killed in Gaza and 6 in the West Bank.

Even though PICCR was established by that giant of human rights, Yasir Arafat, it appears to take its job as an independent auditor of PA institutions seriously. It blames the government and the "security forces" squarely for the lack of a judicial process in the territories.

It is a shame that their website is so poor, because very few groups and NGOs seem to take a real interest in internal PalArab problems and instead spend their time trying to find ways to blame Israel for everything. WAFA itself is a PA mouthpiece and never reports on most of the murders in the territories, even though its Arabic site updates its news stories every few minutes.

"Totally Jewish" columnist supports Neturei Karta

I can't even quote this drivel.

The upshot is that we shouldn't condemn NK because they bring Jewish books with them to Iran and give them to the dwindling Persian Jewish community (which he mislabels as "Arab.")

Perhaps his next column will praise Hamas for the great work it does with orphans.

Thoroughly sick.

Attack on Rachel's Tomb? Just terror as usual.

A tiny news item in Arutz-7:

Arab terrorists threw a pipe bomb at Rachel's Tomb late Wednesday afternoon. The bomb caused no injuries or damage. Army forces are searching for the terrorists.

A similar news brief was printed in YNet, I could find no mention in the Jerusalem Post nor Haaretz yet.

Let's look at some context.

If a Koran gets desecrated anywhere in the world, it makes headlines. If a Jew would throw a pipe-bomb at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the supposed third-holiest site in Islam, it would cause deadly riots and possibly a war.

But a pipe-bomb aimed at Judaism's third-holiest site barely rates a paragraph even in the most religious-Zionist publication in Israel. No one will make a big deal over it, there will be no angry editorials or calls for holy war or condemnations or apologies.

Even though quantitatively and qualitatively, it is equivalent to a Jew attacking the Dome of the Rock.

The reason for the lack of interest is simple: it is because there have been countless attacks on Rachel's Tomb. It is no longer news. It is no big deal that, yet again, some Arabs tried to destroy or damage an enduring symbol of Judaism. It falls below the radar of our consciousness.

But because of its banality, because of the sheer number of similar and constant attacks on not just Israel but Judaism from adherents of Islam, all of us eventually get numbed to the fact that this is an outrage.

By virtue of the sheer number of similar outrages done by Arabs day in and day out, the Arabs end up getting a free pass from the world who no longer expect them to act any better. Attacks such as this can happen without any fear of consequence, and the Palestinian Arab community as a whole supports and cheers such attacks while the world yawns.

To the average Joe who skims the headlines or watches the news on TV, this morning's attack against a major shrine in Judaism never happened. And as a result, the average person can be forgiven for assuming that each side is equally wrong, that each side does bad stuff, that it is everybody's fault. There is simply no easy way to know the truth.

Where the press fails is in not showing context. If you put it in quantitative and qualitative terms, by any measure, you can see that what the Palestinian Arabs are doing is hundreds of times worse than the worst that the Israelis are doing. Rachel's Tomb is not a Zionist outpost, it is a holy shrine for Judaism. And we are not even mentioning the crimes done constantly against the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Joseph's Tomb or the site of the Second Temple.

If someone repeats the same crime every day without consequence, eventually nobody cares. Until the victim finally decides to do something about it.

Then he becomes the "aggressor" who is instigating a "cycle of violence."

I'm a hateful racist and fascist!

An Egyptian-American blogger takes me to task and lumps me in as an example of racism in Zionist blogs:

Moving on to the Zionist (Atheists and Jews) bloggers, I happened to notice that they are regular visitors to the Egyptian and Arab blogs. One can't help noticing their hateful, racist and fascist statements towards Arabs and Muslims. They constantly claim antisemitism if you disagree with their statements. Some claim that Arabs and Egyptians on the blogs are lying about the Zionists and Israel, others freely label anyone who criticizes as a terrorist. The most used argument is that Egyptians and Arabs are not tolerant towards Jews in general.

Of course, I am always interested in any valid criticism, so I looked to see what examples she came up with to prove that I'm one of the Evil Racist Zionists.

And the answer? I didn't wish my readers a merry Christmas or a happy Eid!

Tworset self-righteously shows that she wished her readers a happy Chanukah, therefore proving her multi-culti bonafides.

I suppose she was too blinded by her hate to notice that I never wished my readers a happy Chanukah, either.

But since she has now established both that she is as loving and tolerant as anyone else, one wonders why a previous entry of hers seems to blame all American Jews for the "war on Christmas:"

In which country do 3% of the population set the agenda for 97% of the remaining majority? Please don't blame Muslims for wanting to practice their religion and culture when you allow vocal Jewish fascists for forcing their icons and religion on the rest of us. Lets be quite clear that "Christ" is being taken out of Christmas is not because of "Islamofascists" or Nasrallah or Iran. The de-Christianization and the increasing Judaicization of America is because of one subsect group alone--the vocal Jews with Judaism and arrogance as dual chips on their shoulders.

But I'm sure that her "happy Chanukah" was very, very sincere.

Since the proof of my fascism and racism was my terrible omission of seasonal gretings, then according to this very tolerant and loving mom, crimes of omission must be proof of racism. By that standard, I wonder why she didn't comment on this lovely little item:

The snow has already settled on the mountains further north, but the Christians of the Iraqi city of Mosul are scared to put festive decorations outside their homes this year. Their ancestors settled here in the 1st century AD, yet as teacher Jamal Fadi has discovered, some of their Muslim neighbours want this Christmas to be their last.

"A letter was delivered to my door with two bullets placed on top of it," said Mr Fadi, 32, standing watchfully in the neat garden of his two-storey villa. "It said: 'Leave, crusaders, or we will cut your heads off.' They want us to go from Mosul completely."

After months as a nervous bystander to the spiralling civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Iraq's Christian minority now faces the spectre of sectarian violence coming to their traditional home city. They fear that al Qaeda-backed zealots within the Sunni community, which forms the bulk of Mosul's one million population, want to end nearly 1,500 years of co-existence with an onslaught of ethnic cleansing.

But the Jews who supposedly want the stop Christmas are the bigots, right, Tworset?

Now, of course criticizing a blog for not mentioning something is absurd. And criticizing a blog as racist and fascist without any evidence is the cyberspace equivalence of slander.

I would argue that her little screed about Jews is far more hateful and far less accurate than anything I have ever posted here, and if she wants to actually disprove or argue with anything I have actually written, I welcome her to.

And if she is reading this: a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Carter intervened for Nazi war criminal in 1987

I have been resistant to calling Jimmy Carter an anti-semite, but articles like this make me wonder:

In hindsight, Carter book seen
as part of an awkward pattern
By Neal Sher
December 26, 2006

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (JTA) — It was the spring of 1987 and the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department’s Nazi prosecution unit, which I headed at the time, was in the midst of one of our most productive and historic periods.

On April 27, as a result of an in-depth OSI investigation and despite resistance at the State Department, Austrian President and former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who had served as an officer in the Nazi army, was barred from setting foot ever again on U.S. soil.

One week earlier, after eight years of bruising litigation, we deported to the Soviet Union one Karl Linnas, who had been chief of a Nazi concentration camp in Estonia. To do so, we had to outmaneuver concerted attempts to block the deportation by Patrick Buchanan, the Reagan White House’s communications director, and my boss, U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese.

A month later, OSI announced the loss of citizenship and removal from the United States of a former Chicago resident. Martin Bartesch admitted to our office and the court that he had voluntarily joined the Waffen SS and had served in the notorious SS Death’s Head Division at the Mauthausen concentration camp where, at the hands of Bartesch and his cohorts, many thousands of prisoners were gassed, shot, starved and worked to death. He also confessed to having concealed his service at the infamous camp from U.S. immigration officials.

In Bartesch’s case, OSI researchers uncovered iron-clad documentary evidence of his direct, hands-on role in the Nazi genocide. Among the SS documents captured by American forces when they liberated Mauthausen was what we described as the Unnatural Death Book, a register of prisoners killed, along with the identity of the SS guard responsible for the murder.

So powerful was this evidence that, in postwar trials conducted by the U.S. military, the book served as the basis for execution or long prison sentences for many identified SS guards.

An entry on Oct. 20, 1943, registers the shooting death of Max Oschorn, a French Jewish prisoner. His murderer was also recorded: SS man Martin Bartesch. It was a most chilling document.

Bartesch’s family and “supporters,” seeking special relief, launched a campaign to discredit OSI while trying to garner political support. Indeed, OSI received numerous inquiries from members of Congress who had been approached.

After we explained the facts of the case, however, the matter inevitably was dropped; no one urged that Bartesch or his family be accorded any special treatment.

Well, there was one exception — Jimmy Carter.

In September 1987, after all of the gruesome details of the case had been made public and widely reported in the media, I received a letter sent by Bartesch’s daughter to the former president. Citing groups that had been exposed for their anti-Semitism, it was an all-out assault against OSI as unfair, “un-American” and interested only in “vengeance” against innocent family members.

It’s axiomatic that the families of every person prosecuted under the criminal or immigration laws are affected and subjected to hardship. It was obvious, I thought to myself, that no reasonable person could genuinely believe that the Bartesch case was worthy of special dispensation.

On the contrary, it would be a perversion of justice to accede to the family’s demands and grant Bartesch relief to which no one else would be entitled. Not even the staunchest and most sincere devotee to humanitarian causes could legitimately claim that an SS murderer who deceived authorities to obtain a visa and citizenship was somehow deserving of exceptional treatment.

That’s why I was so taken aback by the personal, handwritten note Jimmy Carter sent to me seeking “special consideration” for this Nazi SS murderer. There on the upper-right corner of Bartesch’s daughter’s letter was a note to me in the former president’s handwriting, and with his signature, urging that “in cases such as this, special consideration can be given to the families for humanitarian reasons.”

Unlike members of Congress who inquired about the facts, Carter blindly accepted at face value the daughter’s self-serving (and disingenuous) assertions.

As disturbing as I found Carter’s plea, and although his attempted intervention has always gnawed at me, I chalked it up at the time to a certain naivete on the part of the former president. But now, in light of Carter’s most recent writings and comments, I am left to wonder whether it was I who was naive simply to dismiss his knee-jerk appeal as the instinctive reaction of a well-meaning but misguided humanitarian....

Maybe Carter is a misguided humanitarian, but one must wonder why a large proportion of his humanitarian efforts go towards humans who hate Jews.
(H/T Zionist Spy)

Today's Palestinian Police Phunnies: A dose of reality

This article from the Sunday Herald (UK) says so many truths about the situation that it is hard to know what to highlight. The bias that the Herald uses in making the terrorist heroic is nothing new but even so, this article is a must read.

To begin with, notice how even this article recognizes that the Palestinian "security forces" are meant to be an army to fight Israel rather than meant for law and order and stopping terror.

By day, he is a Palestinian Authority soldier, guarding his land against Israel. By night, he is a Hamas warrior, fighting his countrymen

GAZA MAN Abu Khaled leads two very conflicting lives. During the day he serves as a soldier in the National Security Force, the notional army of the Palestinian Authority (PA), guarding a token position a few hundred metres from the Israeli border fence.

But when night comes, he takes off his army uniform and puts on the black mask and fatigues of the al-Qassam Brigades, the guerrilla wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym, Hamas.

Twice wounded in combat with Israeli forces as an al-Qassam warrior, on four occasions he has only narrowly escaped being killed by missiles fired from Israeli robot aircraft. [The human vs. unthinking robot motif is one used many times by the MSM to frame the conflict, but rarely so explicitly. - EoZ]

Now, however, he faces a new and even more disturbing threat to his life. In Gaza, Ramallah and Nablus in recent days, his Hamas comrades have fought bloody skirmishes with loyalists of the rival Fatah movement, which Hamas defeated in parliamentary elections last January. [Notice how the Herald is disturbed that a terrorist's life is threatened by Israel. - EoZ]

Despite Fatah's defeat, the vast majority of the PA's public servants and security men still profess loyalty to the former ruling party, leaving 23-year-old Khaled, a known Hamas supporter in their midst, dangerously exposed to violence from either side.

Last week, Khaled would only agree to be interviewed in a moving car, driving around his north Gaza home of Beit Hanoun to avoid attracting attention.

"It's miserable and terrible right now," he said. "We are afraid all the time that we could be hit, either by the Israelis or by our own factions. The al-Qassam Brigades haven't attacked any army posts yet, but they might, and I'm afraid that Fatah guys could get information that I'm a Qassam Brigades guy and come and shoot me."

Many members of Fatah's various private militia groups also double up as members of the armed forces, a tangled network of 14 rival police, military and intelligence agencies set up by the late Yasser Arafat to keep his gunmen fed, loyal and - just as important - divided.

...
In recent months, moreover, Abbas's position has been further boosted by the dramatic expansion and retraining of his own presidential guard force.

The Palestinian Authority's 3.7 million people may be wilting under the international political and financial boycott imposed following Hamas's election win, but Abbas has nevertheless found money and weapons to upgrade a personal army which is expected to reach 3000-strong. And its members' salaries are still paid even while other public servants - including Fatah loyalists - are left without.

There is now considerable debate about how Abbas has pulled this off, particularly in Gaza, where the bulk of the new-look presidential guard is leading the confrontation with Hamas's own new "Executive Force", a force set up by the Hamas interior minister supposedly to counterbalance Fatah's control of the established security forces.

It is openly acknowledged, though, that US military and intelligence personnel have been training Abbas's new force in the West Bank town of Jericho, from where they travel to Gaza through Israeli territory. Moreover, it was widely reported last week that the White House is asking Congress for as much as $90 million (£46m) in special aid for Abbas's guard, to strengthen it for a showdown with Hamas.

In a tour of the Middle East last week, prime minister Tony Blair sought to portray the Abbas/Hamas stand-off in the mould of the war against terror, as part of a wider struggle between extremist forces such as Iran and Syria - both of which support Hamas - and more "moderate" Arab leaders, such as the regimes in Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf.

Mr Blair suggested that part of the hundreds of millions of dollars in customs revenue and aid currently withheld from the PA by Israel and the West should be passed directly to Abbas's "moderate" forces. In the process, he said, care should be taken to ensure that the money went only to Abbas's security forces and not to armed factions.

But, as anyone who has visited Gaza knows, the PA security forces and Fatah's armed factions are largely the same thing.

As violence intensified last week, masked presidential guards drove through Gaza City in armoured cars and trucks mounted with new heavy machine guns, shooting in the air and openly brandishing yellow Fatah flags.

...While both sides have much to be ashamed of after months of brutal feuding, the mere suggestion that Fatah leaders are in effect working with the US - and by implication with Israel - to bully and starve out an elected Palestinian government points to fresh depths of horror ahead.
...
Fatah's rag-tag gunmen, whether in PA uniform or not, have little hope of taking on Hamas's well-trained religious warriors without extensive support from Israel, which effectively controls the wider strategic map. But victory with Israeli and US support would rob Fatah of what legitimacy it still possesses in Arab eyes, transforming it into a quisling government.

So while this article has its share of anti-Israel bias, it is important in that it shows the utter uselessness of arming and training thousands more terrorists in the name of "peace" and for a "moderate" Fatah that is equally bloodthirsty as Hamas and PIJ.

A month of a unilateral "cease fire"

As the calendar on my sidebar is showing, we now have had nine consecutive days of Qassam rockets being shot at Israel, making it 24 out of 32 days since the illusory "cease-fire" was announced that rockets have been launched (click on any day's link for more details; some of the days link to earlier articles in the day and more Qassams were fired later that I didn't capture):

So far today (12/26)there have been five rockets.

Olmert, trying hard to prove that he can decend to new levels of idiocy every day, took strong action:

The Olmert administration is depending on diplomatic retaliation at this point and instructed United Nations Ambassador Dan Gillerman to register a strong complaint with the U.N.

And how was this strong complaint worded?

"The continuous rocket attacks and grave violation of Israel's sovereignty constitutes a grim threat to peace and security in the region... which may bring to a deterioration of the situation," Gillerman continued in the letter.

Gillerman asked that the Security Council immediately condemn the attacks and warn those parties on the Palestinian side who are "provoking the situation" that they may bring to a renewed eruption of hostilities.

Evidently, in the bizarre language of UN diplomacy, dozens of Qassams don't destroy peace, but are only a "grim threat." They aren't "hostilities", but they may bring a "renewed eruption."

But surely there are fewer rockets being fired now than before the cease-fire? Certainly things are calmer, right?

Ummmm.....no.

Information collected by the defense establishment indicates that only during the months of June, July, and November more rockets were fired than in this month of calm. In contrast, during the months of February, April, August, and September, the months where there was no calm, there were less Qassam attacks than during the ceasefire.

So there is literally no relationship between Israel acting with restraint and the number of Palestinian Arab rocket attacks.

Yet Olmert, against the advice of the IDF, is gambling with his citizen's lives and betting that the world will put some sort of "pressure"on a reichlet that he himself is now funding and arming!

Fatah terrorists slam Hamas - for being too soft

From the PA Arabic mouthpiece, WAFA (autotranslated/cleaned up):

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military arm of the "Fatah" Movement, today rejected "Hamas" on the truce offer, for its unprecedented free concessions to Israel.

Abu Al-Walid, spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said in a telephone conversation with the "Voice of Palestine", this morning, that this document, beyond the constants and national standards, through repeal the right of return, and acceptance of the temporary borders of Israel which will give full opportunity to intensify settlement and looting Palestinian land and divide it into "cantons".

He added that the "Hamas" resort to its pledge not to make concessions before the Palestinian arena, and the basis of the national principles to extricate the government from the crisis, saying : "The government was out" Hamas "from the crisis deserves to implicate the Palestinian people in free concessions."

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to fight the "Hamas" by all means, pointing out that Ahmed Yusuf, the political adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who arrive at the document with other Western intelligence, represents only the "Hamas", adding that spokesmen, "Hamas" are misinforming the Palestinian people is a shame.

Some of the accusations are clearly a purposeful misreading of the Hamas "hudna" offer to make Hamas look weak compared to the Fatah "military arm," and much of this statement is political positioning rather than reflecting reality, but it proves yet again that Fatah is no more interested in peace than Hamas.

Also interesting is the fact that though this is a pro-Abbas newspaper (really a mouthpiece), there is not the slightest hint that the newspaper is distancing itself from the feelings of the Al Aqsa Brigades the way that its articles on Hamas make clear that they are "the other side."

And just like Abbas refuses to say anything bad about Al Aqsa, notice that Al Aqsa is slamming Hamas and refusing to say anything bad about Abbas, even though he has publicly claimed (when criticizing Hamas!) to only want a state on the 1967 territories and nothing more.

Which means that, at best, Abbas has no interest in reigning in his "military wing" even when their statements are totally at odds with Abbas' public, more "moderate" statements. At worst, it means that the Brigades is just part of the PalArab Fatah strategy to use both the carrot and the stick to get Israel to bend to their will and that Abbas agrees with their statements wholeheartedly. This was a hallmark of Arafat's methodology.

Yet somehow Olmert and his European friends think that strengthening Fatah is the key to peace.

Handy-dandy guide to Olmert's negotiating skill

The increasingly French Olmert showed off his devastating negotiating skills with the "moderate" terrorist leader Mahmoud Abbas this evening. For those too lazy to read all the details, here's a scorecard:

What Abbas got	What Olmert got
$100 million	More Qassams Saturday and Sunday
Discussion of extending the "cease fire" to the West Bank
Abbas' Force 17 will be deployed at the Philadelphi Corridor
Discussions on how Israel will release terrorist prisoners
PLO "Badr Brigrades" troops will come from Jordan
Removal of some checkpoints in the West Bank

For good measure, Saeb Erekat described the meeting to Palestinian Arabic news sources in this way (autotranslated):

Mr. President addressed the revival of a meaningful peace process between the two sides leading to the end of military occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the application of the road map, including the Arab peace initiative and other issues of the final status negotiations, Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees and water.

So apparently, despite Hamas running the government, everything that PalArabs want is still up for negotiation while not a single Israeli position is even discussed.

Way to go, Olmert! It's nice to see you are so empathetic with the Palestinian Arabs, the Saudis and the Europeans. That covers almost everyone!

HH XCIX

Today's Haveil Havalim #99 represents the age-old Roman numeral question: why is it XCIX and not IC?

Anyway, this week's round-up of the best of the JBlogosphere is hosted by me-ander. She does a great job.

I am honored to say that she picked two of my better posts (Time for the PalArabs to step up. But they won't. and Don't forget Islamic Jihad) for the round-up as well..

Check it out!

The Khaleej Times on freedom of expression

From today:

AS EXPECTED, David Irving’s release from an Austrian prison and subsequent return to England has sparked an intense debate regarding the freedom of speech in the modern era, especially with regard to subjects as sensitive as the Holocaust.

How free is it that in addition to Israel, several European countries also have strict laws against Holocaust denial. In Austria, for example — where the ageing historian/writer initially sentenced for three years — the ‘crime’ carries a prison term of up to 10 years. The relevant law states that ‘anyone who denies, plays down, approves or tries to excuse the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity’ automatically qualifies for a stint in the slammer.

That much of the world’s Jewish community continues to nurse psychological wounds from the much-reported Holocaust is understandable considering that according to popular opinion, it threatened to practically finish them off, and that too in the most gruesome manner. But there is a fine line between advocating justified sympathy and muscling all and sundry into acceptance of what is their own version of the episode, true or concocted notwithstanding. It is no secret that the slightest question posed to the Jews’ analysis of Hitler’s atrocities — even if it is with the sincerest of intentions — draws the severest reaction from right across the West. So much as a word is taboo, and one is slapped with charges of anti-Semitism even before one’s point is made completely. The media hounds do the rest and the person-in-question’s credibility is reduced to scarce more than dust.

What is it that has pushed the Zionist lobby to the verge of paranoia, if not into it? Having suffered one of the worst known human rights abuses on record in the Holocaust, they should be eager to encourage rather than shun research and analyses into it. If their claim is right and true, what other could be unearthed by those looking into it?

It bears noting that this iron-fist no-questions-asked approach is widely reflected in the Israeli character. Truth be told, history will judge them as gross violators of human rights themselves, hardly becoming of a people that have suffered injustices. It does not take genius to figure out that only those with something to hide discourage debate and reason, especially in the modern age of much trumpeted freedom of speech. Unfortunately though, it looks as if for such topics it’s going to be ‘Mum’s the word’.

The stupidity of the editorial is apparent, as is the underlying hate, scare quotes and condescending words that show the author himself doesn't quite believe that the Holocaust actually occurred. Hiding behind the absurd premise that the Ahmadinejads and Irvings of the world are actually interested in the truth, the Khaleej Times is painting Jews as a paranoid and scheming people who wouldn't know truth if they saw it. And, overall, the newspaper's editor hides his aching to see the Holocaust debunked under the pretense of "freedom of expression."

But in a somewhat different context a couple of months ago, the editor does not seem to be quite as sanguine about freedom of expression:

More importantly, now it is not possible to dismiss the cartoon episode last year as something that was the handiwork of a loony and reckless cartoonist. Clearly, there is a method in the madness. In fact, these disturbing acts of vandalism are not limited to Denmark. They are part of what has become a disturbing trend across Europe as the right-wing media and politicians whip up paranoid frenzy against everything Islamic. There is sickness in the heart of Europe. And the all-pervasive war on terror unleashed by the US neocons appears to have boosted it.

If it was the Danish cartoons last year, it's Danish video this year. Then there was this opera in Germany that took the concept of artistic licence too far when it showed the beheading of Prophet of Islam besides that of Jesus and Buddha. Last week, prominent French newspapers published an incredibly painful article by a Jewish 'scholar' about the Prophet accusing him of all sorts of absurdities.

What is going on? Can you blame the anguished Muslims if they see a clever and concerted campaign being conducted across the continent to vilify their faith and its revered figures and teachings? And can you blame the Muslims if they come out on the streets, from Morocco to Malaysia, in anger and frustration?

Whatever the explanation for these growing attacks on Islam and Muslims, they could have dangerous and far-reaching consequences for the whole world. The leaders of Denmark and other European countries cannot hide behind the fig leaf of the freedom of expression as these acts of intellectual vandalism and intolerance are unleashed on Muslims, Europe's second largest religious community. The freedom of speech is fine and Muslims respect it too just as they respect all other rights. However, the freedom of speech mustn't be abused to insult other people's beliefs and sensibilities. As the OIC has argued, it is the responsibility of politicians, governments, media and civil society organisations in the West to oppose all such attacks. This is essential if we want to avoid a dangerous clash of civilizations — between West and Muslim world.

Notwithstanding the implied threat in the last sentence ("don't upset us or else we'll hurt you") see how hypocritical his desire for truth and justice and freedom is? Freedom of speech is great when the victims are Jews, but if the victims are Muslims then a world war is the only logical outcome.

And this world view holds that Muslim world war to defend Mohammed seems preferable to jailing Holocaust deniers.