Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 25, 2009

Egypt forces Galloway to re-route

Egypt refused permission on Thursday for a Gaza-bound aid convoy in led by British MP George Galloway to enter the country through the Red Sea port of Nuweiba.

There will be "no entry from Nuweiba. Entry can only be through Al-Arish," on the Mediterranean coast, Hossam Zaki told the French news agency AFP.

The Viva Palestina convoy of 250 trucks and ambulances laden with European, Turkish and Arab donations of food and medical supplies arrived in Jordan from Syria on Wednesday and was headed to the Red Sea port of Aqaba for the ferry journey across to the Egyptian Sinai port of Nuweiba.

Entering through the port of Al-Arish would mean going around the Sinai Peninsula and through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean.

British MP George Galloway, said the convoy would not be deterred by the Egyptian decision.

“We feel very sad that Egypt has turned us away on Christmas Day, but we hope they will reconsider. This is a very determined convoy and we’re not going anywhere except to Gaza.”

Egypt didn't turn them away. They just told Galloway that he must follow established procedures.

People like Galloway think that they are above the law and then they pretend to be victims when the world doesn't agree.

In March, Galloway handed over thousands of dollars and dozens of vehicles to the Hamas-run government in Gaza after arriving on an aid convoy.

Can't someone in Great Britain sue Galloway, or call for his arrest, for directly supporting a terror group?

Today is the anniversary of "Operation Oil Stain"

One of the problems with NGOs is that they create a framework around a topic that makes Israel appear like the aggressor. The Gaza war is a perfect example.

On December 24th, 2008, Hamas declared war on Israel. As Ma'an reported at the time,

The military wing affiliated to Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades released a statement on Thursday morning briefing the group's military activities over the first twenty four hours of an operation they called "Oil Stain" which started Wednesday morning.

According to the statement, a total of 87 shells have been fired at Israeli targets bordering the Gaza Strip including 54 mortar shells, 31 homemade projectiles which Hamas calls "Qassam", and two Soviet-made Grad missiles.

Al-Qassa Brigades threatened to enlarge the "Oil Stain" to get more thousands of Israelis "under fire". The group asserted that its fighters are "far greater than surrendering to Israeli threats and that they became much more prepared to counter Israeli aggression and to defend themselves than in the past."

Indeed, Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades website still has the original announcement of Operation Oil Stain (autotranslated as Oil Slick.)

However, in their reports about the war, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Goldstone Report all consider December 27th the first day of the war - the day that Israel struck back heavily.

Normally, if one party attacks another and even names the operation, that would be considered, objectively, the beginning of the war. Hamas continued calling the war "Oil Stain" for a full week before it abandoned the term.

When NGOs decide that the war began three days later than it really did, they are establishing a framework that damns Israel before they even write a word about the issues. It is a false framework. It makes Israel appear to be the aggressor and not as if it is reacting to deliberate and planned Hamas actions.

And those Hamas actions would be considered grave war crimes, as they targeted civilians. (Hamas press releases even brag about how Israelis are forced to go to bomb shelters!)

Israel didn't start the war, and every NGO report that says it did on December 27th is guilty of bias.

77% of Gaza women subjected to violence

A new study by the Palestine Women's Information and Media Center is saying that some 77.1% of Gaza women are subjected to violence.

The abstract is published only in Arabic so far, and the full survey results are not out yet. I do not know the definitions of the terms "verbal violence" and "psychological violence."

67% of women are subject to verbal violence
71% to psychological violence
52% to physical violence
15% to sexual violence
45% to more than one form of violence

If you combine the victims of physical and sexual violence, we see that more than half of Gaza women are physically abused or sexually assaulted, and perhaps as many as two-thirds.

Hamas loves Qaddafi

Hamas polical leader Khaled Meshal is in Libya and meeting with crazy president, and inexplicably still Colonel, Maommar Qgaddhaffphi (I think I need to spell it differently every time.

Meshal said that he would have preferred if Gaza bordered Libya instead of Egypt, as no one would be building a giant iron wall between Libya and Gaza.

I think that this is a wonderful idea. It could easily be accomplished if all Gazans would move to Tunisia, the country that already hosted the PLO leaders for a while. They can take a tiny piece of that country on the border, and see if Libya is as magnanimous as it claims.

Better yet, why not ask Qaddaphy if he would welcome all Palestinian Arabs to become full citizens of his country if they so desire. Immediately, a couple of hundred thousand would take him up on that offer. That would prove his love and loyalty.

Unfortunately, Libyan law does not allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, like most Arab League countries. But don't call that discrimination.

Israel allows third flower export from Gaza this month

Palestine Today reports that Israel will allow Gaza farmers to export flowers for the third time this month.

Don't expect the Free Gaza or Code Pink websites to mention this news.

Traveling open thread

Another nice thing about my trip is that I didn't have to be assaulted with Christmas music for the last two weeks!

I'll be traveling all day, so have at it.

UPDATE: I am putting a couple of posts in the queue as I fly.

Richard Falk shows his hypocrisy again

From YNet:

In Geneva, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, urged Israel's European and North American allies to press for the immediate end of the blockade "backed up by a credible threat of economic sanctions."

Isn't that "collective punishment" against the entire population of Israel, something that Falk considers unacceptable in the extreme?

(Links to other examples of Falk's lies, hypocrisy, support for terror and purposeful twisting of international law can be seen here.)

Daily Goldstone 12/24

From the University of Pittsburgh Law School website:

The Goldstone Commission Report on the January 2009 Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza — which comes before the United Nations today, November 4, 2009 — has been accused of failure on various levels. Many commentators argue that the Report fails the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some say it reflects a failure to understand the deeper historical realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Still others say it fails the originally conceived purpose of the United Nations Human Rights Council and fails the search for objective truth. Its most glaring failure, though, has gone unnoticed. The Report fails the law.

It does so by striking out in applying the law in three key areas. Strike One: the Report incorrectly claims Israel disproportionately attacked civilians. Strike Two: the Report unjustly accuses Israel of a disproportionate response to Hamas's attacks. Strike Three: the Report treats Israel and Hamas disproportionately by holding them to different standards.

Strike One

Jus in bello is the law governing conduct during war. One of its key principles is proportionality, which requires military personnel to take precautions in targeting the enemy to ensure that the expected civilian losses are not excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage. The commander's perspective at the time of the attack is the central focus. The law assesses whether his actions were reasonable given the information he had access to, taking into account the "fog of war." Proportionality is not measured after the fact by looking at actual civilian casualties or actual military advantages. If it were, no military could ever engage in any operations.

The Report turns proportionality's bedrock premise on its head. It relies substantively on information gathered after the fact and discounts contemporaneous Israeli intentions or actions and the surrounding circumstances. The Report also undermines its own legitimacy by automatically verifying one side's statements and impugning the other's. Israel's real-time information consists of mere "allegations," but retrospective information collected months later in Gaza consists of definitive "statements." Israel admittedly did not cooperate (given the commission's biased conception), but that cannot justify reliance on the wrong information.

Strike Two

Jus ad bellum is the law governing decisions to go to war. Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter forbids the use of force without Security Council enforcement (Article 2(7)). One exception: Article 51 preserves the right to use force in self-defense. Jus ad bellum mandates that any act in self-defense constitute a proportionate response, meaning a necessary and reasonable means to counter the attack and eliminate future threats.

The Report confuses jus in bello proportionality (as explained above) with this jus ad bellum requirement of a proportionate response. Israel acted legitimately in self-defense to destroy Hamas's tunnels and rocket launchers. Hamas indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians for eight years. And yet, the Report does not even mention Article 51. More egregiously, it uses the incorrect assessment that particular Israeli attacks violated jus in bello proportionality to unfairly package Operation Cast Lead as disproportionate overall, a clear misapplication of jus in bello principles in a jus ad bellum framework.

Strike Three

The Report's (unfounded) legal conclusions disproportionately hold Israel and Hamas to different standards. It states unequivocally (but without factual substantiation) that Israeli forces committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as willful killing and torture.

Article 85 of Additional Protocol I states that "making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack" and launching indiscriminate attacks—the very crimes Hamas committed, according to the Report—are indeed grave breaches. But the Report never considers that Palestinian armed groups committed grave breaches. Accusing Israel of "grave breaches" while failing to similarly identify Hamas' violations exposes the commission's bias to the core.

This uneven treatment pervades the entire report. For example, Hamas and Israel both had obligations to protect civilians in Gaza. The Report's single-minded focus on Israel, however, leads to absurd statements regarding Hamas's breach of those obligations when it used civilian buildings as command centers, munitions storage and rocket launch sites. While quick to condemn Israel flat out for violations, the Report merely suggests that Hamas's actions "would constitute" legal violations.

Reading the Report in an uncritical vacuum suggests that Israel abrogated its obligations under the laws of war. In reality, the main failure lies in the Report itself. The Report fails the law. Why does this matter? Because in maintaining a delicate balance between destruction of enemy capabilities and protection of innocent civilians, the law reinforces our basic dignity and humanity in the face of the horrors of war. We cannot afford to abandon it.

Laurie R. Blank is the Acting Director of Emory Law's International Humanitarian Law Clinic. Gregory S. Gordon is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law and Director of the UND Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies.

Work accident!

Another brave Hamas freedom fighter has missed his chance at getting his virgins because he blew himself up without managing to kill any Jews.

He was killed while on a "jihad mission" in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City.

The fact that Hamas is doing "jihad missions" in crowded residential neighborhoods does not seem to be much of an issue.

A day with the IDF

Today, I attended the IDF Northern Command Familiarization Day, a brand new initiative by the IDF to reach out to bloggers.

The two main events were IDF briefings at strategic mountaintops, one overlooking the entire Syrian border and the other one practically surrounded by Lebanon.

Although the information given was not "inside information," it was a good first step. It was interesting to see in person border villages that are very possibly Hezbollah strongholds: lots of typical looking houses, but very few people, no children and lots of trucks going in and out.

We learned about the village of Rajar, which is split in half along the border. The IDF does not want to put up a fence so a strange situation is set up where the residents of Rajar can sort of travel between Lebanon and Israel, the southern residents have residency rights (and jobs) in Israel, and where the border goes literally through some houses. Most interesting was the information that Hezbollah intimidates all the residents of the villages in the area, much like the mafia, and watches what they say to the media.

The bloggers on the trip were a great bunch of people. They included the bloggers for Israel Matzav, The Augean Stables, Honest Reporting, CAMERA (Israel), Jewlicious and Contentions (Commentary.) Many of them know a lot of people and had a very long and candid discussion about the various famous reporters and others whom they know personally. I, on the other hand, don't know anyone, so I pretty much just listened.

Altogether, it was a fun day, and it only makes me want to visit more often!

Abbas for new intifada in Arabic, against it in English

Mahmoud Abbas had an interview in yesterday's Wall Street Journal where he said, among other things:

I will not allow a new intifada. As long as I'm in office, I will not allow anybody to start a new intifada. Never never.

Yet just last month, in Arabic, the Fatah Central Committee that he leads called for a third intifada, and there were reports that Abbas himself called for a third intifada (without arms but with stones.) The original link to Palestine Today is gone but I found reference to it from a pro-Palestinian Arab op-ed here, where the author admits that stone-throwing is a typical feature of the Nil'in and Bilin protests that Abbas is supporting. This is a far cry from "Never never."

Abbas has learned well from Arafat to say things differently in Arabic and English.

Carter's grandson running for office; benefits from "apology"

As we mentioned yesterday, Jimmy Carter made a non-apology to Jews in the form of "sorry if some of you overly sensitive Jews were upset with my completely correct venomous anti-Israel and borderline anti-semitic actions over the past couple of decades."

It turns out that this fake apology, for some reason warmly welcomed by Abraham Foxman, didn't come completely out of nowhere. Carter's grandson is running for office and he is going to need to get some Jewish votes.

Jimmy Carter is asking the Jewish community for forgiveness -- and insists it’s not simply because his grandson has decided to launch a political career with a run for the Georgia state Senate.
Jason Carter, 34, an Atlanta-area lawyer, is considering a run to fill a seat covering suburban DeKalb County should the incumbent, David Adelman, win confirmation as President Obama's designated ambassador to Singapore.

The seat, which is university heavy -- Emory, among others, is situated there -- also has a substantial Jewish community.

The senior Carter outraged Jewish leaders with his book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” and they strongly criticized the former U.S. president for what appeared to be his likening of Israel's settlement practices to apartheid and seeming to place the brunt of the blame for a lack of peace on Israel.

On the subsequent book tour, Carter further enraged many Jews by intimating that the pro-Israel lobby inhibited an evenhanded U.S. policy.

Such bad blood could potentially translate into problems for Carter’s grandson as he considers launching a political career.

But in an interview with JTA, Carter insisted that ethnic electoral considerations were not reason enough to reach out to the Jewish community, although he did not outright deny that it was a factor.

"Jason has a district, the number of Jewish voters in it is only 2 percent," he said, chuckling.

I wonder if Carter knows the Jewish proportion of every district in Georgia?
(h/t Samson)

Moonbats over Gaza

The Daily News Egypt reports:

The Gaza Freedom March will move forward with plans to march into Gaza on Dec. 31 despite having its request rejected by Egypt’s foreign ministry Monday.
“Our efforts and plans will not be altered at this point,” Ann Wright of the Gaza Freedom March Steering Committee said in a statement.
“We have set out to break the siege of Gaza and to march in Gaza on Dec. 31 against the international blockade. We are continuing the journey,” she added.
Cairo on Monday rejected a request by international activists to organize a march to the Gaza Strip via Egypt to mark one year since an Israeli attack on the enclave.
“Some international organizations have requested permission for a solidarity march — the Gaza Freedom March — into the Gaza Strip,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Egypt finds it difficult to cooperate with this march considering the sensitive situation in the Gaza Strip,” which faces a stringent Israeli blockade, the statement said. [The statement apparently didn't say anything about an Israeli blockade - EoZ.]
It warned that “any attempts to violate the law or public order by any group whether local or foreign on Egyptian soil will be dealt with in conformity with the law.”
According to Wright, Egypt’s foreign ministry said that the Rafah border will be closed well into January, citing escalating tensions.

So who is behind this march? It is Code Pink, and their description of the march clearly shows their bias against Israel:

Our purpose in this March is lifting the siege on Gaza. We demand that Israel end the blockade. We also call upon Egypt to open Gaza’s Rafah border. Palestinians must have freedom to travel for study, work, and much-needed medical treatment and to receive visitors from abroad.

So they are marching from Egypt towards Rafah where Egypt has closed the border to Gaza to protest - Israel. Parenthetically, while they demand Israel ends the blockade, Egypt is only requested to open the border...which also happens to be the other way into Gaza, and which is being explicitly closed to the protesters.

When two countries both decide to guard their borders with Hamastan, why does only one get singled out?

That's a toughie.

News briefs

Jimmy Carter "apologized" to American Jews for saying things that may have stigmatized Israel. He even used the words "Al Het" that are used by Jews on Yom Kippur. Of course, he didn't apologize for any of his positions, so this is one of those situations of a non-apology in the form of "sorry if you were offended by my brilliance."

British director Ken Loach withdrew a film of his from an Australian film festival because it was partially funded by those dreaded "Zionists." Iran therefore scooped him up and is proudly screening his latest comedy at the Fajr film festival.

Hamas strongly condemned the wall that Egypt is building on the Gaza border. I guess smuggling weapons is a human right.

A small religious group in Gaza found that its assembly room or building was blown up by unidentified gunmen.

What I've been doing

I've been too busy to blog, too busy to reply to emails (and even to read them all,) too busy to read many of the comments and, most of the time, too busy to sleep.

But one of the benefits of this trip to Israel is the opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers. In a sense, this has been my "coming out" party as until a few weeks ago I was almost completely anonymous to the vast majority of bloggers. Since then, off the top of my head I have met and spoken with Richard Landes of The Augean Stables, Carl from Israel Matzav, Noah Pollak from Commentary, Aussie Dave from Israellycool, Yisrael and Batya Medad from My Right Word and Shiloh Musings, Emet m'Tsiyon's blogger, Barry Rubin of the Gloria Center, and Yosef Hartuv of the Love of the Land blog.

Yosef Hartuv lives in Hebron and I visited him there today. While there, he introduced me to some of the leaders of Hebron/Chevron including David Wilder and Miriam Levinger, very outspoken wife of one of the founders of the revived Chevron Jewish community. (Her opinions are a bit more extreme than mine, and arguing with her is useless.) Yosef's effusive compliments about me to the people he introduced me to were embarrassing.

My taxi driver Avinoam also happens to know many other well-known Israeli right-wingers, often considered extremists by many. It was almost surreal as, while I was discussing the blog with him, he asked me "Do you want to interview Geulah Cohen? Here, I'll call her up for you!" (She is recovering from spinal surgery and couldn't be interviewed but was very gracious on the phone.) I also managed to have a brief conversation with Nadia Matar, leader of the Women in Green group, from Avinoam's cell phone. Both women are very polite, very strong and much hated by many.

On Wednesday, I will have a rare treat of attending a high-level IDF briefing for bloggers. That should be a blast. (And it is totally coincidental to my being here; I didn't know about it until after I already arrived.)

Add in the usual touristy stuff and other things, and I am simply zonked.