Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 13, 2009

Jimmy Carter was against Egypt/Israel peace!

A very interesting article by Arthur Herman in the WSJ:

The myth of Camp David hangs heavy over American foreign policy, and it's easy to see why. Of all the attempts to forge a Middle East peace, the 1978 treaty between Egypt and Israel has proved the most durable. Mr. Carter's admirers extol Camp David as an example of how one man's vision and negotiating skill brought former enemies together at the peace table, and as proof that a president can guide America toward a kinder, humbler foreign policy. Camp David was indeed Mr. Carter's one major foreign policy accomplishment amid a string of disasters including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and Ayatollah Khomeini's ascent in Iran.

But the truth about Camp David belies this myth. The truth is that Mr. Carter never wanted an Egyptian-Israeli agreement, fought hard against it, and only agreed to go along with the process when it became clear that the rest of his foreign policy was in a shambles and he desperately needed to log a success.

As presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter was sharply critical of the kind of step-by-step personal diplomacy which had been practiced by his predecessors Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. President Carter's preferred Middle East policy was to insist on a comprehensive settlement among all concerned parties -- including the Arab states' leading patron, the Soviet Union -- and to disparage Nixonian incrementalism.

Mr. Carter and his advisers all assumed that the key to peace in the region was to make Israel pull back to its pre-1967 borders and accept the principle of Palestinian self-determination in exchange for a guarantee of Israel's security. Nothing less than a comprehensive settlement, it was argued, could ward off future wars -- and there could be no agreement without the Soviets at the bargaining table. This was a policy that, if implemented, would have thrust the Cold War directly into the heart of Middle East politics. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had strained to achieve the opposite.
...For the better part of 1977, as Israel and Egypt negotiated, the White House persisted in acting as if nothing had happened. Even after Sadat's trip to Jerusalem, Mr. Carter announced that "a separate peace agreement between Egypt and Israel is not desirable."
...But by the autumn of 1978, the rest of Mr. Carter's foreign policy had crumbled. He had pushed through an unpopular giveaway of the Panama Canal, allowed the Sandinistas to take power in Nicaragua as proxies of Cuba, and stood by while chaos grew in the Shah's Iran. Desperate for some kind of foreign policy success in order to bolster his chances for re-election in 1980, Mr. Carter finally decided to elbow his way into the game by setting up a meeting between Sadat and Begin at Camp David.
...
Camp David worked because it avoided all of Mr. Carter's usual foreign policy mistakes, particularly his insistence on a comprehensive solution. Instead, Sadat and Begin pursued limited goals. The agreement stressed a step-by-step process instead of insisting on immediate dramatic results. It excluded noncooperative entities like Syria and the PLO, rather than trying to accommodate their demands. And for once, Mr. Carter chose to operate behind the scenes à la Mr. Kissinger, instead of waging a media war through public statements and gestures. (The press were barred from the Camp David proceedings).

Above all and most significantly, Camp David sought peace instead of "justice." Liberals say there can be no peace without justice. But to many justice means the end of Israel or the creation of a separate Palestinian state. Sadat and Begin, in the teeth of Mr.Carter's own instincts both then and now, established at Camp David a sounder principle for negotiating peace. The chaos and violence in today's Gaza proves just how fatal trying to advance other formulations can be.

Now, of course, Carter uses Camp David as his major credential for "peacemaking" even as he continues to advocate his failed policies of a comprehensive peace based on Israeli concessions and empty promises by Arabs. His recollection of Camp David includes his usual amnesia about Palestinian Arab commitments:

I was really disappointed when President Reagan dropped the ball completely. He showed no interest in the Mideast peace process after I left office and we were right on the verge of a complete success back then. We had two facets of the agreement that I negotiated with (Israeli Prime Minister Menachem) Begin and (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat. One was the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, not a word of which has ever been violated in the last 30 years. The other one was a commitment of Israelis to withdraw their political and military forces from the West Bank and to let the Palestinians have full autonomy. On that part of the process, Israel did not carry out their promise and President Reagan didn’t try to enforce the agreement that they had signed and that their parliament had approved. So yes, I was disappointed.

The text of Camp David shows Carter's bias:

Egypt and Israel agree that, in order to ensure a peaceful and orderly transfer of authority, and taking into account the security concerns of all the parties, there should be transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza for a period not exceeding five years. In order to provide full autonomy to the inhabitants, under these arrangements the Israeli military government and its civilian administration will be withdrawn as soon as a self-governing authority has been freely elected by the inhabitants of these areas to replace the existing military government.
When the self-governing authority (administrative council) in the West Bank and Gaza is established and inaugurated, the transitional period of five years will begin.

The autonomy that Camp David talks about is predicated on free elections in the territories, something that didn't happen until decades later.

So not only does Carter take credit for Israel/Egyptian peace that he opposed, he continues to lie about the very agreements that he brokered - always to vilify Israel.

(Also see My Right Word on the same Arthur Herman article.)

Clan clash, and other PalArab news

Three Qassams were shot from Gaza this morning, and a group called the "Hezbollah Brigades" claimed responsibility for two of them. These small groups give Hamas plausible deniability although the chances that Hamas had no knowledge of the rockets is slim to none. (Despite what unnamed "Israeli security officials" supposedly said to The Telegraph.)

A clan clash near Hebron killed one and injured three.

This weekend, for the first time in five years, Israel will allow Arab citizens to visit Nablus without getting permission ahead of time. A similar program for Jenin started a couple of months ago. Gee, you think that there might be something to the "peace for peace" idea?

Maybe not. A five kilogram bomb was discovered by the IDF near Jenin.

Hamas is making noises that both an agreement for a temporary "calm" with Israel and an agreement with the PA (where the PA would re-assert control over the Rafah border) are imminent.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 26.

Morning briefs

York University saw a crowd of pro-Palestinian Arab students siege the Hillel, which caused the police to get rid of - the Jewish students barricaded in the Hillel. One Jewish student was explicitly threatened.

Palestine Today headlines York University incidents this way: "The curse of the blood of the martyrs of Gaza haunt the Jewish and Israeli students in Canada."

Meanwhile, at UCLA, even the biggest Jewish critics of Israel are noticing that their anti-Zionist allies are stepping over the line, and that the university has abandoned all pretense of objectivity.

The "Seven Jewish Children" play gets more press. The assistant director's justifications prove incredible ignorance:

Natalie Ibu, the play’s assistant director, sent an email to the Board of Deputies while the play was in rehearsal.
She wrote: “The play examines the history of the state of Israel and depicts strong pro-Israeli views. We think it is important we understand this point of view in order to represent it correctly and authentically.

Of course, it doesn't depict pro-Israeli views; it depicts an Israel-basher fantasy of Jewish glee at killing innocents.

A review of the play concludes "For the first time in my career as a critic, I am moved to say about a work at a major production house that this is an antisemitic play."

On the other hand, most superheroes (and even some super villains) have some Jewish - and Zionist - blood:

Then of course there is Magneto, a Holocaust survivor. Perhaps no villain in all of Comicdom has more tangled motives than he. One fanboy during the Q&A following the discussion made an excellent point that Magneto may in fact be the ultimate Zionist. His dream of Avalon, a haven for mutants to live their lives free of persecution is eerily similar to the story of Israel. Only Theodor Herzl didn't have the power to manipulate metal. Though we might've seen a Jewish homeland a lot earlier if he did.

Another Hamas innovation: Molotov medicines

The Jerusalem Post unveils yet another Hamas innovation in using humanitarian aid:

Medicine bottles, transferred to the Gaza Strip as humanitarian aid by Israel, were used by Hamas as grenades against IDF troops during Operation Cast Lead. Pictures of the grenades were obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.

The medicine bottles were filled with explosives, holes were drilled in the caps, and fuses were installed. Once Hamas fighters lit the fuses, they had several seconds to throw the grenades at soldiers. The IDF also found small explosive devices that used medical syringes to hold their fuses.

The medical grenades were discovered in northern Gaza by troops during last month's three-week battle against Hamas. The grenades were taken to military explosives experts, and then disassembled and studied.

One bottle turned into a grenade originally contained a drug called Equetro, which is used by people who suffer from episodes associated with bipolar disorder. Another bottle had contained a vitamin supplement called Super-Vit.

"This is another example of Hamas's cynical use of humanitarian supplies to attack Israel," a Defense Ministry official said Thursday. "Israel facilitates the transfer of the supplies to the Gaza Strip, and Hamas uses the supplies to create weapons."

Yes, the medicines sent by the evil Zionists to help innocent Palestinian Arabs are being used by Palestinian Arabs to try to kill the evil Zionists.

No amount of psychiatric medicine can cure this disease.

UPDATE: Omri talks about this in his trademarked, snarky way. It's a cycle of medical supplies!

Abraham Lincoln and the Jews

Since today is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, it is time to revisit a little known episode of the Civil War, which is recounted in this fairly obscure book published in 1909.

As summarized by the Federation of American Scientists website:

In a remarkable episode from the Civil War that is not as widely known as it might be, General Ulysses S. Grant issued Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862 expelling all Jews from those portions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi where his forces had taken the field.

The book gives details:

General Grant's Order No. Eleven.
The edict of General Grant, known as Order No. 11, excluding the Jews, as a class, from within the lines of his army, naturally aroused a storm of indignation. Grant's first manifesto appeared at Lagrange, Tenn., on November 9, 1862, in the form of instructions to Gen. Hurlbut to refuse all permits to come south of Jackson, Tenn., adding " the Israelites especially should be kept out." He next issued orders to Gen. Webster, referring to the Jews as " an intolerable nuisance." He also reported to the War Department that " the Jews roam through the country contrary to the government regulations." Finally on December 17 he issued a general order expelling all Jews as a class " from his Department within 24 hours."

Back to the summary:

Equally remarkable, President Lincoln did not say he would “stand by” his generals or that “we must give the military the tools it needs” to accomplish its mission. Instead, he rescinded the Order.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln repeatedly suspended habeas corpus and authorized other serious infringements on civil liberties. But there are some things that are not done in America, it appears, even when the survival of the nation is at stake. This was one of them.

General Grant’s action was not entirely irrational and prejudice-driven. An estimated 25,000 of the nation’s 150,000 Jews lived in the South and were loyal to the Confederacy, according to a 2005 Library of Congress exhibition. And some Jewish merchants would “roam through the country contrary to government regulations,” Grant complained.

“The President has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers which I suppose was the object of your order,” wrote Gen. Henry Halleck to Gen. Grant, somewhat inelegantly. “But as it in terms proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deems it necessary to revoke it.”

The story received only cursory, two-sentence treatment in the preeminent Lincoln biography (“Lincoln”) by David Herbert Donald, which mistakenly attributed Halleck’s “Jew peddler” phrase to Grant (p. 409).

And Grant himself did not mention Order No. 11 in his Memoirs. He deliberately omitted it, his son explained in a 1907 letter, because “that was a matter long past and best not referred to.”

To the contrary, however, this principled exercise of restraint by the President in time of war seems well worth remembering and pondering today.

That is what makes a great President.

The book, called Abraham Lincoln and the Jews, also details Lincoln's relationship with his Jewish friends.

Administrivia - Replacing Blogroll

I am not very good at keeping my blogroll nice and tidy, and hadn't even noticed that the Blogroll.com site has been down for months, barely serving old blogrolls but without being able to update them.

So I just replaced my venerable old blogroll with a Blogger gadget that shows recent post titles from all blogs on my blogroll, along with a snippet of the post. That way any blogs that retire will just scroll off the list without cluttering it.

Well, that's the theory anyway.

Feel free to scroll down the right sidebar and peruse the blogs I like to read when I can.

Valentine's Day: A tale of two cultures

A couple of days ago, an Egyptian Islamic cleric went on a bizarre, wild rant against Valentine's Day.

In a few days time, a very dangerous virus will attack the body of the nation. What virus? Is it AIDS? No, something more dangerous. Something more dangerous than Ebola, which dissolves the human body, more dangerous than cholera, which killed half of Europe a few centuries ago. I am talking about the Valentine virus, people. I have come tonight to warn all boys and girls about an extremely dangerous virus, which is about to attack the hearts of the nation’s youth, and to destroy our relations with God. We must confront this Valentine virus?

Extremism is not solely the province of Muslims. At about the same time as this broadcast, an extremist Hindu group was also freaking out over Valentine's Day, threatening violence:

Militants belonging to a group called Sri Ram Sena, who claim to be custodians of Indian culture, said Valentine's Day is un-Indian.

The threat comes days after the group's activists stormed a bar in the south western city of Mangalore, dragging out and beating women they accused of acting obscenely and "going astray".

The attack led to fears an extremist "Hindu Taliban" was on the rise in India.

Gangadhar Kulkarni, an activist in the group, which is a radical wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, said: "If people celebrate the day despite our warning, then we will definitely attack them."

"Valentine's Day is definitely not Indian culture. We will not allow celebration of that day in any form," added Pramod Mutalik, the group's founder.

We have seen how the Muslim world generally responds to fatwas from crazed Islamic lunatics - they cower. They might have no respect for the imam of the day, but they will not confront him, for fear of losing their honor or their lives.

Luckily, Hindu women have different ideas:

Threats of violence from a group of right-wing Hindus have not deterred some Indian women from celebrating Valentine’s Day.

Nisha Susan, a 29-year-old female journalist from Karnatka, India, started a Facebook group last Saturday called the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women in reaction to Sri Rama Sena’s vowed crackdown on Valentine’s Day. The group has garnered support across the country and around the world, and has even spawned an underwear-based protest to let the hardliners know what its members think of the anti-Valentine’s Day decrees.

The SRS has said that it plans to force unmarried couples seen in public to either marry or put on “rakhis”—string bracelets that signal that a male-female duo are siblings.

So in reaction, the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women urges its followers to join them “on February 14, Valentine’s Day, the day in which Indian women’s virginity and honour will self-destruct unless they marry or tie a rakhi,” as the group’s sarcastic tagline reads. “Walk to the nearest pub and buy a drink. Raise a toast to the Sri Ram Sena.”

As of 11:00 am EST, the Facebook group had almost 30,000 members. Rallying support from around the world, the group has since launched another protest that some would call even more “cheeky.”

The Pink Chaddi Campaign, urges all its supporters to mail pink underwear to Pramod Muthalik, the leader of the SRS. Chaddi is the Hindi nickname for underwear.

Indian Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury has also come out in support of the protest.

If Muslim reformers could think as creatively as these Indian women, the extremist clerics would transform from objects of fear into laughingstocks.

Poor, motorcycle-deprived Gazans

Egypt just raided a farm used for smuggling in Rafah. From Al Quds:

A security official said Egyptian police on Thursday raided a farm near the Egyptian border with Gaza that used for dissassembling items as perparation for smuggling into the Gaza Strip. The official said that among the contraband were refrigerators and mobile phones, canned food and even motorcycles that were loaded in more than a hundred trucks and placed in a warehouse for storage. He said that these articles "have been prepared for the Gaza Strip."

The official in charge of the raid which took place Wednesday said, "It seems that the farm is a distribution point," adding that some of the goods carried posters with the names of wholesalers in Gaza.

Egypt is under pressure from Israel to stop smuggling across the Egyptian border with Gaza. Israel says the smugglers were using the network of tunnels linking the Gaza Strip and Egypt to smuggle weapons.

Last Wednesday, Egyptian police seized 30 trucks loaded with goods smuggled into the Gaza Strip and arrested the driver, a security official said. The smugglers of Gaza, the Egyptian authorities started to slow down their trade.

The poor, motorcycle-deprived Gazans!

It looks like the bribes that have lubricated the smugglers in Egypt are not quite as effective as they used to be.

The entire text of "Seven Jewish Children - A Play for Gaza"

As I posted earlier, Seven Jewish Children is a short play by Caryl Churchill that was written as an effectively anti-semitic "response" to Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

Churchill is freely licensing the play, under these conditions:

The play can be read or performed anywhere, by any number
of people. Anyone who wishes to do it should contact the
author’s agent (details below), who will license performances
free of charge provided that no admission fee is charged and
that a collection is taken at each performance for Medical Aid
for Palestinians (MAP)

The play shows a truly despicable Jew-hatred. Its underlying theme is that Jews who feel an attachment to Israel are inveterate liars who consciously feed their children myths, and these children can grow up and lie to their own children, all the while knowing that they are the evil ones and Palestinian Arabs are righteous.

For most of the play, increasingly so as it goes on, nearly all the "Tell her..." lines are what the playwright considers lies and the "Don't tell her...." lines are what she considers the truth. The climax of this sick thinking comes at the penultimate line, "Tell her we love her" - Churchill believes that Jews who live in Israel cannot possibly love their children.

Of course, no modern liberal anti-semitic play can be complete without comparing Gaza with the Holocaust, so it starts semi-sympathetically (but even then, Jews lie to their children) and goes on to the inevitable and grotesque ideas that Jews today revel in the deaths of innocents, just like the Nazis who they must have learned this from.

No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you
like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you
like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as
the time and child are different. They may be played by any number of actors.
1
Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill her
Tell her it’s important to be quiet
Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed
But not to sing.
Tell her not to come out
Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting
Don’t frighten her
Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time
Tell her we’ll come and find her
Tell her we’ll be here all the time.
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still
By magic
But not to sing.
2
Tell her this is a photograph of her grandmother, her uncles and me
Tell her her uncles died
Don’t tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her her grandmother was clever
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her she was brave
Tell her she taught me how to make cakes
Don’t tell her what they did
Tell her something
Tell her more when she’s older.
Tell her there were people who hated Jews
Don’t tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don’t tell her to think Jews or not Jews
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger
Don’t tell her there’s any question of danger.
Tell her we love her
Tell her dead or alive her family all love her
Tell her her grandmother would be proud of her.
3
Don’t tell her we’re going for ever
Tell her she can write to her friends, tell her her friends can maybe
come and visit
Tell her it’s sunny there
Tell her we’re going home
Tell her it’s the land God gave us
Don’t tell her religion
Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there
Don’t tell her he was driven out
Tell her, of course tell her, tell her everyone was driven out and
the country is waiting for us to come home
Don’t tell her she doesn’t belong here
Tell her of course she likes it here but she’ll like it there even more.
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her no one will tease her
Tell her she’ll have new friends
Tell her she can take her toys
Don’t tell her she can take all her toys
Tell her she’s a special girl
Tell her about Jerusalem.
4
Don’t tell her who they are
Tell her something
Tell her they’re Bedouin, they travel about
Tell her about camels in the desert and dates
Tell her they live in tents
Tell her this wasn’t their home
Don’t tell her home, not home, tell her they’re going away
Don’t tell her they don’t like her
Tell her to be careful.
Don’t tell her who used to live in this house
No but don’t tell her her great great grandfather used to live in
this house
No but don’t tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.
Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is our promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.
5
Tell her we won
Tell her her brother’s a hero
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her we turned them back
Tell her we’re fighters
Tell her we’ve got new land.
6
Don’t tell her
Don’t tell her the trouble about the swimming pool
Tell her it’s our water, we have the right
Tell her it’s not the water for their fields
Don’t tell her anything about water.
Don’t tell her about the bulldozer
Don’t tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don’t tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don’t tell her anything about bulldozers.
Don’t tell her about the queues at the checkpoint
Tell her we’ll be there in no time
Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t tell her the boy was shot
Don’t tell her anything.
Tell her we’re making new farms in the desert
Don’t tell her about the olive trees
Tell her we’re building new towns in the wilderness.
Don’t tell her they throw stones
Tell her they’re not much good against tanks
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her, tell her they set off bombs in cafés
Tell her to be careful
Don’t frighten her.
Tell her we need the wall to keep us safe
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea
Tell her they don’t
Tell her they want to drive us into the sea.
Tell her we kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we’re going swimming.
7
Tell her she can’t watch the news
Tell her she can watch cartoons
Tell her she can stay up late and watch Friends.
Tell her they’re attacking with rockets
Don’t frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don’t tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army.
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed
Tell her they’re terrorists
Tell her they’re filth
Don’t
Don’t tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can’t believe what you see on television
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army.
Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her their names why
not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell
her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got
nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell
her they want their children killed to make people sorry for them,
tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them,
tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk
suffering to us. Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog
of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe, tell her I
laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they’re animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don’t care if
the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re
chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.

Rockets and bombs towards Zionists - in Sweden

Must read and view.

James Bennet and Nizar Rayyan: Timing is everything

James Bennet, former NYT correspondent in Israel who has a fairly pro-Palestinian Arab bias, writes for The Atlantic:

Once, as the second intifada was nearing its height, I met with a Hamas man in a Gaza City hotel to talk about suicidal killing. He had written his master’s thesis on martyrdom, before turning to the future of Islam for his doctorate, and he brought his Toshiba laptop along to call up verses from the Koran to bolster his end of the conversation. He had unusual, chilling credibility on the subject: unlike other Hamas leaders, he had actually sent one of his own children to his death, in an attack on an Israeli settlement. He was a mountain of a man, with a sly sense of humor, and I always suspected he was one of Hamas’s deadlier manipulators of the young.
When I mentioned that my wife had come with me to Gaza, where I was reporting for The New York Times, he insisted I call her down from our room. She was then almost eight months pregnant with our first child. To demonstrate how cosmopolitan he was, he made a point of shaking her hand, though in theory, Islam prohibits a man from touching a woman to whom he isn’t related.

I kept thinking of this surreal encounter—my very pregnant wife, the courtly Hamas leader, the talk of deadly, suicidal children—when news came in January that Israel had killed the Hamas man, Nizar Rayyan, by dropping a bomb on his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp. With an intrepid Times colleague, Taghreed El-Khodary, I had met with him a few times in that house. Though we would ask about religion, he used to insist that he believed in fighting Israel purely for reasons to do with this world, not the next. His family had become refugees in the Israeli-Arab war of 1948, and though he had never lived there himself, he wanted to reclaim his ancestral home in what is now Ashkelon, in Israel.

... To him, suicide bombings were valuable, not just because they could kill Israelis but because they confounded the unbelieving world, signaling “that we no longer love this life.”

“It’s normal that a human being will be scared of something mysterious,” he said.

That day at the hotel, he wore a dark-green suit, white shirt, and blue-and-gold tie held in place by a silver clip. We drank juice, I think—he had an affectation of delicately sticking out one pinkie when he held a glass in his big hand—as he patiently tried to explain the Koranic basis for suicide killing. “I’m worried you don’t understand,” he said.

Rayyan said that he missed the son who had died attacking the settlement (he was 16), but that he planned to push another son to conduct an attack of his own. “It’s our home,” he said. “It’s more dear to me than my kids.” He was then looking to add a fourth wife—“I love women,” he told me with a smile—with a goal of eventually having 50 children. His bigoted worldview, and his rich historical imagination, gave him a kind of serenity. “When Muslims ruled the world, we treated everyone as we treat ourselves,” he said. To him, Israel was a hammer the Americans used to fragment Muslim society. Matter-of-factly, he told me once that the Palestinians might have to sacrifice half the rising generation to drive the Israelis out and rule all Palestine again.

He wound up sacrificing most of his own family. His four wives and nine of his children died in the January bombing, buried in the rubble of the house he insisted wasn’t their real home. Several of his neighbors died, too. Outside of a prison, you are unlikely ever to meet someone more trapped than a Gazan refugee—by leaders like Rayyan, by Israel, by a fatal obsession with the past.

Notice how Bennet has to throw in a dig at Israel even though it's actions have nothing to do with the article.

And while the article is a pretty good description of the pathology behind Hamas terror, there is one thing that bothers me.

As far as I can tell, Bennet never published anything about Nizar Rayyan before now, a month after he was killed.

One would think that any reporter would find such a subject to be irresistible - a charismatic Hamas leader who is anxious to share his thoughts about martyrdom, justified by the Koran, and who wants to send his own kids and half of his people to their deaths.

This would have been far more newsworthy at the time of the interviews, not now.

But I suspect that Bennet had an agenda. He wanted to see Hamas soften its positions and meet with Israel halfway. Printing such an interview would have been counterproductive to the moribund "peace process" that people like Bennet worship.

It is easy to publish an article now about Rayyan, exposing his twisted thought process, weeks after he is no longer relevant. One can pretend that he was an anomaly in Hamas, and that other "militants" are more pragmatic.

Printing the details of this man's thoughts beforehand just wouldn't have jived with the Peace Process agenda. And publishing it immediately after Rayyan was killed, while Israel was still fighting, would have looked too much like it was justifying Israel's Gaza operation.

Writing the article now, though, makes Bennet look wise, worldly and knowledgable.

How many other Rayyans are in Gaza now that Bennet and other reporters aren't writing about?

PalArab press roundup 2-12-09

Smugglers in Rafah are having a significantly harder time, as Egyptian security forces seem to have increased their patrols a great deal and are confiscating goods and shutting down tunnels.

Israel started issuing the first of two thousand "VIP cards" to senior Palestinian Arab security officials to ease their travel through the West Bank.

For the first time in three years, Israel will allow the export of carnations from Gaza to Europe for Valentine's Day. This was at the request of the Dutch government.

An Israeli soldier was jailed for shooting into the air while out of uniform close to some Palestinian Arabs near Kiryat Arba last November. B'Tselem had videotaped the incident. (In Gaza, when someone shoots into the air it is called a "wedding.")

The PalArab media is warning about attempts of Jews in Kfar Saba to take over an (apparently abandoned) mosque and convert it into a synagogue. I cannot find any story on this in the Israeli press so I don't know if this originally was a synagogue. The name translates to "Chapel of Simeon/Shimon" and has a suspiciously similar Arabic name, "Sa'aman." Right now, Jews are apparently placing pictures and Hebrew signs on the structure and the Arabs are removing them.

I'm in Indymedia!

Indymedia describes itself as "a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth." It is generally dominated by the far left, sometimes to the point of explicit anti-semitism.

In theory at least, anyone can write for Indymedia. However, in fact, some Indymedia sites will practice heavy-handed censorship of viewpoints that don't fit their agendas.

So I am surprised to see that articles I have written made it to two separate Indymedia sites!

The Cleveland Indymedia Center published my posting about how the world ignores Egypt closing the border with Gaza while it vilifies Israel for limiting goods that go there. This point actually fits pretty well with a pure liberal viewpoint, but it still surprised me that it was allowed to be published.

And the Rochester Indymedia site published my report about the Rochester pro-Hamas student protest that wasn't quite as civilly disobedient as they pretended.

This fits in well with what I suggested on Sunday to spread my articles to various social networking and "citizen journalism" sites which are so often dominated by Israel bashers.

I don't know who posted these articles at the Indymedia sites, but thanks!

Just Like Us! (video) (updated)

Just a typical street scene as you would expect to see in any city in the world. People passing by, talking, and watching the local masked policemen breaking someone's knees.

Because Gazans are just like us!

UPDATE: YouTube has taken this down, and I am suspended from the service for two weeks. Someone else put up a copy, I am linking to it while I try to get LiveLeak working, but it might have to wait until tonight.

The original YouTube video that I got this from is still up and can be seen here. But without my captions.

Someone also made a copy here.

"Secret meeting" in Gaza to consolidate terrorist groups

From IslamOnline.net (Arabic only; they try to look moderate in English):

Abu Mujahid, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, spoke about an initiative of the leaders of the military wings of the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip towards the formation of a united resistance front wing on the ground as one of the lessons learned from the recent Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian sources reported that a secret meeting of the leaders of the military wings of the resistance factions was held on Monday night at an undisclosed location in Gaza.

The spokesperson of the PRC, in an exclusive statement to IslamOnline.net, said that "the idea of forming a united front occurred during the calm, and was the idea of Dr. Mahmoud Zahar - senior leader of Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) - where he discussed it with Dr. Mohammed al-Hindi - an official of Islamic Jihad in Gaza - and Abu Awad Neirab - Secretary-General of the Popular Resistance Committees. "

Even though that initiative was never completed during the six month calm that ended last December, Abu Mujahid said the "coordination in the field during the aggression on Gaza has been excellent, which showed that the resistance in an honorable way to the world strengthens the trend towards the formation of a united front of a greater and more painful resistance in the face of the Zionist enemy."

He added, "We have conducted our investigations since the first day of the Zionist declaration of the cease-fire (18-1-2009), and we have begun research and refinement in the methods of the occupation, and assessment of failures in some things, and we have statements of combatants in the field that shows us the strengths and weaknesses of resistance, and we have put in place mechanisms to overcome these failures and training programs to overcome the weaknesses, and we will not go into details. "

"What happened are the ideas .. We have come a long way in this, but the consolidation of the arms of the resistance in a unified structure could be the future .. and while there is considerable collaboration between the basic wing military, there is a need for unity, both at the field level or the political situation. "

There is nothing tremendously new here, but it proves again that those who try to absolve Hamas for rockets fired by other terror groups have no idea what they are talking about - all the Gaza terror groups, with the possible exception of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, are in full cooperation.