Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Fatah shows its appreciation for Israel releasing terrorists

The "goodwill gesture" just keeps giving and giving - almost like a cycle of generosity. Today, grateful Fatah members tried to shoot mortars at Israeli towns from Gaza. Thoughtfully, Israel responded back with its own special brand of love, as Ma'an nicely put it:

The Israeli forces on Saturday killed two members of Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigades, while they were en route to carry out a shelling operation targeting Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical sources stated that 24-year-old Yahya Barakat and Tamir Al-Khatib, aged 23, were assassinated by Israeli soldiers near the former Israeli settlement in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip.

The spokesperson of the Al Aqsa Brigades told Ma'an that the two activists were on a "jihad" mission; they were going to launch mortar shells at Israel from Gaza.

And as we all know, "jihad" means an internal struggle for good.

Still working on next PalArab history post

I find myself with less and less free time, but I am still working on the Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs series.

Today I have been researching the UN's role during the 1950s and it is fascinating. The UN at the time did make an honest effort to solve the refugee problem in very fair and realistic ways, and was stymied by a combination of Arab intransigence and Palestinian Arab fantasies about returning to their homes (stoked by the Arabs who didn't want them).

The UNRWA stands for UN Relief and Works Agency, and the "Works" was the important part initially - it was meant to create a Marshall Plan for the Middle East where work projects would provide jobs to Palestinian Arab refugees and also pump up the Arab economies so they could afford to absorb a majority of them. In classical Western style, the UN tried to create a win/win situation, thinking naively that a solution where everyone ends up ahead is something that the Arab countries would embrace as well. The UNRWA only intended to provide relief for a short time while the Palestinian Arabs would resettle or repatriate.

They didn't count on Arab hatred for Israel as well as Arab hatred of their Palestinian brethren, who reminded them of their own impotence in 1948. Even as late as 1959, the Arabs were complaining to the UN about Jewish immigration into Israel! They said that this was "the principal factor which has been the source of danger and anxiety in Palestine for the past thirty years", neatly blaming Jewish immigration for the 1929 Arab riots and every Arab atrocity since then.

Some time during the next couple of decades, the UNRWA was going to turn into a self-perpetuating terrorist-supporting entity, but during its first ten years it did not reflexively take the Arab side and it really tried to solve the refugee problem.

Israel saving the world - again

From AP :

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced plans to buy enough electricity to power 400,000 homes from a massive solar park covering up to nine square miles (23 square kilometers) in California's Mojave Desert.
The San Francisco-based utility signed a 25-year contract with Solel Solar Systems, based in Beit Shemesh, Israel, to purchase 553 megawatts of electricity — equivalent to the amount generated by a large coal-fired power plant. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Mojave Solar Park, estimated to cost $2 billion, would dwarf the largest solar plants operating today, which generate less than 100 megawatts of electricity.

Solel, which would build and operate the park, still needs approval from California's Public Utilities Commission, Energy Commission and other state and local agencies. But Solel and PG&E officials said they were confident state regulators would support the project because it would help California reach its clean-energy goals.

"Preliminary research suggests the environmental impact will be minimal," Keely Wachs, a spokesman for PG&E, said Wednesday. The utility supplies electricity to 5.1 million customers in northern and central California.

This is not one of those flashy but tiny solar power plants - this is the equivalent of a good-sized traditional power plant.

No pollution and no lining the pockets of people who support terrorists - what's not to love?

And the fact that Solel is based out of Beit Shemesh is too funny. (For the Hebrew challenged, "shemesh" means "sun.")

Al-Ahram weighs in on "Jewish psychosis"

As someone who pretends to be able to examine the Arab psyche, it is always interesting to see how intellectual Arabs examine the Jewish psyche. Turnabout is fair play, right?

From a Ph.D. in political science from Oxford, in Egypt's Al-Ahram, comes a typically rambling article, complete with incoherent examples and some hilarious asides. First, he sets the mood to show that he is smarter than the typical reader, to soften them up with his brilliance:

The closing of the Jewish mind
How long will Jewish psychosis be tolerated, even vaunted, and its brutal consequences ignored, asks Issa Khalaf*
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
-- John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671)

In March of last year I wrote, in other pages, that: "The events overtaking Palestine are eerily reminiscent of 1948. Unfolding today in the occupied territories is another disaster of historic proportions, evocative of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. Israeli expansion, colonisation and consolidation of what is left of historic Palestine are reaching a culmination in the next several years. The Israeli goal, short of another 1948 or 1967- like event that would provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society... "

The Zionist programme to overtake the land and empty it of its indigenous people is so relentless and uncompromising, so openly implemented, so strikingly lacking in decency and humanity, that I'm trumped for categories to explain it. ...

Then he slowly builds what he believes is a thesis, and the projection of his attitudes on his enemies is really funny to watch:

I'm inclined to think that the worst is brought out in the American imperial impulse by Zionist organisations. Though the application of imperial power is conceivably tempered by pragmatism and calculations of self-interest and the need for stability, which would include the resolution of regional conflicts on a reasonably equitable basis, Palestine is an exception. Apparently, nothing short of complete surrender will satiate Jewish Israelis and the organised American Jewish community, who've managed to make US Middle East policy an extension of themselves and render synonymous in the American mind and institutions US and Israeli needs and interests -- and even then the Palestinians or Arabs will not appease them....

The result is a chronic American Jewish inability to see Arabs and Palestinians in all their complex humanity. Instead, Arabs are distant myths and images; culturally defective Muslims, unreformed savages and anti-semites ruled by their passions of hate, the only legitimate response to whom is crushing violence. What otherwise explains the shrieking escalation of the creed "Israel right or wrong," the infinite desire to satisfy Israel's every need, to achieve totalitarian conformity in support of it even if the consequences include taking the world down with it?

...And there were these two: a Jewish man and his college-age daughter, sitting atop a picnic table, each facing opposite directions, bracing and balancing each other with their backs. I observed them with fascination as Ashrawi spoke, including their expressions and almost unconscious, incoherent mumbling and heckling as they rocked back and forth like an agitated seesaw, furiously chewing gum throughout a long talk, livid as they listened to Ashrawi say, well, virtually nothing about Palestine. I realised then the profound shutdown of the American Jewish mind.

...This episode for me is a metaphor for self-fulfilling tragedy. I decided then there was nothing at this moment in history that could be done to rectify a yawning myopia. ... The Holocaust, always replayed and pushed on Western publics, is corrupted and appropriated by narrow ethnic imperatives. A persecuted people persecuted no more seem to have lost their senses, so fossilised are they in their Shoah, the culminating event of Jewish history. Compassion, remorse, guilt for the Palestinians eludes them.
I wonder how the millions who died in the Nazi death camps would perceive the new, defiant, death- insensate Israeli Jew, forged through this sanctified entity called Israel, "purifying" others like animals.

How long is one to extend sympathy to Jewish psychosis in the face of this obvious self-righteous folly? Neither American Jews nor Israeli Jews, brilliant people overall, seem capable of understanding outside themselves, so gripped are they with the rectitude of their own past suffering. There is perhaps nothing more noxious than Jewish assumption of morality in the context of obscene inhumanity towards victimised Palestinians. No, I don't believe Zionist Jews who unqualifiedly support Israel can speak with authority on this issue, despite the illusion of a superior Jewish morality.
...As I've previously argued in this newspaper, in the face of such power and influence -- and as truly tenuous, illusory and counterproductive this power may ultimately be -- rationality is all but lost. Power is used to impose a Jewish-Zionist defined reality, particular to its own perceptions and experiences and histories and psychologies, forcefully disengaged, oblivious, from others, ignoring actualities for the sake of chasing illusion, confusing rationalisation for rationality. It perpetuates delusions, choking a group's ability to see themselves as others experience them. Because of this distortion, action and its consequences remain devoid of introspection, humanity and reason. Cruelty is sanctified; imagination is impaired. The essential outcome, in the context of a narrow ethno-religious identity and messianic nationalism and militarism, is a most dangerous and fatal blindness.

The Palestinians are strikingly unburdened by the pathologies of their oppressors, not least of all because they do not reciprocate their occupier's widespread racism. Their responses to their sadistic dispossession and unbearable suffering run the gamut from peaceful to violent resistance, including the desperate barbarity of suicide bombings. Yet unlike their tormentors, they've not lost their humanity and essential decency, their acceptance of their enemy's humanity, their cultural generosity of spirit and life, their respect for the sacredness of all life, their sanity. I can't imagine that Palestinian soldiers would cruelly and coolly remain unmoved -- devoid of an abiding sense of rescue -- by a Jewish mother dying in her house as her children watched in fear and horror.

...My hope is dimmed, as Milton's words were meant to evoke.

Sure, Palestinian Arabs can send in suicide bombs to blow up women and children - but they are really decent people! Unlike the psychotic Jews!

The whole thing should really be read as a classic example of rabid anti-semitism and Arab projection of their own attitudes disguised as Arab intellectualism. The readers of Al-Ahram can find a pseudo-scholarly, quasi-rational basis for the hatred they already have towards Jews and everyone is happy.

And if you think that my last sentence is just a different manifestation of the generalizations that this author is applying to Jews, remember that last year's Pew global research study found that 97% of Egyptians had "unfavorable" opinions towards Jews, worse that any other country besides that other moderate state of Jordan.

Gazans happy three girls are dead

A followup on the three sisters killed in Gaza over the weekend, from Newsweek:

When I asked him about the case of the Juha sisters, he grimaced and seemed almost as dismissive as his counterparts from Hamas. "Look, we have information from intelligence sources that they have been committing sins," the attorney general explained. He told me that he had taken a personal interest in the case, and ordered "forensic work" to be done on the bodies. "After the work was done, it was determined that they were not virgins," he continued. "We could detect that there were recent sexual relationships." He lifted his hands and cocked his head, as if to say: case closed. "Of course, this is not a pretext to kill them," he added. "Nobody is allowed to take the law into his own hands." The attorney general sounded very much like he was trying to convince himself.
After two days of asking around about the case, I realized that I knew almost nothing solid about the lives of the three young women. I stopped by the apartment complex where they had lived, a split-level gray cinderblock structure in the heart of Gaza City. A neighbor who identified himself as Abu Ahmad said that the three had lived alone; their father had died years before of a heart attack, an older brother had been killed as an Israeli collaborator in the 1990s, and their mother had also been murdered. "They used to talk to boys in the street," the neighbor recalled. "They used to go without a headscarf. Now we're rid of them." Relatives I visited were no more helpful or sympathetic. Not a single family member was willing to talk about the girls. Mahmoud Juha, the family mukhtar—the head of the clan—explained that he would have nothing to say about the young women or their murders. When we stopped by his home, he told my translator firmly: "I advise you not to talk to anyone else."

The article shows that both Fatah and Hamas members are equally blasé about the murders.

If you are a non-virgin single girl in the Palestinian territories, you very well may get killed.

UPDATE: An-Najah student dies of wounds from intra-university fighting earlier this week. The PalArab self-death count for the year is at 492.

Harry Potter, Zionist Plot

You just knew this would happen.

From MEMRI blog:

In an article, the Iranian daily Kayhan, which is identified with Iranian Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamenei, criticized Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry for approving the distribution of the new book in the "Harry Potter" series.
The paper said that "Harry Potter" was a Zionist project in which billions of dollars had been invested in order to disrupt the minds of young people.

Source: Kayhan, Iran, July 26, 2007

Congress tried to stop UNRWA support for terror in 1961

I just stumbled across a fascinating tidbit of American history.

In section 301(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (PL 87-195) as amended, Congress has directed that "No contributions by the United States shall be made to [UNRWA] except on the condition that [UNRWA] take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army or any other guerrilla type organization or who has engaged in any act of terrorism."

Apparently, organized Palestinian Arab terror predated the PLO by a few years, enough so for the US to recognize that it was potentially funding terror by funding the UNRWA.

In 2003, this law was dusted off and the General Accounting Office started making reports as to whether UNRWA funds are going to terrorists. So far, from what I can tell, the results have officially been too inconclusive (or perhaps politically inconvenient) for them to make that determination, so the funding continues. UNRWA's response was pretty much "hey, we don't ask the people we help if they are terrorists." But from the definition above, even that is inadequate - the law stipulates that the UNRWA take "all possible measures" to assure that no "refugees" who are members of terror groups get any help.

In addition, Israel informed the US of actual employees of UNRWA who had been convicted of terror activities, and while it is noted in GAO attachment 5, it did not stop the US from continuing to fund UNRWA.

It seems pretty clear that by continuing to fund UNRWA, the US is effectively breaking its own laws.

I wonder if anyone is looking at Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon to see if their members were getting aid through UNRWA.

Today's anti-semitism in The People's Voice

Fans of the People's Voice - get ready to cry about "censorship" again, as I reveal yet another piece of Jew-hating filth on its Google News-indexed website:

Abe Foxman's outrage at Catholic prayer for his conversion candidly expresses his Jewish attitude toward the basic heart of Christianity. He is threatened and incensed that some believe (and dare to say) we all--Jew and Gentile, male and female, foolish and wise--must convert and become like small children, humbly trusting the mercy of our Maker to be saved from sin. In a word, he is outraged by Christ.
To unconverted Jews like Foxman, the gospels are every bit as abhorrent as the Catholic mass. In their minds, the apostle Paul is a traitor who deserved his persecution. In reality, Paul deeply and tenderly loved his Jewish brothers and sisters. Witness his heartbroken words, "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh..." ( Rom. 9:2,3)

Before Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus , Paul acted as a sincere Jew ... by persecuting Christians. Afterward he acted as a sincere Christian, by peacefully and zealously preaching for the conversion of eternal souls, whether carried by Jewish or Gentile bodies. If you sincerely believe Christ is our only hope against God's scorching anger, you can do no less! For his trouble, Paul was mobbed, flogged, imprisoned, and driven through countless hardships.

Today, the message Paul spread in self-sacrificing love is treated as hate speech by Abe Foxman and other activist Jews. If the ADL succeeds with hate crime legislation, all Christians who express such "hateful" concern--who witness to the most central heart of our faith, as compelled by conscience--will be locked up and silenced.

Through hate crime laws, modern, organized Jewry (led by ADL/B'nai B'rith) thus seeks to excommunicate Christianity from public life. Catholics are the first target, because they are in some ways the easiest. They are lesser in number than evangelicals. They have been historically plagued with scandals and abuses of power. They hold some beliefs considered odd even by other Christian denominations.

But--most galling--Catholics have frequently been the only Christian source of real criticism of Zionism, the state of Israel , western Jewish activism, and the neocons' Mideast war agenda. As Catholics are targeted, evangelicals should not feel safe. The moment they awaken to the real nature of racist, Christ-persecuting Talmudic Judaism--and speak against it--they too will be called the enemy.

Previous examples of outright anti-semitism at TPV can be seen here, here and here. A previous complaint to Google News resulted in the de-indexing of a single article, and for a couple of days the site wasn't indexed altogether but Google relented when the nutcases complained.

If you want to complain to Google about indexing this filth, click here.

UK inching towards Hamas acceptance

In the Guardian today, Ismail Haniyeh states that Britain has increased diplomatic ties with Hamas:

The British government has expanded its links with Hamas in recent weeks, according to the militant organisation's leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Mr Haniyeh, who was the Palestinian prime minister until last month, claims that contacts between Hamas and Britain have increased since they worked together to free Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent, who was held captive in Gaza for almost four months.
"I cannot deny that there are now other contacts, other channels of communication with the UK and these involve people of high rank, although I am not personally involved," he claimed in an interview with the Guardian.
"The main aim of the contacts is to improve our democracy and governance. This is just part of the many contacts that are going on with other governments around the world."
He added that Britain wanted to keep the contacts secret.
Officials at the Foreign Office and the British consulate in Jerusalem denied that there had been political links with Hamas and insisted that any contacts had been purely "humanitarian and consular". They said it was possible that Mr Haniyeh had misunderstood the work of British non-governmental organisations such as Forward Thinking and Conflicts Forum, which have established contacts with Hamas. Both groups work with former government advisers and civil servants and members of the House of Lords.

Actually, Conflicts Forum includes a member of the House of Lords.

Conflicts Forum is interesting from another perspective. It recognizes that Islam is political Islam, and wants to talk with both "non-violent" Islamists and terrorists. Reading a little further into the website it is apparent that it does not only want to engage in dialogue - it is meant to be a cheerleading section for terrorists. Its last newsletter said: "Western leaders can neither match nor relate to Haniyah's stature as a politician and a human being."

Forward Thinking, on the other hand, "aims to promote a more inclusive peace process by engaging the religiously motivated Palestinian and Israeli political parties who have been previously excluded from ... dialogue." Yet from its website I could not find a single reference to them speaking with any religiously motivated Israeli parties, nor any pictures of them speaking to any Jews in yarmulkas. It also appears to be a front for advocating Islamist interests under the guise of peaceful resolution.

But let's look further into what the Guardian has to say:

The British government has sanctioned unofficial visits to the UK for senior Hamas officials in Gaza over the past 18 months. In one of the first Ghazi Hamed, the former editor of Al Risala, the Hamas newspaper, visited the BBC and the Guardian. Ahmed Yusef, an adviser to Mr Haniyeh, has also visited the UK.

The Johnston kidnapping forced Britain to change its policy of not publicly meeting Hamas officials. Richard Makepeace, Britain's consul general in Jerusalem, twice travelled to Gaza City to request Mr Haniyeh's help in freeing Johnston. Mr Haniyeh assured Mr Makepeace that he would do everything in his power to free Johnston and Mr Hamed was asked to head the negotiations with the kidnappers.

In May Mr Hamed was again invited to the UK and attended a Hay festival event that was also attended by Gordon Brown, then chancellor. The two did not speak.

Johnston was freed on July 4 after Hamas surrounded the compound of the Dogmush family, the kidnappers.

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, thanked Hamas for its help in freeing the BBC correspondent. Mr Haniyeh said he was pleased with the respect and gratitude shown by the British government and organisations for Hamas's assistance.

"The deputy consul came to thank me personally and the consul general and the foreign minister thanked us in press conferences that were broadcast all over the world. In addition we have received thanks from the Johnston family, British NGOs and the British media. They have shown us a lot of respect," he said. "In addition, 20 members of the British parliament signed a motion to renew contacts with Hamas."

And he's not lying about the 20 MPs who want to talk to Hamas, either.

All in all, it appears that Haniyeh is telling the truth and the British denials are ringing hollow.

And what does Britain get out of this relationship? Haniyeh again:

Mr Haniyeh said that Hamas intended to enforce law and order in Gaza but admitted that the kidnappers of Johnston, who also kidnapped two journalists from Fox TV in Gaza last year, remained free. "But they are being watched closely and are subject to other controls which I can't tell you," he said.

Ah, they are under double secret detention!

Time magazine implies Israel is the obstacle to peace

In an article about the pseudo-Arab League meeting in Israel, Time magazine says:

The problem with Olmert's approach is that the Arab world has run out of patience. It is well aware that the Oslo process floundered, at the end, not over customs arrangements and the Palestinian economy, but over borders, Jerusalem and refugees, and those issues are the ones that must be resolved if the process is to be about anything more than marking time.

Time is not saying that this is the Arab world's perception - it is saying that it is a fact that the Arab world is "well aware" of.

In other words, Palestinian Arab terror attacks, daily rocket attacks, infighting, constant incitement, Hamas' election and takeover of Gaza have no bearing whatsoever on whether there should be a continuing "peace process." No, Time believes that the real issues are "borders, Jerusalem and refugees": the Arab demands and Israel's refusal to acquiesce to them unilaterally are the only issues stopping progress towards peace!

Similarly, look at this paragraph about Syria implying again that Israel is the obstacle to peace with Syria:

Likewise, time may have run out for peace between Israel and Syria. Since the end of last year, Syria has been repeatedly calling for a resumption of the peace talks of the late 1990s premised on Israel returning the Syrian Golan Heights, captured in 1967. But while Olmert has largely evaded the overtures — questioning their sincerity, quibbling about who if anyone should mediate — Syria may have given up. Last week, the Israeli press was filled with rumors that Iran gave Syria $1 billion to purchase weapons in return for abandoning peace overtures towards Israel.

Syria's providing arms to Hezbollah, its deals with Iran, its threats about its own ballisitic missile capability - all ignored by Time. Only Israeli intransigence is at fault.

The entire article does not mention the word "terror" even once.

More on PalArab survey

More from the Pew research survey:

62% of Palestinian Arabs have a favorable opinion of Hamas (more than any country but Bangladesh)

76% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah (far more than any other country, Lebanon was at 35%)

56% percent say that the influence of religious leaders in the territories are good.

79% have confidence in Hassan Nasrallah as a leader in world affairs, far more than any other country

Once again, the polls show that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are far more extremist than they are portrayed in the Western media.

Let's reward them with a state!

Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support terror and Bin Laden

A new survey done by the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that, almost alone among all Arabs, Palestinian Arabs solidly support terror:

Among the most striking trends in predominantly Muslim nations is the continuing decline in the number saying that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are justifiable in the defense of Islam. In Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia, the proportion of Muslims who view suicide bombing and other attacks against civilians as being often or sometimes justified has declined by half or more over the past five years.

Wide majorities say such attacks are, at most, rarely acceptable. However, this is decidedly not the case in the Palestinian territories. Fully 70% of Palestinians believe that suicide bombings against civilians can be often or sometimes justified, a position starkly at odds with Muslims in other Middle Eastern, Asian, and African nations.

The decreasing acceptance of extremism among Muslims also is reflected in declining support for Osama bin Laden. Since 2003, Muslim confidence in bin Laden to do the right thing in world affairs has fallen; in Jordan, just 20% express a lot or some confidence in bin Laden, down from 56% four years ago. Yet confidence in bin Laden in the Palestinian territories, while lower than it was in 2003, remains relatively high (57%).

Opinion about Hezbollah and Hamas varies among Muslim publics. Views of both groups are favorable among most predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia. And Palestinians have strongly positive opinions of both militant groups. But majorities in Turkey have negative impressions of both Hezbollah and Hamas.
...
Palestinians See Suicide Bombings as Justified

But support for suicide bombing is widespread among Palestinians: 41% say such attacks are often justified while another 29% say it can sometimes be justified (no comparative data from 2002 are available). Only 6% of all Palestinians say it is never justified, by far the smallest proportion in any Muslim public surveyed.

Acceptance of extreme terrorist tactics in the Palestinian territories is remarkably uniform across major demographic groups, including roughly equal proportions of men (44%) and women (38%), Palestinians under the age of 30 (41%) and those 50 years old or older (47%), as well as among those who are the most committed to Islam (38%) and Palestinians who are less religious (45%).

This is remarkable. The rest of the Muslim world is recognizing that supporting terror is a dead end, but PalArabs overwhelmingly support it - across demographic lines! Young and old, religious and secular, men and women - they have managed to create a culture that is not only at odds with all of civilized society, but also at odds with the rest of the Arab world.

The reason is that decades of the worst kinds of incitement in Palestinian Arab media glorifying terror have paid off. Palestinian Arabs have managed to create their own unique identity in the Arab world - and that identity is based on support for violence. Now, they are truly a people.

This explicit support for terror would be the ideological basis for a Palestinian Arab state.

Relativistic terror

Another magazine has noticed the new chumminess between the UN and Hezbollah:

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was increased from 2,000 to 13,300 peacekeepers after the month-long war last summer between Israel and Hizbullah. The UN peacekeepers are led by elite European troops and are charged with helping the Lebanese Army ensure that the tense border remained calm.
But a year on, UNIFIL still finds itself under threat, not from the Shiite Hizbullah, but from suspected radical Sunni militants possibly inspired by Al Qaeda. And in a bizarre twist, some UNIFIL contingents are now seeking the cooperation of the powerful Hizbullah, which also views militant Sunnis as a threat, to help provide tacit security for the peacekeepers, Hizbullah and UNIFIL sources say.

Last month, six Spanish and Colombian soldiers serving with UNIFIL's Spanish battalion were killed when a car bomb exploded beside their armored vehicle, the deadliest attack in UNIFIL's 29-year history.

Last week, a UNIFIL jeep was damaged when a small bomb exploded nearby, confirming fears that last month's bombing was not a random act. In both attacks, radical Sunnis are the prime suspects.
The growing threat of attack by Sunni radicals apparently spurred the leading European troop-contributing states to seek the Shiite Hizbullah's cooperation. According to UNIFIL sources, intelligence agents from Italy, France, and Spain met with Hizbullah representatives in the southern city of Sidon in April. As a result, some Spanish peacekeepers subsequently were "escorted" on some of their patrols by Hizbullah members in civilian vehicles, the UNIFIL sources say.
A day after the six peacekeepers were killed last month, Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos spoke with Manucher Mottaki, the foreign minister of Iran, Hizbullah's main patron. According to a Hizbullah official in south Lebanon, there has been at least one meeting between the Shiite party and Spanish UNIFIL officers since the bombing.

So while Hezbollah may not have changed its pro-terror positions one iota, since a supposedly worse terror group has emerged, they are now considered pretty good by comparison.

A similar phenomenon is happening in Gaza. Both Fatah and Hamas are claiming that the other side is hosting Al Qaeda in Gaza, and the existence of that group there - or any other group that can be claimed to be more extreme than Hamas - ends up bolstering those who want to ease up on Hamas terrorists, like these parliamentarians in the UK.

In a report to be published on Tuesday, a subcommittee of the House of Lords' European Union Committee said that the EU should avoid an "undesirably rigid" approach to dealing with Hamas that would risk undermining progress in building viable and democratic Palestinian institutions, a prerequisite, they say, for any peace settlement.

Still, in the report, entitled "The EU and the Middle East Peace Process," the committee asserts the EU is "right" to require Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept existing agreements.

A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs subcommittee, one of seven subcommittees of the European Union Committee, said that Hamas must be "clear on renouncing violence" and that while pressure should be put on the group to recognize Israel and accept previous agreements, "progress should not be scuppered because of this."

This should not be surprising. Fatah is an extremist terror organization by any objective yardstick, but compared to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it is "moderate." Say the word "moderate Fatah" enough times and people start to believe it.

But if you imagine Jews who hold symmetric positions as Fatah - that only Jews should live in the territories, that the Arabs should move, that 100% of the territories are Jewish, that no compromise is possible, that those who kill Arabs are heroes - they would be considered extremist, militant, terroristic and racist to boot. So would saying the same things about Israel.

This lack of objective standards is one of the major problems in the Middle East. Behavior that any civilized nation would consider beyond the pale is welcomed when done by Arabs - because many of their compatriots would act even worse. Rather than expecting and enforcing a single standard for human behavior, the West is willing to give Arabs much more slack, with the unspoken bigoted assumption that Arabs just don't have the ability to act the way enlightened human beings do.

Here's a short guide on how to make terrorists look moderate without forcing them to actually change their positions, or even to lie:

Have them wear ties and jackets.
Put someone even more bloodthirsty next to them.
Have them elected to any office.
Teach them to use ambiguous language (like "Of course we recognize that Israel exists.")
Have Jimmy Carter, or any of the "Elders," praise them.

Voila! Instant moderation!

Syria occupying 4% of Lebanon - today

A scary followup in the Wall Street Journal to an earlier report from Michael Totten of Syrian occupation of Lebanon:

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.
The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the U.N. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, the authors have requested anonymity and have circulated the report only among select government officials and journalists. But its findings cannot be ignored.
In meticulous detail--supplemented by photographs, satellite images, archival material and Lebanese military maps predating Syria's 1976 invasion (used as a basis of comparison with Syria's current positions)--the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated. In the area of the village of Maarboun, for instance, the authors observed Syrian military checkpoints a mile inside Lebanon. In the Birak al-Rassass Valley, they photographed Syrian anti-aircraft batteries. On the outskirts of the village of Kossaya they found a heavily fortified camp belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in violation of U.N. resolutions and Lebanese demands.

...Last September, Mr. Annan paid a visit to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the latter had declared he would treat any attempt by the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers along the Lebanese-Syrian border as a "hostile act." To defuse the impasse, Mr. Annan simply accepted Mr. Assad's assurances that Syria would police its border and prevent arms smuggling. "I think it can happen," said the diplomat at a press conference. "It may not be 100%, but it will make quite a lot of difference if the government puts in place the measures the government has discussed with me."

What happened, predictably, was the opposite. In May, Fatah al-Islam, a terrorist group whose leadership was imported from Damascus, attacked Lebanese army outposts outside the Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr El-Bared and Biddawi, causing a bloody standoff that continues till this day. In June, current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report citing numerous instances of arms smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah and the PFLP. Yesterday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted that he once again has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv--missiles he could only have obtained via Syria. Israel confirms his claims.
Mr. Ban's report is notable for its clarity and seriousness. Taken together with the border report, it paints an alarming picture. Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil--in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms. The farms, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and which amount to an area of about 12 square miles, are claimed by Hezbollah as belonging to Lebanon--a useful pretext for it to continue its "resistance" against an Israeli occupation that ended seven years ago.

Needless to say, Hezbollah--which purports to fight for Lebanese sovereignty--makes no similar claims against Syria. For his part, Mr. Assad refuses to agree to a demarcation of his border with Lebanon, just as he refuses to open an embassy in Beirut. The ambiguity serves him well: He can seize Lebanese territory without anyone appearing to take notice, supply terrorist camps without quite harboring the terrorists, and funnel arms to Hezbollah at will--all without abandoning the fantasy of "Greater Syria" encompassing Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Israel itself.

It would, of course, be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject. It would also be nice to see the media report this story as sedulously as it has the controversy of the Shebaa Farms. Don't hold your breath on either score. In the meantime, the only countries in a position to help Lebanon are France and the U.S. They could strike a useful blow by closing their embassies in Damascus until such time as Damascus opens an embassy--with all that it implies--in Beirut.

The author makes a great point - Hezbollah will arm itself with tens of thousands of Katyushas under the pretext of Lebanese sovereignty from an expansionist aggressive Israel, but when Syria grabs land that is unquestionably Lebanese this concern holds no water.

Tisha B'Av, 1948

(I am keeping this post on top until the end of Tisha B'av on Tuesday night.)
Tonight and tomorrow, Jews worldwide will commemorate Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem as well as other calamities throughout Jewish history.

Jews in Jerusalem have commemorated Tisha B'Av for centuries by visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem and crying over the Temple's destruction and the daily desecration of this holiest of Jewish sites by the Muslims who built their mosques on its site as a symbol of Muslim supremacy.

But in 1948, for the first time in recorded history, Jews could not visit the Wall. While for the previous two years the British disallowed visits to the Wall during the fast day, there were always at least a few who managed to get through.

In 1948, for the first time in the history of the city, no Jews were allowed to live in the Old City of Jerusalem and no Jews were allowed to visit.

Old Jerusalem was Judenrein. Dozens of synagogues had been destroyed by the Jordanians within days of their occupying Jerusalem, including the famous Hurva synagogue.

The Jordanian commander reported to his headquarters, "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Even after the synagogues were destroyed, the BBC on June 5 "reported" that the Jewish holy places were safe:

This was how Tisha B'Av was for Israel's Jews in 1948.

These actions of the pro-Western, pro-British Transjordanians in 1948 are irrefutable proof that Arab animosity towards Jews had little to do with Zionism and everything to do with Jew-hatred. This is besides the facts that other synagogues in Arab countries were being destroyed at the same time, that Transjordan defiled hundreds of Jewish graves, that Jews were being killed and expelled in Arab countries and all the other anti-semitic crimes by Arabs that occurred in the years surrounding Israel's independence.

Is there any doubt in even the most clueless leftist's mind that, given the opportunity, the Palestinian Arabs would do exactly the same to the synagogues of Jerusalem that their Jordanian forefathers did in 1948?

Today, the Hurva synagogue is being rebuilt yet again: