Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 04, 2007

UN resolutions that Palestinian Arabs ignore

Much is made among the loony anti-Israel crowd about the many absurd resolutions that the UN has passed against Israel, as if that is meaningful. However, not too many of them call upon Palestinian Arabs to fulfill the items that UN resolutions have required of them. Of course, most of these include much harsher language and requirements on Israel, but we're talking about the UN here:
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1322 (outset of intifada)
Calls for the immediate cessation of violence, and for all necessary steps to be taken to ensure that violence ceases.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1397 (2002)
1. Demands immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1402 (2002)
Calls upon both parties to move immediately to a meaningful cease-fire. Reiterates its demand in resolution 1397 (2002) of 12 March 2002 for an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1435 (2002)
Reiterates its demand for the complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction;
Calls on the Palestinian Authority to meet its expressed commitment to ensure that those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice by it.

There may be others but these what I could find immediately.

Palestinian Arab blood gets cheaper

The financially-strapped PA has cut back on its martyr's death benefits, from $350 to $6.

According to Ma'an:

Ma'an learned that the compensation paid for the son's death through the bank and agreed upon by the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), was NIS 24 (US $ 8 [sic - EoZ]), whereas previously it had been NIS 1.400 (~ $ 350 US).

Mohammad's brother confirmed that the new compensation is 24 NIS and that this is in accordance with the new law.Mohammad's brother confirmed that the new compensation is 24 NIS and that this is in accordance with the new law. "The issue is not the money, we have refused to receive the money," he said "but such rules are humiliating to the blood of martyrs, these rules do not appreciate the struggle of the fighters."

I'm sure that there is much more martyr money coming from Iran and elsewhere, but this is a good consequence of the minor reduction in aid that the PA receives.

Of course, it looks like that aid has started up again through the PLO bank account, and hundreds of millions have already gone into the coffers of the Fatah "militants," so we'll see how long this austerity towards terrorist families lasts.

Another Gaza kindergarten graduation video

Complete with little girls holding toy rifles in one hand and baby dolls in the other. Also scimitars, for that traditional look.

Notice the large crowd of doting parents, shepping nachas from their lovable tykes with suicide bomb belts.

(H/T Israel Insider.)

"Human rights" organizations show their true colors

In a press release today, the International Solidarity Movement which claims to support "using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles" to destroy Israel shows how committed to peace it really is: Excerpts:

This resistance is integral part of the history of the Palestinian people - the 1935 – 1939 Great Strike, the crushing of the Palestinian Resistance in September 1970 in Jordan, later in Lebanon or the two Intifadas (1987-1992) and the Intifada Al-Aqsa in September 2000.

Palestinian resistance also acts against the liquidation plans of the freedom national project as the Oslo agreement, the Geneva Initiative or the Quartet Roadmap (UN, USA, Russia, and European Union). Since the creation of the illegitimate State of Israel in 1948, more than 40 peace plans were adopted, without results, because they were not based on the application of these basic humane principles : There can be no justice in the presence of occupation, and there can be no peace in the presence of a racist colonial-settler entity.

The September 2000 Intifada as well as the elections on January 2006 – Hamas victory -, are the expression of the refusal of the legitimacy of the Israel's colonial project over historic Palestine. It is the expression of the people living under occupation's right to resist, which remains the angular stone of its freedom national project in reconstruction.

The question of Israel's legitimacy remains at the core of the conflict and the Palestinians give an answer to it every day by their passive or active resistance in the territories occupied in 1948 or 1967.

We will support the Arab Palestinian struggle till the complete liberation of their historic land, the only solution which will guarantee the return for the refugees.

It would take a great deal of semantic gymnastics to try to explain this praise for Palestinian Arab acts that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Jewish civilians (the "Great Strike" in the 1930s killed hundreds itself, including many Arabs as well) as being "non-violent."

But even more telling is the list of signatories to this communique, a "call to action" to destroy Israel, including many so-called "human rights" groups who show exactly how much they care about the rights of Jews to live in the Middle East. Here are some of them:

Al-Bahrain Center for Human Rights - Bahrain
Association of Bahreni Youth for Human Rights - Bahrain

Canadian Peace Alliance, Canada

Arab Program for Human Rights Activists - Egypt

Arab European League, Europe
Campo Antiimperialista - Europe

Collectif Paix Comme Palestine, Avignon, France
ISM-France (International Solidarity Movement - France)

Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons, Iraq
Iraqi Communist Party - Leadership Committee, Iraq

Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism, Italy

Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan (AOHR-Jo), Jordan
Socialist Thought Forum - Jordan
Arab World Center for Democracy and Human Rights - Jordan

Communist Workers and Peasants Party (CMKP) - Pakistan

National Association Against Zionism, Syria
National Committee for the Boycott of US Commodities in Syria, Syria

The Front for Rights and Liberties, Turkey

New Jersey Solidarity - Activists for the Liberation of Palestine, USA
Al-Awda New York, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, USA

al-Afeef Cultural Association - Yemen
al-Shaqa'eq Arab Forum for Human Rights - Yemen
Democratic Social Forum - Yemen
Yemeni Youth Shoura Council - Yemen
National Assembly for the Defence of Rights and Liberties - Yemen
National Organization for the Development of Society - Yemen
The School of Democracy - Yemen
Yemeni Organization for the Defence of Rights and Liberties - Yemen
Yemeni Youth Development Center - Yemen

With all of these Arab and communist organizations supporting "peace" and "democracy" and "human rights" one need never worry about peace again! It is heartwarming to know that they've solved all their internal human rights issues and are now so gung-ho to sign petitions on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs who they refuse to grant citizenship to - for their own good, of course.

Cycle of Violence

So it seems now that fighting in Lebanon has spread a second "refugee" camp.

You'd think that the Lebanese would learn. Obviously the second front wouldn't have opened if they would have just ignored the murders from the first camp. Now we are in a cycle of violence that threatens to keep spreading until one side has the decency to just stop fighting.

I'm sure that there are plenty of op-eds being written right now to this effect.

Encyclopedia Britannica's 1911 edition is online. It's entry on "Palestine" is especially interesting:

Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the " River of Egypt " to Hamath). However, the Hebrews themselves have preserved, in the proverbial expression " from Dan to Beersheba " (Judg. xx.i, &c.), an indication of the normal north-and-south limits of their land; and in defining the area of the country under discussion it is this indication which is generally followed.
Taking as a guide the natural features most nearly corresponding to these outlying points, we may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from the mouth of the Litany or Kasimiya River (33° 20' N.) southward to the mouth of the Wadi Ghuzza; the latter joins the sea in 31° 28' N., a short distance south of Gaza, and runs thence in a south-easterly direction so as to include on its northern side the site of Beersheba. Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins. Perhaps the line of the pilgrim road from Damascus to Mecca is the most convenient possible boundary. The total length of the region is about 140 m.; its breadth west of the Jordan ranges from about 23 m. in the north to about 80 m. in the south. According to the English engineers who surveyed the country on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the area of this part of the country is about 6040 sq. m. East of the Jordan, owing to the want of a proper survey, no figures so definite as these are available. The limits adopted are from the south border of Hermon to the mouth of the Mojib (Arnon), a distance of about 140 m.: the whole area has been calculated to be about 3800 sq. m. The territory of Palestine, Eastern and Western, is thus equal to rather more than one-sixth the size of England.

The West Bank is 2200 square miles, and Eastern Palestine was estimated in 1911 to have been 3800 square miles.

In other words, there is a large area of historic Palestine that is under Jordanian rule.

Why is no one upset over Jordanian occupation of ancient Palestinian lands? Why doesn't anyone want to see an independent Palestinian Arab state on the Eastern banks of the Jordan?

Every map of "Palestine" published by the PA - in their textbooks, in their logos - completely ignores a major part of historic Palestine. If there is a long and ancient tradition of Palestinian Arabs living in the eastern part, why are they being ignored? The arbitrary British boundaries separating Palestine from Transjordan are relatively recent and have no bearing on Arab history. The people who lived on the East Bank have historically been exactly as Palestinian as those who lived in the West.

Not only that, but when Jordan annexed the West Bank there was no "liberation movement" to speak of even in that part of historic Palestine. The PLO was founded in 1964, before there were any "territories."

The only areas of Palestine that Arabs have ever wanted for an independent Palestinian Arab state happen to be whichever areas Jews control at any point in time.

What a coincidence!

Zionist pigs return

I mentioned in April about the latest conspiracy theory among Palestinian Arabs, that Israelis are releasing wild pigs to eat their produce.

Like all good stories, it becomes a recurring theme. In Arabic PalToday (autotranslated):

A correspondent in the northern West Bank that the settlers deployed hundreds of wild pigs and wolves in Salfit, especially near the colony "down", where animals are those in the Al Matwi, by the presence of sewage mentioned in the colony, which is fertile ground for breeding pigs and reproduction is surprising and without interruption.

Transfer correspondent for the San Ibrahim Hamad, director of Salfit emphasis on the cultivation of this matter, stressing that the ministry has spared no effort in combating pigs, despite the weakness of the possibilities available to them.

His Praise "it is difficult to combat the phenomenon of pigs for two reasons : the continuing Israeli occupation forces and settlers deployment, and secondly, the rapid reproduction considerably."

Our correspondent also noted that the farmers in the governorate of Qalqilya and found large numbers of wild pigs roamed the rebel lands and ruining crops.

The correspondent reported that Mohammed Abu Asida director cultivation Qalqilya, saying : "The phenomenon of the proliferation of wild pigs disturbing and dangerous and detrimental to Palestinian farms, explaining that the phenomenon began to spread after the completion of the racist wall, and the establishment of the gates on a large scale in confined areas behind the wall."

So far the "racist wall" is responsible for pig proliferation as well as flooding. Those sneaky Jews manage to even have their inanimate objects multitask.

HH CXIX plus

Haveil Havalim #119 is out at Soccer Dad. I am once again honored to have been included in this weekly roundup of the Best of the JBlogosphere, for articles about staged news photography in Gaza and for the third installment of my Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs.

Check it out!

This blog was also mentioned in the monthly History Carnival for my look back at Jerusalem, 1952.

Some fairly popular website, somewhere, has a link to the Google Images link to my link of a picture at Internet Haganah of the head of a female suicide bomber who was the hostess of a children's TV show from 2004. I am getting a steady number of hits for it and I'd love to know where they are coming from, since I only see the Google Images link.

Exploding cows and another child intrafada martyr

Ma'an (Arabic) autotranslation gives us this interesting puzzle to decipher:

boy died d spring Abed Rabbo (17 years old) who died from injuries suffered in the unfortunate events that took place today after a car hijacking Colonel retired intelligence Yasmin Abu Smahdanh in Jabaliya, north of Gaza.

The boy was injured after Scores of family members Abed Rabbo protesters on the driver kidnapped their son, while addressing them gunmen shot and seriously wounded in the abdomen, then transfer to a hospital Kamal aggression, he died of his wounds.

The kidnappers released the driver Magdi Ahmed Abed Rabbo (34 years old), a few hours after his abduction, where he was assaulted and molested transferred to the hospital to receive treatment.

So this young man was peacefully protesting the abduction of his father. And the kidnappers shot him dead.

This might hurt the Gaza tourism business.

Our PalArab self-death count is now at 278 for the year.

Meanwhile, Ma'an (English) offers this tantalizing Breaking News item (no link to the story yet):

Al Arabiya Satellite Channel: Fatah Al Islam using explosives strapped to cows in confrontations with the Lebanese army

The poor terrorists of Fatah al-Islam are forced to use such humiliating weapons against the far superior Lebanese Army because they have no choice. It would be a much fairer fight if we gave them their own tanks and airplanes so they can properly defend themselves. (I've seen people say that about poor Palestinian Arabs in the territories, so it makes just as much sense here...)

UPDATE: Clan Clash in Khan Younis. 18 year old killed, 16 year old seriously injured. 279.

UPDATE 2: Fatah terrorist Abu Obed, 20, killed by "unknown persons" in Jabalya. 280.

UPDATE 3: PalArab shot dead by PA "police" during a car chase. 281.

Today's news from the Religion of Peace

From YNet:

A Muslim extremist group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don't don strict Islamic dress, leaving the women terrified and marking a further downward spiral in Gaza's anarchy.

The threat to "cut throats from vein to vein" was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops.

The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people, and adds to a growing climate of extremism, fear and suspicion in Gaza.

In many parts of the Muslim world, religious conservative policies keep women out of TV anchoring positions or only let them take the jobs if they wear headscarves. But in some countries scarves are uncommon, like Lebanon and Jordan, and Egypt even keeps newscasters who wear them off its TV stations.

Most of the 15 women broadcasters on government-run Palestine TV wear headscarves. But they also wear makeup and Western clothing, which is not considered strictly observant by the extremists.

The Swords of Truth issued the statement Friday in an e-mail sent to news organizations. "We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation."

The group accused the broadcasters of being "without any...shame or morals" and said it knew where to find the women.

Prior to the statement, some women broadcasters said they had received personal threats through their mobile phones. It was not clear if those threats were from the same group.

I just want to savor that quote again: "We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and morals of this nation."

Isn't it wonderful that they take their morality so seriously?

Movie: "Recruited to Die"

From the New York Sun, H/T Little Green Footballs:

In 2004, 24-year-old Brooke Goldstein spent her summer in the West Bank filming more than five hours of in-person interviews with terrorists — all of which she conducted without a bodyguard and without a weapon. A Cardozo Law student with a fashion model's high cheekbones and long blond hair, Ms. Goldstein came face-to-face with Zacaria Zubeidah, a notorious recruiter of child suicide bombers. She interviewed suicide bombers' families and children, who aspire to "martyrdom." The resulting film, "The Making of a Martyr," will screen as part of the Brooklyn International Film Festival on Saturday and Tuesday....
The night before her first foray into the West Bank, she was terrified. "I called my sister and said, ‘You should know where I'll be in case I don't come back in 24 hours.' I thought of the lynching of those Israeli reservists. A million horrible things were going through my mind."

Her arrival didn't allay her fears. "There are gallows in Ramallah — they practice public hanging. There are pictures of dead children brandishing weapons — ‘martyr posters' — everywhere you look … with captions like ‘Our hero.'"

As the group walked through the town, they spoke to Palestinian Arab children in schools and on the street. "Our fixer was encouraging us to speak with the children. I think I'd always, deep down, had a hard time thinking the problem was really that bad. I thought maybe it was a lunatic fringe," she said.

In fact, the fanaticism was worse than she ever imagined. "The most shocking thing was reconciling the normal appearance of these kids and what was coming out of their mouths," she said. "I was holding these beautiful children in my lap, and my translator was translating words of hate."

The story was always the same. "No child ever said, ‘I don't want to be a martyr.' They talked about fame, paradise, virgins, and Ferris wheels [after death]. They were happy to tell me they hated Jews," she said.

The children were more fanatical than their parents. "When we interviewed Hussam's family for the film, his parents were distraught. They don't believe in this whole child suicide bomber concept," Ms. Goldstein said. "Then I interviewed his sister, who was like, ‘I'm so proud of my brother. Hamas says he's a hero.' At one point she had a loser, dwarf, mentally handicapped brother. Now she's the coolest girl in class, and very proud."

In addition to the children, Ms. Goldstein interviewed Mr. Zubeidah, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces had made five attempts to assassinate him. In person, Mr. Zubeidah was not the harsh figure she had expected. "It was like talking to any other kid, about 27 years old," she said. "He was smiling. My translator told me, ‘He's talking about killing Jews.'"

Ms. Goldstein didn't say she was Jewish, but she asked if she were on the streets of Tel Aviv, could she be murdered in a suicide attack? His response was chilling: "He said, ‘Indeed you could. Right here you are my friend. I'm protecting you. But when you are in Israeli territory, I'm no longer protecting you.'"

Now 26, Ms. Goldstein, who finished law school in 2005, is setting up an international think tank of attorneys, psychiatrists, and policy makers to address the problem of recruiting children for terror. "It's a problem everyone should be concerned about," she said. "There are child suicide bombers now in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's being orchestrated by adults."

It is a point her film makes with honesty and compassion in presenting Hussam and other impressionable children at the mercy of a predatory society, as well as in presenting the adults, some of whom seem to participate in these children's exploitation more due to intimidation than venality.

For a particularly disgusting example of inciting hate ,see this MEMRI video of a kindergarten graduation ceremony.

The impact of years of inciting hate in young children will be felt for decades to come. It will also distance Palestinian Arabs from other Arabs even more than they already are.

Musings on Lebanon

I am not the only one to read stories about the Lebanese Army fight against Fatah al-Islam terrorists in Lebanon and find myself wondering why the rules of war, diplomacy and semantics are so very different for Arabs and Jews.

I've already linked to this article that asks why the Lebanese army can go into a crowded civilian area and kill innocent people in the pursuit of terrorists, while Israel can never do that in world public opinion.

Eye on the World notices that Lebanese tanks and heavy artillery would be considered a "disproportionate response" in the Bizarro world that Israel is forced to inhabit.

I just can't get past the fact that people who were born and raised in Lebanon are considered "Palestinians" and that they are considered "refugees." In any other context, they would be considered Lebanese, but no one on the planet considers it inappropriate for Lebanon (or Syria or Jordan) to keep generations of Arabs in camps with few services and little prospects for jobs. No one says "apartheid" or "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing." Somehow, it is Israel's fault that Arab families are stuck in ghettoes in Lebanon for 60 years, and the UNRWA pretends to help these people by perpetuating their status as non-people with no rights. And when Lebanese kill a few dozen of them, hey, no biggie.

Their desire to integrate into the greater Lebanese society is given no weight whatsoever by the entire world of humanitarians and advocates for the downtrodden. Everyone "knows" that the best solution for them is to "return" to a state that they never lived in (and consequently destroy that same state.) 60 years of Arab desire to punish the Palestinian Arabs for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, 60 years of the most explicit kind of racial discrimination imaginable performed by their ersatz brothers, is crystallized as being moral.

The Arab attitude towards Palestinian Arabs can be summarized like this: Just wait a few more decades or centuries, and one day you can live in your very own Gaza. Meanwhile, we'll pretend to have your best interests at heart.

PalArabs using children as bait

The headlines say "Israeli troops kill Palestinian boys."

The PalArabs are saying either that the boys were out gathering scrap metal, or hunting birds, or playing. They are claiming that there was no warning and the boys were killed in cold blood.

They are lying.

Even al-Haaretz points out anomalies in the Palestinian Arab stories:

Israel Defense Forces troops on Friday afternoon shot dead two Palestinian children, aged 11 and 13, close to the ruins of the former settlement of Dugit, in the northern Gaza Strip.

An IDF spokeswoman said the two children and another 16-year-old were trying to place a bomb near the Gaza Strip border fence.

The army believes that they had been paid by one of the militant groups to place an explosive device.

"We know that a number of Palestinians crawled towards the border fence. They know that it is a dangerous area but they did not heed repeated calls to stop and they planted a suspicious device close to the fence," the spokeswoman said.

The 16-year-old, who was unarmed, was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment, the IDF said.

YNet adds more detail:

Palestinians organizations said that no cell was operating in the area and that the IDF was claiming that gunmen approached the fence in order to justify shots fired for no real reason.

IDF officials noted, however, that terror organizations and Palestinian groups had distributed false information in the past few weeks claiming the IDF fired and hurt civilians. In a number of incidents, Palestinians also reported that IDF soldiers were killed or injured, but these reported were also proven to be false.

The troops spotted five Palestinians moving near the fence and called on them to stop. As the Palestinians ignored the call, the soldiers fired at them and killed two. A 16-year-old Palestinian was injured and evacuated to the Barzilay Medical Center in Ashkelon. A fourth Palestinian was arrested by the soldiers and taken in for questioning.

All of a sudden, the story changes from two twelve year olds innocently playing to a group of youths, including a 16-year old and at least one other, crawling near the fence that every Gaza parent knows is a kill zone.

Sorry, but these boys (if they were really 12, that could be a lie too) did not innocently walk into IDF fire. The entire group was warned and ignored the warnings. Whether someone put them up to it, or paid them, or perhaps they were older teenagers looking to become heroes, either way the IDF acted appropriately and the Palestinian Arabs at the very least acted negligently and at worst, maliciously and cynically.

"Mere fireworks" vs. "proudly manufactured" Qassams

To a Western audience, here is how PalArabs describe Qassams:

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israeli TV Channel Two broadcast an interview on Thursday with the Palestinian Prime Minister's advisor, Dr Ahmad Yousef, in which Yousef described the homemade projectiles launched from the Gaza Strip at Israel as "fireworks".

But in their own media they look at Qassam rockets as scientific breakthroughs and proof of Arab ingenuity as they keep trying to "improve" them. From Ma'an Arabic (autotranslated):

The Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for shelling the town of Sderot missile new aircraft Nasser 4 medium term.

The brigade sent Ma'an a copy of which was able to rocket bombardment of Sderot new aircraft Nasser 4 medium term were tested for the first time successfully at the town of Sderot. "

The brigade : "The Nasser rocket 4 advantage and the extent of the largest capital explosive device detonated greater precedent, which would have a deep impact on the destructive power."

Notice how the development stage of Palestinian Arab weapons R&D uses live Jewish women and children as guinea pigs.

May Qassam Calendar

As with the February, March and April calendars, the numbers for each date represent the number of Qassams fired on that day. The numbers in parentheses (second row after date) are those I saw reported by Palestinian Arab media, outside of parentheses (first row after date) are those reported in Israeli media. Linked dates are dates that Israel fired back. (Israel has fired back every day since the 15th and I have not maintained links for each day.)

May