Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How do 1948 Palestinian refugees compare to others?

We are in the midst of two solid weeks of "nakba" commemorations, each one further removed from reality than the last.

Yesterday, during yet another "nakba" celebration, PA prime minister Fayyad stated that the Palestinian Arab flight in 1948 was the "biggest tragedy of displacement in the modern era." (Ma'an Arabic) So I decided to do a quick check of the numbers of people who have been displaced in various wars and other events in the modern era, and compare them to the 711,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in 1948. Most numbers are from Wikipedia.

Event	Year	Number of refugees	Notes
Armenian	1915-21	1,100,000
Russian revolution	1917-21	1,500,000
Greece/Turkey	1923	2,000,000	Population exchange
Spanish Civil War	1939	500,000	Spanish Republicans to France
World War II	1939-45	7,000,000
Poland/Ukraine	1944-46	2,600,000	Population exchange
Potsdam conference	1945	12,000,000	Forced repatriation of ethnic Germans to Germany
Soviet Union	1945-47	2,500,000	Forced repatriation of Russians to USSR
Germany	1945-61	560,000	Flight from East to West Germany
India/Pakistan partition	1947	18,000,000	Population exchange
Palestinian Arabs	1948	711,000	UN count
Middle East Jews	1948-60	700,000	Arab countries to Israel
Korean War	1950-53	1,000,000
Algerian independence	1954-62	2,000,000	To Morocco, Tunisia
Pieds-Noirs	1962	900,000	Algeria to Europe
Bangladeshi Liberation War	1971	10,000,000	Bengalis to India
Sahrawis in Western Sahara	1975	150,000
Salvadoran Civil War	1975-82	1,000,000
Lebanese civil war	1975-90	900,000	Displaced from their homes
Khmer Rouge	1978-79	300,000	To US, Canada, Australia
Afghan War	1978-92	6,000,000	To Pakistan and Iran
Sri Lanka Tamils	1983-2008	800,000	to Europe and Canada
Kurds from Turkey	1984-99	378,000
Al-Anfal campaign	1986-89	1,000,000	Iraqi Kurds
Nagorno Karabakh	1988-89	750,000
Kashmir	1990-	300,000
Sudan war	1990?	930,000
Burundi	1990?	485,000
Democratic Rep. of Congo	1990?	462,000
Somalia	1990?	389,000
Russian Jews	1990-95	700,000	USSR to Israel
Persian Gulf War	1991	1,400,000	Iraq to Iran
Balkans	1991	2,700,000
Kuwait Palestinians	1991	400,000	expelled from Kuwait
Chechnya	1991-	2,000,000
Tajikistan	1992-97	500,000	Russians, excluding Jews who went to Israel
Abkhazia	1993	250,000
Rwanda	1994	2,000,000
Serbia	1999	1,000,000	Albanians
Darfur	2003-	2,500,000
Current Gulf war	2003-8	2,200,000	Iraq to Arab countries

The problem is not that there were so many refugees in 1948, although it is a significant number by any yardstick. The problem is that Palestinian Arab leaders and other Arab leaders, together with the UNRWA and so-called "human rights" organizations, have conspired to not only perpetuate the issue but even to exacerbate it.

By uniquely defining descendants of original Palestinian Arab refugees as refugees themselves, the "refugee" problem grown from 700,000 to over four million. Therefore, we see such nonsensical statement as this one from Human Rights Watch:

Palestinians are the world's oldest and largest refugee population, and make up more than one fourth of all refugees.

- a manifestly absurd statement, and one that serves to minimize the real refugee problems worldwide and give a single group preferred refugee status, generations after most of them are no longer refugees by any sane definition. The sheer number of displaced persons during the past hundred years is breathtaking, and in context the Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948 are barely a footnote.

Much larger refugee populations listed above have been forced to integrate and assimilate into the countries that they migrate to, but Arab countries who claim affinity with "Palestinians" have kept Palestinian Arabs separate and second-class.

No matter which historical narrative one believes, the 1948 refugee problem was indeed a disaster for Palestinian Arabs. But the fact that the problem still exists today is directly due to the conscious actions of their Arab neighbors and "supporters" for the past sixty years who want to see only one "solution" - destroying the State of Israel and replacing it with another giant refugee camp populated by people who mostly never lived there and who would be ecstatic to live as equals among their Arab brothers today.

Here's a nice litmus test to see whether people who claim to care about Palestinian Arabs: ask them if they would prefer to see millions of PalArabs in camps sixty years from now, or to have them become productive full members of the huge Arab world?

"Interfaith conference" in Qatar; Iran freaks out

From Peninsula On-Line:

The Sixth Conference for Dialogue Between Religions is due to kick off here today at Doha Sheraton hotel with prominent intellectuals, scholars, media persons and followers of three major religions participating.

The conference, to be inaugurated by the Minister of Awqaf (Endowments) and Islamic Affairs, H E Faisal bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud, will focus on three major topics: The peaceful relations among the three religions, the value of life in accordance with religion, including issues such as suicide, abortion, human trafficking, trafficking of human organs, clinical death and euthanasia, and insulting religious symbols. Many of these issues are medical issues with a religious dimension.

The third topic deals with violence, self defence and media and violence, in addition to questions over the suicide bombings taking place in Palestine and Afghanistan and whether they are violence or a type of self defence according to the viewpoint of religious scholars.

The conference, organized by the Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and Qatar University, will host up to 200 delegates representing Islam, Christianity and Judaism as well as local research centres.

I don't know what rabbis are participating in Qatar, but I do know that the fact that they are there is enraging at least one nation:

Iran boycotts Qatar's International Conference on Dialogue between Religions in a bid to protest the participation of Zionist rabbis, PressTV reported.

Iran's representative, Ali Akbar Sadeqi Reshad has asked the organizers of the conference to withdraw his paper from the event.

The Egyptian scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi has also boycotted the conference, which will be held on May 13 and 14, 2008 in Doha.

And what exactly does "interfaith dialogue" mean to the hosts in Qatar?

To a question on the participation of the Jewish rabbis, she said that the annual visits of the participating Jewish rabbis have contributed to the change of their conception on Muslims.

“I remember that the Jewish rabbis who participated for the first time in interfaith dialogue were very scared and even asked for tightening security measure. They thought they were coming to a country of terrorists. We do not expect them to hand over Palestine to us after inviting them to such meetings. The important thing is that their perceptions have changed with their annual participation in the Doha Interfaith Dialogue,” she explained.

Notice yet again that the point of "interfaith dialogue" from the Muslim perspective is not to learn from other religions, but to force them to learn from you. In other words, it is a Muslim monologue disguised as a conversation.

Obama's anti-Israel friends

Barack Obama's recent pro-Israel statements don't reflect his pre-campaign thinking. From the NYT (h/t EBoZ)

He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.

“He has a pattern of forming relationships with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago.

Electronic Intifada is not just a Palestinian Arab advocacy periodical; it is a virulently anti-Israel publication that supports Hamas and advocates Israel's destruction.

As Mr. Obama moved closer to running, he paid a visit to James S. Crown and his father, Lester, billionaire investors who presided over a sprawling Chicago business dynasty and prominent leaders in the Jewish community.

As the meeting ended, the younger Mr. Crown said, his father — who is “fairly hawkish” about Israel’s security — was noncommittal about Mr. Obama. But, James Crown said, “I pulled him down to my office, and I said, ‘Hey, look, I think you should run, and I want you to win.’ ”

In courting families like the Crowns, Mr. Obama was gaining entree into the upper echelon of the city’s corporate boardrooms, a ripe source of campaign money. But he was also seeking to broaden his appeal to Jewish voters, and he was wading more deeply into one of the touchiest issues in American politics: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For years, the Obamas had been regular dinner guests at the Hyde Park home of Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East scholar at the University of Chicago and an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1990s peace talks. Mr. Khalidi said the talk would often turn to the Middle East, and he talked with Mr. Obama about issues like living conditions in the occupied territories. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama during his Congressional campaign. Both Mr. Khalidi and Mr. Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, said Mr. Obama had spoken at the fund-raiser and had called for the United States to adopt a more “evenhanded approach” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

My critique of Rashid Khalidi's work can be seen here and here. Khalidi considers all of Israel "occupied" and was critical of Arafat - as being too flexible on Israel.

A.J. Wolf, a Hyde Park rabbi who is a friend of Mr. Obama’s and has often invited Mr. Khalidi to speak at his synagogue, said Mr. Obama had disappointed him by not being more assertive about the need for both Israel and the Palestinians to move toward peace. “He’s played all those notes right for the Israel lobby,” said Mr. Wolf, who is sometimes critical of Israel.

During the Senate campaign, Mr. Obama joined in a “Walk for Israel” rally along Lake Michigan on Israel Solidarity Day. The Crowns and other Jewish leaders raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him. Several days before the primary in 2004, some of his Jewish supporters took offense that Mr. Obama had not taken the opportunity on a campaign questionnaire to denounce Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or to strongly support Israel’s building of a security fence.

But in a sign of how far Mr. Obama had come in his coalition-building, friends from the American Israel Political Action Committee, the national pro-Israel lobbying group, helped him rush out a response to smooth over the flap.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that “none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.”

Notice that his letter didn't denounce Arafat or support the security fence.

Mr. Abunimah has written of running into the candidate around that time and has said that Mr. Obama told him: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping that when things calm down I can be more upfront.”

The Obama camp has denied Mr. Abunimah’s account. Mr. Khalidi, who is now the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, said, “I’m unhappy about the positions he’s taken, but I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed.” He added: “People think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s a politician.”

But for all of Mr. Obama’s attentiveness to Jewish concerns about Israel, Republican Party officials have made it clear that they think this is an area of vulnerability. Though Mr. Obama has condemned Hamas, a militant Palestinian group, as a terrorist organization, just last week Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, suggested that the group wanted to see Mr. Obama in the White House. Mr. Obama denounced that suggestion as a “smear.”

It was more than a suggestion. Hamas leader Ahmad Yousef said explicitly, “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.”

PalArabs seem ashamed about rocket attack

Few of the Palestinian Arabic-language press that I could find has mentioned that the victim of today's rocket attack was a 70-year old grandmother.

Palestine Today describes her as a "youth of American origin."
Ma'an does not mention it.
I couldn't find a mention in WAFA.
Firas Press describes her as a "settler."
Palestine News Network described her as an "Israeli settler."
And Islamic Jihad refers to her as a "settler."

Only Ramattan calls her a 70-year old woman.

It appears that when the victims can be spun into aggressors, the Palestinian Arabs are uniformly proud of their terrorists (as in the case of the Mercaz HaRav massacre, as they considered them all extremist settlers.)

But old ladies cannot be turned into monsters, so it is easier to just not mention that they are old ladies - easier to call them "settlers" or even "Americans."

There seems to be a small amount of embarrassment for terror, and that shame needs to be hidden well. They are proud for having killed but not quite so proud as to publicize who they killed.

Brave resistance fighters manage to murder a 70-year old woman

Islamic Jihad today gleefully took credit for the successful murder of a 70-year old women from a Qsssam rocket.

Their webpage describes the victim as a "settler". Perhaps they are slightly embarrassed at the identity of their victim (any man who gets murdered is automatically considered a "Zionist soldier.")

The worst place in the world to be a woman?

From the Guardian (UK):

In Yemen, the situation is more serious even than it is among its neighbours. In terms of freedom, it is probably Saudi Arabian women who have the hardest time of all. But even there, females have access to education and healthcare. In Yemen, an absence of citizenship rights for women horribly combines with crushing poverty to create a society in which women are not only the property of men, unable to leave the house without the permission of a male relative and vulnerable to arbitrary arrest on the street even once they have it, but are also likely to be illiterate, to be married before they reach puberty, and to die in childbirth. 'Our family law is the worst in the Middle East for women,' says Suha Bashren, a Yemeni who works as a campaign officer for Oxfam. 'It is medieval.' Does the fact that the law permits Yemeni women to drive - something that is illegal in Saudi Arabia - make up for any of this? You'll forgive Suha for thinking that it does not.
Yemen is one of the least developed countries in the world, with a Human Development Index of 149 (out of 177 countries), and a poverty level of over 40 per cent. Only 35.9 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water. For women, though, life is especially tough. A woman has only a one-in-three chance of being able to read and write (some 71 per cent of Yemeni women are illiterate, as opposed to 31 per cent of men; in most other Middle Eastern countries, the average female illiteracy rate stands at 35 per cent). If a Yemeni woman has a baby, she has only a one-in-five chance of being attended by a midwife, and she has a one-in-39 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth over her lifetime. As for rights, she has none - or very few. The law does not state what age a woman must be before she marries, which means that many females find themselves with a husband when they are as young as 12, something that has a serious impact on maternal mortality rates, and which can also result in other serious health problems, such as incontinence.
Male power is total, and not only in politics (one woman MP out of 301 members, 35 women represented in local councils out of 6,000). A woman cannot, for instance, marry without the permission of a male relative; if she has no father, she must ask her brother, or a cousin and so on until, if she has no male relatives at all, she must turn to a judge. Women are regularly the victims of arbitrary arrests, picked up for 'immoral acts' such as adultery, smoking or eating in a restaurant with a 'boyfriend'. It is not only the police who can make such arrests; power is invested in all kinds of men from the minister of the interior to local neighbourhood chiefs, even coastguards.
'Any uniform will do,' says Suha. The country's prisons are full of women who should not be there - their 'crimes' are so vague, even they are uncertain as to what they have done wrong - and many of whom have never faced a trial. Compared to all this, the way that women are expected to dress is unimportant, a cosmetic trifle. But they are highly covered up, and while this may be voluntary - this is a deeply religious society - to an outsider, even one who has travelled widely in the Middle East, it is bewitching and unnerving in equal measure. In Hadramout, a rural province in the south, I see women working in the fields whose every body part is covered in black fabric: even their hands, even their eyes. So, your vision adjusts. You stop expecting to see women's faces. You look at your own in the mirror of a hotel bathroom, and feel vaguely amazed.
...The concept of haram (shame) is so embedded in the culture that people do not always say what they mean, even - or perhaps especially - when asked a direct question. You need a translator not only of Arabic, but of the subtle language of avoidance and denial.
Say'un is a town of 30,000 people in the biggest wadi or watercourse, Wadi Hadhramawt, in the Arabian peninsula. Hadhramawt is extremely inaccessible. ...In Say'un, Oxfam is trying to improve reproductive healthcare, chiefly by funding the training of midwives and traditional birth attendants (TBAs). This is more important work than you may realise. In this part of Yemen - rural, religious, isolated - women are often unwilling to be treated by doctors, for the reason that they are men; it would be shameful for a woman to show her body to a man, even if the alternative meant that she might bleed to death. Getting more women into the healthcare system is therefore vital. 'Our midwives work in the hospital in Say'un,' says Basima Omer, a doctor involved in the programme. 'They save lives. But they also go back to their communities with new information about hygiene, high blood pressure ...' She sips her coffee - in the country that gave the world coffee, everyone drinks Nescafé with condensed milk - behind her veil. So how on earth did she become a doctor? She laughs, quietly. 'Oh, I went on hunger strike for three days until my father agreed.'
In a side room in the hospital, I meet some of these newly qualified midwives - and find proof of something I was told before I came here: that in Yemen there are women who, having taken the veil when they reach puberty, show their faces to no one - not even their own mothers - until they marry. For this reason, though we are in a private room, I am able to see the face of only one of the midwives (she lifts her veil because she is a divorcee).
...Wameedh and Suha take me to Hudaydah prison and, after a long wait on the governor's Seventies leather sofa beneath a creaking ceiling fan, I'm taken to meet women on whose cases Oxfam's volunteer lawyers work in their free time (the prison governor is unaware that I am journalist). The women's prison is a squat concrete building, its communal cells built around a yard in which washing can be hung in the sun. The place is clean and tidy, the cells, open to the yard, freshly scrubbed by the 52 inmates who inhabit them. But it's shocking how many of the women have babies, and how terribly young some of the prisoners are; when a warder gathers them to ask for volunteers to meet me, it's as though I've walked into a classroom rather than a prison. S (for their own safety, I am unable to identify the women) is 21, A is 22 and M just 14. Their stories are patchy and dreamlike, a quality that perhaps catches the sophistry that led to their arrest.
'I was visiting a friend,' says M. 'We were in a friend's house. We were chewing qat. Suddenly, I was arrested for prostitution. I've been here 11 months.' M, who has been in prison for two months, recounts that she was watching TV in a neighbour's house when she was arrested on suspicion of having committed an immoral act.
A tells me that a man offered to pay her for sex; when she refused, he took her to an interrogation centre where she was beaten until she admitted 'to everything I had done in the past'. She has been in prison for three months. None of the women has so far faced a trial.
Between them, Wameedh and Aminah unpick their stories for me. The friend whom S was visiting in her friend's house was probably a boyfriend. In the case of M, Wameedh believes that she is probably too ashamed to admit to me that she was having sex with a boy as well as watching television with him, though she later passed a virginity test. A has fallen victim to a local self-appointed religious vigilante, who is making it his business to arrest women on the streets. S begins to cry. 'My family are poor,' she says. 'They cannot do anything.' (Some prisoners are released if their families can pay up - irrespective of the so-called legal process.) The truth drawn out, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am lost for words.
... Most of the women gathered here, all of them married as teenagers, insist that they have been happy in their marriages. Then one, Shueiyah, who suddenly found herself with a husband at 12, before she'd even had her first period, tells me how horrible it was.
'At first, I was happy. There was singing, I had new shoes. Then I was alone with him in my room. I was afraid. I started to cry. He called his mother. She had to explain: "This is your husband. Don't be afraid. You're grown-up now. Act like a woman." I couldn't say no to my parents, but I didn't know what marriage involved.'
She didn't mind the cooking and cleaning. The only thing she didn't like was the night time. She used to try and find excuses to stay away from him. 'We argued a lot. But I couldn't explain why to his family. I couldn't tell them that it was because of sex. He wanted to have sex every night. No one told me anything about sex.'
She gave birth to a son, but four years later she and her husband divorced. We seize the moment. Was she too young? Would she put a daughter of hers through such a marriage? She laughs. 'I would be happy for my daughter to marry early.' When Suha starts to argue with her, Shueiyah becomes annoyed. It isn't long before she brings up Aisha.
On the journey back to our hotel, Suha lets off steam. She wonders aloud how she can prove to people that refusing to marry off children is not haram. Then she invites me to join her and Wameedh at the house of one of the Oxfam lawyers to chew qat. I do join them, though I don't chew qat; I don't have the taste for it. Our hostess has prepared delicious food, and she lights a water pipe for us. She dabs at our ears with exotic scents as if we were in a harem. No one is veiled; there are no men in the house. We could go on all night. Abdullah, our driver, is happy to wait for us: he is lying with the guard on a divan outside, chewing qat, in the cool of the night. It's a happy evening, our last before we go back to Sana'a. I admire these women more than I can say. So I get out my camera. I'm going to take a picture. But, no. Our hostess - a lawyer who gives up hours of her time fighting the cases of abused and forgotten women - gives me a big smile. 'I'm sorry but you can't take a photograph of me,' she says. 'Not like this.' She points to her unveiled face. 'I must ask my husband's permission, and he is out with his friends.' Like I said, nothing is straightforward here. Suha chews on her qat furiously.

Nakba nonsense floods in

Major newspapers are dutifully printing Palestinian Arab nakba nonsense. Here's a sample.

From Ahmad Samih Khalidi in the Guardian:

Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs - both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists' intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.

Given that there are now more Arabs in Israel than existed there in 1948, this is manifestly untrue. Of course, the Arab leaders in the 1920s and 1930s did all they could to stop Jewish immigration, even though none of them were being dispossessed by it - and in fact their people became much richer as a result.

From Daoud Kuttab in the Washington Post:

Jews worldwide, including modern-day Israelis, should be the first to understand Palestinians' desire to return. For 2,000 years Jews reminded each other of the prayer for Zion, repeating the hope "next year in Jerusalem." No one opposed that dream. Likewise, no one should demand Palestinians stop yearning to return.

Sorry, Daoud, but your heroes like Haj Amin Husseini did all they could to oppose that dream, and your tolerant Arab brethren in Jordan made sure that historic Jerusalem was Jew-free when they controlled it. But it really sounds good.

From Saree Makdisi in the Los Angeles Times:

To resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, Israeli Jews will have to relinquish their exclusive privileges and acknowledge the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes. What they would get in return is the ability to live securely and to prosper with -- rather than continuing to battle against -- the Palestinians.

Yes, just as Jews lived securely and equally with their Arab neighbors for centuries, right?

No, having a single Jewish state in an ocean of Arab states - almost all of which declare Islam to be their official state religions - is inherently abhorrent to Arabs. Their love for democracy starts only as soon as they can rig the results to ensure an Arab majority.

Note that Saree Makdisi teaches at UCLA, Daoud Kattab teaches at Princeton University and Ahmad Samih Khalidi teaches at St Anthony's College, Oxford. As I pointed out in my last posting - all these former Palestinian Arabs are living in the West, claiming to want what is right for their brethren still in the Middle East, but not willing to actually leave their cushy academic positions to truly help. Their protests ring hollow when one realizes that they pretend to be advocating for a people who just want to raise their families somewhere, and cannot because of the actions of "friends" like these.

Where is the "Palestinian Aliyah" movement?

As Israel's 60th anniversary passes, and the news media goes out of its way to contrast the past sixty years from the Israeli and Palestinian Arab perspectives, one question not being asked is: where is the ideological core of Palestinian Arab nationhood?

From following articles by Palestinian Arabs in the West decrying Israeli "crimes" and pretending to yearn for their land, one is struck by a simple fact: most if not all of them live, quite comfortably, outside "Palestine." From universities in the US and the UK they rail about "justice" and the suffering of their people - but none of them seem to want to actually move to "Palestine."

It's not like it is so hard. Even if Israel limits immigration, there is no shortage of ways to get in from Jordan. Tens of thousands of opportunistic Jordanians did exactly that during the early Oslo years as it appeared that the economy in the West Bank was poised to leapfrog Jordan's.

It is instructive to compare the early ideological Zionists, many of whom of whom risked their lives for a very uncertain future in Palestine (even before Herzl), and today's "settlers" who do the same, with today's ideological Palestinian Arab nationalists who are quite happy to pontificate from afar.

The lives of the early Zionists were no more secure in Palestine than in the West. It was far from clear that they would be able to build a homeland successfully. Yet they sacrificed themselves for an idea that they believed strongly in.

Similarly, there are hundreds of thousands of Jews - today's pioneers - who choose to live across the Green Line. They build schools, clinics, farms, against the wishes of not only the Arab world but most of the West and sometimes even their own government. Yet they choose to stay, and more choose to move there. Even if you disagree with them you must admit that they have a strong ideological core that makes them want to move there.

But where are the Palestinian Arabs who grew up in the West? They stay in the West. The ideology of "return" is great to talk about, but not so important to live.

Palestinian Arabs have hijacked the terminology of the Jews ("Diaspora," for example) but they have always suffered from a black hole at the center of their ideology: their most passionate nationalists were either terrorists or lived outside Palestine altogether, with no desire to build the land.

Of course they applaud and encourage the miserable Palestinian Arabs who live in the Middle East to have lots of children so the next generation will be even more miserable. They are in the forefront of screaming "Zionism=Nazi" in left-wing rags. But they simply do not put their money where their mouths are.

Because they really don't care nearly as much about a Palestinian Arab state as they do about the destruction of a Jewish state.

Fatwa: Palestinian Arabs may not compromise with Israel

A religious council called the "Palestinian Scholars Association" has given a legal ruling that it is forbidden to ask real Palestinian Arabs to vote for compromise with Israel. From PalToday (Arabic):

Palestine Scholars Association said "it may not in any way resort to a referendum if it is a virtue, about the fixed legitimate right of God or public rights of the nation."

A copy of the fatwas received today states that "one cannot accept the judgment as is the case in Palestine in the right of return and self determination, or waive a portion of the land of Palestine or of the sacred Islamic shrines, or coordination with the enemy to strike the resistance."

It went on to say "that the presentation of these rights and fold the referendum, represents a betrayal of God and His Prophet and the believers and the homeland."

We've seen this sort of thing before. Palestinian Arab religious and political leaders know that their people are not nearly as interested in destroying Israel as in just gaining normal lives for their families, and that their nationalism is very weak, so they impose artificial limitations on the people's rights in order to shore up their true goals.

This is why Abbas is so much against Lebanese citizenship for hundreds of thousands of his people stuck in camps there. This is why Hamas is against any compromise that allows Israel to exist. They know that a large number of Palestinian Arabs would be happy to move elsewhere if given the chance, and they desperately want to make sure that they aren't given that chance.

Hamas man explodes in the "playground of death"

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades English site says:

As Al Aqsa Intifada against the occupation assault on the Gaza Strip continues, Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades has its best men to be in the playground of death to defend their people from any attack by the enemy.. Today , Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the death of the Mujahid :

Osama Salah Al-Astal - 28-year-old - Khanyounis, south of Gaza Strip

The Mujahid was martyred in a resistance mission east of Al Qarara area to the east of Khanyounis city . Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the death of the Mujahid, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces.

In normal English, the Jerusalem Post explains what happened:

A Hamas operative was killed on Sunday in an explosion along Gaza's fence with Israel, the group said.

The Islamic group's military wing says the member was killed, and another injured, during a "holy mission." Such language is used when explosives meant for an attack on Israel explode prematurely.

Israel's army said it was not operating in the area at the time of the explosion early Sunday.

Yet even though Hamas itself never says that the IDF killed him, Ma'an shamelessly reports otherwise:

Eyewitnesses told Ma'an's reporter that Al-Astal was on lookout duty east of the town of Al-Qarara, when he noticed Israeli special forces entering the area. He immediately hurled a grenade towards the Israelis, who fired back, killing him and wounding three other fighters.

Showing yet again the trustworthiness of both Ma'an and Palestinian Arab "eyewitnesses."

Palestine Today (Arabic) is a bit more honest:

When suspected Israeli special forces sneak into the region then to the explosion was a bomb in his possession which led to his martyrdom and wounding three others resistors.

Our 2008 PalArab self-death count rises to 69. (There have been a couple of ambiguous West Bank deaths recently as well - a dead woman found outside a mosque, and a man who died while in Palestinian Arab custody, but not enough evidence of foul play in either case.)

2 Jordanian "honor killings" in a week

From the Jordan Times:

Criminal Prosecutor Amjad Kurdi on Saturday charged a 23-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.
Kurdi also charged the victim’s father, mother and sibling of complicity in premeditated murder in connection with the drowning of the 22-year-old at dawn on Saturday.

The victim, who was not identified by officials, was reportedly badly beaten by the suspects at her family’s home, then driven by her 22-year-old brother from Amman to the Dead Sea where he allegedly drowned her, according to the source.

The 23-year-old suspect, an electrician who got engaged a week before the murder, then placed his sister’s body in the trunk of the car, drove back to Amman, headed to the Jabal Hussein Police Station and informed officers on duty that he murdered his sister to “cleanse his family’s honour”, the source added.

The victim, who was married almost two weeks before the incident, was returned to her family home on Friday by her husband, who questioned “her fidelity”.

The victim’s family interrogated her and she allegedly told them that “she knew a man but was not involved in an affair with him” so they beat her until she almost fainted, the source told The Jordan Times.

The 23-year-old brother then told his sister he wanted to take her for a ride to calm things down, the source added.

“He drove her to the Dead Sea, and when the call for dawn prayers began, he asked her to recite verses of the Holy Koran, then dunked her head in the water until he made sure she was dead,” the source said.

The victim tried to resist and informed her brother that she did nothing wrong, but “he did not listen and killed her,” the source added.

A postmortem conducted on the victim indicated that she died of drowning and was tortured before she was murdered.

“Pathologists detected multiple bruises on different parts of her body caused by a wooden stick… the woman was beaten on the head, shoulders, legs and stomach,” the source said, adding that blood and tissue samples were sent to the criminal lab for further analysis.

The victim became the sixth woman to be killed in a so-called honour murder in Jordan since the beginning of the year. She is also the second to be killed during the past week.

Last Wednesday, a 22-year-old man reportedly shot his pregnant married sister three times in the head for reasons related to family honour.

Jordan had 17 known honor killings in 2007.

Gazans for Obama

This was on Al-Jazeera a month ago, showing Gazan volunteers making phone calls to the US to campaign for Barack Obama.

UN engages in collective punishment in Myanmar

By the definition of the international community, the UN has engaged in collective punishment against a poor and starving people who are suffering from a humanitarian crisis:

The World Food Program said Friday it stopped shipping aid to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar after the government impounded the program's first delivery.

The U.N. unit said the military junta seized tons of aid sent to help victims of Cyclone Nargis, which killed tens of thousands, and left millions homeless, the BBC reported.

"It is sitting in a warehouse. It is not in trucks heading to Irrawaddy Delta where it is critically needed," WFP spokesman Paul Risley said.

The aid included high-energy biscuits that could feed 95,000 people, WFP said.

"It should be on trucks headed to the victims," said WFP regional director Tony Banbury told The Daily Telegraph. "That food is now sitting on a tarmac doing no good."

While aid has resumed since this morning, it would be nice to know the UN's justification for doing something to limit aid to Myanmar - when the UN isn't even being attacked daily by that nation?

Nah, it isn't hypocritical. Insisting for Israel to do something that even the UN is queasy about must be justifiable, because of occupation, or settlements, or something.

(h/t David)

Saudis give UK universities $30m for Islamic studies

The proselytizing of Islam in Western universities continues:

Two of the country's best known universities are to set up research centres aimed at promoting a better understanding of Islam.
Cambridge and Edinburgh universities will share a £16m endowment from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Abdulaziz al-Saud, a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family and chairman of the Kingdom Foundation – a charitable and philanthropic foundation set up to alleviate suffering around the world.
Both universities, members of the 20-strong Russell Group, which represents the leading research institutions, will set up study centres with the aim of fostering better understanding between the Muslim world and the West.
In Cambridge, the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies will seek to develop a "constructive and critical awareness of the role of Islam in wider society". There will be research programmes on Islam in the UK and Europe and the portrayal of Islam in the media. Public lectures, conferences and summer schools will be organised to promote better understanding, with policy makers from both worlds invited to become visiting fellows at the centre.

Any chance that these research programs will be the slightest bit objective?

The Kingdom Foundation is specifically set up as a conduit for Islamic propaganda with a few dollars spent on Islamic-only charities, not to "alleviate suffering around the world." A short glance at where they spend their money shows that the foundation will give a couple of hundred thousand dollars to various Arab and Islamic causes, a pittance compared to the $30 million being spent on propaganda here and the $40 million spent at Harvard and Georgetown.

And as we've seen before, whenever Muslims claim to be interested in "fostering better understanding" or "dialogue" between Muslims and the West, they always mean propaganda, with no interest at all in Muslims understanding the West.