Golden Oldie: Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, part 13

Since I am (probably) unavailable, here is another classic from a previous August, this one two years ago. This was the most recent of my series on Palestinian Arab history. I would change a little of what I wrote since then, but it is pretty much on target. Feel free to read the earlier chapters.

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The stateless Palestinian Arabs became more and more fragmented as the 1960s dawned. As their numbers increased, so did their value to the ever-growing number of Arab leaders who wanted to act as their leaders.

The Arab world at this time was far from unified. By 1960, there were at least three major players bidding for leadership of the Arab world: Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan and Abd al-Karim Qasim of Iraq. Each of them tried to out-do the others in claiming to be the leader of the hapless Palestinian Arabs, now numbering over a million.

Qasim opposed Nasser's plan for a pan-Arab state with himself as leader, pushing instead for a looser confederation of Arab states. He proposed a Palestinian Arab republic in the West Bank and Gaza, directly challenging Nasser's non-stop rhetoric claiming to help the Palestinians as well as Jordan's annexation of the West Bank.

Nasser, who was now head of the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria, responded by setting up a "Voice of Palestine" radio station and a newspaper called "Akhbar Filastin." In addition, Nasser set up a pseudo "Palestinian army" in Gaza and formed a quasi-government in Gaza that recalled the ill-fated Gaza government of 1949. Qasim responded by setting up his own "Palestinian Liberation regiment" in Iraq.

King Hussein, for his part, offered citizenship to any Palestinian Arab, not just the ones in Jordan, as he wanted to equate Jordan and Palestine and was against all attempts to establish an independent Palestinian Arab state.

Meanwhile, the clashes within the Arab world were not only confined to the Palestinian Arab problem. Coups and assassinations happened often - Jordan and Iraq were allied until the 1958 coup and assassination of King Faisal that brought Qasim to power, and Qasim was overthrown and killed himself in 1963 from a Baathist coup (in which 5000 were killed over two days.) There were many assassination attempts against King Hussein. Egypt became embroiled in a civil war in Yemen in 1962.

It is no wonder that these leaders tried to use the Palestinian issue to their advantage. Claiming to support Palestinian Arabs against Israel was an easy way to score political points, as the one thing that all Arabs could agree on was the need to destroy the Zionist state.

The Palestinian Arabs themselves were fragmenting into four major groups:

The Gazans were in many ways in the worst shape of all Palestinian Arabs. Completely dependent on UNRWA handouts and completely immersed in Egyptian Nasserite propaganda, they tended to support Nasser wholeheartedly even as he would use them purely for political points.

The fatalists were the ones who stayed in refugee camps, even more than a decade past their leaving Palestine and with little intention of leaving. They were happy to be living on the UNRWA dole, getting free education, medical care and food. They tended to support Nasser as well, and his vision of a pan-Arab nation in which they would become equal citizens again with their Arab brethren took strong hold of their imagination.

The pragmatists were the ones who left the camps and settled their families in Jordan, taking jobs and living in honor. They tended to be more supportive of the King and they didn't agitate nearly as much for a return to Palestine.

Finally, there were the ambitious Palestinian Arabs. This group tended to move further away from old Palestine and make their own way in life. In many ways, these were the spiritual and sometimes literal descendants of the hundreds of thousands who moved to Palestine in the first half of the century for purely economic reasons. Most of them moved to the Gulf states that were beginning to reap the benefits of the oil boom, although a significant number moved to Central and South America.

By the tens of thousands they moved to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Dubai, taking jobs. The Kuwaiti economy and infrastructure was built to a large degree by Palestinian Arabs. They tended to be more educated, more highly-skilled and harder-working than their other Arab counterparts. Even so, they were not allowed become citizens of these nations that they were helping so much.

Starting in the late 1950s, some of these former residents of Palestine and their supporters started forming small groups dedicated to defeating Israel by force. Fatah was founded by Khaled Yashruti (born in Acre) and Yasir Arafat (born in Cairo) in this time period, and as early as 1959 it was publishing manifestos relying heavily on Arab concepts of honor and shame as their motivation:

The youth of the catastrophe (shibab al-nakba) are dispersed... Life in the tent has become as miserable as death... [T]o die for our beloved Fatherland is better and more honorable than life, which forces us to eat our daily bread under humiliations or to receive it as charity at the cost of our honour... We, the sons of the catastrophe, are no longer willing to live this dirty, despicable life, this life which has destroyed our cultural, moral and political existence and destroyed our human dignity.

The members of Fatah were mostly living in the Gulf states, as well as Algeria, and were not living in the camps that they so eloquently describe. They and the other nascent Palestinian Arab leaders were just as willing to use the Palestinian Arab masses as pawns for their own purposes as the Arab national leaders were.

In addition, in 1960, something called the "Palestine Liberation Army" that was based in the UNRWA camps engaged in terror acts against Israel, although it is unclear whether it was a home-grown Palestinian Arab group or one that was sponsored by an Arab country. (This is different than the Palestinian Liberation Army, created a few years later as a military wing of the PLO.)

Although Fatah styled itself early on as a "liberation movement" it did not start off with any aspirations to create a new independent Palestine, rather, its initial goal was simply the destruction of Israel for pan-Arab purposes. It initially intended to be completely independent of Arab governments that it mistrusted in the wake of 1948 and the refugees, however by 1964 it was effectively taken over by Syria in exchange for military training and weapons.

Meanwhile, other terror attacks against Israel continued. Most of these were also state-sponsored, usually from Egypt or Syria although often from Jordan as well. At this point the fedayeen trained by the Arab nations were much more deadly and brutal than Fatah - even as early as 1954 Jordanian terrorists shot each passenger in an Israeli bus point-blank, killing eleven of them. No matter what the methods or effectiveness, the goals were always the same: the eradication of Israel (and not necessarily the establishment of an Arab state in its place.)

The Palestine Liberation Organization was launched in 1964. Ostensibly, it was formed as a result of a meeting of the "Palestinian National Council" that held its first meeting only a few days beforehand, but in fact it was created by the Arab League in its Cairo meeting in June of that year. The PNC itself is a more subtle example of Arabs using Palestinian Arabs as pawns in their plans - the vast majority of delegates to the PNC are from the Palestinian "disapora," not from those who are actually suffering in camps.

The first leader of the PLO was Ahmad Shukairy, who was born in Lebanon. He drafted the "Palestinian National Charter" in 1964 with an eye towards Nasser-style pan-Arabism, not an independent Palestinian Arab state. The original charter itself denies the legality of the UN partition plan and indeed any British or international declaration that gave any land at all to Jews anywhere in the world, and it denies as well any Jewish connection to Israel:

Article 18: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate System, and all that has been based on them are considered null and void.The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood. Judaism, because it is a divine religion, is not a nationality with independent existence. Furthermore, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states.

The Charter also betrays the thinking of the Arab leadership on exactly what being a "Palestinian" means. It strongly implies that identifying people as "Palestinian" is not a statement of fact, but rather one of convenience in the efforts to rid the Middle East of a Jewish state, as can be seen in the following sections:

Article 5: The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from fathers to sons.

Article 6: The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian.

Article 11: The Palestinian people firmly believe in Arab unity, and in order to play its role in realizing this goal, it must, at this stage of its struggle, preserve its Palestinian personality and all its constituents. It must strengthen the consciousness of its existence and stance and stand against any attempt or plan that may weaken or disintegrate its personality.

Article 12: Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary goals; each prepares for the attainment of the other. Arab unity leads to the liberation of Palestine, and the liberation of Palestine leads to Arab unity. Working for both must go side by side.

Articles 5 and 6 attempt to arrive at a definition of "Palestinian" that is independent of self-identification. A people who truly have strong cultural and communal ties would not require such a definition, and its effect is to keep the Palestinian issue alive. By defining a Palestinian personality separate from the more general definition of Arab, the effect of the charter is to do everything possible to avoid Palestinian re-integration into Arab society.

Those two articles are effectively contradictory with Articles 11 and 12, where Arab unity is stressed right after Palestinian separateness.

Most telling is the section in Article 11 where the charter comes close to admitting that preserving what can only be described as precarious Palestinian "personality" is only important "at this stage of its struggle." This strongly implies that once Palestine is "liberated" from the grips of the Jews, the national aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs would disappear and become subsumed into a more general unified Arab state.

Putting these paragraphs together, the original purpose of the PLO and the PNC becomes clear: to keep the Palestinian Arabs from ever assimilating into the Arab world as long as they can remain useful to pressure Israel internationally. Once this usefulness disappears, so would the Palestinian people. It was not an organization that was interested in the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need, rather it was fixated on how to use them to destroy Israel.

Another interesting paragraph in the charter seems at odds with the original Fatah viewpoint regarding the dignity of Palestinian Arabs. While Fatah decried Western aid to Palestinian refugees as an affront to Arab honor and dignity, the PLO regarded it as a right:

Article 19: Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims. Israel, in its capacity as the spearhead of this destructive movement and as the pillar of colonialism, is a permanent source of tension and turmoil in the Middle East, in particular, and to the international community in general. Because of this, the people of Palestine are worthy of the support and sustenance of the community of nations.

This also shows that the PLO was not at all interested in Palestinian Arabs themselves and that its platform was more aligned with the Arab League than with the people it was claiming to be defending. The Arab League showed no more interest in alleviating Palestinian Arab suffering in 1964 than it did when it announced its first disastrous boycott of Jewish goods and services in 1945. And although Ahmad Shukairy's father was Palestinian, his career up to this point was being a diplomat for both Syria and Saudi Arabia as well as working for the Arab League itself.

Yet another article shows even more clearly how national aspirations were entirely absent from a "National Charter:"

Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

The British borders of Palestine were occupied by four countries (the Himmah area is a section of Mandatory Palestine that was seized by Syria in 1948) and yet the founding national charter of the PLO was only concerned with one of them.

The second Arab summit, held in Alexandria in September 1964, endorsed the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and quickly acted to establish a Palestinian Liberation Army as a military wing to the PLO.

Fatah, not yet a part of the PLO, established its own military wing called al-Asifa in 1965. Fatah's first attack against Israel occurred that year, as they tried to bomb Israel's National Water Carrier. This was followed by a number of other (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to attack Israel's infrastructure.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12

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Golden Oldie: Fisking an Arab News editorial

Since I am unavailable to post, check out this article from August 2006:

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Normally, I see articles like this drivel in the op-ed sections of Al-Jazeerah.info or similar sites that pretty much publish anything anyone wants to say as long as it fits their agenda, facts be damned. But this is slightly more interesting because it was written by the Editor-in-Chief of the Arab News, which styles itself as a real news source. As such, it is important to, yet again, point out the half truths and outright falsehoods that characterize reasoned debate in the Arab world.

Arabs Can’t Be Anti-Semites
Khaled Almaeena, almaeena@arabnews.com
Last week I wrote about the phone call from an Italian friend who asked me whether Islam and Muslims were characterized by fascist tendencies or beliefs. His query came as a result of US President George W. Bush’s unfortunate and ill-considered use of the phrase “Islamic fascists.”

Inaccurate and incorrect as the phrase is, it was not born from the brain of Bush — or even from the brains of his speechwriters. It was first used soon after Sept. 11, 2001, by Christopher Hitchens, a former diehard Marxist who is now a mainstay of the American neocons.

As anyone with a passing familiarity with English knows, saying that a group of terrorists are "Islamic fascists" does not mean that all Muslims are fascists. calling the phrase "inaccurate and incorrect" is nonsensical, unless the author is saying that the terrorists themselves have no desire to subjugate the world to Islam.

Also, the phrase was not first used by Hitchens, but was used as early as 1990 by historian Malise Ruthven and also before 9/11 by Muslim historian Khalid Duran who was criticizing extremist clerics and was in turn denounced by Muslims for that.

As a neocon, Hitchens enjoys great privileges and is a member in good standing of the media group which regularly attacks Muslims and Islam. His popularity is great in both neocon and Zionist circles. Included among those he is close to are Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, David Horowitz — all closely associated with the American administration and its destructive and internationally unpopular policies over the last few years.

By sheer coincidence, I'm sure, Almaeena only mentions "neocons" who happen to be Jewish.

The word “fascist” seems to have been used because the Bush administration and its sycophants (the neocons, evangelists, extreme right-wingers and the Zionist lobby) have this false and preposterous idea that Islam wants to take over the world. They are convinced that Muslims want to conquer the entire world by force and convert everyone to Islam by the sword!

Have they drawn this conclusion based on what they know of the terrorists’ beliefs and practices or on the beliefs and practices of the 99.99 percent of Muslims who are not terrorists? And while, as always, our Arab media focuses on trivialities, their media is slowly and insidiously planting negative ideas about Arabs and their alleged anti-Semitism.

The author says that 99.99% of Muslims are not terrorists. That may be true - there may be only 160,000 real, active Muslim terrorists on the planet out of 1.6 billion total. Perhaps he does not think that is a problem for Islam.

However, what Almaeeda is purposefully ignoring is the fact that a significant number of Muslims do support terror. One in four British Muslims felt that the 7/7 bombings were justified. If that is the number in a Western nation that was the victim of terror, it is not too hard to imagine that the numbers in Muslim nations go over 50% (or much higher.)

And, finally, can the author honestly say that the idea of re-establishing an Islamic caliphate is not seen as desirable in most of the Muslim world? Perhaps this caliphate would not take over the entire world, but the idea that people who support terror and have nuclear weapons want such sweeping political power is indeed a clear threat to the entire world.

Now we get from the naive to the stupid:

How, I wonder, can Arabs be anti-Semitic? They are in fact themselves Semites; the word derives from one of the sons of Noah — in English Shem — who was the ancestor of both Jews and Arabs. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Semite” as “people who speak a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.” In other words, it would be highly unusual for Arabs to be anti-Semites though they might well be anti-Zionists. But that is not the same thing.

It is a pity that this editor could not trouble himself to look up the meaning of "anti-semite" in the same Oxford English Dictionary:

anti-'Semite,

one who is hostile or opposed to the Jews;
anti-Se'mitic a.

Other dictionaries say (since the author apparently believes in proof by dictionary definition):

Random House Dictionary:
an‧ti-Sem‧ite  /ˌæntiˈsɛmaɪt, ˌæntaɪ- or, especially Brit., -ˈsimaɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[an-tee-sem-ahyt, an-tahy- or, especially Brit., -see-mahyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

a person who discriminates against or is prejudiced or hostile toward Jews.

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[Origin: 1880–85]
American Heritage Dictionary:
an·ti-Sem·ite (nt-smt, nt-)
n.

One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews.

Is the author clueless or lying?

A recent Pew Research Center study showed that in most countries, Muslims had an unfavorable impression of Jews. That is prejudice, plain and simple - which means that most Arabs are, by definition, anti-semitic, notwithstanding the etymological calisthenics that the author goes through.

In order to combat the lies and half-truths about Islam and Muslims, we need our own researchers. And we have very few indeed. We Arabs, for whatever reasons, are not known for funding or encouraging research unless we are fairly sure what the end result will be. Nor do we have enough people who are fluent in other languages. For example, how many Arabs are fluent in Hebrew? Nowhere near the number of Israeli Jews who are fluent in Arabic.

Of people who say they have doctorates from this or that university, we have many. Unfortunately, the holders of such doctorates can do little except demand special consideration because of their alleged academic excellence.

We need researchers who are able to state — and back up the statement with facts and evidence — that “Zionists are often anti-Semites.” Because that is a fact. The Zionists, by and large, are Ashkenazi Jews which means they are of Central or Eastern European descent. The great majority of Israeli Jews today are Ashkenazi and it is they who control the country and, in the past, it was they who made the rules and regulations and government policies. They do not always consider their Sephardic brothers — Jews of Spanish, Portuguese, North African or Middle Eastern descent — their equals.

Since the real-world definition of anti-semitism has nothing to do with the definition of Semite, this entire section is a crock. However, it brings up a favorite topic of Jew-haters, namely, the theory that most Ashkenazic Jews are descended from Khazars, not Israelites.

There are many ways to debunk this, but I will choose two that are usually not mentioned: One is that traditional Jews have been very protective of their Kohanic/Levite status and the idea that a bunch of converts declared themselves to be Levites is absurd. The other one is that rabbinic literature, especially Jewish legal literature, is pretty comprehensive throughout the time period of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, and a mass immigration of Jews of questionable legal status would have resulted in a flood of responsa literature which simply doesn't exist. Every Jewish marriage and death in Europe would have been affected!

This is not to say that there hasn't been discrimination against Sephardim in Israel, and it is shameful. But to call it anti-semitism is a classic magician's redirection trick to distract from the serious amount of Jew-hatred in Muslim lands throughout the centuries, including their own versions of blood libels.

Also, Ashkenazim do not take up the "great majority" of Jews in Israel, though it is probably the majority. Up until the mass Russian immigration, I believe the Sephardim had a slight majority.

After World War II, the Ashkenazi Jews poured into Palestine, dreaming of a new life and brainwashed by traditional myths and legends; it was of no importance to them that the land they poured into was populated by Arab Semites who had lived there for thousands of years. At one point, during the British Mandate in Palestine, there was surprisingly only one Jewish family in Jerusalem.

This is simply a bald-faced lie. Jews lived in Jerusalem by the thousands continuously until Jordan made the Old City Judenrein in 1948. Jerusalem was majority Jewish since 1896.

Not surprisingly, he brings no source.

A British researcher, Tanya Hsu, who has done a great deal of work in this field and has suffered a lot in the process, believes that an approach using accurate information would go a long way toward opening people’s minds. “I am always surprised when talking with people in the West who do not understand that one cannot become Semitic by merely learning Hebrew,” she says. “If I speak Arabic, am I now a Semite also? Until the late 20th century, Hebrew was a dead language, revived by Zionists seeking to claim the land of Israel. Most Israeli Jews do not even appear to understand this fundamental flaw in their arguments.”

This is a red herring. No one says that learning Hebrew makes one Semitic.

And judging from at least one article, if Tanya Hsu is considered an expert in this field, then Arab scholarship is in far worse shape than Almaeena thinks.

Unless we have a credible research center to highlight all this and to focus on the forced demographic changes in Palestine because of transplanting people from the ghettoes of Europe, we will never convince the poor, gullible Americans who have fallen victim to this web of lies. As Dresden James said: “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”

Here is a classic Arab attribute of projection. I can back up my claims, Amlaeeda cannot (using his example of "only one Jewish family in Jerusalem," or his bogus definition of anti-semitism) Who is spinning a web of lies?

This unfortunately is what appears to have happened in America in the last 25-30 years. The media, Hollywood and any other means are used to create the picture of a country under attack, living in a “bad neighborhood” protecting its democracy “by having to suppress and kill women and children,” making the desert green (by stealing other people’s water) and a number of other things.

By putting the words "by having to suppress and kill women and children" in quotes, Almaeeda is implying that this is an actual quote from an Israeli. It is, of course, another lie. As is "stealing other people's water."

And, perhaps I am paranoid, but I would consider a country where rockets are being shot and terror attacks are foiled daily as a country under attack. I would not consider the 1.6 billion Muslims who can walk freely almost anywhere in the world as being under attack.

The latest attacks in Lebanon, the killing of 1,400 women and children, the callous destruction of property and infrastructure has all exposed these unsubstantiated claims and allegations for what they really are. Let our researchers do some work and expose them even more.

Wow, are we up to 1400 dead women and children already? Not a single male killed, not a single Hezbollah freedom fighter suffering a scratch? Those Israeli smart bombs must be remarkable to be able to target only women and children so accurately!

For any normal newspaper to publish such an absurd, provable lie would in itself make it lose credibility forever.

Keep in mind that this huge load of rubbish is being published in what would certainly be considered a moderate Arab publication!

So there we have it. An article directed towards an English speaking audience that is chock full of irrelevancies, half-truths and outright lies that all add up to a typical piece of Arab propaganda against Israel and (implicitly and so slyly) against Jews - for accurately accusing Arabs of hating them.

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Golden Oldie: "Don't trust any kaffirs"

As I am unavailable to post, check out this post from August 2005.

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I was surfing tonight and saw a rabidly anti-Israel article concerning another thinly-disguised anti-Jewish campaign for the town of Somerville, MA to divest from Israel. Among the hysterical, bigoted and demostrably false comments in this article were:

* Zionism is a "violent genocidal racist ideology";
* " Israel’s crimes are ongoing, and have included bombing the Church of the Nativity."
* "Are we safe with them living among us? What if they want to murder our family and steal our house? What if they get a Caterpillar bulldozer to root out non-Jews from Somerville? These are the kind of racists we are dealing with here."

The author of the article was "Karin Friedemann", a prolific author of anti-Israel diatribes who is also editor of the "World View News Service", and who is evidently also known as "Umm Yakoub" and "Maria Hussain."

As she lobbies Somerville about human rights and liberal ideals, perhaps someone should point out exactly how liberal she really is:

For example, she is quoted as having said

"Muslims ... are not seeking peace. We get peace from Allah. In Palestine, we will stop only at victory, which will be, inshaAllah, in the end, a just implementation of Islamic religion. We have to guard against the Palestine movement being represented primarily by homosexuals and feminists."



A little further research finds that she wrote this lovely liberal statement about Jews in the anti-semitic Jewish Tribal Review:

"Clearly, there are no moral guidelines in Jewish Law, other than genocide and enslavement, for the treatment of conquered peoples, as one would find in Islamic Law. While Islam views humans as stewards of the earth, and Muslims consider themselves God’s appointed defenders of religious freedom for people of all religions, Judaism neither proclaims respect for other people’s prophets nor guarantees any respect of other people, nor even of the environment, except in so far as they are useful to the Jewish community. "

Not surprisingly, she supports US Muslims murdering their fellow soldiers:

This is written in response to Stan Goff’s article "The Case of Hasan Akbar" in which he repeatedly asserted that he did not condone Hasan Akbar’s killing of two US soldiers. I was put off by his obscene moralizing and wrote to him that were I in Akbar’s shoes I would have done the same thing, and when I am president I will put Hasan Akbar on a postage stamp.


And lest the Massachusetts liberals still feel that Karin/Maria/Umm is still a kindred spirit, perhaps these words that she wrote in 2002 to fellow Muslims in a posting called "How Quickly Liberals Become Fascists" will make them think twice about what she thinks about them:


Salam alaikum

I am forwarding this to you all just so you can see how even liberals who seem to be on our side will quickly turn on you and attack you. [following is a story about a liberal who she feels attacked her in a letter....]

Live and learn. Don't trust any kaffirs, because if they knew what you really think they will turn on you at the drop of a hat. They only feel sorry for Muslims as long as we are being victimized. But if we ever were to gain domination they would cringe in horror.



Ms. Hussain's own rants, as disgusting and bigoted as they are, do not even hold a candle to the absurd filth she happily reprints in her "newsletter" from other anti-semites. Check out, for example, "Do Sinister Jews Rule the World?" (Guess what the answer is!) and "Nuclear Attack in United States `Imminent' As Jews Continuing Fleeing From North America" - just in recent weeks.

It is bitterly ironic that someone who is so strongly a Muslim supremacist, who openly despises "kaffirs", who viciously attacks the most liberal writers when they give even a mild rebuke to any Muslims worldwide, who clearly hates all Jews with a passion - that such a person can represent herself as someone who seeks "justice" and "equal rights."

UPDATE: Ms. Friedemann/Yakoub/Hussain married Joachim Martillo in 2004. Martillo is one of the most bizarre people in cyberspace history. Back in the early days of Usenet, around 1985, he represented himself as a Sephardic Jew who was rabidly anti-Arab and anti-Ashkenazic Jew. For example:

> In article <5...@jjmhome.uucp> marti...@jjmhome.UUCP (Joachim Martillo) writes:
> >In practically every way, Palestinians are a thoroughly dispicable
> >community whose bigotry and fanaticism prevents them from joining
> >the modern world and who deserve much worse punishment than they
> >are receiving (apparently mostly at their own hands -- poetic
> >justice or the cunning of history, if I have ever seen it).

He changed in the mid-90s, claimed he was never Jewish, and now he is one of the most pro-Arab and anti-Jewish voices on the Web. As I recall, he was always beyond weird and in some ways quite intellectual, in other ways just off the wall.

A match made in heaven for the strange, psychopathic Ms. Yakoub.

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Jews "storming" Temple Mount during Ramadan

Palestine Press Agency has another article about those wicked Jews desecrating the holy Al Aqsa Mosque by walking around and - horrors! - possibly praying!

Of course, to do this during Ramadan is an extra insult.

Jewish religious groups on Sunday morning broke into Al-Aqsa Mosque from the gate, and then toured around the mosque, while performing religious rites according to Talmudic Judaism.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation said in a statement received by the Palestine Press News Agency that today's break-in today is an unprecedented move, as Jewish groups are not allowed to enter the area during the month of Ramadan.

The article goes on to detail other crimes: tour groups that describe the "alleged" Holy Temple, Jews calling the Mughrabi Gate the "Rambam Gate," and plans to do even more egregious acts of prayer during Sukkot.

Keep in mind that streams of tourists simply walk inside the Al Aqsa Mosque constantly. Only religious Jews "storm" the area.

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Ma'ariv vs. HRW

HRW has responded defensively - but not convincingly - against Ma'ariv's accusations of bias by the main author of its report that claims to have "proof" that IDF soldiers fired on Gaza civilians holding white flags.

The "white flag" accusation is the core of the report. In fact, it is called "White Flag Deaths." But look at how HRW defends itself from Ma'ariv's and the IDF's responses:

• "Human Rights Watch is relying on the testimony from people who are not free to speak out against the Hamas regime." Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, in an interview with the BBC, August 13, 2009.

• "The Human Rights Watch report which claims that IDF soldiers killed 11 Palestinian civilians holding ‘white flags' is based on unreliable witness reports." Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement, August 13, 2009.

Both claims are false. Human Rights Watch methodology does not rely only on the accounts of victims and eyewitnesses. We examine medical records such as hospital and autopsy reports; forensic evidence left over from attacks, such as bullet casings, tank tracks or ammunition boxes; the attack sites themselves; and we conduct interviews with multiple witnesses, including medical staff and law enforcement, military and other officials and, where possible, the alleged perpetrators. Our interviews are conducted in private (unless otherwise stated) and confidentially. We carefully cross-check individual interviews with the interviews of other witnesses to assess reliability and consistency, and assess information we receive against accounts of the fighting made available by the IDF, Hamas combatant lists, and in the media.

Well, since medical records and bullet casings and tank tracks and ammunition boxes do not say anything one way or the other about white flags, all that is left are "witnesses."

And Palestinian "eyewitnesses," to put it simply, lie. They lie consistently, they lie to a known playbook, and the evidence of their previous provable lies is overwhelming. To rely on "witnesses" to prove the white flag allegations is exactly the same as to rely on "witnesses" to prove that Israel steals organs - which is what the Swedish newspaper did last week.

Moreover, HRW ignored the inconsistencies from these very supposed eyewitnesses that had been published and noted in numerous sources in the days after these attacks. If the very witnesses they rely on cannot keep their own stories straight within days of the incidents, how reliable can their testimony be to HRW months later?

The author of the original Ma'ariv article, Ben Dror Yemini, responds to the latest HRW attempts to deflect their bias and shoddy research, and the article is translated here. It is important enough to reproduce in full:

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Ben-Dror Yemini, Maariv, 21.8.09

HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS BECAME THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN RIGHTS

On Sunday (16.8.09), I wrote an article entitled "Author of Report Against Israel Supported Munich Massacre" which dealt with Joe Stork, the man who presented the severe Human Rights Watch (HRW) report last week (13.8.09) which said that 12 Palestinian civilians, including children, were shot to death by IDF soldiers even though they were waving white flags.

The article received widespread coverage and many references, and apparently struck a very sensitive chord with the organization. Up until now, the organization did not respond to claims of anti-Israel bias; on occasion, it arrogantly belittled the claims. This time the organization deviated from its habit. Two days later (18.8.09), Stork sent a letter to Maariv in which he tried to deal with the claims that were made against him. The letter is presented in full below, both for reasons regarding the right of response and in order to make it clear that the letter, in effect, only strengthens the claims against the organization in general and against Stork in particular. Following is Stork's letter in full, with remarks added in order to set the record straight.

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"The Israeli government and Ben-Dror Yemini ['Author of Report against Israel Supported Munich Massacre'] seem to share a “shoot the messenger” approach when it comes to addressing painstakingly researched criticisms of the Israel Defense Forces’ actions in Gaza. Instead of addressing these detailed findings, they spread malicious misinformation about me and my organization, Human Rights Watch."

Stork is right. One must deal with the message, not the messenger. But sometimes, in extreme cases, there are grounds for focusing on the messenger. Let us assume that a former Ku Klux Klan activist would issue a report against Afro-Americans. Would the report be important or the messenger? The comparison is not far off the mark in the current case. Stork opposed the recognition of Israel and was even one of the founders (!) of a group that admired the murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich. Stork also recommended that the left-wing body should withdraw if the PLO decided to negotiate with Israel. May we not doubt the objectivity of such a man?

"On August 13, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing instances in January in which Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian civilians who were waving white flags to convey their civilian status. Government spokespersons sought to dismiss the report by calling Human Rights Watch biased. But to date no critic has disputed the facts about the seven incidents in the report, in which soldiers shot and killed 11 unarmed civilians, including four children and five women."

One of the main stories in the HRW's report relates to Abd Rabbo family, that three of her daughters were shot in cold blood, despite the fact that they raised a white flag, and despite the fact that fighting was not in the area. The case was published extensively on many newspapers around the world. A special report of Tamar Sternhal from CAMERA found out significant contradictions in the testimonies of the family members and the neighbors. Sternhal test was much more meticulous than the HRW report, and was posted on 4.2.09 - long before the publication of the report of HRW. It was ignored by the HRW team. Even the “Times Magazine” published a contradicting testimony about the Abed Rabbo affair, but again, it was ignored by HRW.

And indeed, it is becoming clear that HRW carried out negligent and non-serious work. All of the incidents appearing in the report were known to the IDF. The report itself did not add anything. Moreover, the claim that, "no critic has disputed the facts about the seven incidents," is a total lie. On the contrary, regarding five of the seven incidents, it was decided to open Military Police investigations, meaning that the IDF is carrying out a serious inquiry. If there are discrepancies – they are being thoroughly examined.

HRW adopts the opposite method. Videos have been published of Hamas personnel exploiting civilians and hiding behind white flags. These were even published on YouTube. Is there even one word – one! – about this in the HRW report? Of course not.

In the same video, it should be pointed out, the terrorist hides in a house from which civilians are waving white flags. The terrorist was apprehended. The civilians were not hurt. It is no coincidence that the film's findings were not refuted in the HRW report because when the target is painted in advance – the delegitimization of Israel – the facts will not confuse Stork and his people. While photographic testimony that refutes the findings of the report receives no comment, the testimony of Palestinians living in the shadow of Hamas's reign of terror receives top billing. Is this testimony serious? NGO Monitor responded to this and refuted HRW's claims. But Stork, as is his custom, takes no notice.

Many claims have been made against Israel. Israel did not ignore them. On the contrary, many of these claims were refuted in detail, in a 163-page Foreign Ministry report that was issued on 29.7.09. The HRW report, which was issued two weeks later (13.8.09), ignores most of them, just as the video was ignored because this is what HRW does. Stork is not even interested in checking; he wants delegitimization.

"Now, again instead of addressing our research, Mr. Yemini has launched a personal attack on me, which the Israeli government has dutifully translated and distributed. The quotes he attributes to me are more than 30 years old. Most of them I do not recognize, and they are contrary to the views I have expounded for decades now. For instance, selective excerpts about the Munich massacre come from an unsigned editorial that appeared 37 years ago where at the time I was one of seven volunteers that produced the publication. All my work since then shows that I would never support such an attack. For nearly 40 years, I have been documenting, writing, and speaking out on injustices by virtually all of the governments and many non-state armed groups in the Middle East. This work is readily available – including at Middle East Report magazine, which I edited through 1995, and at Human Rights Watch since then – but Mr. Yemini did not include these many statements, undoubtedly because they did not support his claims. Had he looked at the hundreds of statements, articles and reports I’ve written since the 1970s, he would have found exposés of Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime and my report for Human Rights Watch on war crimes by Palestinian suicide bombers. I have dedicated much of my adult life to the protection of human rights for all and to fighting the idea that civilians can be attacked for political reasons. Ma'ariv and Mr. Yemini owe me an apology."

Indeed, it is clear that Stork does not deny even one of the claims that I raised. He simply claims that there are his remarks from many years ago. Has Stork disavowed his very problematic past with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)? Indeed, in an article he wrote in 1993 on US-Israel relations, Stork expresses very similar positions to those he expressed in his MERIP days. Moreover, many footnotes in the same article direct the reader to remarks written in MERIP years before. This means that not only has there been no turning point but a reiteration and continuation of the past. And it should be clear that Stork was for the Israelis just as the KKK activist would be for the Afro-Americans.

Let us continue. Stork claims that HRW published condemnations of Saddam Hussein and Palestinian suicide terrorists. This is the case, there indeed were additional reports. But these reports do not pass the proportionality test. Among countless human rights violations around the world in which Israel has a marginal and small place, HRW sees fit to issue countless reports precisely on Israel, a disproportionality that indicates a pre-selected goal and Stork's special logic. Even when HRW issues a condemnation of a Palestinian action, Stork adds clarifications of his own [in a 2001 BBC report]: "Most of the [Palestinian] security officers have been in Israeli jails." Yes, the Stork of the past is no different from the Stork of today.

Stork's headline-grabber has to do with the equivocal support issued by MERIP in the wake of the Munich massacre: I was "one of seven volunteers," he tries to claim. Not exactly. Stork was one of MERIP's founders and the chief editor of the journal which published a statement in support of the massacre. It is a pity that Stork does not read his own CV as it appears on HRW's official website. The determination that the action was "an important boost in morale" for the Palestinians is part of the sequence of other remarks, including opposition to recognizing Israel, encouraging Arab countries to struggle against Israel, etc.

I believe that today, Stork would not issue a statement in support of massacring athletes. But Stork has merely gone from the highest rung on the anti-Zionist ladder to the next one lower down. But he is still on the same scale. He was and remains in the ranks of the anti-Israel Left. NGO Monitor and Prof. Gerald Steinberg will soon publish a book that analyzes a decade's worth of HRW publications and the people behind them, including Stork himself. But Stork is above criticism. It is possible to assume that he did not bother to study NGO Monitor's detailed response to the HRW report. This allows Stork to claim that there were no responses. This is what he does. When Steinberg previously issued a biting and substantive criticism, Stork arrogantly responded that he is not at all interested in criticism against him.

Israel, in contrast to Stork, takes notice of the criticism against it. It checks itself. Not all criticism of Israel deserves to be dismissed. Israel also makes mistakes. But Stork is a special personality. He is both radically anti-Israeli and unwilling to be criticized. Is it possible to accept the "criticism" of such a man?

Stork is not alone. When he began to work at HRW, he had no special expertise in the field. His only talent was a series of articles that were exceptionally hostile to Israel. That is not surprising. The Director of the Middle East Department, Sarah Leah Whitson, arrived at HRW after having been in a pro-Arab body. This is legitimate. Is there a chance that someone from the Anti-Defamation League would be accepted to HRW?

Global human rights are in a predicament. The UN Human Rights Council has turned into the Dark Regimes Rights Council. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya have an automatic majority. Non-governmental organizations, such as HRW, were supposed to stand against such bodies. But in reality a sad thing happened, Whitson flew to Saudi Arabia recently to raise funds for HRW. And they don't even understand that they have a problem. This is how non-governmental bodies have transformed antagonism towards Israel to the main issue. They are biased to the extreme. They place Israel in the same category as Sudan, and publish weak protests on the suicide and rocket industries, just to discharge a perfunctory obligation.

Israel is contending with the Hamas regime, the official covenant of which is the closest thing to Nazi ideology. This is a group that calls for the elimination of the State of Israel, the malicious murder of Israeli citizens, gratuitous Jew-hatred, and many of its speakers talk candidly about taking over the West. How exactly is a democratic country supposed to confront such an entity, indoctrinated in the ideology of hatred, murder and incitement? Why is Europe permitted to fight the Taliban – which threatens Germany or Spain much less – with much harsher measures, but Israel is prohibited from fighting a body like Hamas?

It is permitted to criticize Israel. But HRW has lost the moral right to do so. He who in the past has called for the elimination of Israel; he who supports, directly or indirectly, the boycott of Israel, cannot become an objective critic. There is a need for an international struggle for human rights. But bodies such as HRW hurt this important struggle. They become the prop of the world's darkest regimes. Instead of saying unequivocally that such a regime, such an ideology, such an element – has no right to exist, the HRW is waging a struggle that is not a criticism of Israel, but rather wild slander against Israel. True, there is marginal criticism against Hamas. But criticism of Israel is the main point. And therefore, for the sake of returning human rights to its proper standing, it is time for HRW to cleanse its ranks.

The very existence of a group like Hamas is a crime against humanity. Stork and HRW find it difficult to understand this. On the contrary, in their crude attack, in their delegitimization of Israel, they are parties to this crime.

h/t SfA

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Sunday/Monday open thread

I will be traveling and unavailable most of the day Sunday and Monday and blogging will be light to nonexistent.

Feel free to comment on anything cool you come across.

If I have a chance, I'll try to queue up some postings while I am unavailable.

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Report: Hamas executed opponents inside ambulances

Palestine Press Agency quotes an Italian news agency as saying that Hamas executed several injured Jund Ansar Allah members who were being evacuated in ambulances.

A number of commenters to the article claim to have witnessed those very events. One said that he saw Hamas stop an ambulance with 17-year old Jihad Duhan, who had a bullet wound in his foot, and shoot him in the head.

Another commenter said that he saw 22-year old Abdullah Awadallah murdered in the hospital he was being treated in.

PalPress is very anti-Hamas, but in general a high percentage of their anti-Hamas reports end up being corroborated. It is hard to know how accurate the comments are but the names mentioned were indeed of people killed during the mini-war.

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Peres says Shebaa Farms not the issue; Hezbollah agrees

YNet reports:

In an interview set to be published Sunday, Peres said that Shiite group Hezbollah serves nothing but its own narrow interests, and that he believes it will continue to fight Israel even if the latter withdraws from the disputed Shebaa Farms and the border village of Ghajar.

This is not just a guess. Hezbollah has said the same thing. As I quoted a Lebanese newspaper last year (original no longer available):

The Shiite movement Hezbollah said on Thursday that Lebanon would still need its armed presence even if Israel finally quit the disputed Shebaa Farms district in the south.

"Any Zionist retreat from the Shebaa Farms would be a big achievement for the 'resistance' for this would be the result of its role and its pressure," Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah was quoted as saying by the state-run National News Agency.

But any retreat "will not change the fact that Lebanon needs the resistance," he said.

Remember, Hezbollah is not composed of Palestinian Arabs. They have no valid territorial claims against Israel. A full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon has not made them go away or become any less threatening, despite the wishful thinking of Western diplomats.

Hezbollah's insistence to maintain its own terrorist army proves that it is still an Arab-Israeli conflict, not a Palestinian conflict.

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Photo of evil Jews

Palestine Today marks today as the 40th anniversary of the arson attack against the Al Aqsa Mosque by a deranged Australian Christian named Michael Dennis Rohan. Palestine Today has an article about it, calling Rohan "Jewish" (as Arabs have done for 40 years.)

Perhaps more interesting is how PalToday chose to illustrate the article:
They've used this exact image at least twice before. (It was originally part of a series of pictures showing the placement of a model of the Second Temple.)

Clearly this family is part of a plot to destroy Al Aqsa and replace it with a Joooish Temple. The father is photographing the Holy Sanctuary to figure out where to place the bombs, and the kids are holding extra sensitive Mossad-built lasers to pinpoint the weak points.

By the way, exactly six years ago Hamas attacked a bus leaving the Western Wall. The suicide bomber killed 18 people including 5 children.

In other words, a far more heinous attack occurred on this same date in history, but no one talks about that one.

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Starving Gazans (2009 edition)

Heartbreaking pictures from Palestine Today.





Many more can be seen here.

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Clan clash!

From Ma'an:

A clan clash in Tubas caused the death of a young man and incineration of five houses Thursday night.

Palestinian Authority police arrested five in connection with the death of the 23-year-old Husny Ziad Abed Sawafta. An additional 38 were injured. Sawafta was shot point blank with a 9mm.

The police said Sawafta’s family set fire to the homes to avenge the death of their son, and the fires lead to street-side brawls.

There was another clan clash in Bethlehem this week. More than 30 were hospitalized.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is at 168.

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How bad are things in Gaza?

The Free Gaza movement just released a Ramadan message begging for funds.

Dear Friends of Palestine,

Inshallah, this appeal finds you and your families in the very best of circumstances. Sadly, not all of our brothers and sisters in the world share this good fortune. The Palestinian people continue to live under a cruel occupation regime, subjected to merciless Israeli policies designed to ethnically cleanse Palestine of her people. The situation is especially dire in Gaza, where Israel has imposed a brutal siege that is denying 1.5 million Palestinians basic food, medicine, and the freedoms that we take for granted.

So how has Gaza been doing while under this brutal siege designed to mercilessly ethnically cleanse all of Palestine?

The current blockade began in June 2007, although the military blockade started at the outset of the intifada. One would expect that things must have gotten progressively worse for Gazans over the years from reading propaganda from Free Gaza as well as the media.

The data show differently.

The most obvious metric is life expectancy. After two years of supposedly restricting food and medicine into Gaza, one would think that it must be effecting the demographics of Gaza by now.

The truth may surprise you (all figures from CIA World Factbook, historical data from IndexMundi)

Year	Life expectancy at birth	Rank	Percent Change	Date of Information
2003	71.4	106		2003 est.
2004	71.79	111	0.55 %	2004 est.
2005	71.79	113	0.00 %	2005 est.
2006	71.97	116	0.25 %	2006 est.
2007	72.16	114	0.26 %	2007 est.
2008	73.16	105	1.39 %	2008 est.
2009	73.42	107	0.36 %	2009 est.

During the blockade, the life expectancy increased at a faster rate than beforehand!

Not only that, but Gaza's life expectancy ranks solidly in the middle compared to all world countries and areas, higher than many Arab countries like Egypt and Morocco (as well as Syria), and nearly seven years above the world average.

How about infant mortality? With the lack of medicines, Gaza must have been doing very badly in that area under this horrendous siege, right?

Wrong:

Year	Infant mortality rate	Rank	Percent Change	Date of Information
2003	24.15	109		2003 est.
2004	22.93	107	-5.05 %	2004 est.
2005	22.93	107	0.00 %	2005 est.
2006	22.4	107	-2.31 %	2006 est.
2007	21.88	105	-2.32 %	2007 est.
2008	19	113	-13.16 %	2008 est.
2009	18.35	114	-3.54 %	2009 est.

Those numbers have also gotten much better since the "siege." And the world average is 40.85, more than double Gaza's rate. Gaza has better numbers than Mexico and the Philippines, not to mention Egypt and Turkey.

Comparing Gaza with sub-Saharan nations is even more striking. The infant mortality rates in Angola are nearly ten times worse than in Gaza, and the life expectancy in most African nations ranges from 31 to 60.

Zakat money would be better spent in other parts of the world.

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Egypt restoring historic synagogue to appear tolerant

From the Daily News Egypt:

The Supreme Council of Antiquities is working on renovating the Moses Bin Maimon’s Synagogue in El-Gamaliya, Zahi Hawass, head of the SCA announced in a press conference Thursday.

The restoration of the synagogue is part of a key plan by the SCA to restore all the major religious sites in Egypt including 10 Jewish temples.

The council is expected to spend LE 700 million every year on the renovations.

Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue’s expenses alone amounted to approximately LE 8.5 million, restoring about 60 percent so far.

Renovations started in June 15, 2008 and are expected to be completed by March 30, 2010, coinciding with the birthday of its founder.

“The Jewish temples belong to the Egyptian people,” said Hawass, “that’s why the Supreme Council of Antiquities strives to reestablish this Egyptian heritage. There are 10 other Jewish temples across Egypt in the restoration plan.”

The synagogue, which was declared an antiquity in 1986, dates back to the 19th century.

It is good to hear, even if the synagogue itself will hardly be used. Egypt has less than a hundred Jews left, down from 75,000 in 1948. Many were forcibly expelled (or what would be called "ethnically cleansed" nowadays.)

Somehow, I imagine that Muslims would find it very upsetting if they heard someone say "Israel's mosques belong to the Zionist people."

To paraphrase something I wrote last year, about the news that Kuwait was going to build a synagogue that would be unusable by any Jews: It is easy to show respect for a religion after you make sure that most of its adherents aren't polluting your country.

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