Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

UNRWA starts funding UNHCR Iraq refugees

I cannot find details yet, but Palestine Today quotes UN Radio as saying that the European Commission of UNRWA is donating a million euros to help the 2300 refugees of Palestinian Arab ancestry who fled Iraq and are now on the Iraqi-Syrian border.

These refugees do not fall under UNRWA, but rather under UNHCR, which has been diligently trying to resettle them in other countries - the way a UN refugee agency should act.

Their Arab brethren have treated them as pariahs.

Since their grandparents lived in Palestine in 1947, Arab nations refuse to let them become citizens. Syria took in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees but refused to support the ones who are termed "Palestinian" because of Arab League rulings that they should always be treated differently to enforce their fake nationalism. So Arabs who lived in Iraq for generations are not Iraqi nor are they Iraqi refugees.

Arabs have not been happy with UNHCR's resettling hundred of these refugees to the West, preferring that they stay in misery in order to strengthen the "Palestinian" cause.

The question is, is UNRWA contributing out of humanitarian considerations or is this the beginning of a power play to take over the refugees from UNHCR?

Hamas claims that their executions are getting results

Hamas leaders are claiming that their execution of two "collaborators" last month has resulted in many others turning themselves in out of fear.

A Gaza interior ministry spokesman said that Gazans have been surrendering to Hamas, and that Israel is using experts in psychology to target weak spots in vulnerable people to entice them to be spies. He also warned again about how Israel is using social networking sites to communicate with potential agents.

Another article talks about others who have been caught by Hamas, with a picture of what is alleged to be a secret radio transmitter and a map.

I am not sure why radios make sense nowadays when Gazans can easily use Skype or other encrypted Internet methods to securely talk with their Israeli handlers.

More tunnel deaths

Today a Gazan was killed in a tunnel collapse. Yesterday another was killed.

By my count, sixteen Gazans have been killed this year from smuggling tunnel accidents - collapses, electrocutions, or suffocations.

A question of dignity

Ma'an reports:

The Palestinian Authority is working in full swing to make sure no laborers will be working in Israeli settlements by the end of 2011, PA Minster of National Economy Hasan Abu Libda said Tuesday.

“There are currently 25,000 Palestinians who make their living from working in Israeli settlements. They should stop as they aren’t any different from 200,000 other unemployed workers,” Abu Libda said in an interview with Ma'an.

“Even though Palestinian law prohibits work in Israeli settlements, we know that a large number of people left their jobs and have gone to work in settlements,” he said, urging laborers to “work out another solution.”

Asked what alternatives those 25,000 workers could expect to find, the minister said there were 200,000 others out of work and that in seven months, the PA would take action to protect national interests by completely stopping all economic relations with settlements.

“In no country in the world is the unemployment rate zero, and so long as Israel continues to discourage the Palestinian national economy, the only alternative is to get citizens to consume national products,” Abu Libda explained. Only 18 percent of consumption in Palestine is national products, he explained, and if the PA can raise this rate to 40 percent, that will provide 50-60,000 jobs.

With regard to quality and competitiveness of national products, “Work is ongoing with the private sector to provide budgets to improve the quality of products and in a couple of weeks or months, there will be a noticeable improvement in quality of Palestinian national products, he said. “Once they improve, consumers will trust national products, and they will eventually be able to compete with Israeli products.”

This is going to be very interesting.

The vast majority of Arabs want dignity. Dignity means supporting your family with honor.

Dignity is the reason why the Arab boycott of the 1930s was such a spectacular failure, even though it is now considered "The Great Revolt" by people who try to manufacture Palestinian Arab history. Arabs who hated the Jews killed hundreds of Arabs who just wanted to keep their jobs and raise their families by cooperating with those same Jews.

Dignity is also the reason that so many Palestinian Arabs moved to Kuwait and other Gulf countries in the 1950s and 1960s - so they could get jobs, make money and live semi-normal lives (while being forced to remain stateless by the Arab League.) It is the reason that so many have moved to the West.

In many ways, the Arabs who stayed behind in camps were the lazy ones who preferred UNRWA handouts to their own dignity, and in that way the Palestinian Arab psyche has slowly changed from the most dynamic of the Arabs to a welfare mentality where the world owes them everything.

Now we have a clash between personal dignity and an imposed "national" dignity. The question is, which will win?

History so far has shown that ordinary Palestinian Arabs have traditionally placed their own welfare above that of their illusory nation, but 60 years of an externally imposed national culture - combined with the slow change from a people who care about their personal dignity to a people who feel a sense of entitlement - may have changed that.

The PA is officially telling tens of thousands of its gainfully employed citizens that they must plan to quit the jobs that provide them with their dignity, with the nebulous promise that other jobs will magically appear (propped up with Western money, of course.) This is on top of the thousands of newly unemployed Palestinian Arabs who are suffering from the ten-month building freeze in the territories.

The question is - what will the remaining dignified Arabs do in response?

Incidentally, it seems that the statement that "Palestinian law prohibits work in Israeli settlements" is not currently true, as the article goes on to say:

For his part, PA Minister of Labor Ahmad Majdalani asserted that nothing in Palestinian law prohibited work in settlements. However, workers should stop on their own free will for moral and political reasons, Majdalani told Ma'an. In any case, Palestinian law prohibits only the import of settlement products, he said.

Which means that a PA minister doesn't even know the law of his quasi-country.

Islamic Jihad is reading Israeli analyses

The Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today reproduces and translates a paper from the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies on how Israel should react to Palestinian Arab "resistance."

The paper, by Michael Milstein, is titled "The Challenge of al-Muqawama (Resistance) to Israel."

While it is not surprising that Islamic Jihad or other terror groups would be keenly interested in any Israeli military analysis, I have never seen such an article in Arabic before.

For example, one section which reads like a playbook for the Gaza operation reads:

The preferred policy (or more precisely, the lesser of the evils) is that
of a relatively extensive military campaign once every few years. The
scope of the campaign and its frequency are dictated by the intensity
of the threat posed by the elements of resistance, the nature of the
battlefield, and the regional and international circumstances prevailing
at the time. However, in every scenario it is crucial that Israel’s military
response be disproportionate, so as to demonstrate to the enemy the
heavy cost inherent in every attempt to undermine the security of Israel’s
regional sphere. Such a step must not last long, but must focus on causing
extensive damage to the leaderships of the resistance organizations (both
at the military and the political echelons) and the various infrastructures
under their auspices (including civilian). Such a step may well be
accompanied by extensive damage to the Israeli home front, and also
by extensive damage – unintentional, of course – to the enemy’s civilian
sphere. Therefore, Israel’s leadership must conduct a public diplomacy
campaign on two fronts: one at home, where it will have to clarify the cost
Israel’s citizens must pay for confrontations with resistance elements
and stress that one must not expect a quick victory or decision by the IDF;
and the other for international audiences, where it will be necessary to
explain the complexity of tackling resistance elements and describe the
constraints the enemy imposes on Israel, first and foremost the necessity
to fight in the densely populated civilian sphere.

None of the steps described is likely to cause the complete surrender
of resistance elements or convince them to enter into direct talks with
Israel or recognize its existence (at least not in the foreseeable future).
However, military moves, particularly extensive ones accompanied by
serious damage to the resistance elements, are likely to create long term
deterrence with regard to undertaking violent operations against Israel.
Indeed, resistance elements developing sovereign or semi-sovereign
status have also developed a sensitivity and vulnerability they lacked
in the past. The assets of a governing entity, such as those of Hamas
in the Gaza Strip, give Israel more targets to damage and spell out loss
considerations to the resistance organizations, especially at a time when
governmental stability hangs in the balance.

How closely the IDF follows the advice (or how often it independently arrives at the same ideas) is an open question. It is still interesting to see that the Arabs are closely following Israeli military thinking.

I assume the IDF is doing the same against the terrorist organizations.

Does anyone still get their news from the networks?

For the first time in years I watched the network evening news. In this case I watched NBC's coverage of the arrest of the Times Square bomber.

They said a number of times that Faisal Shahzad was a "lone wolf." Their Pakistan correspondent said that there were no arrests made there, and their terrorism expert tslked about how inept the bomb-making was and how he clearly acted alone (he said words to the effect of "he must have been asleep during bomb class.")

Yet, a couple of hours before the broadcast, the news broke over the wire services that Pakistan did arrest several people in connection with the case. Even the MSNBC website mentions that!

I knew that the news broadcasts were bad, but I had no idea that they were that incompetent.

Or, worse, that they are so invested in the idea that this was not an organized Muslim terrorist attack that their wishful thinking affects what they choose to report.

Dore Gold on the "1967 borders"

From Dore Gold:

[T]he 1967 lines are coming back as a common reference point when many officials and commentators talk about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is increasingly assumed that there was a recognized international border between the West Bank and Israel in 1967 and what is necessary now is to restore it. Yet this entire discussion is based on a completely distorted understanding of the 1967 line, given the fact that in the West Bank it was not an international border at all.
In fact, Article II of the Armistice with the Jordanians explicitly specified that the agreement did not compromise any future territorial claims of the parties, since it had been "dictated by exclusively by military considerations." In other words, the old Armistice Line was not a recognized international border. It had no finality. As a result, the Jordanians reserved the right after 1949 to demand territories inside Israel, for the Arab side. It was noteworthy that on May 31, 1967, the Jordanian ambassador to the UN made this very point to the UN Security Council just days before the Six-Day War, by stressing that the old armistice agreement "did not fix boundaries."

Read the whole thing.

Ma'an Arabic says that the PA sent a high-level delegation to the funeral of Moshe Hirsch, the Neturei Karta leader who did everything he could to destroy Israel while claiming that the Torah demands it.

The delegation presented a telegram to Hirsch's son from Mahmoud Abbas.

Sorry for posting this during lunchtime.

Toolbar test open thread

I saw that Israellycool added a toolbar, and it looked interesting, so I added the same one. It includes a chat, a search function, links to my YouTube page and some site stats. I can add other tools as well, just checking it out.

This is only a test - if it starts getting obtrusive I'll pull it. But let me know what you think. I'll see what other apps it has....

UPDATE: Removed it after a complaint.

What a surprise!

As you all know, I spend a great deal of time reading the Arabic press. By definition, the press is more moderate and thoughtful than the Arabic message boards or social media. Even so, however, it truly is a different world out there - a different mindset, a different narrative, a different history - than how Westerners think.

There is some internal consistency in the narrative, although it is comical when it comes up against real facts, which the Arab media tends to dismiss as lies or as conspiracies.

The readers of that media know, for a fact, that terrorism is a Zionist attribute. There are some crazy Islamic extremists but they are a tiny minority. The major danger to the world at large is Israel. Yet when a Koran is allegedly desecrated, the billion peaceful Muslims who are exhorted to violently come to the defense of Islam in that same media. No contradiction there.

So we can expect to see massive amounts of cognitive dissonance in reaction to the news that the person who attempted to kill hundreds of people in Times Square, Faisal Shahzad, is a Muslim. It will end up, as always, being a Zionist plot.

Ha'aretz' top analysts catch up with the Elder

One of the better part of Ha'aretz is called "The MESS Report" where their senior reporters do some real reporting and analysis.

Today's report discusses Hamas' severe economic problems.

Only a couple of weeks since I started talking about it.

(Hey, sometimes I need to brag a little.)

PalArabs say Israeli media all in Israel's pocket

Palestine Today has an article that claims that the Israeli media is all part of the great Zionist conspiracy, reporting what its Israeli masters demand and an integral part of the huge worldwide Zionist Hasbara campaign run by Israel with help from Jews worldwide. The headline is: "Israeli media .. Deceit, cunning, deception, intelligence"

Yesterday, however, in the very same newspaper, there was an article that described the Arab journalists who were killed while covering Gaza fighting as being "martyrs" who heroically document their history and their cause. One of them, for example, was killed while he was filming terrorists launching rockets at Israel, and Israel retaliated.

Arab hip-hoppers freak over Israeli keffiyeh

I have mentioned that a couple of companies have made Zionist versions of the keffiyeh, causing much consternation from Arabs worldwide and gathering ridiculous amounts of publicity for what is essentially a Jewish novelty item.

Well, now the hip-hop world is joining the battle.

A female Arab hip-hop star, Shadia Mansour, has made an entire song protesting the Israeli keffiyeh, insisting that the keffiyeh is Arabic. Some of the translated lyrics:

The kuffiyeh is Arabic, and it will stay Arabic

The gear we rock, they want it; our culture, they want it

Our dignity, they want it; everything that’s ours, they want it
They imitatin us in what we wear, wear; from this land enough, what else do you want?
Before y’all ever rocked a kuffiyeh, we here to remind em who we are

And whether they like it or not, this is our clothing style

That’s why we rock the kuffiyeh, cuz it’s patriotic

The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

That’s why we rock the kuffiyeh, our essential identity

The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

Come on, throw up the kuffiyeh (throw that kuffiyeh up for me)

The kuffiyeh, the kuffiyeh is Arabic

Throw it up, come on “Bilad Al Sham” (Greater Syria)

The kuffiyeh is Arabic, and it will stay Arabic

I like the "Greater Syria" lyric. I also like the fact that the song pretty much admits that the keffiyeh is not historically "Palestinian" but Arab.

This is all giving much publicity to the Zionist version, which has its own short video.

Meanwhile, there was an Arab hip-hop concert called "The Arab League of Hip-Hop" in Brooklyn. The highlight was an emotional rap song called "Long Live Palestine." As one would expect from a "national" movement that is really based on the eradication of another nation, the lyrics of the song are not about Palestine but rather about how evil Israel is - and a call to boycott supposedly "Zionist" companies. Here are some of the lyrics:

While we listen to tunes, made by ignorant fools,
Israel blocked the UN from delivering food,
They'll bring in the troops and you won't even glimpse at the news,
They make money of the products that we are quick to consume,
It's not simply a question of differing views

Every coin is a bullet, if you're Mark's and Spencer,
And when your sipping Coca-Cola,
That's another pistol in the holster of a soulless soldier,
You say you know about the Zionist lobby,
But you put money in their pocket when you're buying their coffee,
Talking about revolution, sitting in Starbucks,
The fact is that's the type of thinking I can't trust,
Let alone even start to respect,
Before you talk learn the meaning of that scarf on your neck,
Forget Nestle,
Obama promised Israel 30 billion over the next decade,
They're trigger happy and they're crazy,
Think about that when you're putting Huggies nappies on your baby,

Israel is a terror state, there terrorists that terrorise,
I testify, my television televised them telling lies,
This is not a war, it is systematic genocide,
But whatever they try, Palestine will never die!!!

What a great example of Palestinian Arab nationalism! Very little good to say about their beloved mythical homeland - just calumnies against the Jewish state.

The only thing binding Palestinian Arabs is hate.

PalArabs claiming that prison guards tore Koran

Publicity-seeking Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi of Jerusalem seems to have a quota of how many outraged press conferences he needs to give per week. If nothing outrageous happens, he's duty bound to make it up. Today's non-story of outrage is the claim that an Israeli prison guard in Ashkelon's prison tore a Koran. As Tamimi said, "the Koran contains the Enshrined Word of God Almighty, revealed to His Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, a divine and sacred book, proving the biggest miracles of the Prophet peace be upon him, and any violation of the sanctity and holiness is an act contrary to the teachings of divine laws and international conventions that guarantee freedom of belief and worship and [desecrating it is] one of the biggest religious and moral vices." He seems to be very serious about his outrage that a Koran is torn in an Israeli prison. Yet the only English-language story I can find about a Koran being torn in an Israeli prison comes from 2005, and the circumstances were somewhat different:

A female Palestinian security prisoner in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison tore up pages from a copy of the Quran and threw them toward the toilet during a routine search Sunday, the Israel Prison Service said. The 22-year-old detainee from a village near Hebron is an Islamic Jihad member who was arrested three months ago in suspicion of hostile terror activity. She resisted a routine search by a female guard, and then took out torn Quran pages from her skirt and hurled them toward the toilet. The guard handed the torn Quran pages to the prison’s director, and Prison Service officials said she showed heightened sensitivity to the holy Islamic book. A month ago Palestinian security prisoners detained in the Megiddo Prison claimed prison guards tore up pages from Quran copies during searches of their cells. However, a special investigative committee found the prisoners themselves had torn the Quran copies in an attempt to stir controversy. According to the Prison Service, prisoner representatives apologized for the incident, saying it was a Hamas-affiliated minority that carried out the act.

So in 2005, Korans were torn by both Islamic Jihad members and Hamas members in Israeli prisons. You will recall, of course, the outrage and riots that spontaneously broke out against those groups because of how much every believing Muslim loves the Koran and is uncontrollably outraged whenever it gets desecrated, no matter who does the vile act. You mean you don't remember those 2005 riots against Hamas and Islamic Jihad?