Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 09, 2007

The futility of "goodwill gestures"

From Ma'an:

The families of Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails have expressed their reservations about the Israeli prime minister's initiative to release 250 Fatah-affiliated prisoners. They said that accepting such an offer would only fracture the Palestinian national unity, and they called on President Abbas to make a deal that includes all Palestinian detainees without exceptions.

The prisoners' families depicted freeing any Palestinian detainee as an accomplishment; however, they expressed their fear that the 250 whom Israeli Prime Minister Olmert intends to free would include only prisoners who have almost completed their sentences, and who are scheduled for release shortly in any case.

Such conduct would help improve the Israeli image internationally, the families said, while failing to serve the Palestinian people, of whom almost 12, 000 are detained in Israeli jails in dire conditions. In addition, most of the detainees are denied visits by their families.

The prisoners' families held their weekly sit-in outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Monday. They asserted that they would prefer a comprehensive prisoners' swap that includes all affiliations and is conducted under Palestinian conditions.

Israel is stupidly offering, for free, to release 250 known or probable terrorists, and their families are supposedly saying that it is not a good idea.

Now it is entirely possible that this is a contrived PR move where the families of known terrorist murderers, who know that their relatives will never be released, are being set up to be quoted in a newspaper purely for pressuring Israel. Nevertheless, it shows the absolute futility of "goodwill gestures" - they create no goodwill at all, and on the contrary, they engender even more demands.

The only goodwill that ever come out of moves like this are a very temporary PR bump for Israel in the West. These reactions generally last a few weeks. Then, Israel is stuck with the consequences of unilateral gesture that cannot be undone - in this case, dealing with hundreds of new terrorists in the territories.

The day that Palestinian Arabs thank Israel for unilateral gestures is the day that they may have real value. As long as they are greeted with jeers and insults, their goodwill value seems to be below zero.

Mustafa Barghouti's lies: Why Rafah is closed

The PA has a new professional spokesliar, doing for Mahmoud Abbas what Saeb Erekat did for Yasir Arafat for many years. He is Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, and he has been issuing daily statements about Israel that are filled with lies and half-truths.

His latest lies concern the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt:

PLC member and secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, said on Saturday that the Israel denying reentry to Gaza to 6,000 Palestinians trapped at Rafah Crossing is endangering their lives.

Barghouthi said in a press release that "28 Palestinians have died at the crossing since June 1st and the world has remained silent on Israeli actions, which transformed the strip into an open-air detention centre."

He added that a large number of Palestinians trapped at the crossing are in urgent need of medical treatment.

Barghouthi explained that even the deceased were not immune to Israeli punishment as they were denied entry to the strip and held in morgue in Egyptian hospitals.

Now, let's look at the truth:

Israel has offered to allow any stranded Gazans to enter through the Kerem Shalom crossing.
As soon as this offer was made, Hamas and Islamic Jihad shelled that same crossing and threatened the lives of any Palestinian Arabs who attempt to use it.
The next day, Egypt prevented thousands of stranded Palestinians from going to the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The EU is responsible for Rafah, and the agreement that opened Rafah to begin with specified that Fatah would be responsible for control there. The EU considers Hamas to be a terror organization and they cannot according to their own agreement allow Hamas to re-open the crossing.
The bodies of those who died at Rafah were transferred to Gaza through Kerem Shalom.

I think that's enough to prove that Barghouti is a liar.

Saudi Arabia sentences tragic teen to beheading

From the Asian Human Rights Commission:

This case concerns Rizana Naffeek who is facing the death sentence in Saudi Arabia, allegedly for the strangulation of a four month old baby. Through close study of the case the Asian Human Rights Commission is satisfied that, in fact, what has taken place was the tragic death of a baby in the process of being fed by an inexperienced teenager.
Rizana Naffeek was born on February 4, 1988 and comes from a war-torn, impoverished village. Here, many families, including those of the Muslim community try to send their under aged children for employment outside the country, as their breadwinners. Some employment agencies exploit the situation of the impoverished families to recruit under aged girls for employment. For that purpose they engage in obtaining passports by altering the dates of birth of these children to make it appear that they are older than they really are. In the case of Rizana Naffeek, the altered date, which is to be found in her passport now, is February 2, 1982. It was on the basis of this altered date that the employment agency fixed her employment in Saudi Arabia and she went there in May, 2005.
She went to work at the house of Mr. Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi whose wife had a new-born baby boy. A short time after she started working for this family she was assigned to bottle feed the infant who was by then four months old. Rizana Naffeek had no experience of any sort in caring for such a young infant. She was left alone when bottle feeding the child. While she was feeding the child the boy started choking, as so often happens to babies and Rizana Naffeek panicked and while shouting for help tried to sooth the child by feeling the chest, neck and face, doing whatever she could to help him. At her shouting the mother arrived but by that time the baby was either unconscious or dead. Unfortunately, misunderstanding the situation the family members treated the teenager very harshly and handed her over to the police, accusing her of strangling the baby. At the police station also, she was very harshly handled and did not have the help of a translator or anyone else to whom she could explain what had happened. She was made to sign a confession and later charges were filed in court of murder by strangulation.
On her first appearance in court she was sternly warned by the police to repeat her confession, which she did. However, later she was able to talk to an interpreter who was sent by the Sri Lankan embassy and she explained in her own language the circumstances of what had happened as stated above. This version was also stated in court thereafter.

The Arab News delivers the punchline:

Upon hearing the case, the judge urged Otaibi, the child’s father, to use his prerogative to pardon the maid, which he refused to do. Therefore, the Shariah court sentenced her to death by beheading and gave her a period of one month to lodge an appeal, which has been left up to the Sri Lankan government to file.

However, Sri Lanka has not been given access to the documents needed to file the appeal, and time runs out on July 16.

So far, Human Rights Watch has not taken notice of this case, but Amnesty International (UK) has:

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

'The death penalty is always wrong but it is an absolute scandal that Saudi Arabia is preparing to behead a teenage girl who didn't even have a lawyer at her trial.
'The Saudi authorities are flouting an international prohibition on the execution of child offenders by even imposing a death sentence on a defendant who was reportedly 17 at the time of the alleged crime.
'Rizana's execution must be stopped and she must be allowed proper legal representation. Saudi Arabia should also freeze all further executions and stop what has become a torrent of judicial killing in recent months.'
Rizana has apparently informed the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but the Saudi authorities have reportedly ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that she was born in 1982. According to information available to Amnesty International, no medical examination is believed to have been carried out to ascertain her age, nor was she given the opportunity to present her birth certificate, which reportedly shows that she was born in 1988.
In January 2006 Saudi Arabia assured the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child that no children had been executed in the country since the children's convention came into force in Saudi Arabia in 1997. This is a weaker commitment than is required by the convention, which demands that no one is executed for crimes committed when they were under 18, no matter how old they are now.
Amnesty International is raising urgent concern over the plight of Rizana Nafeek at a time when executions in Saudi Arabia have increased rapidly. In the first six months of this year nearly 100 people in the Kingdom have already been executed, including three women. Half of these have been foreign nationals, mostly from poor countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2006 Saudi Arabia was known to have executed 39 people (though the true figure may have been higher), the seventh highest number in the world. This year the execution 'rate' is approximately five times higher than last year's, and Saudi Arabia is now likely to have one of the highest execution tolls for 2007 of any country in the world.

AHRC is organizing a letter-writing campaign to the bereaved father asking him to pardon the girl, which is enough to spare her under Shari'a law. So far it hasn't helped.

AHRC is calling on Muslim scholars to speak out. That hasn't happened. In fact, I have not yet seen any of the prominent Muslim "human rights" organizations say a word about this case.

A single phone call from the US government would probably have more effect to help the girl than anything else. There's only a week left.

A Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 9

(This chapter is a bit different, as I became fascinated by the story of Abu Ghosh and saw it as a great example of how things could have been in 1948. Here is a classic example of the exception that proves the rule.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

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The village of Abu Ghosh was established in the 1500s on top of a Biblical site known as Kiryat Ye'arim. Within the town are some extremely important historical finds, including a Crusader church and evidence of the Roman Tenth Legion camping there during the siege of Jerusalem in the first century. It is named after the family that lived there, which for a while levied a toll on pilgrims coming on the road to Jerusalem. The original Abu Ghosh was regarded with some fear as a robber by the Christian visitors to Jerusalem in the 19th century.

Unlike most Arab villages in Palestine, Abu Ghosh enjoyed excellent relations with the Jews. They sold land willingly to Zionists in 1912, that was to become Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim. During the 1920 riots they assured their kibbutz neighbors that they would defend them, if necessary. There were no attacks on Jews from Abu Ghosh in 1921, nor 1929, nor the years of Arab terror from 1936-39. They emphatically did not support the al-Husayni family from Jerusalem, a mere ten miles away, and generally were more supportive of Husayni's rivals the Nashashibis. Husayni rewarded their impertinence with at least one attack on their leaders in 1946.

Of the 36 Arab villages in the hills around Jerusalem during the 1948 war, only Abu Ghosh (which was a crucial village in keeping the road to Jerusalem open) remained somewhat friendly to the Jews. (One of them, Yousef Abu-Ghosh, was even a member of the Jewish militant Stern Gang.) But after the first cease-fire in 1948, the residents of Abu Ghosh were told by the Arab Legion to get behind the Arab lines and abandon their village. They, along with hundreds of thousands of other Arabs, became refugees. Some of the Abu Ghosh refugees were treated with exceptional cruelty by the Transjordanians as being too friendly to the Jews.

Most of the abandoned Arab villages in crucial areas around Jerusalem were destroyed by Israel in 1948 and 1949, as the Jews feared being at the mercy of the Arabs in traveling the roads in their own state. One exception was Abu Ghosh, which was left untouched. The few families who managed to stay there remained as Israeli citizens.

Many of Abu Ghosh's former citizens infiltrated into Israel to move back to their old village in 1949 and 1950. In general, Israel treated them as they treated other Arabs who tried to sneak back into Israel - fearful of an Arab fifth column, and largely unaware of the previous friendship between Abu Ghosh's citizens and the Jews, they would deport them back to Transjordan.

Finally, after one such roundup of Abu Ghosh infiltrators in early 1950, the town publicly appealed directly to the Knesset to allow them to stay. Public pressure from Israeli Jews mounted immediately to the defense of Abu Ghosh's Arabs, and almost every single family came back to their homes.

Abu Ghosh shows how the events of 1948 could have turned out had the Arabs treated the Jews as equals. While some of what Israel did to the residents of the village may be regrettable, it also shows that Israel had no policy of ethnic cleansing Arab villages and that her wartime decisions were based on real life and death circumstances.

Abu Ghosh was not unique. There were other Arab villages that were, effectively, Zionist during the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, these were the exceptions, and many Arabs whom the Jews considered friends ended up supporting the bigoted ideologies of the Mufti al-Husayni and Sheikh Qassam and cheered the death of every Zionist.

Today, Abu Ghosh remains a sterling example of Arab-Jewish cooperation. Prominent resident Jawdat Ibrahim, who won $20 million in an Illinois state lottery, invested some of his winnings in a scholarship program that benefits Jews as well as Arabs. A joint Arab-Jewish soccer team was created with the Arab members being from Abu Ghosh. A major music festival brings in Jewish as well as Arab fans.

The residents of Abu Ghosh are proud citizens of the State of Israel and the Jews are proud to have them as neighbors. The shortsightedness and bigotry of most of the Palestinian Arabs, however, keep them on the outside looking in. From there, they can see how the people they decry as "collaborators" are living with the hated Jews, and they can compare this to their own miserable existence at the hands of their so-called "brethren."

More scoops for the Elder. Where are the journalists?

I've been talking about it for weeks, and finally The Jerusalem Post and Newsweek are mentioning that Gaza is not the most hospitable place for reporters and journalists.

It is fun scooping the big boys, but it is very upsetting that organizations that have large staffs of full-time reporters are so consistently behind the curve.

In just the past week I reported about deal where the "Army of God"was possibly paid millions for Alan Johnston's release (beating MEMRI), prostitution in Mecca that wasn't reported anywhere else in the MSM, and Iran paying "martyr" families that was likely not reported anywhere else.

Why can I find things in a couple of hours a day on the Internet things that paid full-time professionals don't seem to notice?

I'm not trying to toot my own horn - I am just saying that the members of the media, even the Israeli media, are not doing their jobs.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

2 killed and 3 injured near Bethlehem in a "family dispute."

It was announced that 28 Palestinian Arabs have died while waiting for the Rafah crossing to open. Keep in mind that Israel offered to open the Kerem Shalom crossing to allow them back into the Gaza Strip and Hamas threatened to shoot the would-be crossers. Hamas is trying to use dead Palestinian Arabs to pressure Israel to open the crossing in violation of the agreement that opened it to begin with. At this time I am not going to count them in my PalArab self-death count, but I'm thinking about it.

The calm Hamas dudes threatened the Ma'an news agency, which has already moderated its coverage of Hamas, saying that Ma'an was not toeing the Hamas party line enough. And now Hamas is accusing Ma'an of lying. (Hamas had already threatened the Fatah -supporting Palestine Press Agency as well.)

Palpress is also reporting on Hamas breaking into homes and injuring people from the Fatah government, and YNet reports on Hamas arresting 30 members of a pro-Fatah clan.

In Nablus, hundreds of Al Aqsa/Fatah terrorists are upset that they cannot take their matriculation exams in private. In the past, they were protected by the "moderate" Fatah government, allowing them to take guns into secret classrooms to take exams (to get high-paying fake jobs for Fatah.) Now, Abbas told them they can't do that anymore so they stopped the exams altogether.

Our count of Palestinian Arabs killed violently by their own now stands at 484.

UPDATE: Another person has died from his injuries during the Fatah/Hamas fighting. 485.

UPDATE 2: "Collaborator" mysteriously dies in Hamastan prison. 486.

1948 flashback on PalArabs being told to leave their homes by the Arab League

As I continue to research my "Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs" series, I sometimes come across articles that are just too good not to share.

From the July 29, 1948 Palestine Post, Column One by David Courtney, a non-Jewish British writer:

This is one of the earlier sources that the Arab League encouraged the refugee problem in order to gain propaganda points. He is explicit that Abu Gosh residents were told to leave their homes by the Arab leaders.

Note also that Courtney believes that most Palestinian Arabs had no desire for this war, "except for a few hotheads." I think it was more than a few but to an large extent he is right. But they didn't fight very hard to keep their land either; they just wanted to move their families elsewhere so they could start again - and the Arab countries forced them to return to fight the Jews, because they didn't want to use their own people! My next chapter will elaborate on this and other topics from 1948-1950 (iy"H).

For another great Courtney column on the same topic a year later, see my posting here.

Palestinian Arabs set up illegal settlement - in Israel

From Ma'an Arabic, quoting Ma'ariv: (autotranslated)

Maariv newspaper reported that a group of Palestinian workers who have managed to infiltrate into Israel during the past few weeks in order to set up work camps inside them Mu near the town of Netivot in the Negev region.

The newspaper added that 13 Palestinians from the town of Dahariya south of Hebron erected tents inside Harsh them to decide where and elaborating them each morning to work in the Negev area only caught the Israeli police dismantled their tents and forced them to return to their town.

Will Peace Now issue a statement condemning this illegal activity?

...And what does cause terrorism?

I just saw this great essay after my last post:

Tanveer Ahmed: Islam must face its uncomfortable truths

THE latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between good and evil.

The methods of attack are becoming more brazen, amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by the burning terrorist at Glasgow airport shouting "Allah" while struggling with a policeman, but the ideological roots are unchanged.

As a commentator on Muslim affairs and home-grown terrorism, I am often asked whether there is something in Islam itself that is contributing to terrorist acts. As someone who is not a theological expert, I shy away from strong pronouncements on the issue, preferring to discuss the sociological roots of alienation and the modern symbol of protest that Islam has become.

But the question is impossible to avoid and I believe that theology is central and not peripheral to the problem. It is grounded in history, but the sparks have been generated by the information age.

While the images of poverty and war in countries such as Sudan, Palestine or Iraq combined with the relative disadvantage of some Muslim communities in countries such as France or Britain may contribute to radicalisation, the foundation for their acts lies very much in the set of ideas called Islam. I have lost count of the number of occasions disgruntled Muslims have responded to my writings with comments like "Islam is peace" or "You are not a Muslim any more".

Truth be told, I was never a practising Muslim, despite growing up in a Bangladeshi community where religiosity was the norm.

This had more to do with being raised in a secular household and society than any great misgivings about Islam. In fact, I often watched friends who were able to practise a spiritual version of the religion with envy, wishing that I could subscribe to a greater purpose than myself.

But with hindsight, I can see that what we now call extremism was virtually the norm in the community I grew up in. It was completely normal to view Jews as evil and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt, its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny of Muslim communities.

But they remain widespread, as research in Britain showed earlier this year: up to 50 per cent of British Muslims aged between 15 and 29 want to see sharia law taken up in Britain. This needs to be seen in the light of American data collated by the Pew Research Centre that showed close to 80 per cent of American Muslims believed they could move up the social ladder in the US and had no interest in Islamic laws on a public level. Like most things Australian, it is likely we sit somewhere between our British and American cousins.

But the threat is very real. It was reported yesterday that up to 3000 young Muslims are at risk of becoming radicalised in Sydney alone, according to research by a member of the now-disbanded Muslim Community Reference Group, Mustapha Kara-Ali. But when these views morph into the violent political act that is terrorism, it is very much based in theology.

At its core, Islam is deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are believed to be inseparable. This idea then interacts with centuries-old edicts of Islamic jurists about how the land of Islam should interact with the world of unbelievers, known as dar ul-kufr. The modern radicals then take it further, declaring that since, with the exception perhaps of Pakistan and Iran, there are no Islamic states, the whole world is effectively the land of the unbelievers. As a result, some radicals believe waging war on the whole world is justified to re-create it as an Islamic state.

They go as far as reclassifying the globe as dar ul-harb, "land of war", apparently allowing Muslims to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In dar ul-harb, anything goes, including the killing of civilians.

While it may appear absurd to most, this nihilistic but exclusivist world view is clearly attracting significant numbers of young Muslims. British police have suggested the latest attacks and foiled plots may have involved teenagers. But the obvious absurdity of the set of ideas is still grounded in Islam, which, regardless of how theological experts argue, can be interpreted in many ways.

Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West. But thereafter, the argument must proceed rapidly to Islamic theology and all its uncomfortable truths - from its repeated glowing references to violence, its obsession with and revulsion at sex and its historical antipathy to the very possibility that reason can exist as separate from God.

Tanveer Ahmed is a Sydney-based psychiatry registrar and writer.

What doesn't cause terrorism?

This WSJ article does a very good job at describing what doesn't cause terrorism, but it wimps out at the end when guessing what does:

When Princeton economist Alan Krueger saw reports that seven of eight people arrested in the unsuccessful car bombings in Britain were doctors, he wasn't shocked. He wasn't even surprised.
"Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists are attacking us because they are desperately poor," he says. "But this misconception doesn't die."

Less than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush said, "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." A couple of months later, his wife, Laura, said, "Educated children are much more likely to embrace the values that defeat terror." Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn has argued, "The war on terrorism will not be won until we have come to grips with the problem of poverty, and thus the sources of discontent."

The analysis is plausible. It's appealing because it bolsters the case for the worthy goals of fighting poverty and ignorance. But systematic study -- to the extent possible -- suggests it's wrong.

"As a group, terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families than the typical person in the same age group in the societies from which they originate," Mr. Krueger said at the London School of Economics last year in a lecture soon to be published as a book, "What Makes a Terrorist?"
"There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen," he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia.
....
• Backgrounds of 148 Palestinian suicide bombers show they were less likely to come from families living in poverty and were more likely to have finished high school than the general population. Biographies of 129 Hezbollah shahids (martyrs) reveal they, too, are less likely to be from poor families than the Lebanese population from which they come. The same goes for available data about an Israeli terrorist organization, Gush Emunim, active in the 1980s.

• Terrorism doesn't increase in the Middle East when economic conditions worsen; indeed, there seems no link. One study finds the number of terrorist incidents is actually higher in countries that spend more on social-welfare programs. Slicing and dicing data finds no discernible pattern that countries that are poorer or more illiterate produce more terrorists. Examining 781 terrorist events classified by the U.S. State Department as "significant" reveals terrorists tend to come from countries distinguished by political oppression, not poverty or inequality.

• Public-opinion polls from Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey find people with more education are more likely to say suicide attacks against Westerners in Iraq are justified. Polls of Palestinians find no clear difference in support for terrorism as a means to achieve political ends between the most and least educated.

Data on which all this relies are hardly perfect: Terrorists don't fill out elaborate questionnaires. Better-off, better-educated individuals could be motivated if not by their own circumstances, then by the conditions of their impoverished countrymen. Interviews of terrorists in Pakistan by Harvard terrorism scholar Jessica Stern reveal recruiters there found the poorest neighborhoods to be the most fertile ground, particularly among those who feel Muslims are humiliated by the West. She says Mr. Krueger and like-minded scholars don't yet have enough evidence to prove anything. "We are only just beginning to do really serious large studies in terrorism," she says.

But the conventional wisdom that poverty breeds terrorism is backed by surprisingly little hard evidence. "The evidence is nearly unanimous in rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate education as an important cause of support for terrorism or of participation in terrorist activities," Mr. Krueger asserts. The 9/11 Commission stated flatly: Terrorism is not caused by poverty.

So what is the cause? Suppression of civil liberties and political rights, Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed," he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics."

Which -- ironically, given that Mr. Krueger is no fan of the president's actual policies at home or abroad -- is close to Mr. Bush's rhetoric: "Liberty has got the capacity to change enemies into allies."

So close, and then this stupid theory about "political oppression." Why would people in politically oppressed Saudi Arabia or Jordan decide to bomb the UK or Australia or the US where they have more freedoms than anywhere else? Where were the suicide bombers of the USSR or Communist China?

The entire article falls again to the politically correct shortcomings of not wanting to use the word "Muslim" (the word is only used once in Jessica Stern's counterargument.) The gratuitous use of Gush Emunim, a group that hasn't done anything in over twenty years, to "prove" the point that terror is not only a Muslim problem is equally absurd.

Islamic supremacy, rhetoric and constant incitement are the most obvious and most accurate triggers of terror. And petrodollars are the means by which terror is funded, directly or not. Any "scholar" that thinks otherwise is sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness.

Iran paying Gaza terrorist families

Palpress.com (Arabic) reports that the Al-Ansar "Charitable" Association has distributed $2 million to the families of "martyrs" in Gaza.

Al-Ansar is a branch of the Iranian Martyrs Association, and has had the blessings of Mahmoud Abbas in the past. It is headed by a former senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, and the funding seems to come from Iran through Hezbollah.

Iran seems to be trying to fill the vacuum of Saddam Hussein's funding of terror families. It is effectively a life insurance policy for terrorists.

What was the deal to release Alan Johnston?

Different rumors are flying about what exactly the "Army of Islam" Dughmush clan got in exchange for releasing Alan Johnston.

From Ma'an:

According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "the army of Islam will receive five million US dollars and more than one million bullets". The sources added that "a pledge was made by some of the religious leaders, who issued a fatwa announcing that the acquiring of a ransom would be preferable to killing the reporter". The clerics also allegedly received guarantees from the leaders of the Hamas-affiliated Al Qassam Brigades and the leaders of the Army of Islam, who agreed to exchange the reporter for the money.

The anonymous sources confirmed that the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) mediated between the Army of Islam and the Qassam brigades. "The army [Army of Islam] first received the money and the bullets, although the deal also included the release of members of [the Army of Islam], abducted by Hamas, and a pledge from the Hamas movement not to attack 'the army' in the future." The militant group then apparently handed Johnston to clan sheikhs, and then on to former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

In statements to journalists, the PRC confirmed the fatwa, but did not speak about any financial ransom.

A spokesman for the PRC said that the deal was that the abductors would be allowed to keep their weapons, and denied any ransom in the deal.

Prominent Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahhar, is reported to have said that the man was released "without any conditions".

Al Quds al Arabi, the London-based newspaper reported that Said Siyam, the former Hamas interior minister had stated that Mumtaz Doghmosh, and three of his comrades, had stood accused of committing the assassination of the late General Jad at-Tayih.

According to Palestinian sources, Doghmush has now received guarantees from Hamas that he will not be taken to court for the crimes it is alleged he has committed. The same sources added that the deal also includes the release of Khattab Al Maqdsi, abducted by Hamas some days ago.

From the Jerusalem Post:

A clan member told The Jerusalem Post that the five-point agreement with Hamas recognized the Army of Islam as "the weapon of mujahideen [holy warriors] against Jews, Crusaders and apostates."
He said the deal also banned Hamas and the Army of Islam from attacking each other and called for solving future disputes peacefully.
"The Army of Islam belongs to all Muslims, and not a particular clan or faction," the clan member said. "We decided to release the journalist so as not to give an excuse to the Crusaders to dispatch international troops to the Gaza Strip."
Another member of the clan said Mumtaz Dughmush decided to release Johnston after he received assurances from Hamas that he and his relatives would not be killed. "We wanted to avoid a bloodbath in the Gaza Strip," he said. "It's forbidden for a Muslim to shed the blood of his Muslim brother."

From World Net Daily:

In exchange for the release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, Britain told the Hamas terror group through mediators it would free from jail an extremist sheik accused of serving as al-Qaida's spiritual adviser in Europe, Palestinian sources involved in the negotiations claimed to WND.

The sheik, Abu Qatada, is accused among other things of advising 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui and attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Qatada's sermons were found among the possessions of 9/11 operational leader Mohamed Atta.

The Palestinian sources involved in the Johnston negotiations claimed the British government pledged through a third-party mediator to release Abu Qatada after six months so the release wouldn't appear connected to Johnston's freedom.

I don't know which is the most accurate, but the idea that the clan released Johnston only because of Hamas or because of a fatwa is laughable. Of course, the MSM is not known to think too critically.

The new rules of Gaza news

Since Hamas took over Gaza and started its reign of terror there (which the West considers a "calm") it has gotten more difficult to find out what is going on there. The formerly objective Ma'an News has gotten more and more skittish about saying anything that makes Hamas look bad.

For example, my item yesterday about Hamas' threatening to shoot thousands of Palestinian Arabs if they try to enter Gaza using the Kerem Shalom crossing is being reported in Ma'an only in vague terms of "Hamas threats." If they would mention the nature of the threats, their reporters will be in real danger.

There is one source of news that is very critical of Hamas, the Palestinian Press News Agency. It is an extremely pro-Fatah and anti-Hamas news source and it is hard to know how accurate its stories are, but here are some of the stories it is reporting from Gaza:

The Minister of Health Dr. Fathi Abu Meghli , condemned the incident of preventing the employees and medical crews affiliated to the Ministry of Health from resuming their work on hands of militant lawless militias.

He pointed out in a statement that members of the executive force shut down the medical centers affiliated to the primary care and associations of the Ministry of Health by chains in addition to attacking the employees and patients by insulting and hitting them.

The Chief of the Union of the public sector employees Mr. Bassam Zakarna , strongly condemned the attacks of Hamas militias on employees today and their shutting down to five ministries by force in Gaza .

Zakarna stressed in a statement that the acts of Hamas' militias reflect how much far they are from the ethics and morals of the Palestinian people .

He pointed out that Hamas' militias attacked the Ministry of Education , the Ministry of Health , the Ministry of Planning , and the Ministry of Labors under gun point to terrify employees , force them leave their offices and consolidate that Thursday is the formal weekly holiday and not Saturday

The formal spokesman of the Palestinian Democratic Union ( Feda ) revealed today that Hamas affiliated militias kidnapped a number of women from their houses and kept them as hostages to force their relatives who are fugitives for Hamas to give up themselves .

Kidnapping women, threats against employees, forcibly shutting down government services? Doesn't sound too calm to me!

The pro-Hamas Palestine Today has a different spin on Hamas' freedom of the press (autotranslated):

Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahhar, Deputy leading figure in the Hamas movement : that the movement will resist the law for anyone to attack the press or media in the Gaza Strip.

He then supplemented through the picket organized block a Palestinian journalist in Gaza City today, Thursday, "to mark the liberation of Johnston," that the media have freedom of action in the Gaza Strip, but without offending the dignity of the Palestinian people or religions.

Which means that the media has no freedom in Gaza at all!

Political Islam is Islam

Over the past few years, the term "political Islam" has gained currency as a way to distinguish between Islamic radicals and the more personal, purely religious Islam. There are a number of interesting articles about political Islam from all perspectives.

In general, it is good for the world to be aware that such a thing exists, that at the very least political Islam should be regarded as a political movement and not as a religious movement, and opposing political Islam is not a violation of "freedom of religion" so central to Western thought.

The problem with this formulation is that it is meaningless. While there may be various strains of political Islam that may have useful distinctions between them, in general all of Islam is political Islam, by definition.

If Islamic law itself does not distinguish between religion (deen) and politics (dawla), then any Westerner trying to draw those distinctions themselves is engaging in a sophisticated form of wishful thinking. Certainly there are Islamic points of view that do not stress the political aspects as much as the personal aspects of Islam, but deep down, every believing Muslim must ultimately desire the establishment of Islamic state.

The exception that proves the rule can be seen in the International Coalition Against Political Islam, an umbrella organization of Muslim groups opposed to political Islam. A quick look at these groups show that they are all secularist in nature and do not truly accept Islamic law as binding on them - if they did, they would have a hard time defining exactly how political Islam is not synonymous with Islam itself. (It is telling that none of these Muslim groups have Arabic names.)

The separation of church and state is a Western liberal invention, and while it is useful, it simply does not apply at all to the Muslim world. Any attempts by Westerners to look at Muslim nations through that prism are ultimately doomed.

Hamas threatens to kill thousands of Palestinian Arabs

Yesterday I mentioned that Hamas would rather have the thousands of Palestinian Arabs stranded at the Rafah crossing rot there than allow them to cross at a different crossing where Israel could monitor it.

Israel was going to open the Kerem Shalom crossing anyway but, according to some reports, Hamas started shelling the area.

Now, Hamas has made it very clear that they'd rather kill the stranded Arabs than to let them pass under Israeli and Egyptian supervision:

Hamas's threat to open fire at throngs of Palestinians stranded in Egypt has thwarted Israeli plans to open the Kerem Shalom crossing to southern Gaza on Wednesday to let the travelers return to their homes, defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

According to the officials, 6,000 Palestinians have been marooned on the Egyptian side of Rafah since Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip three weeks ago and the closure of the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Palestinians shelled the crossing last week, forcing its closure after it had been used as an alternative to the Karni cargo crossing to send food and other supplies into Gaza.

During his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Sharm e-Sheikh summit last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would work to relieve the humanitarian crisis on the Egyptian side of Rafah.

In an effort to allow the stranded Palestinians to return home, the IDF recently offered to Egypt to open the Kerem Shalom crossing - which connects Israel, Gaza and Egypt - to pedestrian travel. Egypt contacted Hamas and, according to Israeli officials, was told that if Kerem Shalom was opened they would attack the crossing with mortars and gunfire, even at the price of killing thousands of Palestinians.

Israel immediately canceled the plans and is waiting to see if Egypt succeeds in convincing Hamas to allow Kerem Shalom to be used to help the stranded Palestinians.

Why should Israel have canceled the plans? If Hamas decides to shoot at their fellow PalArabs, it is not Israel's fault, and it would hurt Hamas' popularity more than anything Israel could do directly.

Here's another perfect example where Israel has dropped the ball for hasbara badly. If Hamas threatens to kill Palestinians, shouldn't there be press conferences about that?