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I also nominated a posting of mine that appeared in the Carnival of History this month. (I nominated an article for the Carnival of Insanities but we'll see if it made it in.)
Palestinian militants opened fire at a festival at a U.N.-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a bodyguard of a local Fatah leader and wounding seven other people, medical officials said.Isn't it lovely to see PalArabs attack the one organization that helps them the most? UNRWA only exists for them. (Paltoday says that people threw hand grenades at the festival.)There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Muslim extremists had earlier visited the school, warning authorities not to hold the festival, U.N. and security officials said.
A number of foreigners, including John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, were inside the school when the shooting broke out, a U.N. official said. Ging was not hurt, but remained holed up inside the school, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
Palestinian medical officials identified the dead man as a bodyguard of Majid Abu Shameleh, a senior official in President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Abu Shameleh was leaving the event when the shooting erupted. No children were hurt.
Sabri Rajawi, 26, was murdered Saturday night by Fatah terrorists who claimed he confessed to helping Israel by passing information about Fatah’s terrorist groups.There may have been a third murder this weekend, as PalArabs claim Israel killed an Arab in Gaza but no independent source verifies any Israeli actions there. But that story may have been made up altogether, as the dead man was not identified.
Members of Fatah’s Al-Aksa Brigades said Rajawi helped Israel arrest local terrorist leaders and even established a terror cell solely to turn over its members to Israeli security forces.
A second PA man was handed over to one of Hamas’s PA militias.
An abbreviation of Global Hosted Operating System, G.ho.st is a free 'Virtual Computer' - a Web-based operating system that allows users to access their on-line desktop from any browser. G.ho.st aims to "to complement and eventually replace Windows", according to its Website.
Israeli internet entrepreneur Zvi Shreiber is the founder and chief architect of the project which he privately funded, partly using profits from the lucrative sale of his company Unicorn to IBM.
With offices in Jerusalem and Ramallah, almost all of G.ho.st's 15 employees are of Palestinian or Israeli Arab origin.
In an interview with Ynet, Shreiber said that he was the mastermind behind the original idea for G.ho.st and he met his Palestinian business partner Tareq Maayah through a common acquaintance.
Academically educated in the United States, Maayah gained expertise in the field serving as CEO of Siemens Information and Communication Technologies and on the Advisory Board to the Palestinian Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.
G.ho.st and its team support collaboration – not just on-line but in real life as well.
Shreiber and Maayah don't just prove that co-existence is possible, they promote the idea financially as well, pledging 10 percent of earnings to the non-profit G.ho.st Peace Foundation. Their goal is "to promote peace in the Middle East through grass-roots social and commercial collaboration between the individuals on both sides," the Website says.
How much longer will the world permit Israel to get away with land theft and child murder? The sieges and check-points, the collective punishment and targeted executions, the house demolitions and ethnic cleansing...Taking these absurd accusations at face value, one would think that Kasrils is against land theft, child murder, checkpoints, targeted executions and so on.
South Africa has invited Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to visit this country, in what would be his first trip outside the Muslim world.Now, is Kasrils so uneducated as to not know that Hamas practices routine assassinations, targets Jewish children, steals land, encourages children to kill themselves, persecutes Christians, practices misogyny, condones "honor killings," shoots rockets indiscriminately at civilians, and who knows how many other crimes?Haniyeh would like to meet Nelson Mandela during the trip, according to a Haniyeh aide.
The invitation was issued by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who met Haniyeh in Gaza City yesterday.
"We stand by you and support you," Kasrils said of the new Palestinian unity government, a coalition of Hamas and the Fatah movement of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
A 7-month-old girl, Shahed Khalil, was seriously injured on Friday as a result of gunfire from unidentified armed men in Jabalia in northern Gaza.As usual, if Shahed Khalil should die, it will probably go unreported in the PalArab press, because it really isn't that important.
Palestinian sources reported that the infant was shot in the head while she was in her house. She was transferred from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya to Ash-Shifa' Hospital in Gaza City.
Dr. Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: We use trains and planes, but they are not our trains or planes. The (Westerners) manufacture them and export them to us. True, we can buy the most magnificent things in the world products for our homes and for ourselves. Our people can buy the most luxurious cars, Rolls-Royce or Mercedes 500 or 700, models S, M, and L with all the luxuries. We own them, but we don't manufacture them. We don't even produce a single nail in any of these cars. Others do this for us.
The income of the entire Arab world, including the oil-producing countries, does not reach the that of a European country, such as Spain. Spain – let alone Germany, France, Britain, or Italy. Just Spain, which is at the bottom of the list of industrial countries... The income of the entire Arab world does not reach it. How come? Because we don't work, and if we do work, we don't do it professionally.
They conducted a survey of the average time that a government employee spends working in a certain Arab country. The average was 27 minutes a day. 27 minutes! The rest of the time he drinks coffee, reads newspapers, and goes on errands here and there. Only a small number of people work. The rest do not.
In the mid 1970s I went to Germany. We arrived during in the morning. I asked the guy who took me from the airport to the convention hall… As I was passing through the empty streets, I asked him how come the streets were not busy, like in our countries. He said: "People are at work." After 7 p.m. he took me back to the hotel, and the streets were empty. I said to him: "What's going on, the streets are empty again." He said: people are back home from work, and they are exhausted. All they want is to eat their dinner, watch the news, and then go to bed, because early next morning they have to wake up for hard work. They commute more than an hour to work and back, and spend an hour at lunch. They work non-stop.
We are a nation that doesn't work. How can we develop if we don't work? When we do work, we don't do it professionally. We keep saying "Don't worry, later, later…" Islam teaches us to do things professionally. Doing things professionally is a religious duty. The Prophet said that Allah ordered to excel in everything. He imposed excellence and professionalism. Professionalism must be followed in everything. "If you kill, do it properly, and if you slaughter, do it properly." Even when killing, you must do well.
Unfortunately, we do not excel in either military or civil industries. We import everything from needles to missiles. This is our nation. We still haven't manufactured an engine in our Arab countries. We assemble parts, but have no manufacturing industries. India has manufactured a car, and even a plane, while we still go around in circles like a bull in who turns a grinding mill or a water wheel until it reaches exactly where it started.
How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us, despite being so few? It has become superior through knowledge, through technology, and through strength. It has become superior to us through work. We had the desert before our eyes but we didn't do anything with it. When they took over, they turned it into a green oasis. How can a nation that does not work progress? How can it grow?
Today, 3 May, is the United Nations' World Press Freedom Day, celebrated around the world. The United States consul for press affairs in Jerusalem, Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, invited members of the Palestinian press to a special celebration in the West Bank city of Ramallah to honour the achievements of Palestinian journalists.Now, I spend a fair amount of time reading Palestinian Arab news sources in both English and autotranslated Arabic. With one exception, every major news source is clearly aligned with a political party, and the news is slanted that way (for example, Fatah-leaning newspapers will refer to Fatah victims of intraPal violence as "martyrs", and Hamas-leaning papers will do the same for Hamas victims.) With one exception, even basic journalistic standards of unbiased reporting is completely ignored in the Palestinian Arab media. Wafa, Al-Ayyam, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Paltoday - all of them have the journalistic standards of the National Enquirer.
In her speech, Schweitzer-Bluhm applauded the Palestinian journalists for their "dedication to service", "commitment to getting at the truth" and "solidarity and bravery in the face of intimidation."
She particularly expressed her appreciation of the obstacles Palestinian media personnel must overcome to carry out their jobs, mentioning roadblocks, checkpoints, accusations of bias, threats, violence and gunfire. "Despite these obstacles, you do get the news out every day," she congratulated.
She applauded Palestinian journalists for challenging their own government, governments of neighbouring countries and the government of the United States. "Your inquiries and reports are a required part of a democratic Palestinian society," she said. "You are providing your fellow citizens with the information, the tools, to make decisions and be active members of their society. I urge you to continue to question and investigate and report."
Schweitzer-Bluhm described all attacks on journalists and freedom of speech as "despicable", adding, "And to those who would try to intimidate you or curtail your freedom of speech, I say no one is free if there is not freedom of information," she said.
Demanded that the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine today, the occasion of World Press Freedom Day today, Thursday,, the masses of journalists, to focus on the fundamentals it meets all our people away from the differences and contradictions Media battalion is developed in all our battles.Nice of them to tell the media what they should cover to advance their cause. The fact that they have RPGs to back up their request shouldn't be a problem at all.
The movement said in a statement the "Palestine today," a copy of which, the role played by the media in highlighting the novel and impose national, and avoid discord and show Unionist voice of our people.
The movement said in a statement "the day World Press Freedom Day, journalists live atmosphere of persecution and oppression and gagged and confiscated liberties, spared no prosecutions were kidnapped and killed and arrested, at the hands of the enemies of freedom around the world, topped by the head of the evil American and pampered State of the Zionist entity."
Reasons for decline of the Muslim worldThere is something seriously wrong when repressive Muslim regimes can print something like this but the liberal US media, supposedly dedicated to free speech, wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Husain Haqqani
03-May-07
THE Muslim world seems to be in the grip of all kinds of rumours. The willingness of large numbers of Muslims to believe some outrageous assertions reflects pervasive insecurity coupled with widespread ignorance.
The contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories limits the capacity for rational discussion of international affairs.
For example, a recent poll indicates that only 3 per cent of Pakistanis believe that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the United States, notwithstanding Osama bin Laden and his deputies have taken credit for the attacks on more than one occasion.
The acceptance of rumours and the readiness to embrace the notion of a conspiracy does not apply exclusively to the realm of politics.
Villagers in rural Nigeria are refusing to administer the polio vaccine to their infant children out of fear that the vaccine will make their offspring sterile.
Some religious leaders in Pakistan's Pashtun tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have also voiced concerns about a "Western-Zionist conspiracy" to sterilise the next generation of Muslims as part of what they allege is an "ongoing war against Islam".
Mobile phones and the Internet, the pervasiveness of which is often cited as a measure of a society's progress and modernity, have become a means of spreading fear in the Muslim world.
Text messages, originating from the Pakistani city of Sialkot, recently warned people of a virus if people answered phone calls from certain numbers.
The virus would not hurt the phone, the messages said, but would rather kill the recipient.
The panic caused by the rumours forced the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to issue a denial. Phone companies sent out text messages urging people to be calm.
A newspaper rejected the rumour but featured the headline, Killer Mobile Virus.
A text message widely circulated in an Arab country claimed that trucks carrying a million melons had been smuggled across the country's northern border and the melons were contaminated with the HIV virus, which causes Aids.
No one paid any attention to the fact that the HIV virus cannot be transmitted by eating melons.
The Muslim world has a high rate of illiteracy but ignorance reflected by the readiness to believe unverified (and sometimes totally outrageous) claims is not just a function of illiteracy.
It is a function of bigotry and fear. Literate Muslims, such as those involved in the text message rumour-mongering, are as vulnerable to ignorant behaviour as illiterate ones.
Conspiracy theories have been popular among Muslims since the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire as a way of explaining the powerlessness of a community that was at one time the world's economic, scientific, political and military leader.
The erosion of the leadership position of Muslims coincided with the West's gradual technological ascendancy.
The Persian, Mughal and Ottoman empires controlled vast lands and resources but many important scientific discoveries and inventions since the 15th century came about in Europe and not in the Muslim lands.
Ignorance is an attitude and the world's Muslims have to analyse, debate and face it before they can deal with it.
The 57-member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference have around 500 universities compared with more than 5,000 universities in the US and more than 8,000 in India. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an "Academic Ranking of World Universities", and none of the universities from Muslim-majority states was included in the top 500.
The Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Western nations spend around 5 per cent of GDP on producing knowledge.
The tendency of Muslim masses to accept rumours as fact and the readiness to believe anything that suggests a non-Muslim conspiracy to weaken or undermine the Muslims is the result of the overall feeling of helplessness and decline that permeates the Muslim world.
Most Muslim scholars and leaders try to explain Muslim decline through the prism of the injustices of colonialism and the subsequent ebb and flow of global distribution of power.
But Muslims are not weak because they were colonised. They were colonised because they had become weak.
Conspiracy theories paper over the knowledge deficit and attitude of ignorance in the Muslim world. It is time for a discussion of the Ummah's decline in the context of failure to produce and consume knowledge and absorb verifiable facts.
Husain Haqqani is director of Boston University's Centre for International Relations, and Co-chairman of the Islam and Democracy Project at Hudson Institute, Washington DC. He is author of the book "Pakistan between Mosque and Military".
The [Palestinian Arab Gaza] journalist adds: "There are two options today that could take us out of this situation: Someone strong in the Gaza Strip who does not care about a confrontation with the clans, or an Israeli occupation. Many people in the Strip hope that Israel will reoccupy it because these phenomena were not prevalent during the Israeli occupation."
In the reality that is Gaza, where economic hardship screams out, there are quite a few Palestinians who wish to send Qassam rockets at its northern neighbor - and not necessarily for ideological reasons. The head of a unit of launchers gets $5,000 from the organization that sends him on his mission for releasing a salvo of rockets - an enormous sum in Gazan terms. The members of the unit receive several hundred dollars. The economic temptation is immense. It is less important to those launching the rockets whether the target is actually hit. That may be important only to those who wish to see the IDF return as an occupier to Gaza.These two items - that many Gazans are hoping for Israeli re-occupation, and that rocket crews get paid huge amounts - are facts that you will never see in a Western newspaper. Because, once again, the facts upset the narrative of a Zionist-oppressed Palestinian Arab people that is the basis of nearly all journalism about the area.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad is being slammed by Iranian newspapers and Islamic groups after he kissed his teacher's hand during a celebration, on the occasion of Iranian teacher's day.
The Tehran-based "Hezbollah newspaper" considered the Iranian president's behavior contradictory to Islamic law, "which prohibits the kissing the hand of any lady, if she is not one of the man's family members, and to whom he can not get married."
The newspaper went as far as saying, "the Iranian people have never witnessed such a violation of the Islamic rules since the Islamic revolution in 1979, and such inappropriate behavior could have very serious influence on the sacred Islamic principles and values."
It is noteworthy that, when the Iranian president kissed his teacher's hand, she was wearing gloves, and so there was no contact with her flesh.
THE KURDISH EXAMPLE FOR PALESTINE:For years the Kurds were my favorite lost cause. I do not mean this at all cynically. I gave to Kurdish charities. I wrote about them, and others wrote about them in TNR, too. I bored dinner table conversations about the justice of their cause and the injustice of their oppressors. What the Dalai Lama was to Richard Gere (forgive my pretension), the Kurds were to me. But Tibet is truly a lost cause, having fallen into the grisly grip of the Chinese who will never let go. Never.
But I don't want to compare the Kurds to the Tibetans who have no one but celebrities behind them, and people driving Volvos. I want to compare the Kurds to the Palestinians. This comparison arose in the middle of a public discussion last night with Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Olin Center for International Studies at Harvard University. He and his audience were talking about the United States in the Middle East after Iraq. One of Kramer's points was that the Middle East was about to break down, whether we like it or not. Another was that the "city-state" will be a more common form of government than what it is now. And, in the discussion, it became clear that Kurdistan, whether it had formal independence or not, was a real state and its people were a real people.
So my lost cause was no longer a lost cause. And those who loved the Kurds, but never loved them the most, have also been rewarded for whatever decent loyalty they had and expressed. The fact is that, aside from us lost causers, nobody really wanted the Kurds to have a state, which they did have for less than a year after World War II until the Soviets turned on them and the U.S. did not help. So some people loved the Kurds but everybody got an acid attack when the name Kurdistan was mentioned.
Still, consciously or not, and I believe consciously, the Kurds followed the example of what the Zionists did from the twenties on. For several decades, even under the raging reign of Saddam Hussein, they built an educational system and a health system, they had a working Kurdish government that no one recognized, they paid attention to all of the requirements for civil society. There is a vibrant economy and it is generating serious foreign investment. It is true that, for the last dozen years or so, their ambitious ventures were implicitly and explicitly carried out under the protection of the U.S. Yet it was as if nobody noticed. The international system paid no attention, except to warn that there should not be a Kurdish state. There should not be a Kurdish state. There really should not be a Kurdish state. Yet there is a Kurdish state, and it will get along with Turkey.
Contrast the Kurds with the Palestinians. Everyone is passionate for a Palestinian state. There have been at least two declarations of independence proclaiming it. 120-odd countries have already recognized the state of Palestine. The Palestinians have embassies all over the world, and the world's countries have representation in it. Even the government of Israel wants there to be a Palestine, and three of the previous governments have also expressed support and worked for a Palestinian state. In fact, I suppose I want a Palestinian state, too. But the Palestinians don't have a state, and it's not because Israel failed to give them one or negotiate one with them.
The contrast is startling: no one wants a Kurdish state and yet there is one. Everyone wants a Palestinian state, people are willing to die for it and, what's worse, kill for it. Mahmud Abbas is president of the state, and there is an elected parliament with a designated prime minister and a "unity" government. But let's face it: the state of Palestine simply does not exist. There is even a question as to whether the Palestinian people really exists, except in the realm of conflicted ideology. That is not enough. I'll wager a bet. The Kurds will be represented as a state in international councils long before the people of Palestine stop killing each other.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!