Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 26, 2009

Egypt captures more weapons meant for Gaza

Egyptian security forces said on Sunday that they discovered and seized a major weapons cache and arrested a suspected smuggler in near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian security officials said police stopped the suspect when he was driving in the area. The suspect, Ahmad Abu Maleeh, 30, from the Egyptian side of the city of Rafah, told interrogators that he had just driven another smuggler to tunnel in the area.

Security forces also discovered a tunnel in the same area, and confiscated what they said was a large quantity of firearms and ammunition. The officials said that the security presence in the area was increased as a result of the discovery.

Egypt has found tons and tons of explosives and weapons in recent months. Yet the Western media rarely mentions these regular finds by Egypt. Instead, they talk about how the tunnel trade is being used for consumer goods with barely a mention of the major reason that Gaza is under a blockade.

Daily Goldstone 10/25b

"Trevor Norwitz has written an impressive and extensive response to the Goldstone report. According to information received from reliable sources Trevor grew up in Cape Town where he attended SACS and UCT before going on to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He is now a successful attorney in a leading corporate practice in New York."

Here is part of the lengthy letter, which can be read as a PDF file here.

Your Selection of Incidents to Investigate
A closely related point is your Mission's selection of which matters to investigate and which to ignore. Your Mission investigated 36 incidents in Gaza and stated that it "considers that the report is illustrative of the main patterns of violations." (17) Since virtually all of these incidents were cases involving Israeli actions and Palestinian casualties or damage, it is clear that the "pattern of violations" that interested you most were those where Israel could be condemned. As discussed above, the efforts you made to find the relevant facts underlying the operation left much to be desired. Very little effort was made to investigate the behavior of Hamas and the other "Palestinian armed groups": did they direct attacks at civilian targets? Did they use
civilians as human shields? Did they hide weapons in civilian buildings like mosques, schools and hospitals? You do not even raise as a possibility the question of whether Hamas and the other "Palestinian armed groups" intentionally drew fire towards civilian objects to score public relations victories (I do not believe in their wildest dreams they ever expected the PR and strategic windfall that you have awarded them), although this appears to be a central element of their moqawamma ("resistance") strategy. I understand that seeking those facts was difficult the people you were talking to would not talk about that (because of both bias and intimidation)
and the people who would talk about it (the Israelis) refused to talk to you but that should not relieve honest fact-finders of their obligation to try find the facts. Reviews by others of the video clips of interviews with Palestinian witnesses posted on your website suggest that you did not even press witnesses for answers to these questions19. Instead you simply relied on the absence of countervailing evidence to validate the "facts" reported to you by those biased and intimidated witnesses.

On a few occasions, you accepted the "possibility" that there might be another side to the story that you "could not entirely discount," that is, that there may have been inappropriate actions on the Palestinian side. For example: "The Mission finally notes that it cannot entirely discount the possibility that Palestinian civilians may have been killed as a result of fire by Palestinian armed groups in encounters with the Israeli armed forces, as argued in a submission to the Mission, although it has not encountered any information suggesting that this was the case." (361) "[W]hile the Mission would not rule out the possibility that there might be individuals in the police force who retain their links to the armed groups, it believes . . ." (417) "[T]he Mission accepted, on the basis of information in the reports it had seen, the possibility of mortar attacks from Palestinian combatants in the vicinity of the school." (444) The Mission cannot discount the possibility that Palestinian armed groups were active in the vicinity of such [United Nations] facilities." (483)

However these matters were never investigated to the point of ascertaining whether they amounted to war crimes or whether they justified the Israeli actions under investigation. For the most part, you were satisfied simply to state that you were unable to make any determination regarding these matters: "The Mission is unable to make any determination on the general allegation that Palestinian armed groups used mosques for military purposes." (484) "On the basis of the investigations it has conducted, the Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities . . ." (485) "On the basis of the information it gathered, the Mission found no indication that the civilian population was forced by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups to remain in areas under attack from the Israeli armed forces." (486)

On other occasions, where the evidence of bad behavior on the Palestinian side was so clear you could not deny it or profess ignorance, you proceed astonishingly to justify it or explain it away.

Example: Firing rockets from civilian areas: "[T]he Mission finds that there are indications that Palestinian armed groups launched rockets from urban areas . . . Palestinian armed groups do not appear to have given Gaza residents sufficient warning of their intention to launch rockets from their neighbourhoods to allow them to leave and protect themselves against Israeli strikes at the rocket launching sites . . . Given the densely populated character of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, once Israeli forces gained control of the more open or outlying areas during the first days of the ground invasion, most if not all locations still accessible to Palestinian armed groups were in urban areas." (480) In other words, you explain and even seek to justify Hamas' actions endangering civilians because it would have been dangerous for it to fight Israel otherwise.

Another example: Booby trapping houses: "From the information it gathered, the Mission does not discount the use of booby traps by the Palestinian armed groups. The Mission has no basis to conclude that civilian lives were put at risk, since none of the reports records the presence of civilians in or near the houses that were allegedly booby-trapped." (482) Your willingness to accept a "no-harm-no-foul" defence for booby trapping civilian houses is as telling as your reluctance to find improper intentions on the Palestinian side.

These few examples (of the many more that could be cited) should suffice to demonstrate that your Mission chose only to investigate one side of the conflict (Israel), and made its findings based on evidence presented by only one side one the conflict (the Palestinians).

Fundamental but Dubious Assumptions
Without denying that there are matters raised in your report that deserve further investigation and explanation by Israel, it appears that your wholesale condemnations of Israel and accusations of "war crimes" rest in large part on certain fundamental premises or a "world view" shared by you and your fellow Commissioners. These premises reflect assumptions that underlie much of your
Report, but their validity is not incontrovertible. Indeed they are highly contentious and to the degree these assumptions are wrong, your Report's conclusions are invalid.

Legitimizing Hamas. One of these fundamental assumptions that permeates your entire analysis is that Hamas is a nonviolent political organization distinct from its military wing. This characterization of Hamas is entirely implausible. It requires more than naiveté to reach that conclusion, in light of all the readily available evidence, including that organization's refusal to renounce the use of violence or even to recognize the existence of the State of Israel (which together torpedoed the peace process and damned Gaza to its present state of destitution), the express statements of Hamas' own leadership regarding the use of violence and terrorist tactics, and the fact that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and genocide against the Jewish people (which remarkably does not merit a mention in your Report).

Because it openly embraces terrorist tactics, Hamas is widely condemned as a terrorist organization. In light of all the readily available evidence, the suggestion that Hamas can be neatly separated from its military wing is spurious.

Earlier I stated that your Report not only legitimizes but whitewashes Hamas. Although the press has chosen not to highlight this, a close review of every reference to Hamas throughout your Report will reveal that, while there are some perfunctory condemnations of "armed Palestinian groups" (which include Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades) and some measured criticism of the "Gaza Authorities" regarding things they could have done better (sins of omission rather than commission), Hamas itself gets off virtually scot-free in your Report and even emerges looking like an innocent victim. My point here is not to refute as a substantive matter that highly troubling aspect of your Report I shall leave that to others but simply to observe that a critical assumption underlying many of your claims of "war crimes" is that Hamas should be considered independent of its infamous military wing. To the extent that this assumption is flawed, the conclusions on which it is based are invalid. But the very fact that you approached your fact-finding mission with this as a basic assumption indicates a perspective that calls the conclusions drawn by your Mission into question.

Gaza Still Occupied? A second fundamental assumption, discussed above, is the notion that Gaza remains occupied by Israel notwithstanding its complete unilateral withdrawal four years ago which, in your view26, has "`done nothing' to alter the character of Israel as an occupying Power." 27 Again, I will leave it to others to debunk this dubious legal conclusion, noting simply that it is one of the foundations on which you build your case for the prosecution. The implications of your position are dramatic. For example, although Israel facilitated the supply of significant humanitarian aid to Gaza and even your Report acknowledges "that the supply of
humanitarian goods, particularly foodstuffs, allowed into Gaza by Israel temporarily increased during the military operations" (72), you nevertheless condemn Israel as violating the Fourth Geneva Convention for not doing enough "as Occupying Power" to provide such supplies. In other words, your report twists Israel's humanitarian efforts (done from its perspective out of kindness rather than legal obligation) into a war crime because you reached a different legal conclusion on the status of Gaza. If you are wrong in your conclusion that Gaza remains occupied, then rather than being condemned as war criminals, Israel should be commended for its humanitarian efforts to support the Palestinian civilian population even while that it was in the midst of a bloody war to root out the terrorists who had converted their homes into rocket launching sites.

Placing Blame. Perhaps the most fundamental and flawed assumption underlying your Report is the position that the tragic situation of the Palestinian people, and especially those in Gaza, is all Israel's fault. That your Mission is of this view is clear from the way you characterize (or rather mischaracterize) the history of the region; it is clear from your use of language throughout your Report; it is clear from your failure to seek to understand why actions were taken why Israel shut border crossings? Why Israel built the security barrier? Why Israel felt the need to
undertake the Gaza operation at all? And it is clear from your refusal to acknowledge what Hamas and its charter say unequivocally that Hamas exists to destroy the Jewish State. Your perspective is also clear from specific statements, including the curious analysis you offer in one of your concluding paragraphs where you say: "After decades of sustained conflict, the level of threat to which both Palestinians and Israelis are subjected has not abated, but if anything increased . . . The State of Israel is therefore also failing to protect its own citizens by refusing to acknowledge the futility of resorting to violent means and military power." (1711) It is telling
that it is Israel you criticize in this regard, and it is unclear what you expect Israel to do in the context of a foe that refuses to negotiate but only wants to fight.28

There are other elements of the "world view" with which you and your fellow Commissioners approached your assignment and which impacted your Report assumptions regarding Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state at all, for example, or regarding the legitimacy of a separation barrier to protect Israeli civilians from terrorist attacks, or whether Israel is a decent country (for example at 132 you state: "The Mission is also of the view that the Israeli system presents inherently discriminatory features that have proven to make the pursuit of justice for Palestinian victims very difficult.") This is not the place to debate these interesting topics; I mention them solely to make the point that there are perspectives and prejudices that underlie your investigation that cannot but influence your findings.

From Al Arabiya:

A college in the United Kingdom has banned a Muslim student from enrolling because she refused to take off her burka, or face veil, press reports said Saturday.

Shawana Bilqes, 18, was turned away from enrollment after she refused a staff member's request to remove her burka for identity fraud purposes, Britain's the Sun tabloid reported.

Bilqes said she tried to compromise with staff but could not remove her burka because of her religious beliefs. Muslim scholars say the burka is not obligatory in Islam and is a cultural practice rather than Islamic.

"I tried to compromise but they wouldn't. The college sent me a letter to say I could continue with my course if I stopped wearing the veil," the paper quoted Bilqes as saying.

Ironically, her choice to wear a pink headcovering over the veil would be seen in parts of Saudi Arabia as being way over the line of acceptable clothing.

Some of the Muslim Al Arabiya commenters got it right:

Why is she being so stupid for? she doesnt need to wear the niqaab or the burka its a cultural practice not an islamic one. just because she got refused from the college for wearing one she gets all huffy and tells the entire world, i am a muslim too and i dont wear the niqaab or the burka and my religion is very important to me and i practice it too. Wearing the burka and niqaab may hinder communication between staff and students a little but its not the end of the world. Plus i dont blame the college for doing what they did - it is for security reasons and they have every right to do so. why doesnt she just take it off - its not going to make her any less islamic or prevent her from practicing her religion is it? she is just being stupid and wants attention. get a life!!!

AS A MUSLIM I AM HAPPY THAT SHE WAS NOT ALLOWED IN SCHOOL, THE BURKA IS NOT ISLAMIC THEREFORE IT SHOULD BE BANNED.THESE PEOPLE ARE GIVING THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM MORE REASON TO HATE US EVEN MORE.i AM ALL FOR HIJAB BUT BURKA NO WAY.

Arabs keep trying to light the spark of a new intifada

The pattern of incitement to violence continues, and the world media ignores it.

Yesterday, in a clear move to start more riots today, Sheikh Tayseer al-Tamimi called on all Arab to go to the Al Aqsa mosque today and defend it against an alleged "storming" by Zionists.

As we've seen in the past, this "storming" means only one thing: visiting the Temple Mount respectfully, and at most meditating there.

Tamimi pre-emptively said that Israeli police would be responsible for any violence that happened on Sunday.

Naturally, in light of the clear incitement, the Israeli police geared up for trouble, committed to ensuring that the status quo is not changed on the Temple Mount. And naturally, their very presence was regarded as a green light for Arabs to riot, throw stones - and lie by saying that the police shot tear gas at them and that they entered the Al Aqsa mosque itself. These lies were then used in a call for more people to come and riot - using the mosque's loudspeakers, which the Israeli police then turned off.

Ha'aretz reported the facts:

Early Sunday morning, police were patrolling near the Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem, when the youths began to hurl stones at them. Officers subsequently stormed the compound and arrested 12 people on suspicion of disorderly conduct.

A large wall of riot police, holding glass shields, closed in on the crowd, sending many of the rioters running into the mosque for cover.

Arab youths hurled a firebomb at police during clashes at the site, but no one was wounded.

A Jerusalem police spokesman, Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police did not enter the Al-Aqsa mosque atop the compound.

The violence came after Jerusalem police announced Saturday that they would beef up their forces on Sunday around the Temple Mount, after Muslim leaders urged Arabs to defend Jerusalem against "Jewish conquest."

There have been repeated rumors among Palestinians that Jewish extremists are planning on harming the holy site. No such attempt has been made.

Keep in mind that these lies, plus the lie that Israel is digging under the Temple Mount, made their way into the UNHRC resolution that was passed against Israel a week ago.

Daily Goldstone 10/25

Israel Matzav shows a Bill Moyers interview with Richard Goldstone, and then quotes an Israeli legal expert demolishing his claims. For example:

1. The Goldstone report draws its conclusions on the basis of 36 incidents it says it investigated. The report says that incidents are illustrative and therefore justify the broader conclusions made by the report. But Goldstone admits that the report lied in saying that the incidents are “illustrative” and in saying that the Mission worked according to its self-described neutral mandate rather than the official biased one. Goldstone says “We chose those 36 because they seemed to be, to represent the most serious, the highest death toll, the highest injury toll. And they appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened.” In other words, the Mission chose incidents that were seen as NOT ILLUSTRATIVE, and, rather, most likely to support a finding of war crimes.

2. Goldstone repeatedly misstates the law in the interview.

a. Goldstone implicitly misstates the rule of distinction. Goldstone rightly says that the rule of distinction requires combatants to distinguish between “combatants and innocent civilians.” But then, he “proves” that Israel violated the rule of distinction by saying “We found evidence in statements made by present and former political and military leaders, who said, quite openly, that there's going to be a disproportionate attack. They said that if rockets are going to continue, we're going to hit back disproportionately.” Stating that a counter-attack will be disproportionate to the attack isn’t a violation of the rule of distinction. The rule of distinction requires that Israel not aim its fire at civilians as such. It has nothing to do with how much fire Israel can aim at legitimate targets.

b. Regarding the rules of distinction and proportionality, Moyers asks Goldstone, “Who is to say that? Who is to make that distinction?” Goldstone answers, “Well, that distinction must be made after the event.” That is absolutely, positively, not the law. The law is that commanders must make judgments on the basis of knowledge they have at the time, not that one second-guesses them after the event and judges them guilty on the basis of knowledge they may not have had. Thus, for example, Newton testified “In order to properly assess a real proportionality assessment therefore, the relevant question is what did the commander know? What information was available to him?”

Read the whole thing.

Israelis barred from Komen cancer event in Egypt

The news over the past few days about this have been muddled, but the upshot is that Israelis have been banned from attending events sponsored by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization in Egypt this week.

A couple of days ago, Egyptian authorities announced that they will not allow Israeli doctors to attend, and the Komen people said that they would do everything they could to ensure that the Israelis would be able to attend in a press release last Thursday:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure Pleased to Announce Egyptian Events to Welcome All Advocates, Including those from Israel Statement by Nancy G. Brinker, Founder, Susan G. Komen for the Cure

“Breast cancer advocates from the United States and across the Middle East are meeting in Egypt from October 21-27 for breast cancer awareness events. There have been reports that some of the invited participants would not be allowed to attend these events. Susan G. Komen for the Cure has now received confirmation that all advocates, regardless of their country of origin, are invited to fully participate in events to bring breast cancer to the forefront of public discussion in the Middle East.

It was still unclear whether any Israelis would be able to attend at that point, and a number of people on the SGK bulletin board felt that the organization should pull out of the Egyptian events if the Israelis could not attend.

The ADL praised Komen for their position on Friday.

Today, though, the Daily News Egypt is saying that the Komen Foundation has withdrawn the invitation to Israelis:

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization has withdrawn its invitation to Israeli doctors to attend a conference in Egypt upon the request of Egypt’s Minister of Health.
The conference was organized as part of the American NGO’s breast cancer awareness month activities on Oct. 21-22 in Alexandria, which brought together breast cancer awareness advocates from 10 Middle Eastern countries.
According to the Israeli news portal J Weekly, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, wrote a letter to the NGO’s President Hala Moddelmog, condemning the decision, describing it as “shocking and contrary to the stated purpose of these programs.”
Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the world’s largest breast cancer advocacy organization and is holding the breast cancer awareness month in cooperation with the Breast Cancer Foundation of Egypt and the Suzanne Mubarak Regional Center for Women’s Health and Development in Alexandria, with support from the governments of Egypt and the United States.
Representatives of the organization were unavailable for comment.

The J weekly article was published on Wednesday, though, and it did not indicate that the Komen Foundation had rescinded the invitations but rather that Egypt had, so it appears that the Egyptian newspaper is not being completely accurate.

Saudi woman journalist sentenced to 60 lashes

From the Arab News:

A Saudi woman journalist has been sentenced to 60 lashes for her involvement in the LBC program “Bold Red Line” aired in mid-July, Suleiman Al-Jumaie, the lawyer representing Mazen Abdul Jawad, the prime offender in the case, told Arab News on Saturday.
“The journalist, R.A., the seventh accused in the case, accepted the verdict issued by Judge Muhammad Amin Mirdad of the Jeddah Summary Court. Her acceptance deprives her of the right to appeal,” Al-Jumaie said.
R.A. was accused of being an accomplice to Abdul Jawad who provoked a furor because he boasted on TV about having premarital sex and also provided explicit sexual descriptions and told how to pick up girls and women. His statements have been viewed as publicizing and promoting sinful behavior and violating Saudi social norms on the issues of dating and premarital sex.

The man who actually bragged about his sexual exploits has already been sentenced to 1000 lashes and five years of prison.

This was a Lebanese TV program, not a Saudi one.

Open thread time (Blue edition, updated!)

When life gets a little nutty, and everyone needs you to do stuff for them, and you have no time to sit and blog like you would like to...

It's Open Thread time.

UPDATE: Held over for an extra day due to popular demand!

Hamas prevents soccer player from leaving Gaza

Palestine Press Agency reports that a member of the Palestinian Football Federation, Ibrahim al-Akkad,who apparently leads a youth league, is being prevented by Hamas to travel to Nepal for a soccer festival there. Hamas confiscated his identity card.

You know all those human rights reports about how Hamas denies freedom of movement?

Yeah, me neither.

Hasbara that falls short

YNet reports:

Israel decided to dispel rumors according to which excavations under Temple Mount were the reason behind recent riots in Jerusalem.

As part of the public relations campaign, the Government Press Office held a tour of the Western Wall tunnels for foreign reporters.

Some 70 reporters participated in the tour, during which they received briefings from engineers, archeologists, members of the Antiquities Authority, as well as from the Western Wall's Rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz.

"Under the instructions of Minister of Information and Diaspora Yuli Edelstein, the Government Press Office will resume PR activities with foreign reporters," Daniel Seaman, head of the Government Press Office, told Ynet.

"During the tunnel tours we explained that we are not excavating, but merely exposing the past, in order to learn what happened here. Unfortunately there are those who are looking to discredit our right to the Temple Mount by painting a distorted image of our actions, as part of a de-legitimization campaign against the State of Israel," added Seaman.

Mary Ann Hock, a journalist who participated in the tour, was impressed by Israel's transparency. "There were some new things they showed us.

"I was impressed; we entered areas that are not open to visitors. It was very intriguing because we saw the depth of the excavations, and I never realized how many layers existed," said Hock.

According to Hock, the explanations given by Rabbi Rabinowitz clarified the picture. "I understood there is no way Jews are conducting excavations here; certainly not underneath the Temple Mount.

This all sounds good, and is much overdue.

The bad news? So far, I can only find one reference to this tour in the world media: from Al Quds newspaper, showing a picture of the tunnels and not explaining any facts.

These 70 journalists might now be better informed, but they have little incentive to report the truth.

And enthusiastic journalist Mary Ann Hock does not show up in any Google searches as a reporter.

Today's PalArab news (10/23)

A Jordanian newspaper claims that the US is telling the PA that it will cut aid to the group immediately and comprehensively if they go ahead and reconcile with Hamas without adhering to the Quartet's conditions. Mahmoud Abbas implied this pressure exists, telling Egyptian newspapers that certain international parties asked him not to sign a reconciliation agreement, and he is ignoring them.

More friction between Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader who lives in Damascus, and the Gaza Hamas leadership. Meshaal is trying to stop any reconciliation with Fatah and he is sending money directly to the Qassam Brigades, bypassing the Hamas leadership.

Turkey censored parts from new episodes of a TV series after Israeli complaints of scenes showing Israeli soldiers murdering children.

In two separate incidents this month. Gaza folk singers were kidnapped, beaten and robbed:

According to Al-Qeshawi's statement to Al Mezan Centre, the armed men were wearing military uniforms and were repeating the word 'atheist' while beating them. The armed men said to the young boy 'Don't ever sing, singing is haram (religiously forbidden)'.

A Jordanian geologist is warning that a devastating earthquake is likely to hit southern Jordan, as they come every 75-100 years, and that building nuclear reactors in that area is dangerous. The last one was in 1927.

At least one Palestinian Arab newspaper took note of yesterday's amazing Independent article about how Arab governments treat Palestinian Arabs in their countries.

A Palestinian Arab inventor created an electrical generator that is powered by ocean waves. He can join the list.

A Gaza social worker is holding workshops on the problems of intolerance. It seems that many potential marriages are being stopped by families who do not like the political affiliation of the prospective spouses' families, and political differences have also caused divorces in Gaza.

News snippets from Al Arabiya

Some articles in the English-language Al-Arabiya website today:

A Sudanese court on Thursday sentenced two women to 20 lashes for dressing "indecently," an AFP reporter said.

The two women, who have not been identified, were arrested in Khartoum in July along with journalist-turned-activist Lubna Ahmed Hussein who spent a day in jail after refusing to pay a fine for wearing "indecent trousers."

A self-styled sheikh has been arrested in Australia over letters sent to widows of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, accusing their partners of murder, as Canberra mulls an early withdrawal from the troubled country.

The Iranian-born Muslim spiritual leader, who calls himself Mufti Sheikh Haron, was charged with sending hate mail to families of seven Australian soldiers killed fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan over a two-year period.

"I feel bad that you have lost your son but I don't feel bad that a murderer of innocent civilians has lost his life," Haron allegedly wrote to the family of one Australian commando killed in January, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said on Thursday.

A top hardline Iranian cleric said on Thursday that "God's fury" would be unleashed if Iran appoints women as governors of some provinces, as was raised as a possibility by a minister last week.

"If some people want to change the principles and values of the revolution without considering the views of clerics, they will face the fury of God and of the people," Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani said on his website.

Hamas backs down from shutting down human rights org

From Ma'an:

The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) said on Thursday that Hamas-allied security forces briefly ordered their office in Gaza to close, before government officials denied there had been such an order.

Sources in the organization in the West Bank city of Ramallah told Ma’an that three members of the security forces entered the office and ordered everyone, including director Jamal Sarhan, to leave.

Later, Salah Abed Al-Ati, the director of ICHR’s operation in Gaza City and northern Gaza, said that a delegation of government officials visited the office to explain that there had never been a decision to shut down the organization.

The delegation included Comptroller-General Hassan As-Sayfi and Interior Ministry Spokesperson Ihab Al-Ghusein. They told ICHR that the organization could continue working "with a few minor reservations" on the part of the authorities.

ICHR sources said that the apparent initial decision to close the office came from Fathi Hammad, the minister of the interior in the Gaza administration. The security officers who had first appeared presented warrants from the Ministry of the Interior and the General Secretariat of the Gaza-based cabinet.

(Palestine Press Agency thought it was the PICCR that was closed, which I am pretty sure is a different organization.)

Hamas seems to have no compunction about throwing its weight around.

By the way, this article highlights Ma'an's methods of criticizing Hamas since the coup: it refuses to print any article that makes Hamas look bad, until it can find a different reason to mention the facts that it is reluctant to report. In this case, it waits until Hamas backtracks on closing down a HR organization before reporting that the action happened to begin with.

Worth reading

Been too busy to post, but it is worthwhile to read this piece by David Bogner in response to a troll who called all Israelis "colonialist." Punch line:

As a parting gift, I would direct you to the U.N. Declaration Of Human Rights; a document which is so often mis-quoted as a weapon against us. It clearly states that "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country". You can't turn over a stone anywhere in the length and breadth of this country (especially in Judea and Samaria; the areas you refer to as occupied Palestinian territory) without finding hard, indisputable evidence of an ancient and continued Jewish presence here. The very label 'Jew' comes from the word 'Judea'; the real name for the southern half of the so-called 'West Bank'.

You want to engage me in an intelligent discussion of prejudice, of second-class status, of disenfranchisement and confiscated property? I won't rub your face in your own country's shameful conduct against the Jews (although by all rights I should). Instead I will freely admit that like most countries in the world, Israel has many social and legal hurdles to clear before we have the Utopian society we would all prefer. But our societal shortcomings and ills are not unlike the problems each and every one of your countries has had to face in trying to balance civil liberties and homeland security.

But if you want to call me a Nazi? If you want to tell me I'm a colonialist? That tells me that not only are you not interested in an intelligent discussion... but that you don't even understand the meaning of those words.

And by the way... in reference to your continued reference to Palestinians as the only indigenous people of this land, I am still awaiting the discovery of the first 'Palestinian' artifact tying that people to my homeland and giving them a greater claim to it than mine.

Why Did the Arabs Run?

Part of a 1948 article from The Nation, by Freda Kirchwey, reprinted this year:

Jaffa and Tel Aviv were like hostile Siamese twins, joined in uneasy physical union by a slum area in which the mingled blood of both formed a poisonous, explosive compound. Murders, riots and clashes between Arabs and Jews had happened at frequent intervals long before the real fighting began last spring. Then the bad feeling between the two cities exploded into open warfare, and on April 25 the Irgun moved into Jaffa with armored cars and mortars and took the Manshieh district that borders Tel Aviv. The British rather than the Arabs stopped them; but Haganah sent in reinforcements, and four days later the Jews had surrounded the city. Within another few days the Arabs had gone; only a couple of thousand out of an all-Arab population of more than 70,000 hung on. The largest Arab city of Palestine, headquarters of nationalist activity, chief center of Arab business and intellectual life, was silent and deserted.

I drove through Jaffa with a man from the Israel press office. The Manshieh district was pretty badly damaged, partly by fighting in the streets and partly by shell and mortar fire. I saw small shops open to the street, empty, their interiors wrecked. "There was a lot of looting, especially in this section," my companions said. "Who?" I asked. "Both. Our men too. There had been a lot of trouble here; the feeling was very bad. But this is disgusting, this sort of thing." He waved his arm at the damaged shop fronts. "What can you expect," I asked, "especially after what went before? This was a clash between people that hated each other. Suppose the Arabs had swept into Tel Aviv? You think only a few streets of deserted small shops would have been smashed and looted?" He didn't answer the last question. He said, "I expect Jewish soldiers to act like civilized human beings. They had captured the town; they should have protected it. They've done so in most places -- protected both property and life." I was more impressed by his severity than I was shocked by the damage done by the soldiers. I was later told, not by him but by someone else, that a good part of the looting in Jaffa was the work of assorted Europeans fighting in the Arab ranks--Nazis, Chetniks from Yugoslavia, and Balkan Moslem soldiers--who lingered after the defeat long enough to do some profitable marauding.
Most of Jaffa was in good shape. The Arab masses, when they fled, took what little they could carry; the wealthy Arabs, who had left during the months before the real fighting began, often salvaged the greater part of their portable possessions. A good many of the undamaged houses in Jaffa and elsewhere are now being used for newly arrived Jews; so the Arab refugees unwittingly helped make a place for the Jewish refugees their leaders were so determined to keep out. This means hardship for individuals; collectively it is obviously fitting and just.

Why did the Arabs run? Their mass flight from Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Jerusalem, Jaffa and from the village in those areas, seemed to have little to do with the fighting itself. Anyhow, down the ages civilians have traditionally stuck to their homes and their land, through wars and alien occupations, surviving as best they could, waiting for the end of their troubles. Why should the Arabs have behaved differently, even those who had been on good terms with the Jews? Some blame it on the Mufti. Arabs told their Jewish neighbors that agents of the Mufti said they should go or they'd get their throats slit by the Israelis. Some professed not to believe this, but thought they'd better do as they were told. Other Arabs thought Jewish control would be temporary, a matter of weeks, and that their safest bet was to get out until the Arab forces came back; otherwise they might be regarded as collaborators and suffer at the hands of their own bosses. Others may have been merely defeatist, assuming Jewish victory and preferring to live under Arab rule: the sense of national boundaries is not strong in most of the Arab world. Another likely cause was the example of the wealthy Arabs. When the poor worker in the town or on the land saw his betters disappear with their belongings, he was likely to conclude that the same danger existed for him, too. A dozen reasons probably combined to create the vast epidemic of fear that drove some 500,000 Arabs out of Jewish Palestine into the already overcrowded ranks of homeless, penniless "displaced persons." Should Israel take them back if they want to come? No one I talked to believed they should be readmitted -- any of them -- before the war ends. Aside from those who are hostile and potentially under the orders of Fawzi el Kaukji or the Mufti, they would be an intolerable burden on the new state's already staggering economy. Besides, the Jews feel no responsibility for. their flight and, consequently, little obligation to help them return. After the war the question of the refugees can be discussed on its long-range merits.