Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Al-Dura trial update

For those following the French hearing about the infamous Mohammed al-Dura videotape, Media Backspin has the latest:

HonestReporting together with Take-A-Pen covered this afternoon's hearing in France where raw footage of the Mohammed Dura was publicly screened for the first time. HonestReporting/Take-A-Pen's Alain Benjamin, who saw the video in court, discussed by phone the proceedings with MediaBackspin editor Pesach Benson.
What did the raw footage show?

We can definitely say that nobody can say who was shooting at who. Charles Enderlin said in court that the Palestinians started shooting first, but in the end, there's no way we can say what happened that day. You can't tell who did what. The assertion from Charles Enderlin, that the Israeli army killed the boy, is totally wrong. The least he could've said was that the boy was killed--but we don't know by who.

There was a dispute over how much footage was to be screened. Was the full video shown?

Charles Enderlin submitted 18 minutes of footage. The judge, without any prompting from Philippe's lawyers, asked what happened to the 27 minutes. Enderlin said on record in court that he had to manipulate some footage that was not relevant to that day. He said he transferred the footage onto DVD for the court. That was amazing.

So she asked if anyone in attendance had seen the full footage. Luc Rosenzweig was there, stood up , and said he saw a tape that was more than 20 minutes long. Richard Landes also stood up. He saw the footage at Enderlin's office. He said the timer he saw was at least 21 minutes long. The judge basically let that issue rest, but there was serious doubt hanging over the room that the footage was tampered or doctored.

After the hearing ended, how did people react to what they saw?

Not one person believed that the version of France 2 was right. Some people maintained that the footage was staged. Others think the footage was real. Clearly, nobody believed that anybody died.

Does the footage vindicate Karsenty?

Everyone was going, "Wow" and talking about whether he'll take action against France 2 for trying to swindle the court. He can wait for the verdict, or sue France 2 for tampering with the tape. He has quite a few options. Clearly, the judge wasn't convinced by France 2's version. The judge's verdict is to be given on February 27.

For background, see Honest Reporting's summary.

For exhaustive analysis, see Augean Stables.

Jerusalem Protection Law

A small bit of good news:

The Knesset passed the first reading of a bill initiated by Likud Knesset Member Gideon Sa'ar, which requires a two-thirds majority of Knesset Members (MKs) to change the status of Jerusalem.

Currently, it would take 61 of the 120 MKs to change the Basic Law: Jerusalem, which annexed Jerusalem's eastern neighborhoods and the Old City to the capital.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has floated the idea of surrendering parts of the capital to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which demands the entire area of Jerusalem liberated in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The vote in favor of the bill was 54-24, but it must be approved by a committee and pass two more Knesset votes before becoming law. A growing number of Knesset members in Prime Minister Olmert's own Kadima party are against his plan to split Jerusalem. Olmert's close confidant and aide Vice Prime Minister Chaim Ramon has openly promoted handing over parts of the capital to the PA.

The bad news? This bill still has a ways to go before becoming law.

And, unfortunately, the Knesset has ignored its own laws before. I recently blogged about a 1977 law that makes giving land away a grave crime, and it was clearly never enforced during Camp David or Oslo.

So while it is a good sign, Israel needs to be far more forceful about its rights to Jerusalem.

"A hellish, covetous power"

You gotta hand it to Iranians; they certainly don't bother with political niceties:

Hellish covetous power seeking to weaken Islamic Revolution

Head of Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here Wednesday that a hellish power in the region is determined to loot Iran's rich natural resources by weakening the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Given the goals behind the US masterminded greater Middle East plan, he said the plot was to bolster Zionist regime and weaken Iran but this was to no avail, Rafsanjani said.
Devoted Iranian nation are the bastion in the campaign against enemies and it is the duty of the officials to be at their services by all means, Rafsanjani said.

See how pragmatic this Iranian "moderate" is?

Is Zionism colonialism?

In the comments section of Israellycool, a Palestinian Arab has asked me to engage in a dialogue with him centering around :

I am coming from the angle that Zionism is a colonial, imperial, and facist ideology. (And I do not mean to insult you personally). This does not mean that I am calling you a pro-colonialist/imperialist/fascist - afterall, there may be other sub-facets of Zionist that you like, perhaps like community, sense of purpose, or what not. But at its core, I believe that this is what it is, but at the same time, this is why I wanted to discuss this matter with another Zionist. To be blunt, I want to sell you on my logic, as I am sure you want to sell me on yours. I think this needs to happen somewhat.

As his questions are broad and they cut to the very core of the differing viewpoints between Zionists and anti-Zionists, I agreed to address them.

His first contention, often stated as fact (especially by Arab academics like Joseph Massad,) is that Zionism is a colonial ideology. We will need to start with a basic definition of colonialism or else we will not get anywhere.

The dictionary definition is:

A policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies.

Wikipedia's definition is more expansive:

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonising nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population (see also cultural imperialism). It is essentially a system of direct political, economic and cultural intervention by a powerful country in a weaker one. Though the word colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is sometimes used more broadly as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formal military control or economic leverage.

In both these definitions, a colonial project is one that is imposed by a powerful nation onto a less-powerful territory.

We will also need a definition of Zionism. This is actually harder than it looks. A very good start would be:

Zionism is the national revival movement of the Jews. It holds that the Jews are a people and therefore have the right to self-determination in their own national home. It aims to secure and support a legally recognized national home for the Jews in their historical homeland, and to initiate and stimulate a revival of Jewish national life, culture and language.

From the Arab viewpoint it is easy to conflate Zionism with the colonialism (and imperialism). The Zionist movement started at the same time that European powers were heavily involved in colonizing many parts of the world, including the Arab world. To make matters worse from the Arab viewpoint, the colonialist mindset of the British is certainly a large reason why Zionism succeeded politically - they felt that Zionism would be a way to gain a foothold in a critical part of the world without having to colonize it themselves. And it would be folly to deny that there was an element of bigotry in play here as the Western world uniformly looked at Arabs as untamed savages.

In other words, the Arabs feel that Zionism has the same effect as colonialism, therefore they conclude that the two are functionally identical.

However, Zionism is more like anti-colonialism: it is a national liberation movement, with the nation being the Jewish nation. Zionism's 's intent is not to rule over others nor to subjugate others. The vast majority of early Zionists wanted to re-build the Jewish national home in the same place that the original home was, the biblical Land of Israel. Judaism had maintained a strong emotional tie with ancient Israel; daily prayers long for a return to Zion;Jews annually mourn for the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem; and not only Jews had maintained a continuous presence in their original homeland, but Jews had returned there in much smaller numbers throughout the ages.

Definitionally, they two aren't even close. The Zionists didn't want to offer allegiance to the British Empire, they wanted to be independent of it. The colonialist requirement for a "metropole", or mother country, doesn't exist in Zionism.

The Arab motivation to apply the colonialist label to Zionism purposefully ignores the definitions or goals of the Jewish national liberation movement and instead tries to fuzz the definition so that the metropole is the entire Western world. Israel indeed has the hallmarks of a modern, Western nation and more closely identifies with the West and the ideals of democracy and liberalism than with the Arab world. And in more recent decades, when the word "colonialism" has turned into a dirty word, the Arabs have been keen on using it as a weapon against Israel among the nations that have the most colonial guilt.

The conscious use of inaccurate and inciteful terminology ("racism" is another favorite) is but one weapon used by Arabs and their supporters in order to delegitimize Israel and Zionism. Deep down, the Arab leaders know this to be true as they consciously adopt Zionist terminology and methods to sell their own Palestinian Arab national movement (for example, "diaspora"and "right of return") - if Zionism is so inherently abhorrent, why would they choose to mimic Zionist methods? The reason is because they know that Zionism was a remarkably successful national liberation movement, not a colonialist ideology. In Algeria, the French could be expelled because they had somewhere to go; this cannot work against the Zionists because Jews have traditionally been the ultimate stateless people and the entire point of Zionism is to rectify that.

The Palestinian Arabs have turned into a modern stateless people due to the decisions of Arab leaders to keep them in that state and therefore artificially turn them into the "Jews" of the Middle East, with an amazing and transparent program of discrimination that mirrors the Jewish experience in Europe. Combined with an incessant diet of hateful rhetoric and incitement against Zionism, of which the "colonialist" label is only a tiny part, they choose to keep Palestinian Arabs in misery knowing that they will not be blamed as long as the Zionists are still around.

Israeli diplomat criticizes UN special committee at the UN

A number of blogs last week mentioned Dan Gillerman's masterful criticism of the UN Human Rights Council.

Apparently, he is not the only Israeli diplomat who is proud to stand up for Israel and speak the truth at that worthless organization.

Gershon Kedar is an Israeli diplomat who had the opportunity to answer yet another set of absurd allegations from yet another UN "special committee" yesterday. Here's how his words were recorded by the UN:

GERSHON KEDAR ( Israel) said it was ironic that the Committee would spend three days debating the report of the “misnamed” Special Committee, for the work of that Committee was “superfluous” and “replete with duplication bordering on plagiarism and one-sided propaganda”. It was no wonder that barely one half of the entire membership supported the renewal of the Special Committee’s mandate. Its lack of relevance had been recognized as “charades” by at least some. ...
He said that, when the resolution relating to the question was passed later in the week, the Palestinian representative should not suffer the delusion that the Palestinian people were receiving real support or even empathy. The resolution was little more than “lip service”. Israel’s legitimate security policies could not be changed by those resolutions; indeed, all those who supported peace should be concerned by such one-sided resolutions that blindly and routinely supported one party to the conflict. They poisoned the atmosphere, created false hopes and encouraged unrealistic demands. Such was the context under which the Fourth Committee was conducting its discussion today, and its discussion on any resolutions that might emerge as a result.
Israel was willing to cooperate with all legitimate human rights organs, bodies and rapporteurs whose mandates did not pre-determine the results of their investigations, he said. Israel had received and cooperated with rapporteurs concerning housing, “arbitrary killings”, displaced persons and health. It had also cooperated with the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Special Committee, however, was “a relic from a bygone era”, whose existence could not be justified morally, intellectually or politically. Its real agenda was not to help the Palestinians, but to harm Israel.
He added that, in principle and in practice, the Committee allowed itself to ignore reality and flagrantly refrained from dealing with human rights violations of Palestinians, which was a taboo subject because it contradicted the Committee’s raison d’etre. Also, the Hamas military takeover of Gaza had been dealt with in the report in two sentences. In addition, the Committee did not refer to the numerous cruel and vindictive human rights violations during the intra-Palestinian fighting, which meant that Member States were not informed about wounded Palestinians being shot to death while being treated in hospitals, or Palestinians being thrown to their deaths from high-rise buildings in Gaza. Nor were they told of the numerous and deliberate maiming of political and military rivals and their families, often by being shot in the knees. Negative statements about Palestinians were “beyond the pale” for the Special Committee for one reason –- that Israel could honestly not be blamed.
Yet the Special Committee had still managed to concoct a fanciful connection, he said. Although Israel had completely left Gaza in 2005 and was not involved in the intra-Palestinian fighting, the report blamed Israel and referred to the situation as “a direct consequence of the Israeli occupation”. Such political and intellectual bankruptcy should not be tolerated in the United Nations system.
Although the Special Committee claimed its report reflected the substance of the information that had been gathered, it was replete with lies, false claims and uncorroborated accusations, and patently ignored any information that did not fit its one-sided ideological agenda, he said. Thus, while Israel’s anti-terror measures were widely covered, it never mentioned Palestinian terrorism against Israel despite that information being widely known. Worse still, an earlier report of the Special Committee (document A/61/500) issued after last year’s general debate in the Fourth Committee, included accusations that could only be described as tantamount to the worst type of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories common in the Middle Ages. It included an allegation that “drugs and prostitution were allowed, if not encouraged, in the Occupied Syrian Golan” to infect clients with HIV. Insinuating deliberate malpractice, it also reported that a sick child had died in the hospital after receiving such an injection.
The parallels between such baseless claims and insinuations about Jews poisoning the wells of non-Jews and killing non-Jewish children for religious purposes were clear to all, he said. Those modern-day blood libels were outrageous and disgraceful from any source, but much more so when they came from an organ of the United Nations. His country found consolation in the fact that, because the Special Committee was such a marginal and even trivial body, it was unlikely that many people outside this room had ever heard of it, much less had or would read its reports.
He said that notwithstanding the Special Committee’s malicious attempts to de-legitimize Israel, the United Nations potentially had much to offer both Israel and the Palestinians in their renewed efforts to resolve their differences. Its potentially heightened relevance, however, was mitigated by the continued existence of the Special Committee and other United Nations organs and mandates, whose sole purposes were anti-Israeli propaganda apparatuses. He called on Member States to reject the report of the Special Committee and end its ill-conceived and ill-managed mandate.

Nice job, Mr. Kedar!

November Qassam calendar

As usual, this is far from complete, and it is more to show how ignored the Qassam issue is rather than to show how many are being fired. Many Qassams never make it in the news, and the rare times that the IDF publishes statistics shows that I am usually undercounting by about 50%.

This list does not include mortars being shot from Gaza, which are usually much more numerous on any given day.

Previous calendars:

October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February

Freedom of the press, PalArab-style (X)

A British reporter details three incidents where Hamas stopped him from doing his job - and yet he still does everything he can to softpedal it.

From the Times (UK):

"I was arrested by Hamas"
Today I was detained while watching a demonstration by female students Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip.

They had gone on strike at noon in protest against the killings in the rally yesterday, and they had made their way to a nearby police station where they were singing and chanting. In particular, they yelled: 'Shia, Shia, Shia,' which is a reference to Hamas being funded by Iran.

Within a few minutes, baton-wielding police laid into the girls. Some fell to the ground, but most ran away.

As this was happening, some other members of the police force grabbed me and dragged me into a cell. They pushed me against the wall, and one of the officers shouted: 'Hit him, hit him, hit him' in Arabic.

They snatched the camera from me, and one of the police officers urged his colleagues to break my camera. Then, my cameraman was dragged into the room too.

Another police officer, more senior than the others, eventually arrived and insisted on viewing the videotape that my cameraman had. I kept telling them that I was a journalist and that I would telephone the chief of police unless I was released, and eventually they did so.

Today's incident follows two previous incidents yesterday, in which my activities as a journalist were deliberately curtailed.

The first took place just as gunfire erupted at the Gaza City demonstration yesterday. We were filming police officers standing by their station, when several officers rushed over, fired shots in the air, snatched my camera and dragged me into the police station, where they threatened to smash my camera and hit me.

When I convinced them that I was a British journalist they let me go, but only after telling me to leave the area.

The second incident took place shortly afterwards when I went to the Shifa Hospital where those wounded in the fighting were being taken.

While we were filming, the police arrived at the hospital. They had orders to clear the hospital of all cameramen, and they took my camera. The officer who seized my equipment was very polite to me. He told me that I would be able to get the camera back only if I went to the police station in an hour and a half's time.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the press to operate in the Gaza Strip. This is very much a reflection of the high level of tension that exists at the moment.

But by comparison with some of the treatment I've had in other parts of the world, this was relatively mild.

Of course, this intrepid reporter didn't bother to ask the obvious question: if a British journalist is treated this way, how is Hamas treating Arab journalists?

A correspondent for the Ramallah-based Palestine radio was attacked and beaten by the de facto government's police in Gaza City while he was covering the Fatah-organized rally in Gaza City marking the third anniversary of the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in which seven people were killed and scores injured, he told Ma'an via telephone.

Thirty-year-old Tamim Abu Mu'ammar told Ma'an that he was trying to send a report by telephone to the Palestine radio in Ramallah about the attacks on the rally when the de facto government's police beat him with clubs and rifle butts.

He said they searched his cell phone and ordered him to leave the scene, threatening to attack him if they saw him again.

Mu'ammar said his whole body was covered in bruises.

PCHR adds:

The police also chased rally participants and beat them with batons and sticks. In the meantime, several journalists were attacked, including:

- Khaled Jamal Bolbol, a photographer for Zoom Press. He was beaten and his camera was broken and confiscated.

- Mohammad Sawalha, a photographer for Abu Dhabi Satellite Station. He was detained and his camera tape was confiscated.

- Mowafaq Matar, a journalist for Al-Hayat Newspaper. He was detained and pictures were erased from his camera.

Palestine Press Agency reports that more journalists were arrested last night by Hamas.

Business as usual in Hamastan.

Museum for Palestinian Arab suffering

Rashid Shaheen, in the Arabic edition of Ma'an, calls on turning the Arafat shrine in Ramallah into a "Yad Vashem" of Palestinian Arab suffering, for visiting dignitaries.

This is a great idea.

A museum showing a good, accurate history of how Arabs migrated en masse to Palestine in reaction to the economic boom from Zionism starting in the late 1800s; how they benefited from the Jews and raised their standards of living compared to all Arab countries, and then how their leaders started using them as fodder for political purposes and started what is now some eighty-odd years of suffering at the hands of their Arab "brethren" would be a good start, and a story that needs to be told.

The deadly fighting between the Husseinis and Nashashibis in the 1930s, and how the hundreds of deaths that resulted are now referred to fondly as a "Great Revolt," would be able to teach generations of Palestinian Arab children about how the current infighting has a long history behind it.

A section showing how Israel didn't allow UNRWA to build any refugee camps in Israeli territory, explaining how treating its Arab citizens in such a way was an insult and insisting on building them real homes in real towns and living in dignity, and comparing them with how they were treated in Arab countries, would be instructive.

Another section can describe how no Arab countries save Jordan will allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, even though they can become citizens of Western countries. An entire wing can cover Lebanese discrimination, and another on how Egypt treated Gaza from 1948-67. Statistics showing Palestinian Arab mortality rates and life expectancy before and after Israel controlled the territories could be a highlight.

There are countless other examples of Palestinian Arab suffering that need to be told, and a museum in Ramallah associated with the tomb of one of the biggest sources of their suffering would be quite appropriate.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is what the writer had in mind.

HRW on Egyptian religious discrimination

From McClatchy Newspapers:

CAIRO, EGYPT - Citing a long list of chilling testimonials, human rights groups Monday called on the Egyptian government to stop discriminating against converts from Islam and members of some religious minorities who want their faiths reflected on their national identity cards.
Egyptians must list their religion on their ID cards, which are required for enrolling in a university, starting a job, opening a bank account and most other aspects of public life. But authorities, drawing on Islamic law, essentially refuse to acknowledge Muslims who convert to other faiths and recognize only the three "revealed religions": Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Egyptians who belong to minority groups such as the Baha'i often find themselves stateless if they refuse to list "Muslim" or "Christian" on their IDs.
Two advocacy groups, Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, spent two years documenting such cases and released their joint report Monday in Cairo.
The report's authors stressed that they weren't seeking new laws or provoking a debate on Islamic doctrine. They say they merely want authorities to apply existing civil law, which permits Egyptians to change or correct information on their ID cards. As it stands, the activists said, many Egyptian officials take it upon themselves to refuse the changes. In several cases presented in the report, Egyptians faced harassment, job termination and detention for challenging the authorities.
The report is filled with examples such as elderly Baha'i retirees unable to receive their pensions, Baha'i parents unable to get their babies immunized, mixed-faith couples prevented from marrying, and the children of Christian converts being forced to study Islam in public schools. In some cases, families paid for bogus documents in order to conduct their lives and later were prosecuted for forgery.

Three years ago, Arab leaders didn't mourn Arafat

In the glare of the rallies and shootings celebrating Arafat's death, people tend to forget that even Arabs were sick of the old turd. From the November 18, 2004 Al-Ahram:

Relief is perhaps the best way to describe the private reaction of most Arab officials to the sudden and somewhat ambiguous death of Yasser Arafat, the icon of the Palestinian struggle for the past 40 years.

In public, before their own constituencies, these same officials laid on what they felt obliged to provide: a red carpet funeral. Most major Arab leaders and senior representatives were on hand in Cairo to pay their last, and somewhat belated respects to a man they had largely forgotten during his nearly three-year siege in Ramallah.

But beyond the honours of a brief state funeral, Arafat received very little recognition from his fellow Arab leaders. Official statements eulogising the Palestinian leader sounded more like a simple notification of another death, rather than any genuine outpouring of grief at the loss of a revolutionary hero.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, certain Arab diplomats, in particular those from countries with direct borders with the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, were explicit in expressing their relief at the death of Arafat. For them, his passing marks the end to the presumptuous obstacles that the Palestinian leader had thrown up on the road to a settlement with Israel, largely for the sake of his own glory. Some see his death as heralding an end to the oppressive control that he had exercised over the Palestinian resistance movements, including Hamas and Jihad. Other diplomats are breathing a sigh of relief at the demise of a leader they considered too self-centred to really care about the misfortunes of his own people.

In six interviews conducted by Al-Ahram Weekly since Arafat's death, there was not a single word of sorrow expressed by any Arab diplomatic source. Indeed, for many, Arafat's death would seem to mark not an end, but a new beginning. This sentiment was also expressed by some Palestinians, who were known for their opposition to Arafat's authoritarian style of rule.

Here is a rare time that the Arab nations were more pragmatic than the Palestinian Arabs themselves. Of course, Arafat's successors didn't seize the initiative to improve the situation and that's how we got to today, where any number of groups can effectively veto any "peace" agreement on the PalArab side.

Even so, it is instructive to look back and see past the nostalgia being shown by the Palestinian people who were so thoroughly screwed by the man they all claim was a hero.

Fatah spokesman: We want peace, but not that much

Palestine Press Agency reports (autotranslated):

Ahmed Abdel Rahman, advisor to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said today that the willingness of the Palestinians for peace does not mean relinquishing one inch of the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

...He reiterated his assertion that Abu Ammar (Yasir Arafat) was killed because of his refusal to waive Jerusalem.

Israel should say the exact same thing: it wants peace but not at the expense of compromising. It would be fun to compare the world reactions to each statement.

The second paragraph quoted was just to emphasize the distance between Palestinian Arab beliefs and reality. The question is: Why does the world coddle their fantasies?

Detroit, the Islamic City (and more University of Michigan trivia)

Followups to the posting on the theft of Israeli flags at the University of Michigan/Dearborn have shown that the university doesn't even pretend to hide its biases.

Here is a lecture from last week(Google cache):

Detroit, The Islamic City

Description:
Middle Eastern Cities Colloquium Series lecture by Andrew Shryock. Detroit has been home to Muslim communities for over a hundred years. The city's first purpose-built mosque was established in Highland Park in 1921. Today, there are over 50 mosques in greater Detroit, and many areas (Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck) have large, influential Muslim populations. Using materials drawn from the "Building Islam in Detroit" project, I will show how Muslim spaces have been created and transformed in Detroit over the last century. The mosque, as a physical object and a spiritual aspiration, is key to understanding larger processes of identity formation that make it possible to know Detroit (to inhabit, historicize, experience, and envision it) as an Islamic city.

The Center for Arab-American Studies at the university refers to Jerusalem as being in Palestine.

(h/t Anti-Racist Blog)

Shy Guy over at Israellycool comments about a few other facts about U of M:

- It employs the dishonest academic Juan Cole.
- It published a study finding no relation between Islam and terror.
- It is building Islamic footbaths in public university bathrooms.

Their Center for Middle Eastern and North Africa Studies has a program of extending their pro-Arab propaganda throughout Detroit's public schools. Typically, their idea of even-handedness is to give equal time to the claims of Syria, the PLO, UNIFIL, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel and then ask kids to decide who they think has the best claim.

Erekat = Hypocrite

The latest proof that Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the PA, remains a hypocrite and a liar:

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Monday rejected Israel's demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.

"There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined," Erekat told Radio Palestine.

Besides the utter foolishness of such a statement (how about Saudi Arabia? How about Iran?), perhaps it would behoove Erekat to peruse the 2003 Palestinian Constitution, Article 4:

1. Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained.
2. The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.
3. Arabic shall be the official language.

Previous examples of his lies can be found here and here.

3 killed in fresh Fatah/Hamas clashes

Palestine Today (Arabic), a pro-Hamas news site, says that three Fatah supporters were shot and killed during a pro-Fatah rally today commemorating Arafat's death.

Which brings our Palestinian Arab self-death count for the year to 577.

UPDATE: Palestine Press Agency quotes Palestine TV saying the number of dead is now 7. 581.

UPDATE 2: Up to 9. Plus more than a hundred wounded. 583. (UPDATE 2a: They've backed off again to 7. 581.)

UPDATE 3: I had missed this story from PCHR:

In another incident, at approximately 02:00 on Saturday, 10 November 2007, Ahmed Suleiman Abu Meghassib, 25, from Wadi al-Salqa village in the central Gaza Strip, died from a wound he had sustained on Wednesday, 7 November 2007. Abu Meghassib was wounded by a gunshot to the back fired by Palestinian militants when he attempted to prevent them from getting close to his house to fire at military posts of Israeli occupation forces.

582.

UPDATE 4: Wafa, the PA news agency, reports that Hamas is controlling access to hospitals to minimize the number of reported deaths. They give an example of a 14-year old boy who was officially listed as dying in a car accident who had three gunshot wounds. Palestine Today lists at least two minors killed. I'll wait to update the list when things clear up a bit.

UPDATE 5: I had in fact counted the death from Update 3. 581 again.

UPDATE 6: A 21-year old man, Marwan Alnono, died from Hamas gunshot wounds from the demonstration. 582.

The lack of an honest mediator

Batya from Shiloh Musings makes an important point:

There won't be any conflict mediation at that Annapolis Conference. There are no "third-party neutral" mediators. U.S.'s Rice and Europe's Blair have very well-defined and well-publicized agendas. Actually they have the same aim. It's not "conflict resolution." It's the establishment of another Arab State in the Land of Israel.

This is, in a nutshell, why Annapolis is a pre-ordained disaster - because the outlines for a "solution" have already been determined by the "third parties" and the entire point is how to prod Israel towards this "solution."

On Saturday, "moderate" Fatah terror leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged that mass-murdering terrorist Yasir Arafat will one day be re-buried in Jerusalem. Is there any possibility that Condi Rice made a phone call to him gently chiding him for saying something inflammatory? Is there anyone in the Bush administration or EU who would publicly condemn the idea of having Arafat's rotting, syphilitic corpse moved to be interred in the holiest ground on the planet?

It is hard to imagine a more disgusting idea to Jewish and Israeli sensibilities than the thought of burying the architect of modern terror near the Temple Mount. Just the mention is enough to evoke retching. From a purely political viewpoint is no less inflammatory - it prejudges that Jerusalem is "Palestinian" land that they can use as a burial ground with impunity.

If an Olmert would make a mildly parallel suggestion, that one day the Israeli flag would fly over the Temple Mount, he wouldn't even have to wait for the Arab world to react before he gets the phone call from Condi about how "unhelpful" such a position is.

The US has changed from an honest broker into an advocate of Arafat's original plan to destroy Israel in "stages." A good part of this is because the Israeli government itself has embraced that same philosophy, but it is not clear that this would have happened without Bush's declaration years ago that there should be another hostile Arab state on the west and south of Israel. American pressure since then has been overwhelmingly against Israel, helping make the idea of another terror state a fait accompli.

This is not mediation - it is nothing but pressuring one side to give up land vital to its security as well as culture, history and religion.