Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Latest conspiracy theory - evil Zionist pigs. Literally.

The latest conspiracy theory blaming evil Zionist pigs for all the world's problems now comes to include, literally, evil Zionist pigs:

A herd of wild boars on Tuesday attacked the cleaning workers of Salfit municipality while they were emptying a garbage truck.

The driver of the garbage truck, 'Umran Abu 'Umar, said "while I was emptying the garbage in the early morning, a group of boars attacked the workers who had to use the truck as a shield and kill one of the boars."

The wild boars are being released by Israeli settlers in order to destroy the plants and crops of Palestinians.

Keep in mind that Ma'an is by far the most objective and reliable of Palestinian Arab media site, yet they blame this wild animal attack on Israel with no shred of evidence. (They also bizarrely illustrate the story with a picture of a pig's head with a kaffiyeh.)

A similar claim was made in February:

Palestinian sources in Salfit, in the northern part of the West Bank, reported on Thursday that Israeli settlers released boars in Palestinian farmlands near Salfit, in the northern part of the West Bank.

Resident Abdul-Fattah Al Ghazzawi, 43, stated that the settlers released at least twenty boars that attacked his farmland and several surrounding farmlands and ate the plants.

The settlers kept the boars in the farmlands overnight and only moved them away on Thursday morning.

Al Ghazzawi added that the settlers have carried out several similar attacks against the farmlands recently, and that the number of attacks has significantly increased.

Those nefarious Jews training wild boars to attack poor PalArabs, damage their crops, and then return to the Jewish fields and leave them untouched?

Well, anything possible - after all, the Jews are training boars to sniff out land mines and terrorist bombs.

Hamas' terror cheerleaders

The Al Qassam Brigades website does not often include purposeful irony or humor, but the English version celebrated their launching of many Qassam rockets this morning with this "Good Morning, Israel" graphic:

(I have no doubt that EUdiots and other similar morons will look at this and see it as a sign of Hamas moderation - after all, they said "Israel" which is practically recognition!)

The accompanying article, celebrating the fact that Hamas is back in the direct rocket game, includes a couple of lovely comments from Hamas' English-speaking fans:

Qassam | Norway

Qassam Attack Against The Zionist jew Animals

Inshalla with Gods Help we will kill Every zionist and every Jew settler On palestinian Land..may God protect our soldiers in Izz el deen Brigades ..

Qassam Mujahida | United States

Lots of Qassam rockets and mortar shells

Good. Lots of Qassam and mortar. Al-Qassam Brigades has right to fire their rockets and mortar shells as the Zionists' attack on the Palestinians are continuing daily. And the Zionists refuse to stick to the ceasefire. Inshaa Allah they will cause severe damage and deaths to the illegal Zionist occupation.

The website actually has an entire forum section in English that is something to behold. The person quoted above, "Qassam Mujahida," is apparently an American woman who moderates some of the forums (although her command of English is pretty shaky - she might very well be a man in an Arab country trying to make Hamas look a bit more inclusive.)

In the unintentional irony department, there are lots of pictures of dead shaheeds (including one smiling in death,) body parts, blown up Humvees in Iraq, and posters celebrating Hamas' wonderful terror achievements:

Page after page of bloody and violent images with accompanying text exhorting all to kill the Zionists - and then there comes this curious cartoon asking

"Does the Zionists want peace with Hamas?"[sic]

But this cartoon showing Hamas extending its hand for peace with Israel was too much for the regulars in the forum:

thats not a good picture sister because it signifies hamas making compromise with the zionists and wanting to be a friend of them.

Norway's recognition of Hamastan, one month later

Reuters reports:

Norway said the month-long policy of international engagement with the Palestinian unity government, led by the Islamic group Hamas, was starting to bring results and helped avoid "civil war tendencies".

Norway was the first Western state to recognise the new Palestinian government last month and said it would soon be ready to resume aid to the Palestinians, raising criticism from Israel and the United States.

In an interview ahead of this week's NATO meeting in Oslo, Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called on the European Union and the United States to normalise economic relations with the Palestinian government to shore up its fragile institutions. "This type of engagement is slowly demonstrating results," Stoere told Reuters on Tuesday as Hamas's armed wing declared an end to a five-month-old ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel, despite the unity government's calls to keep the shaky truce.

Asked if Norway would consider suspending relations or aid if Hamas did not make good on its promises, Stoere said the time was not right to speculate on such scenarios.

"We should not underestimate the tremendous efforts it took for the Palestinian parties to come together and (we should) solidify what is still quite fragile," said Stoere.

The progress that Stoere notices are:

"We have a Palestinian government which has ended the most flagrant civil war tendencies, there has been an improvement in the security situation, the Arab countries have taken new initiative ... and you have stronger U.S. engagement, all these signs are positive," Stoere said.

So, according to Norway, the Fatah/Hamas civil war has been forestalled because Norway recognized them. I can just imagine the masked leaders of these terror organizations canceling their rumbles in appreciation to Norwegian peace moves.

Today, of course, we saw the biggest dividend of the Norwegian initiative - Hamas' rocket barrage in an attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers. For some reason I don't think that Norway will take credit for that, though. And Hamas' announcement that the ceasefire against Israel is over will not make Norway budge either - because, of course, for them not to support Hamas' terrorism they might upset that delicate balance.

It is perhaps not coincidental that Norway, which is essentially a non-player on the world stage, identifies with Muslim terrorists whose incentive is also to prove Islamic relevance to the world. Norway's bucking the West shows the same infantile tendencies that Arabs and Muslims tend to show. And the egocentrism in the Norwegian statement, taking credit for every event in the region that can be construed as positive, is also very similar to Islamic egomania.

Abbas: "Cease fire" still on

Even though Hamas showered Israel with rockets and mortars today, and even though Hamas has said that its non-existent "cease fire" with Israel is over, Mahmoud Abbas knows better:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday that a violation of a five-month ceasefire by Hamas was an exception and would not be repeated, while Israel should show restraint to avoid a security deterioration.

"The violation of the truce is an exceptional event that will not last," said Abbas at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in Rome. "I take this opportunity to appeal to Israel to show the necessary self-control so that this will not happen again."

PalArab family shoots up Pal Legislative Council

Israel isn't the only place celebrating Yom Ha'atzmaut with fireworks:

Dozens of Palestinian citizens broke into the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building in Gaza City on Tuesday, carrying the corpse of a Palestinian youth.

The boy was killed on Sunday by unidentified gunmen after being abducted in the northern Gaza Strip.

Ma'an's reporter stated that family members of the murdered boy, Hasan Abu Sharikh, broke into the PLC building during its session and fired gunshots into the air.

The Abu Sharikh family shouted slogans condemning the state of chaos that prevails in the Palestinian territories and calling on the government, the minister of the interior and the PLC to reveal the killers of their son and punish them.

The family issued a statement in which they depicted the killers as "a merciless group which has gone astray, taking advantage of the lack of security to spread murder and chaos amongst the Palestinian people." The family affirmed that the murderers "will be revealed and pay for their crime."

A group called 'Army of Islam' claimed responsibility for the killing of Hasan Abu Sharikh in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, and claimed that it was an accident.

The group said in a statement, "The man was not meant to be killed. It was an error and we pledge before God and the family of Abu Sharikh that we will bear complete responsibility and repercussions." The statement also commended the Abu Sharikh family and said they had always played a significant role in the Palestinian struggle.

The group also pledged to punish the perpetrator according to Islamic law once the details of the incident are revealed.

Of course, the best way to fight against security chaos is to bring corpses into a parliamentary session and shoot "into the air" - indoors.

And here is an account of how Abu Sharikh was killed - sounds very "accidental:"

At approximately 17:00 on Sunday, 3 masked gunmen stormed a shop of electrical appliances belonging to Hasan Mahmoud Abu Sharekh, 51, from Jabalya refugee camp. The gunmen kidnapped Abu Sharekh. During the attack, the gunmen exchanged fire with members of the Executive Force of the Ministry of Interior who were in the area. Four people, including a member of the Executive Force, were wounded, and the kidnappers were able to leave the area taking Abu Sharekh with them. At approximately 19:00 on the same day, Abu Sharekh’s body was found near Barcelona Park in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the south of Gaza City. He was killed by a gunshot to the head.

Chag Sameach!

April, 1948: How the Arabs left Tiberias

In March, 1948, on the eve of Israeli independence, the Jews and Arabs of Tiberias forged a cease-fire:

Unfortunately, the truce was short-lived. Within weeks, Arabs started firing at the Jews, and the Haganah fought back:

Soon, the Jewish forces were proven superior again. And after the Jews defeated the Arabs, details emerged about what had happened earlier.

It seems that the Tiberias Arabs didn't want to fight the Jews, but Arabs from the outside infiltrated and attacked the Jews from the local Arab homes. Local Arabs even fought against the invading Arabs, but in the end they were forced to leave - by the invaders. Not for the first time, the larger Arab community cynically used the local Arabs who had no real quarrel with the Jews in order to achieve a political gain - that ended up hurting the Arabs themselves.

Evidence of this can be seen by the immediate aftermath of the Jewish victory, where the Jews themselves safeguarded the abandoned Arab homes from Arab looters. See also how the Jews, protecting the homes of their Arab neighbors, clearly want to see those neighbors return to their homes:

An opinion piece in the Palestine Post elaborated on how Tiberias' Arabs had turned into pawns as well as how the Jews, as a whole, had no interest in kicking out the Arabs from their nascent state.

In 1949, a very articulate Haifa Arab wrote a remarkable letter to the Palestine Post (2/6/49) in which he laid the greatest share of the blame for the Arab refugee crisis on the British, and he claimed that the British were the ones who forcibly moved the Tiberias Arabs to Transjordan:

The Editor, The Palestine Post
Sir, — Mr. Bevin appears to
hold the Jews responsible for
the flight of the Palestine Arabs.
Although the Israel military
forces destroyed certain Arab
villages and carried out wholesale
transportation of their occupants,
yet the primary responsibility
for the panicky
flight of the Arabs is the British
Government's. Whether intended
or not, there can be no
doubt that the mischief originat -
ed from the conduct of the
British, and not from the attitude
of the Israeli Government.

There is ample evidence
for this statement.

The sequence of occurrences
showed that the British Government
had no intention or
desire to enforce law and order,
and that Palestine Administration
was labouring to create an
atmosphere permeated with fear
and alarm. No effective measure
was adopted by the authorities,
civil and military, to ensure
safety. On the contrary, they
encouraged disorder and disobedience
of the law, and countenanced
insubordination. They
allowed a large force of armed
Arabs to infiltrate into the country,
and to roam about with
impunity. Palestine was virtually
converted into two antagonistic
armed camps under the
eyes and nose of the Mandatory
Power. Huge quantities of arms
and ammunition were openly
smuggled in, and recruiting and
drilling of combatants became
conimonplace events. ...

Secondly, the idea that the
Arabs should quit their homes
was advanced, sponsored and
propagated by the British. The
Government of Palestine granted
its officers three months' pay
in advance, and facilitated the
departure on leave of Arab of -
ficers to adjacent territories.
British companies, such as the
Iraq Petroleum Company, and
Steel Bros. & Company, unnecessarily
transferred a part
of their offices and the majority
of their Arab employees to the Lebanon.
And generally, the at -
titude of the responsible British
authorities was such as to infuse
into the minds and hearts of the
Arab population a feeling of
consternation and the belief that
their departure was a logical
necessity , or, at least, a prudent
precaution.

Thirdly, it was the British, and
not the Jews, who first put into
effect the dislodgement and deportation
of the Arab popula -
tion. When conditions in Tiberias,
where the friendly relations
between Arabs and Jews formed
a bright illustration of the
possibility of the two communities
co-operating, became acute,
the British authorities forcibly
transported the Arab inhabitants
en masse to Trans-Jordan. They
did not take any action
toward pacification and restoration
of peace and order. It was
their evident duty to do so;- but
instead of discharging their obligation
with honesty and dignity
they discarded it with
ignominy, and compelled the
Arabs to abandon their homes
and belongings and seek refuge
in the contiguous Arab territory.

Yours, etc.
E .N. KOUSSA

I don't know how accurate Mr. Koussa's claims are, but they make a certain amount of sense. Even so, the British didn't act in a vacuum, and they were almost certainly acting in ways that their Arab allies wanted them to.

What is clear, though, is that (as in Haifa,) the Jews did not drive out the Arabs of Tiberias and the people who claim a pre-meditated ethnic cleansing are simply liars.

South Koreans vs. Muslims, part 3

I wrote two postings contrasting the visceral shame and embarrassment that South Koreans experienced after the VA Tech massacre compared to the infantile abdication of responsibility that Muslims exhibited after 9/11.

A wonderful example of exactly this kind of puerile Muslim reaction can be seen in this article in the PakTribune by Ahmer Muzammil, where the author attempts to contrast US reaction to a South Korean nutcase with his fantasy of how Americans would have reacted if the shooter had been a Muslim:

Would it have changed the fact that this was a deeply disturbed not to mention chronically ill man? Would the media, neo-cons and Zionists react in the same manner? Would there be plans to attack another Muslim country even though it had nothing what so ever to do with the heinous crime? Is South Korea where CHO hailed from a clear and present danger now and hence should be the beneficiary of Daisy Cutters and other “Marvels of Science” that we have invented for the well-being of human race? If you are able to answer these questions honestly than it should become obvious, that we live in a very sad, hypocritical, prejudice and bigoted world.

In addition to the international dynamic, domestically speaking all things being as they are now, only If CHO had been Muslim, even a non practicing one at that, you can rest assure that there would have been mass arrests, migrations and intimidation of Muslims thru out the country. There would have been threatening phone calls to the masajids, our sisters who wear Hijab would have been harassed. The MSA’s(Muslim Students Association) would have received threats; Muslim women on campus would have been scared because most of them are identifiable thru their head-covering.

Strawman arguments are but one aspect of an immature person; but the fact that even after 9/11 very little of his imagined harassment happened shows how utterly deranged many Muslims are. Here we have a textbook case of showing how Muslims as a whole cannot distinguish fact from fiction.

After some irrelevant blather, he comes to a punch line:

I realize that there are militants out there that are driven by there interpretation of Islam, however my question is that is Islam the driving force behind it or is it some form of injustice somewhere that is the catalyst? For way too long we have avoided these uncomfortable questions maybe because the Zionist lobby in Washington realizes that if this conversation starts then there jig would be up.

Can one even find a better example of infantilism than this "argument"? Instead of taking responsibility for his fellow Muslims, as the South Koreans did with the shooter, he circles around to blaming the victims instead - for their perceived "injustice" that is as imaginary as his litany of how the US would expel thousands of Muslims had the shooter been Muslim.

Thanks, Mr. Muzammil, for illustrating my point about the immaturity of most Muslims so perfectly.

JIB awards are upon us

The 2007 JIB Awards are here. If you are interested in getting me to the finals in the category of Best Pro-Israel Advocacy Blog, go here and vote. If, on the other hand, you can't stand this blog, go there and vote for someone else.

Unlike other years, you can only vote once per each subcategory. So choose carefully!

Peaceful PalArab weekend

Three PalArabs were killed, including two brothers, in Gaza (Haitham and Mohammed Abu Amr and Hassan Abuscherkh, in autotransliteration.)

We've also recently seen gun attacks, drive-by shootings, accidental explosions and machine gun fire, bombings at an American university in Gaza, bomb threats, a PalArab journalist injured - the usual mayhem.

Israel is uncharacteristically aggressively attacking terrorists this weekend, with about 8 terrorists killed and 1 civilian (a sister of a wanted terrorist who stayed in the house after Israel asked everyone to leave.) So this week the PalArabs have to work hard to keep their streak going of killing each other faster than Israel is.

UPDATE: Paltoday.org (Arabic only) adds a fourth PalArab victim of PalArab violence Sunday, named Imad Abu Hussein. This brings the self-death count this year to 182.

UPDATE 2: Paltoday adds a 12-year old boy named Muhammad Al-Saadi was shot and killed Monday. 183. Ma'an adds a 5-year old girl was shot in the head by one of those "mysterious gunmen," critically injuring her.

UPDATE 3: A Hamas commander died of wounds he got two months ago in Hamas/Fatah fighting. 184.

UPDATE 4: From PCHR, another child who killed himself from finding a weapon at home:

At approximately 03:00 on Tuesday morning, 24 April 2007, medical sources at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City declared that Haitham Mohammed Bulbul, 12, from al-Sha’af neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, died from a wound he had sustained on Monday. The child was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the chest at approximately 22:00 on Monday, when he mishandled a gun at home.

185.

UPDATE 5: A woman died, and others were injured including a 70-year old man, in a clan clash in the Bureij camp in Gaza on Wednesday. 186.

Shame, responsibility and maturity

As a follow-up to my earlier posting on the differences between how South Koreans are acting to the AV Tech massacre versus Arab reaction to 9/11, there is still a nagging issue that needs to be addressed.

It has been long recognized that the West has a guilt culture and the Arab and Eastern worlds are a shame culture. He have discussed many times how Arab conceptions of "honor" (which is just a manifestation of shame) are so foreign to Western ears, and are critical in understanding the differences between us.

But here we have a stark contrast between two cultures that are both recognized as shame cultures: the Arab world and the Asian (in this case, South Korean) world. If they are nominally the same, why are their reaction so diametrically different?

I believe that the answer lies in another dimension of their respective psyches, namely, maturity. The Korean reaction to VA Tech represents a mature instantiation of a shame culture, while the Arab responses to the multitude of terror attacks is clearly immature.

I would argue that the single biggest difference between immature and mature people are their respective abilities to take responsibility.

A child will go through a number of steps instead of admitting guilt - he may lie, or try to put the blame on someone else, or claim extenuating circumstances - not only in an attempt to avoid punishment, but also often so as not to admit to himself that he is guilty.

Growth comes from learning to act responsibly and learning to take responsibility.

Compare the Arab world to Japan. Both suffered humiliating wartime losses in the 1940s. It can be argued that Japan lost much more, as it had a formidable war machine and it was not just defeated but forced to surrender unconditionally. And both of them have strong shame cultures.

Yet only decades later, with very few natural resources, Japan turned itself around into an economic and technological powerhouse that became the envy of the West. The Arab world, in contrast, had the misfortune of sitting on billions of barrels of oil.

Japan was forced to grow up in a hurry. The Arab world, with the cushion of petrodollars, had the luxury of becoming the spoiled brats of the planet, building playgrounds for the super-rich in the Gulf. Is there any real psychological difference between the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s and a boy who takes his football back when the game doesn't go the way he wants?

In short, the shame/honor dynamic may explain many of the Arab world's psychoses, but it doesn't explain them all. We need to add the dynamic of an infantile culture as well. And the VA Tech outrage shines a brilliant light on the contrast between a mature shame culture and a puerile one.

HH CXIII

The 113th edition of Haveil Havalim is out at Soccer Dad.

One of my posts made it in, always an honor since I rarely self-nominate.

Check it out!

South Korean vs. Arab reaction to terror

Many articles have been written about the Arab reactions to 9/11. Critics claim that Arabs refused to condemn the atrocity in an appropriate manner, and Arabs would point to articles and statements that did seem to condemn it.

Even so, there was still a nagging feeling in much of the West that the condemnations were not strong enough, that they weren't heartfelt, that something was missing.

In the wake of the VA Tech massacre, looking at the South Korean community's reaction, it is now clear what was missing: shame and responsibility.

For Korean Americans especially, the tragedy is hitting close to home. Though they don’t personally know Cho or his family, local Korean Americans share a cultural and ethnic background with them.

“I’m very ashamed,” admitted Buwon Brown, a community volunteer who is Korean American.

Dong Lee, an editor at the Korea Central Daily News’ office in Seattle, said the community was “very shocked, very saddened by the news.”

The state’s only Korean American legislator, Paull Shin, said he was watching the news early Tuesday morning as he was getting dressed. He “collapsed” when he heard the gunman was a fellow Korean American. “I could not face the reality. How could this have happened? I lost my control,” Shin recounted.

Later that day, the Edmonds legislator took the floor of the Senate chambers to apologize on behalf of the Korean American community. He told his fellow senators, “This (shooting) really affects me deeply. I’m sorry.” Afterwards, his colleagues came over to console him and to emphasize that the shootings were not his fault or the Korean community’s.

South Koreans expressed shock Wednesday, as new details revealed that the Virginia Tech shooter was Cho Seung-Hui, who was born -- and lived for eight years -- in Seoul.

President Roh Moo-Hyun held a special meeting with aides Wednesday to discuss the shooting and figure out further steps to ease the situation.

The president is expected to make a statement of apology at an event in Seoul Wednesday afternoon. His office has issued two statements of condolence about the mass killings.

"It's a tragic incident. But to find out that he is a Korean, I am ashamed and confused," a shipping-company employee said. "I keep asking myself what would have made him do such a thing. It's a very bad day."

A wave of shame washed over the Rev. Kun Sang Cho when he learned the Virginia Tech shooter was a native of South Korea.

He knew the murders occurred hundreds of miles away, possibly at the hands of a mentally ill young man. But what most pained Cho and many other Korean-Americans living in Colorado was that the shooter was Korean -- one of their own.

"They feel ashamed," said Cho, pastor at Asbury Korean United Methodist Church. "This is our culture. If one of my members got involved in a crime, all members feel the shame."

To honor the 32 victims of the shooting, Cho's church will host a community memorial Sunday at 4 p.m. at 7140 S. Colorado Blvd.

First-generation Koreans tend to have a cultural sense of shared responsibility, said Adrian Hong, a board member of the Mirae Foundation, a national organization of Korean-American college students. "If something good happens to one, it happens to all Koreans, and if something bad happens to one, it happens to all of them," he said.

Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles and member at the university's Center for Korean Studies, said that because Korean culture tends to be homogeneous, new immigrants rely on one another emotionally.

"In Western culture there is an emphasis on guilt; in many Eastern cultures the emphasis is on shame," she said. "I think Korean-Americans want to do something because they feel ashamed. Some of them feel truly responsible, even though it is ridiculous to think they are responsible for the action of this person."

Park said some first-generation immigrants identified with the comments of South Korean Ambassador Lee Tae-sik, who said not only do Korean-Americans feel ashamed but called for them to "repent." He suggested a 32-day fast - one day for each victim of Monday's carnage.

Now we can understand more fully what was lacking after 9/11 and countless other Arab terror attacks.

A condemnation is not a heartfelt, spontaneous reaction. It is almost always a contrived, carefully written, political reaction more for damage control than for true remorse.

Koreans don't have madrassas with daily exhortations against infidels. Koreans don't have daily or weekly terror attacks against the West. Koreans don't have countless newspapers and websites demonizing Americans.

And yet, they spontaneously show true, heartfelt shame - and a sense of shared responsibility - for the actions of a lone crazed man who happens to be one of them. While they have a fear of a backlash, their shame is not a calculated reaction designed to blunt political reprisals - it is a true reflection of what they are feeling.

This is what was missing after 9/11 - the kneejerk reaction of guilt, shame and responsibility from the Arab community. Instead we saw attempts to deny, or redirect, or contextualize the despicable acts - never to take ownership.

While the Koreans are taking responsibility for the actions of a single nutcase, the Arab Muslims spent all their time trying to abdicate their responsibility for the culture that brought about Al Qaeda.

All the condemnations in the world is not worth a single heartfelt apology. And even though it is absurd for the Korean community to apologize for something that is clearly not their fault, the fact that they are doing it shows true remorse.

The world Arab community in general, and the Muslim Arab American community in particular, never felt truly sorry for 9/11, or else they would have acted beyond the way that Koreans are acting today for an event that is miniscule in comparison.

Invoking Elder's First Rule (part 2)

Another example of how Arab accusations about Jews are merely projections of Arab crimes can be seen here:

(IsraelNN.com) Residents of the Gush Etzion hilltop community of Sde Boaz had hundreds of grape vines and scores of fruit trees uprooted and destroyed Friday. The latest vandalism, though the most costly yet, is just the latest in a string of attacks on the community’s property.

Residents of the agricultural community said that in addition to the destruction of the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards and fruit trees Friday, expensive irrigation systems were damaged and stolen as well. The vandals used donkeys to plow under the hundreds of vines and uproot the fruit trees.

As Omedia notes, mainstream Israeli media refuses to even mention Arab destruction of Jewish agriculture, seemingly because it happens on the "wrong" side of the Green Line:

This accumulation of facts attests to a situation in which Israel is gradually conceding its sovereignty and its rule of law while abandoning Jewish agricultural property to the mercy of the Palestinians. The myth that the Palestinians are deeply attached to trees, perhaps as opposed to the Jews, plays into the hands of those who use trees for political purposes. When the trees belong to Jews, the tree is merely considered another tool in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is well known that the Jewish-Arab conflict in Israel is tied to the struggle over land, such as the struggle between the Jewish National Fund’s pine and cypress forests (only in recent years have they begun planting olive trees), and olive groves, typically seen as a Palestinian symbol.
All of the above information was only made public on Arutz Sheva, a radio station identified with the settlers, and never managed to reach the general public. Why was such pertinent information never published in Ha’aretz or on central news sites such as NRG? Such information is obviously newsworthy. Perhaps these media outlets consider the uprooting of Jewish trees by Palestinians too commonplace – a “dog bites man” story – or see it as a mere curiosity. Whatever the reason, tree removal by Palestinians deserves media exposure as well.

As I have shown in the past, Palestinian Arab destruction of trees and other Jewish agriculture predates 1948 and PalArabs have been found to destroy their own trees when it can make the Jews look bad. The idea that trees are somehow sacred to Palestinian Arabs is a preposterous myth, one that is all too ready to be swallowed by even more preposterous supporters.

Invoking Elder's First Rule (part 1)

My First Rule of Arab Projection states that whenever Arabs accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations.

This weekend gives us the opportunity to invoke this rule more than once.

The first example can be seen in an article in Ma'an:

The Al-Aqsa association for protection of Islamic endowments and holy sites revealed on Saturday that some Jewish organisations are manufacturing forgeries of documents aimed to illegally purchase Arab properties in the old city area of Jerusalem.

The forgery and deception is being conducted through registering Jerusalemite lands to the names of Arab citizens who do not originally possess any lands in Jerusalem.

Extremist Israeli groups then come to those people and submit the forged documents, showing that there are lands registered in the lands' department under their names.

They offer those people huge amounts of money in return for selling properties which they never owned, nor did they know about it.

The conspiracy was unfolded when an elderly Palestinian man from the village of Qalansawa in ‘the triangle area’ inside Israel, told the Al-Aqsa association that “a Jewish extremist group had came to his home offering a large sum of money in return for 2600 square meters in Jerusalem registered under his name.” They then showed him the ownership document.

The old man added, "I kicked them out and told them that they are plotting a trick, since I never owned the span of a hand in Jerusalem."

The director of the media department of the Islamic movement and spokesperson of Al-Aqsa association, Sheikh Khalid Muhanna, warned of the dangers of this phenomenon, which, it has been noted has been rising in frequency recently.

He accused the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem in particular, and the Israeli government in general of taking a big share with these far right-wing groups. He based his accusations on the supposition that “such groups could not wander along the length of the country carrying bags loaded with money and forged documents without assistance of formal governmental institutions and departments”.

There are certainly Zionist groups that raise large sums of money to legally purchase Arab-owned land. While it is altogether possible that a member of this organization saw a common Arab name on a legal deed and made a mistake approaching the wrong man, this accusation shows no evidence of forgeries, Israeli government conspiracy or anything else.

But it is interesting that this accusation came on Saturday, because a much stronger accusation came just last Thursday - by the PA itself: (H/T: Backspin)

Dozens of Christian families from the Bethlehem area are about to discover that their homes and lands have been "sold" to Muslims without their knowledge, Palestinian Authority security officials said Thursday.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that members of a local Muslim gang have been arrested on suspicion of stealing land and property registration documents from the Bethlehem Magistrate's Court.

Bethlehem Governor Salah Ta'mari confirmed that an investigation was under way to determine who was behind the theft. He said most of the stolen documents belonged to families living abroad.

A Christian businessman told the Post that most of the victims were Christian families living in the US and Latin America. "They are stealing our homes almost every day," he said. "We believe the suspects have been receiving help from some Palestinian security officers here."

The scam was uncovered when court officials complained that many files relating to cases involving ownership of property had disappeared, a security official said.

Initially, police thought thieves had broken into the court and stolen the files, he added. However, further investigation revealed that the theft was an inside job. Three court employees and five land dealers were later arrested in connection with the case.

The official refused to reveal the land brokers' identities, but sources in the city said some of them were not real land dealers.

"These are people with close ties to the Palestinian security forces," the sources said. "We have written to the Palestinian Authority demanding a full inquiry. This is one of the biggest scandals in Bethlehem and many families are very worried that they may lose their property."

Apparently, the "Al-Aqsa Association" decided that now would be a good time to divert attention from the real phenomenon of Muslims stealing Christian land in Bethlehem.