Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

CNN's and Amanpour's biases

I have no real intention of wasting two hours of my life watching the "even-handed" CNN show, "God's Jewish Warriors", which is meant to show that Jews deciding to live in parts of historically Jewish land are morally equivalent to, say, Muslims bombing children. But we do have a transcript, and here are only a few of Christiane Amanpour's problematic pronouncements from just the first couple of sections:

SHISSEL: We have the Holy Land. It's where God says this is where the Jews has to live.

AMANPOUR: But it is also Palestinian land. The West Bank -- it's west of the Jordan River -- was designated by the United Nations to be the largest part of an Arab state.

The UN's designation does not make it Palestinian land any more than the Balfour Declaration makes all of Palestine Jewish land. Amanpour's logic means that much of Israel itself within the Green Line is "Palestinian" Arab land. Subtle bias to be sure but she is basing Arab claims on what is effectively a moot point.

AMANPOUR: Preventing a Palestinians state is precisely the point for right-wing settlers. They want Israel to annex the occupied land permanently, but not give the Palestinians who live there full democratic rights.

No, it is the Arabs who want to make a state based on denying others' rights. The Jews want to make a state based on their right to have a state. There is a big difference, and Amanpour is conflating Arab goals with Jewish ones. The Palestinian Arabs never showed a real desire for a state there when Jordan held it.

AMANPOUR: The impact of God's Jewish warriors goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world.

So is the reason they are bad because they cause Muslims to be upset? Amanpour just gave Arabs and Muslims carte blanche to riot and murder because "inflaming" them is something to be avoided at all costs. This is not an argument against settlements, it is an argument to accept Muslims as irrational players who must be appeased no matter what they demand.

AMANPOUR: And, although the number is small, there are terrorists -- Jewish terrorists, including some who would even kill Palestinians children.

Saying "the number is small" doesn't mean that she won't devote much of her show to them - what appears to be an entire 15 minute section. The power of watching the video will overwhelm the words she speaks, and she knows that.

AMANPOUR: As a young man, Porat studied to become a rabbi. At morning prayers, he straps on Tefellin, leather boxes containing handwritten verses from the Torah. And he recites an affirmation of faith that dates from the middle ages.

PORAT (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Every day, I say these words: "I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah."

Thus neatly associating all religious Jews with religious terrorists, by showing this strange ritual and enforcing religious Jewish "otherness" to her worldwide audience.It was from here, according to Muslim scripture, that the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven around the year 630. But Hebrew scripture puts the ancient Jewish Temple in the same location, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.This is not in Muslim "scripture." It is a purposefully erroneous interpretation. Comparing a provable myth with a proven fact is incredibly dishonest.

For the next 1,900 years, even the last remnant of the temple known as the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall, was lost to the Jews.

(on camera): But the 1967 War changed all that, when Israel ordered its army to capture the Old City. The soldiers entered here, through the Lion's Gate. It's a short distance to the sacred sites.

Another lie - Jews lived in Jerusalem the entire time except when Jordan expelled them in 1948. By not mentioning that fact she absolves Arabs from one of the biggest crimes of 1948.(Plus, there are other remnants of the Temple in Jerusalem.)

BARNEA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Let's put it this way, I've always liked my sandwiches and my omelets with ham...
(later)
(on camera): What did you think when you saw not just the Wall but the Mosque?

BARNEA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): It made a big impression.

AMANPOUR: Holy?

BARNEA: Holy. Yes, sure.

Amanpour chooses an anti-religious secular Jew to describe a Muslim place as "holy" - she puts the words in his mouth! - to weaken the emotional case that Jews have for the Temple Mount and make the Jewish claim seem arbitrary and unimportant.

AMANPOUR: But to Yakov Barnea, it was a military victory pure and simple.

BARNEA: I don't know nothing about God in this matter of fighting.

Of course, in 1967, most secular soldiers and Israelis were incredibly affected by Israel's recapture of the Old City. Amanpour will never say that Barnea is the fringe element in Israeli society - by implicit definition, Jews who feel emotions about Jerusalem are the crazy ones.

THEODOR MERON: You can justify a lot of things on grounds of security, but you cannot settle your population in occupied territories. AMANPOUR (on camera): No doubt in your mind?

MERON: No doubt.

AMANPOUR: No wriggle room in the law?

MERON: Not really.

Notice that she doesn't interview any legal scholar who disagrees. Since she found an Israeli to say what she "knows" to be true, that's all the research that this topic needs.

The other sections of the show are predictable - interviewing Jimmy Carter and John Mearsheimer about that all-powerful Jewish lobby which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the premise of the show; a bit about Christian Zionism which is similar, and then the set pieces of real, honest to goodness Jewish "terrorists" who pretty much have not killed anybody but who talk about it. Obviously that is the highlight of the show.

Some biases are subtle and some explicit; but they are undeniable. Comparing this show with the Muslim episode will show the biases far better, as certainly they will bend over backwards to minimize the widespread support of terror in the Muslim world even as they maximized supposed Jewish support for terror in this piece of journalistic garbage.

UPDATE: Blogs commenting on this travesty include Mystical Paths, Discarded Lies, Debbie Schlussel, Atlas Shrugs, Dhimmi Watch, Boker Tov Boulder, and Kevin and Patrick. Plus Sharon Cobb and The Atheist Jew, Cheat Seeking Missiles and Seraphic Secret.

Seraphic Secret tried to count the number of times Amanpour said "God's Jewish Warriors" - according to the transcript, the number is 60.

Saudi maid gets arrested after being beaten by employers

This would make a great episode of Saudi Vice, but in this case it appears to be the regular Saudi police, not the Muttawa:

One of the Indonesian maids allegedly beaten up by her employers two weeks ago was taken into custody on Monday from hospital where she was being treated for her injuries.

The Indonesian Embassy was not informed beforehand of the transfer nor has it been allowed official access to the woman or her fellow maid, who was also beaten up by the employers and is still in hospital.

“Tari Tarsim, 27, has been taken away by police to an unknown destination, while Ruminih Surtim, 25, is still in the hospital recovering from her injuries,” Sukamto Javaladi, labor counselor at the Indonesian Embassy, told Arab News yesterday.

A vicious attack two weeks ago on four maids working for the same employers in Aflaj in the Riyadh region resulted in the death of Siti Tarwiyah Slamet, 32, and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan, 28. Tari and Ruminih were left severely injured in the incident. Seven members of the family that the maids were working for are also being held.

The Indonesian Embassy has not yet been officially notified of the incident and only found out about it through Indonesian nationals in Aflaj.

Tarsim and Surtim were admitted into intensive care at Aflaj General Hospital and then were transferred last week to the Riyadh Medical Complex where they have been placed under 24-hour police guard.

“Tari was transferred to police custody yesterday (Monday) but we don’t know why,” said Adi Dzul Fuat, vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy. “The policewoman guarding their room at the hospital told us that Tari has been transferred to jail,” he said.

So the employers beat up four maids, killing two and sending the other two to the hospital. What possible reason could they be arrested for?

Tarsim spoke to Arab News about the attack when she was at Aflaj Hospital. She said that the 17-year-old son of her employer whipped her with his igal accusing her of practicing witchcraft.

...
Speaking about accusations that the maids practiced witchcraft, which is a legal offense, Al-Dandani said, “The maids are denying this completely. And regardless of whether it is true or not, the accusations do not give employers the right to beat them and kill them.”

Ah, witchcraft. It all makes sense now.

Heartwarming children's news from Gaza

First, from the Jerusalem Post:

...Two Palestinians, identified by Gaza doctors as children ages 10 and 12, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
The IDF said the air strike targeted Palestinians who were loading a Kassam onto a rocket launcher and that terrorists were hit.
Palestinian rocket teams have been known to send young children to retrieve rocket launchers after the projectiles are fired, the IDF said in a statement, adding: "In light of the reports, it seems likely that this was the case here."

And then from Ma'an:

An 11-year-old boy was seriously injured when an explosive device went off in Yabna refugee camp, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

A medical source from Abu Yousef An Najjar hospital said that Mahmoud Mohammad was admitted to hospital, suffering from serious injuries.

Child abuse seems to be one of the founding principles of Hamastan.

August Qassam Calendar

Earlier calendars:
July
June
May
April
March
February

Surprise! Corruption at Gaza power company

From Ma'an:

Details of financial and administrative corruption in the Palestinian power company in Gaza was revealed by the deputy chair of the Palestinian power authority, Kan'an 'Ubeid, on Monday evening.

At a press conference in Gaza City, 'Ubeid said there was evidence of money and grants being embezzled as well as finances provided for projects that never materialized.

He called on the European Union to send monitors and auditors from local and international companies to investigate the accusations that money paid in utility bills was ending up in Hamas' coffers.

'Ubeid also called on President Mahmoud Abbas to bring to justice those alleged to have been involved in corruption at the power company. He revealed that a number of suspects have been arrested and have admitted to stealing fuel from the company.

He accused the Palestinian minister of information Riyad Al-Maliki of falsely claiming that Hamas took control of the power generating company and its income.

"There had been a contract with a local company to supply 430 thousand litres of fuel to run the company's generators, and the grant was stolen by the former general manager of the company, the financial manager in cooperation with the supplying company," 'Ubeid explained.

'Ubeid also a grant of 586,000 US dollars from the European Union appeared to be unaccounted for.

So the PalArabs blame Israel for not having power in Gaza, then they blame the EU - and, as usual, the real reasons for their problems are their own people.

Nasrallah: "I'm a small soldier of the Imam Khamenei"

Just in case there are a couple of million Lebanese out there who still think that Hezbollah is defending Lebanese sovereignty and independence:

The Lebanese news agency Al-Markaziya has reported that Iranian television correspondent Bijan Nobaveh has revealed that parts of his August 11 interview with Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had been censored.
He said that the censored parts included Nasrallah saying, "We are willing to turn into body parts so that Iran will be strong, since when Iran is strong we too are strong" and calling himself "a small soldier of the Imam Khamenei."

Jonathan Cook continues his lies

I have discussed Jonathan Cook before, and normally I would just leave it at that and chalk him up as yet another Israel-basher who gets his jollies by publishing his lies on far-left websites like Counterpunch. However, he also prints articles in The Guardian and as such, his lies need to be exposed.

His latest in The Guardian discusses a couple of the criticisms that pro-Israel advocates had of his earlier column on how Israel will start bombing Iranian Jews to get them to leave. Of course, he doesn't discuss the explicit lies and implicit bigotry I pointed out in that column - because it is easier to defend against cherry-picked weak arguments than strong ones.

The funny thing is that he tries to be careful to keep the worst lies out of his Guardian columns, but his lies and his intellectual dishonesty when making his tendentious anti-Israel arguments in his other articles makes all of his writings more than suspect.

For example, his latest screed about the Lebanon War includes this paragraph:

Recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. The UN's admission has been mostly ignored by the international media.

The facts: An unnamed Israeli official said that the UN cartographer decided that Shebaa Farms was Lebanese territory. The UN denied that it made that determination and indicated that determining sovereignty was not the cartographer's job. In other words, Cook's claim that the UN "admitted" that Shebaa Farms is Lebanese is simply a lie.

Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizbullah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon's civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succour by accusing Hizbullah of "cowardly blending".

Besides the fact that there are videos showing the rockets coming from houses, Human Rights watch admitted that "of course Hizbullah did sometimes hide among civilians, breaching its duty to do everything feasible to protect civilians and possibly committing the war crime of deliberate shielding..." even as it condemned Israel for hitting civilians. Cook could have phrased his argument that Israel's reactions were disproportionate but instead he again crosses the line from fact to fantasy.

The war began on 12 July, when Israel launched waves of air strikes on Lebanon after Hizbullah killed three soldiers and captured two more on the northern border. (A further five troops were killed by a land mine when their tank crossed into Lebanon in hot pursuit.) Hizbullah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese prisoners since it withdrew from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

Notice his wording - Israel started the war when it retaliated for offensive Hezbollah actions. Since Hezbollah always said it wanted to kidnap (and kill) Israelis, they are off the hook in Cook's twisted mind as far as any responsibility for starting the conflict. He also implies that the Lebanese in Israeli jails are just hostages, not criminals nor terrorists. No doubt he supports the release of Samir Kuntar, just like his Hezbollah heroes.

This is not journalism, and these are not facts. Ironically, Jonathan Cook rails against people advocating for Israel while he, weekly, advocates for Hezbollah. If he wants to write opinion columns for the Guardian, he is free to do so, but the readers should know how dishonest he has been in his other writings.

YNet reports:

The Leo Savir Foundation for a Mediterranean Vision 2020 within the Peres Center for Peace, Fundación Picasso, and the Newspaper Al-Quds are launching a new project in which young people from the Mediterranean region will compete to express their personal interpretation of Pablo Picasso's famous 1949 painting, Dove of Peace.
Newspapers from the region will be partners to the project, among them Yedioth Ahronot (Israel), Al Ahram (Egypt), Asba (Tunisia), Le Matin (Morocco), and Malta Star (Malta). The panel of judges will be comprised of representatives of the Peres Center for Peace, Fundación Picasso, Al-Quds, and the participating newspapers.
Entries to the competition may be submitted between August 1 and September 30, 2007.

Notice the aim of the contest: just for children to describe their visions of peace, nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict or anything like that.

But this is way too radical for the intellectuals in Tunisia:

Hundreds of Tunisian jurists and intellectuals have condemned the participation of a Tunisian newspaper in a competition for children organised by an Israeli centre.

They threaten to legally challenge what they describe as "symbols of normalization with the Israel."

This competition, called "The World's Children and Picasso's Dove of Peace", is being organised by the Leo Safeer institution which is part of the Israeli Shimon Peres centre for peace.

The competition is for children to express their opinions about peace in newspaper articles, taking their inspiration from Picasso's painting, "Dove of Peace".

Signatories to a petition protesting against the Tunisian newspaper's participation in the competition include the secondary and elementary education unions, the popular resistance committee, and the committee supporting Iraq and Palestine, the Dean of Lawyers Basheer Al Said, and prominent journalists such as Fatima Kray.

They issued a statement saying, "we strongly condemn any attempt to let our children be involved in those practices. Those practices are an attempt to erase the Arab national struggle, history and murdering the future of the coming generations".

The petition which was entitled "No to Normalization, Yes to Resistance" demanded the Tunisian daily newspaper, Al Sabah and the other Arabic newspapers withdraw from "this Zionist competition because it serves the enemy and Shimon Peres who once called the Arab people dirty, ignorant and backward".

Al Sabah said in its Thursday editorial that its participation in the competition is on the basis of the principle that "peace is not made with friends but with enemies."

So are these mainstream Tunisians who are against their children writing about peace "moderates" or "extremists?"

A survey of Palestinian Arab newspaper veracity

Tomorrow is the 38th anniversary of an attempt to burn down the Al Aqsa mosque by an insane Australian Christian named Michael Dennis Rohan.

How many Palestinian Arab newspapers will mention that it was a non-Israeli Christian who set the fire?

Palestine Today (Arabic): "Tuesday August 21 the thirty-eighth anniversary of the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969, as occupation forces set fire to the mosque and the flames spread and consumed Saladin pulpit and the altar of peace and Zakariya many parts of the mosque."

WAFA (Arabic) - Implies that it was Israel but doesn't say it explicitly.

Palestine Press (Arabic) - Implies that it was Israel.

Ma'an (Arabic) - Calls Rohan an "extremist" without saying his religion, implying he was a Jew.

Ma'an (English) - does refer to him as a "non-Jewish tourist."

IMEMC (English) - "an event commemorating the 38th anniversary of burning the Al Aqsa mosque by a fundamental Jew..."

Petra (Jordan) English - "Michael Dennis Rohan, a Jew from Australia, gained worldwide infamy on August 21, 1969, when he set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, located atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem."

Xinhua (China) - "The fire, set in 1969 by an Israeli settler, caused the burning of the eastern wing of the mosque."

Gulf News - "In one of the worst days in the city's history, an Australian extremist with Jewish leaning tried to burn down Al Aqsa Mosque."

Al-Hayat al Jadidah (Arabic):" The bulletin pointed out that the ill-fated fire occurred 38 years ago at the hands of the offender, "Dennis Michael Rohan," which Australian citizenship belonged to the "Church of God", which believes بنبوءات Torah, which claims that Jesus Christ to Earth after staying building temple over the ruins of the Aqsa Mosque, and after he joined Rohan offender to a number of members of the Church of volunteers in one of the settlements of the West Bank."

An intriguing letter from Haniyeh to Bashir Assad

Ma'an Arabic reports on a letter that Hamas leader Haniyeh sent to Bashir Assad, dictator of Syria.

First, some background:

There are a few refugee camps on the Syria/Iraq border, and the Palestinian Arabs who live there have fled Iraq in terror. Syria is not letting them in. Syria is certainly not letting them become citizens, as one would expect "brothers" to act.

There is a good, historic reason why Syria and most other Arab countries refuse to help out Palestinian Arabs and allow them to settle permanently in their countries. Since 1948, they have been dead-set against allowing them to become citizens because they don't want the refugee problem to go away - they want refugees to fester in dire conditions to use them as pawns for the West to pressure Israel.

The Orwellian twist is that the Arabs do this ostensibly to preserve Palestinian Arab nationalism and unity. If the refugees would have been absorbed as refugees throughout history have been, then there would no longer be a "Palestinian cause." The fiction that Arabs have been telling each other for some 60 years is that their mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs has been for the PalArabs' own good. This narrative has been so universal that no Arab, Palestinian or otherwise, dares to disagree with it. Instead, they twist their thought processes around in remarkable ways to allow them to think that mistreatment is a good thing.

Now, there are hundreds or thousands of people whose ancestors came from Palestine, who have lived in Iraq for decades, who have never been allowed to become Iraqi citizens and who now are truly being persecuted, unlike the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs who have been getting free food and education courtesy of the UNRWA. These people really do need help, and the obvious people to help are those who rule the Arab countries that border Iraq.

Now we can read the letter and see the hoops that PalArabs have to jump in order to pretend that being mistreated for decades is all for the best: (autotranslated):

Gaza-together - Prime Minister Ismail Haniya article, a letter to Syrian President Bashar Assad price of the Syrian leadership's position towards the Palestinian cause and to serve the Palestinian people.

Haniya called on the Syrian leadership to intervene immediately to take decisions that end suffering of Palestinian refugees in camps and Walid Al-Tenf, and the Sphinx.

Haniya said in the letter "we value your positions nationalism advanced toward the Palestinian cause, and greatly appreciate your hard work and continued in service of the Palestinian people, you know, Your Excellency, the President enormous suffering experienced by your brothers, your sons in the camps Walid, and Al-Tenf Sphinx and some airports and seaports Arab, they hope Your Excellency to intervene. Personal decisions that end suffering complex and interrelated and accumulated by allowing them to live a decent under your auspices in your venerable, an extension of the proceedings in support of issues of national homeland in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and other Arab countries, as we bring you security broken, we call Bvkhamtkm that this interesting case and special care of yourself and the appointment of a representative of your Excellency to pursue the matter or what you deem appropriate, your brothers Palestinians caught in these camps and your Kararakm waiting. "

By asking Assad to let them into his country, to ask him to treat them like human beings, Haniyeh knows that he is upsetting the status quo of Arab nations treating PalArabs like dirt. But since that treatment is for the greater good of their cause, he has to ask nicely for the Syrian dictator to break the rules and not treat them quite so badly.

This is a remarkable illustration of the convoluted Arab thinking that accompanies the standard Palestinian Arab "refugee" narrative.

Palestinian children hold candles during a power cut in Gaza city August 18, 2007. Israel plans to open a Gaza Strip crossing for several hours to let fuel be transported to the territory, the army said on Saturday, a day after power generators there shut down due to a fuel blockade. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Poor Gazan children forced to use candles because racist Israel is blockading fuel to Gaza?

Funny, other wire services seem to indicate otherwise:

Israel opened the Nahal Oz crossing in central Gaza to allow fuel into the Hamas-controlled coastal strip, but power plant officials said the private Israeli fuel company Dor Alon had yet to deliver any fuel.
Palestinian officials said a European Union aid program, which funds fuel for the plant, has not sent monitors to the crossing to facilitate the shipment as required.

An EU diplomat said an assessment of the funding program was being made and a decision was likely tomorrow.

Dor Alon had no immediate comment, but officials said the supplier was delaying the shipment because it was unclear who would pay for it.

About half of Gaza's 1.5 million residents will be affected by the plant's blackout, power plant officials said.

Israel stopped fuel shipments through Nahal Oz late last week, citing security threats.

Israeli Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the decision to resume deliveries was for Dor Alon to make.

“This is a private company that probably received a security warning from the Defence Ministry. That is why, and rightfully so, the fuel shipments were halted. I assume fuel will start flowing again in a day or two,” Ben-Eliezer said.

Ben-Eliezer said that Israel, which supplies 70 per cent of Gaza's electricity, was in the process of adding a new power line into the territory.

Israel supplies most of Gaza's electricity as part of past interim peace deals.

So Israel supplies most of the electricity into the Gaza statelet that is sworn to destroy it, it allows private companies to sell fuel to Gaza, and the EU is dragging its feet in its role in resuming shipments.

Doesn't sound like a very effective blockade, does it?

The only places I saw the words "fuel blockade" were in a quote from the Palestinian Electric Company, an article from Qatar, and, of course, in the regular Reuters' article on the situation.

Peaceful PalArab weekend

A Gaza man missing for 8 days was found, tortured and shot multiple times, in the evacuated settlement of Netzarim. He died shortly thereafter.

Hamas arrested and reportedly tortured seven Fatah members in Gaza, including an employee of the UN Development Program.

Hamas admits that, sure, it tortures people sometimes - including in prisons - but it is not nearly as bad as the media says.

There are claims that Hamas has been stealing the possessions of Gaza citizens waiting at border crossings.

Three brothers were injured, apparently from a Qassam rocket that fell short in Khan Younis.

The PalArab self-death count is now at 508 for the year.

UPDATE: A Gaza Fatah leader's home was firebombed.

UPDATE 2: Palestine Press mentions the name of an 18-year old murdered in the Jabaliya camp. 509.

Walt and Mearsheimer redux

People are all excited that Walt and Mearsheimer are coming out with their book expanding on their paper last year about how nefarious the Israel Lobby is and how the United States would be better off if we just stopped all support for Israel.

Since their arguments have not become less idiotic over the past year, I see no reason for the counterarguments to have changed either. I discussed the kerfuffle last year here and here.

Peaceful Palestinian Arabs attacking UNRWA

From Ma'an:

UNRWA has on Friday called for the intervention of the Palestinian Authority to prevent its employees being repeatedly subject to threats.

A number of UNRWA employees were detained for several hours in Nablus on Thursday.

In a statement received by Ma'an, UNRWA demanded that the Palestinian Authority intervene immediately to stop those who are attempting to drag UNRWA into the ongoing Palestinian internal conflict.

UNRWA made clear that threats and harassment are hindering their ability to carry out their humanitarian assistance in the Palestinian Territories. Exposing the UNRWA staff to danger limits their ability to continue working, the statement added.

The UNRWA website doesn't say a word about this, not even in theor press release section, and neither do any other newspapers. I guess when the UNRWA criticizes Palestinian Arabs they try to keep it a lot quieter than when they criticize Israel.

Who detained the UNRWA workers? Hamas? The PA? No idea. Ma'an doesn't have any previous articles about this and seems to be purposefully vague about what happened.

Readers of my Palestinian Arab history series will recall that PalArabs attacked the UNRWA as soon as it was set up in the 1950s.

Did Peres just give Hamas more legitimacy?

Unlike previous presidents of Israel, which is a largely ceremonial position, Shimon Peres has been making political statements supporting his suicidal ideas of "peace."

According to Palestine Today (Arabic), Peres has just stupidly opened up a window for European recognition of Hamas, as he spoke to a delegation of US Democratic members of Congress: (autotranslated, slightly cleaned up)

Israeli President Shimon Peres said today that there is a possibility that Israel would offer assistance to Hamas if they focused their activities on economic and humanitarian aspects after their takeover of the Gaza Strip.

During his meeting with a delegation comprising 20 members of the American Congress from the Democratic Party, Peres added "if the Palestinian factions, including Hamas against Israel Fessnerd strongly (?), and if Hamas took the humanitarian field, we will help them."

I usually try to find verification for Palestine Press articles but there is indeed a delegation of members of Congress to Israel happening now who met with Peres.

While the part that was untranslated may mean that Peres put in the standard caveat about recognition of Israel and stopping violence, his words can strengthen the Europeans who are lobbying for recognizing Hamas without the pre-conditions that the Quartet laid out.