Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 15, 2007

Hamas - just ordinary folks

They go to the office just like everyone else:

...and the restroom...

...
or just hanging out:

The cult of terror is so strong, that they keep their faces covered like criminals even in victory.

Calm in Gaza - only a few murders so far

Things are winding down in Gaza with the lesser-equipped but far more hateful Hamas destroying the Western backed corrupt, yet moderate terrorists of Fatah.

So far today:
Hamas executed two Fatah men suspected of being evil in the eyes of Allah,
A Fatah man sprayed bullets at a pro-Hamas rally, killing one,
Hundreds are looting PA buildings in Gaza;
"Gunmen" entered a hospital and executed a patient and also shot two women.

Ma'an points out (in an article that has since disappeared) that the only journalists left in Gaza are too scared to tell the truth about Hamas atrocities. The public executions of Hamas' enemies seem to have had a, shall we say, chilling effect on free speech. This helps explain why Ma'an reported Hamas' claims of an Israeli tank killing a family as credible, when it was in fact a Hamas explosive blowing up a car. Also, yesterday there were five killed in a "gas cylinder explosion" in Gaza - but was it really?

Our count of PalArabs violently killed by each other this year is now at 421.
UPDATE: A shortened version of the article remains here.

Bush's responsibility for Hamastan

To a large extent, US policy has allowed Hamas to create its terror statelet in Gaza.

The 2006 elections where Hamas beat Fatah took place mostly because Bush was on his democracy kick - and he made the mistake of confusing democracy with elections. He read and admired Natan Sharansky's book, and misunderstood it. Real democracy requires freedom as a prerequisite, something that certainly didn't apply in the PalArab territories.

As a result, Hamas emerged stronger than ever and is now on its way to building an Islamist thugocracy - the exact opposite of the Bush administration's intent.

And it appears that the lessons have not yet been learned.

(Blogging from Blackberry so no links to relevant articles, sorry.)

So what does a Gaza Hamastan mean?

ותמלא הארץ חמס...

People are asking what a Gaza officially run by Hamas will mean.

I had a tiny moment of optimism after the initial Hamas victory in January 2006, followed immediately with a much worse case scenario that can easily happen:

My initial lack of concern over the Hamas victory may be premature. I had forgotten one of my own recent blog themes.

There is a way for Hamas to refuse to talk to Israel, ignore Western economic pressure, stay true to its Islamist roots and to appear to help the Palestinian Arabs in their day-to-day lives.

And the answer is Iran.

Iran would be overjoyed to have an Islamist fundamentalist terror statelet right next to Israel. It will provide more than enough money to offset the shortfall from any chance of the EU refusing to give aid to a terror group. It would increase Iran's influence and further its goals of being the world Islamist power. It would help Iran's popularity among the faithful, and it will solidify Iran's leadership role as the major threat to the West and eventual Islamist world domination.

As long as the world is willing to pay huge amounts of money to Iran for oil, the world will end up subsidizing the Hamastan terror statelet. For only a billion petrodollars a year, Iran can replace the EU, UN and US funds. (And the European twisted logic will then continue to find ways to give money to Hamas as a way to "maintain influence" over a bunch of thugs.)

Iranian missiles in Gaza could reach all of Europe.

Ultimately, Iran views Hamastan as the perfect delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons - an entire "nation" that would happily vaporize itself to destroy Israel.

Hamas initially claimed that they had no immediate designs on building an Islamic theocracy when they won the election, but statements made today show that this is no longer the case. Their commonalities with Iran far outweigh the Shia/Sunni divide. Al-Qaeda is not worrisome Gaza wildcard - it remains Iran, which will now have the opportunity to sandwich Israel between Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

The EU has already cut off aid to Gaza in the wake of Hamas' steamrolling Fatah. It is way past time for Israel to follow suit - cut off water, medical help and electricity towards a reichlet that is intent to destroy Israel. There is no occupation and Israel has no moral or legal obligation to prop up an entity that is dedicated to destroying it. Iran will be happy to try to fill the gap - but Iran is already stretched economically and I don't believe it can afford the billions of dollars annually that it would take to even keep the status quo, and its own domestic problems will only increase.

It is critical for Israel to speak up now to the world: Gaza shows what happens when you give Palestinian Arabs autonomy. Gaza is the model for the Palestine that the world insists is needed. In less than two years Gaza went from a functioning society to a violent Islamic terror statelet under Palestinian Arab rule. Staying silent now is a wasted opportunity.

Ultimately, Israel will invade Gaza again, especially when Hamas solidifies its victory and turns once again against Israel. This time Israel cannot be as concerned about civilians as she has in the past, because in war, total victory ends up saving more lives than the cease-fires that have been imposed on Israel in the past.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer agrees about the Iranian scenario. (h/t Daled Amos)

Hamas starts humiliating Fatah

One of the corollaries of the honor/shame culture in the Arab world is that you don't only desire honor for yourself, but you want to humiliate the enemy. Fear of disgrace is a much bigger incentive than seeking honor.

So it is not surprising that Hamas is showing Fatah members this morning on TV in their underwear. Even Ma'an News, which is the only PalArabic news source that is not openly partisan, describes it as humiliating. And note the juxtaposition of humiliating Fatah and declaring the greatness of Hamas (autotranslated):

Broadcast space Aqsa loyal to Hamas pictures of dozens of soldiers and officers of the Force are without clothes, except their underwear while raising their hands while elements of the Qassam shooting over their heads in humiliating and insulting.

Hamas leader Sami Zuhri Ayo on the background of these pictures said : "Allah Akbar Allah Akbar, praise be to God a lot, It was a moment of victory and say to the nation and the people that this is the second liberation of Gaza Liberalization of the first settlers and the second liberation of these clients.

Notice also that Hamas' promises not to turn Palestine into an Islamic state during the election have gone out the window.

Hamas: "The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived"

From Ha'aretz:

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot dead in the street outside Preventive Security building. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed before their wives and children.

"They are executing them one by one," Abu Ayad said. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting."

Some of the Hamas fighters kneeled down outside the building, touching their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Others led Fatah fighters out of the building, some of them shirtless or in their underwear, holding their arms in the air. Several of the Fatah men flinched as the crack of gunfire split the air.

"We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return," Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio. "The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived."

Reuters: Islamic terrorists just like Jews and Christians

Let's play Find the Bias:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil" and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters.

It said extremists from each of the three faiths often have tangible grievances -- social, economic or political -- but they invoke religion to recruit followers and to justify breaking the law, including killing civilians and members of their own faith.

The report was commissioned by security think tank EastWest Institute ahead of a conference on Thursday in New York titled "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization." The report will be updated and published after the conference.

The authors compared ideologies, recruitment tactics and responses to violent religious extremists in three places -- Muslims in Britain, Jews in Israel and Christians in the United States.

"What is striking ... is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence," the report said.

It said that while Muslims were often perceived by the West as "the principal perpetrators of terrorist activity," there are violent extremists of other faiths. Always focusing on Muslim extremists alienates mainstream Muslims, it said.

The report said it was important to examine the root causes of violence by those of different faiths, without prejudice.

"It is, in each situation, a case of 'us' versus 'them,'" it said. "That God did not intend for civilization to take its current shape; and that the state had failed the righteous and genuine members of that nation, and therefore God's law supersedes man's law."

COMMON WORLDVIEW

This worldview was common to ultranationalist Jews, like Yigal Amir, who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, to U.S. groups like Christian Identity, which is linked to white supremacist groups, and to other Christian groups that attacked abortion providers, it said.

"Extremists should never be dismissed simply as evil," said the report. "Trying to engage in a competition with religious extremists over who can offer a simpler answer to complex problems will be a losing proposition every time."

Harvard University lecturer Jessica Stern, the conference's keynote speaker, spent five years interviewing extremists for her 2003 book "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill."

She said it was dangerous for U.S. President George W. Bush to use terms such as "crusade" or "ridding the world of evil."

"It really is falling into the same trap that these terrorists fall into, black and white thinking," Stern told Reuters on Wednesday. "It's very exciting to extremists to hear an American president talking that way."

Stern said to compare violent extremists from the three faiths was not to suggest that the threat was the same.

"These are not equivalent," she said. "The problems arising from Christian or Jewish extremism are not threatening to the world in the same way as Muslim extremism is."

Conference organizers say their aim is to develop a nonpartisan strategy to combat religious extremism.

The guest list includes representatives of the State Department, Homeland Security, the New York Police Department and the U.N. missions of Israel, Iraq, Britain and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Reuters is excited to have obtained an exclusive report from an obscure conference that seems to confirm what they've been saying for years.

The conference had, as its principal aim, to find a non-partisan way to combat extremism - and lo and behold, it wrote a report that made all extremism sound the same!

And even though the keynote speaker notes that Islamic extremism is qualitatively and quantitatively in a different ballpark than Jewish and Christian extremism, that opinion is buried at the bottom of the article, after a quote from her saying that Bush's use of the word "evil" is stupid.

Apparently, to consider a people who send pregnant women to blow up women and children as "evil" is just way too simplistic and just as bad as Islam calling all infidels "evil."

The deaths keep piling up

JPost puts Wednesday's count at 35.

Ha'aretz adds 8 for Thursday.

Out PalArab self-death count for 2007 is now at 390.

Rumors that Fatah will finally take off their gloves are today's news, but it is unclear how many gloves they have left.

Fatah is discovering tunnels filled with explosives under their buildings; Hamas seems to have been busy in recent weeks. Hamas, of course, claim that the tunnels were meant to kill Jews. Yesterday some 10 Fatah members were killed when Hamas detonated a one ton bomb under their building in Khan Younis.

Ma'an English has the best description of the current state of the civil war as it is spreading beyond Gaza to the West Bank:

The main headquarters of the Preventive Security service in the Gaza Strip, known as Tal Al-Hawa, and the main building of the general intelligence services, known as Al-Mashtal, in western Gaza City, were the prime targets of Hamas' attacks on Wednesday night.

Our correspondent stated that the death toll in Gaza since Wednesday afternoon rose to 33 after the clashes between Hamas forces and the Bakr family came to an end. Five members of the Bakr family were killed. Dozens more were abducted in addition to three others who were killed earlier.

Furthermore, two brothers from the Afana family were killed in clashes which erupted in the centre of the city, and both were Fatah activists. A Hamas operative was also killed in Tal Al-Hawa.

Earlier, 11 Palestinians were killed and around a hundred were injured in clashes in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, after which Hamas took control of the headquarters of the national and preventive security forces.

Haniyeh and Abbas vainly call for a ceasefire

On Wednesday night, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Isma'il Haniyeh called for all hostilities to cease.

In a telephone call, Abbas and Haniyeh stressed that "efforts must be exerted in order to reach a ceasefire agreement." They called on all parties to cease hostilities, resume dialogue and to respect the previous agreements, especially the Mecca accord, in order to protect the national unity.

Fatah gunmen retaliate in the West Bank

However, the fighting continued and spread to the West Bank where Fatah-affiliated gunmen responded to the attacks on its facilities in Gaza by attacking Hamas' headquarters and institutions.

In the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank, Hamas accused Fatah of launching a campaign of arrests and break-ins against Hamas members.

Hamas sources told Ma'an that large numbers of Fatah-affiliated security services broke into Hamas members' homes in Ramallah and its suburb of Beitunia, arresting many and ransacking homes.

Hamas affirmed in telephone call to Ma'an that Fatah gunmen abducted attorney Rabi' Rabi', who is a member of the local council of Ramallah, after setting fire to his office in the city centre on Thursday morning.

Hamas also accused the security services of arresting the director of the Islamic endowment department in Ramallah, Majid Saqir, on Thursday. They added that Fatah gunmen also opened fire at the West Bank director of Hamas' Al-Aqsa Satellite TV, Muhammad Shtewi.

Hamas also said that gunmen opened fire at the home of the imam of the Beitunia mosque, Sheikh Iyad Ajlouni, at 3:00 am.

In the northern West Bank city of Salfit, south of Nablus, Hamas said that gunmen set fire to the local office of the Hamas bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is located in the village of Bidya, north of Salfit. The gunmen, according to Hamas sources, broke into the Nahda Society for Orphans, which is also Hamas-affiliated. In addition, the Juthour centre and the 'Bayan As-Sahafi' offices, also Hamas-affiliated, were broken into and equipment stolen.

In Tulkarem, also in the northern West Bank, our correspondent reported that unidentified gunmen opened fire at the 'Mass Press' information office, also Hamas-affiliated, causing huge material damage. No casualties or injuries were reported.

Unidentified people also torched 2 cars belonging to the Isra' schools, which belong to the Islamic alms-giving committee in Tulkarem.

In Jenin in the north of the West Bank, about 200 gunmen set ablaze the building of the Islamic club and damaged the property. They also besieged the Al-Iman school and raised the flags of Fatah and Fatah's armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, on the rooftops.

Unidentified gunmen also opened fire at Hamas members in the villages of Silat Al-Harithiya and Al-Yamun, located north west of Jenin city. Gunmen broke into homes of Hamas activists, intending to arrest them, but they were not at home.

Thursday's copies of 'Filasteen' ('Palestine') newspaper, which is considered close to Hamas, were also burned on Thursday morning by gunmen while being delivered from Ramallah to Jenin.

In Bethlehem in the southern West Bank, unidentified people torched the car of the Mufti of Bethlehem, Abdul Majid Ata, in front of his home in Dheishah refugee camp in the south of the city

UPDATE: JPost counts 14 dead in morning fighting in Gaza City, which presumably doesn't count the one from early this morning I mentioned in my last post on the topic. So my best guess on the death count is now up to 397. Grim milestone ahead!

UPDATE 2: Ma'an Arabic counts 16 today, but they might be including this morning's guy. So we are conservatively at 398.

UPDATE 3: JPost has the death toll at 25 by mid-afternoon. Also, Hamas claims to have found documentation of ties between Fatah and the CIA. 407.

UPDATE 4: Ma'an Arabic counts 27. 409.

UPDATE 5: PCHR counted 36 on Tuesday, I only had 35. 410.

UPDATE 6: Hamas blew up a family, including 4 kids, in a car in Rafah - and are claiming that it was from an Israeli tank. Israel denies being anywhere near there. Witnesses said it was from Hamas/Fatah fighting. 415.

UPDATE 7: The first West Bank death. 416.

UPDATE 8: A Hamas terrorist dies of his wounds Friday morning. 417.

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 5

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Al-Husayni, as the head of religious affairs in Jerusalem, used his position to increase his influence not only among Muslims in Palestine but throughout the Arab world. One way he accomplished this was by fundraising for the Al-Aqsa Mosque built on the Temple Mount.

Despite the often mentioned phrase that "Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam," Islam has never treated Jerusalem as anything other than a slum before modern Zionism. Pictures of the Al-Aqsa mosque from before 1922 show an empty ruin, strewn with weeds and with visible damage.

As photos and history show, Jerusalem was never a place of pilgrimage in Islam. The politically astute Husayni had ample reason to increase Muslim awareness of Jerusalem and increase his own power. He went on a fundraising tour of the Arab world, saying that he was defending the Al Aqsa Mosque from being destroyed by the Jews.

By the late 1920s he had raised enough money to repair and renovate the Dome, he had increased his influence in the Arab world at large as a real Arab leader, and his prestige among Palestnian Muslims skyrocketed. Not incidentally, he also managed to marginalize his family's major Jerusalem rivals, the Nashashibi family. To a large extent, the myth of the extent of Jerusalem's holiness to Muslims is a direct result of the Mufti's activities in te 1920s.

Palestine's Muslims, thirsting for Arab leadership, mostly accepted Husayni in that role. Together with his control of ever-increasing amounts of money his influence continued to grow. And his unbridled hatred for Jews colored every move he made.

Incensed at the Jews who continuously flocked to the Western Wall, Husayni created a story that Mohammed tethered his winged horse to the Wall during his mythical "Night Journey" and therefore the Wall itself was a holy Muslim place as well. Palestine's Muslims were more than willing to believe this new claim, and the Mufti knew his audience well enough to be able to incite them to any violence whenever he wanted.

An interesting aspect of "honor" is that, in the context of conflict, it is something that can be defended but not something that can be initiated. Throwing the first punch is not honorable. Defending one's family, people and religion, however, is praiseworthy.

An Arab leader who seeks the honor that comes from being a great warrior, therefore, needs to find a pretext for attacking - a reason to make his attack look defensive. The flimsiest excuse will do, and the Arab mentality provides the ability to interpret anything at all as a gross insult to the Arab people or to Islam. Here's why:

The guilt culture of the West is based, at least nominally, on reality - facts and results and accomplishments are the building blocks of the Western mindset..

The shame culture of the East, on the other hand, is based on perception, on how one is viewed rather than what he has actually done.

The importance of perception gives rise to the importance of symbolism in Arab culture. A symbol is, after all, only a representation. Symbols do not have any tangible value., but they have huge perceptional value - and perception is everything to Arabs.

The supreme importance of symbols in the Arab world leads to a number of corollaries.

Arab projection will assume that the West places the same importance on symbolism that Arabs do. As a result, during wartime, Arabs choose targets based on symbolic value more often that their strategic value. 9-11 is only one example.

Projection will also assume that the enemy places the same importance on symbolism, and as a result even innocuous actions by the enemy are perceived as huge (symbolic) insults to Arabs - because that is their entire frame of reference. A torn Koran, a damaged mosque, an offhand comment can all take on gigantic importance.

al-Husayni and his fellow religious leaders had already identified his enemy - the Jews. He had already identified his battleground - the Western Wall. Now all he had to do was wait for an event that he could spin as a gross offense that would provide cover for his retaliation, and that he could use to whip up the emotions of the Arabs that accepted him as their leader.

His chance occurred on September 23, 1928, on the afternoon before Yom Kippur. The Jews had erected a temporary, cloth screen to separate men and women during the holy day, and the Arabs sheikhs complained to the British that it must be taken down immediately or else "they would not be responsible for what happened." Such temporary mechitzot had been placed at the Kotel in years and decades past, but coupled with the Mufti's claims of the Jews wanting to take over the Temple Mount, any physical alteration of the site was taken to be an intense provocation and proof of Jewish designs on the entire area.

The British wanted to avoid antagonizing the Arabs, and even when they suggested that perhaps the screen can stay up until the end of the fast day, the Arabs continued to threaten violence. So the British dismantled the screen on Yom Kippur morning, and Husayni won the first round for control of the Western Wall with only threats of violence. But he got his supposed Jewish provocation that he could use an an excuse for violence. He then proceeded to distribute leaflets accusing the Jews of planning to take over the mosque.

In early 1929, the Arabs started their own prayer service opposite the Wall at precisely the same times as the Jewish prayer services. They started herding mules through the area. They "accidentally" dropped bricks from new construction on the mosque above onto the Jewish worshippers. They also applied for, and received, permission from the British for the building adjacent to the Kotel to be converted to a mosque. The British continued to prove to be cowed by threats of Arab violence.

On August 15, 1929, on Tisha B'Av, members of the Betar youth movement held a peaceful demonstration in front of the Wall. The Arabs then started a rumor that Betar attacked Muslims and cursed Mohammed. The very next day, the Supreme Muslim Council marched on the Wall and burned prayer books and notes in the Wall. The day after that, on the Jewish Sabbath, riots continued an an Arab mob killed a Jew in Jerusalem. The "disturbances" of 1929 had started.

Everyone knew that the riots would spread throughout Palestine. The British were warned but did nothing, and some reports had them standing by during actual murders. The Haganah organized and repulsed attacks against some areas, but others - particularly old Jewish communities who had lived in relative harmony with their Arab neighbors for centuries - refused help. Hebron bore the brunt of the Arab gangs, who not only killed all the Jews they could find but also raped and mutilated women and children. (Many of the Hebron victims were American yeshiva students.) In the end, over a hundred Jews had been murdered by the murderous Arab mobs.

It is notable that the victims were, by and large, not Zionist and not new immigrants - Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem each hosted ancient Jewish communities. The attacks, instigated by the Mufti and his cronies, were the purest manifestation of anti-semitism imaginable.

It is unclear who actually participated in the riots. Accounts of the Hebron massacre do not mention any of the victims knowing the Arabs who were attacking. Many in Hebron were in fact saved by their Arab neighbors. It can be guessed that the mobs were most likely comprised of young, unemployed men who were loyal to the Mufti, and this loyalty came both from his charisma and his power. But in the aftermath of these pogroms we find none of the self-criticism that followed the 1921 riots - al-Husayni was now an unchallenged leader and the Arabs who had no problem with the Jews were not going to stand up to him.

The British did their part in the Mufti's playbook as well, recommending in the wake of the Arab riots that they were a reaction to Zionist immigration and recommending to limit the number of Jews that could move to Palestine. The Shaw Commission exonerated the Mufti for his part of the riots, although a later commission in 1937 found that he was far more involved than the British were at first willing to admit. In addition, the British declared that the Wall was owned by the Muslims but allowed certain, specific kinds of worship by Jews there. (The Jews did not claim to own the Wall, saying that it belonged to God.) The British also agreed that the Wall was al-Buraq and holy to Muslims, even while they admitted that the claim that al-Buraq coincided with the Western Wall was relatively new.

The pogrom instigated by the Mufti ended up giving him more power than ever, and the Jews wound up being punished by the British desire to not upset the Arabs. Violence against Jews, proven to be effective twice, was now the preferred modus operandi of the Palestinian Arab leaders for political gain.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

A small reminder of the depravity of Palestinian Arabs

While all the infighting between moderate terrorists and extreme terrorists is well and good, it is important to remember the depths of depravity and pure hate that they all have for Jews:

Details of a foiled double suicide attack in Netanya and Tel Aviv were released for publication Wednesday afternoon. Two Palestinian women were arrested last month at the Erez Crossing. They admitted to have planned to carry out a double suicide attack in Netanya and Tel Aviv. Both women are mothers of children and one of them is also pregnant.

The Islamic Jihad is the organization that sent the two women to commit the attacks in a restaurant, a wedding hall or a location with a concentration of IDF soldiers.

Ha'aretz adds more sickening detail:

Fatma Yunes Hassan Zak, 39, a resident of Gaza, mother of eight children and pregnant with her ninth, had been responsible for an Islamic Jihad Gaza women's labor office for four years. She had been in contact with Islamic Jihad terrorists and coordinated contacts on their behalf with women who had volunteered to be suicide bombers.

Approximately three months ago, her niece, Ruda Ibrahim Yunes Haviv, 30, a resident of Gaza and mother of four children, sought her assistance in perpetrating a suicide attack. Zak, who decided to participate in the attack as well, contacted her Islamic Jihad liaison, who aided the two women in putting their plan into operation.

Haviv requested the Israeli authorities' permission to travel to Ramallah, falsely claiming she needed to undergo medical tests. Zak was supposed to accompany her to the fabricated treatment in Ramallah.

The Shin Bet maintains that the two were due to meet with an Islamic Jihad militant in Ramallah, who was supposed to give them explosive belts and take them to the the locations of the planned attacks.

Pure, unadulterated evil that is cheered by Palestinian Arabs across the board when it is "successful."

Saeb Erekat, comedian

We all knew what a good liar Saeb Erekat is - but his comedy career is about to get a boost as well:

Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said on Wednesday that he expects Palestinians to overcome the current crisis and that the dangerous deterioration in the Gaza Strip should have a positive affect on the international community and encourage it to enact its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people.

Erekat spoke following a meeting with the EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, Marc Otte, and head of the EU observers at Rafah Crossing, Major-General Pietro Pistolese.

Erekat urged the EU observers to continue their job despite the descent into violent conflict in the Gaza Strip. Erekat said that the Rafah Crossing is the only access point for Gazans to the outside world.

Finally, Erekat stressed the responsibility of the international community towards the Palestinian people and urged the UN and the EU to help the Palestinians and submit more aid to ease the lives of people living in dire conditions in the Palestinian territories.

I wonder what possible circumstances would ever occur that would make Erekat say that the Palestinian Arabs should not get more free money from the civilized world?

Today's joke

Did you hear that Fatah and Hamas are burying the hatchet and going to merge?

They'll now be known as Fatass.

(h/t TreeHugger )
UPDATE: Aussie Dave has a prior claim - plus proof - on that joke.

Don't kill us - we're not Jews!

From the Daily Telegraph (h/t Dry Bones):

"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.
Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

I guess in times of stress it gets very hard to remember to substitute "Zionists" for "Jews."

PalArab civil war update

Most sources put today's death count at 9 so far, including a 16-year old boy.

It appears that Hamas is close to winning that wonderful prize known as Gaza.

Hamas prepared a hit list of Fatah leaders it wants dead. Wisely, most of those "leaders" happen to be out of the area while their people are killing each other.

Meanwhile, a retiring UN Jerusalem envoy wrote a 53-page report complaining that the UN wasn't anti-Israel enough.

And just because they are killing each other doesn't mean that PalArab terrorists can't take out a few minutes for some R&R, shooting Qassams at Jews.

Our count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other this year is now at 354.

UPDATE: Ma'an Arabic now counts 14 for today. 359.
And during a rally against the violence, 15 marchers were injured.

UPDATE 2: One of those marchers was killed (Ha'aretz still has the total at 14 but Ma'an did not count the dead civilian earlier.) Also, two PalArab UNRWA workers were killed too. 362.

UPDATE 3: Ynet counts at least 27 dead today. Conservatively, this makes the self-death count 372, assuming they are including everyone mentioned above.

UPDATE 4:YNet has upwardly revised Wdnesday's total death count to 33. 380.

UPDATE 5: Thursday's first victim, a "senior" Hamas member. 381.

UPDATE 6:PalToday Arabic reports on the bodies of two women found Wednesday evening. No idea if they were counted by the other counts. I will update the number of women killed but not the total number.

New versions of old tunes

Another article about how Palestinian Arabs would prefer Israeli occupation to Hamastan:

Even before the civil war which Hamas and Fatah are starting in the Strip, Professor Jarbawi of Bir Zeit University maintained that the Palestinian Authority was a mere illusion of power: occupation under the guise of self government, and therefore useless.

On Tuesday, a Palestinian journalist likened the Palestinian Authority to a smoke-belching car wreck, adding that it was time to toss the keys to the Israelis. His view is shared by many Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who in recent days have told the media that they are fed up. "We've had enough, we should be so lucky as to see the return of the Israeli occupation."

Another article on how Jewish Israeli doctors keep saving Palestinian Arab lives:

In the Gaza Strip's Jab aliya refugee camp, Aref Suleiman was raised on Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state. Today he lies in an Israeli hospital bed, his body riddled with Palestinian bullets, his wounds tended daily by Israeli nurses.
For the 22-year-old Mr Suleiman, who was shot five times point blank by Hamas militants last month during a renewed bout of Palestinian infighting, this is not the Arab-Israeli conflict he learnt about as a child growing up in Gaza's desperate, rubbish-strewn alleys.
"Palestinians shoot me and Jews treat me," he laughs bitterly. "It was supposed to be different.