Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 20, 2010

UNHCR succeeds where UNRWA fails

From AFP:

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chief Antonio Guterres announced on Friday the body has referred 100,000 Iraqi refugees in the Middle East for resettlement in third countries since 2007.

"100,000 submissions of Iraqi refugees is a tremendous achievement. Many have been living in limbo for years," he said at the start of a three-day visit to Syria, which says it hosts one million refugees, mostly from Iraq.

Of the 100,000 submissions of Iraqi refugees over the past three years, 52,173 people left the Middle East up to May 2010, the UNHCR said in a statement. In 2007, 3,500 Iraqis departed for third countries from the region.

"Lengthy security checks and the time it has taken for state processing mechanisms to be established have led to considerable delays in the departure of refugees to their new homes," it said.

Guterres called on countries "to facilitate the speedy departure of refugees they have accepted for resettlement."

The acceptance rate by resettlement countries of UNHCR?s referrals now stands at 80 percent, of which nearly 76 percent have been accepted by the United States, the UNHCR said.

The UN agency said that around 1.8 million Iraqis are currently seeking refuge in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey.

The UNHCR is working tirelessly to resettle these Arab refugees, and even though the going is slow, they are making progress. Tens of thousands of the refugees are being resettled in Syria, which is now hosting about one million of them.

The UNHCR managed to resettle 100,000 refugees in three years with an annual budget of about $80 million. (Correction: this seems to be wrong; the UNHCR budget is actually between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, from its website. -EoZ) And they are not exclusively concerned with Iraqi refugees - they are responsible for every refugee worldwide who is not considered "Palestinian."

Compare this to UNRWA, an agency dedicated to a single class of "refugees" - the Palestinian Arabs. UNRWA has not even attempted to resettle Palestinian Arab "refugees" (really, descendants of refugees) since the 1950s. Their annual budget, which is exclusively used to perpetuate the Palestinian Arab "refugee" problem, $1.2 billion dollars. Yes, the annual budget to keep Palestinian Arabs in camps is roughly the same that the UN grants the other refugee organization, UNHCR, from spending on the entire rest of the world's refugees combined.

Imagine what would happen if the UNHCR took over the UNRWA's budget and the responsibility for Palestinian Arabs!

Here is a study of contrasts of the needs of the different populations.

From the UNHCR website:

Refugees complained during lunch with the High Commissioner of extremely harsh conditions in the desert. Al Hassakeh has suffered from a drought during the past four years. In addition to the shortage of water, refugees said they could not sleep at night for fear of being bitten by deadly scorpions and poisonous snakes.

At the exact same time UNRWA's Gaza "refugees" are complaining about the high fees of renting beach houses on the Mediterranean for their families to vacation.

The only thing they have in common is...sand.

It seems that there is a bit of a problem with how the UN is prioritizing the budgets of its agencies. Maybe it is past the time to fix this problem.

West Bank Arabs prefer to build Jewish settlements

Evelyn Gordon at Contentions notices a new poll of Palestinian Arabs, and one of the results is most revealing.

The PA has announced its desire to stop Palestinian Arabs from working in settlements within the next year. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, only 34% of West Bank Arabs support such a ban and over 60% of all PalArabs (including those in Gaza) oppose it.

This means that the majority of West Bank Arabs prefer that their brethren continue to work in the settlements.

And most of settlement jobs for PalArabs are in construction.

As Gordon notes,

[M]ost Palestinians’ actual prime concern is supporting their families (something that really shouldn’t surprise those liberals who believe all people want the same things), and the settlements are a major employer. It will be years before the Palestinian economy is capable of providing an alternative. Thus by demanding a freeze on settlement construction now, Barack Obama and his European counterparts are merely generating massive Palestinian unemployment. It turns out that Palestinians would rather they didn’t.

Once again we see a disconnect between how Palestinian Arab leaders want to force their people to act, and what the people really want. This is just an extension of the types of declarations that Mahmoud Abbas has made saying that he is against Lebanese Palestinians gaining equal rights, including citizenship, in Lebanon, when in fact most of them would jump at the opportunity to move out of their camps and become full citizens.

Palestinian Arab leaders have continuously and consistently made decisions to limit the freedom and choice of their people, all in the name of non-existent "Palestinian unity." Their decisions usually result in increasing the misery of those they pretend to lead. And they have no compunction about representing these decisions are being what the Palestinian Arabs want - when in fact they often want the opposite.

The death of Egyptian Khaled Said

Talking about Egypt... I often visited the ranting Egyptian "Sandmonkey" and enjoyed his writings. He does not update his blog that often, so that's why I only now encountered a "new" post of him which he published on the 13th. It's... shocking:

What terrifies me is the feeling of helplessness that those victims must feel before they meet their end. The absolute certainty that someone has the power to end your life, and is doing just that, and there is nothing you can do about it. The horror of realizing that this one won't pass, that you won't live to see the morning, and that this person- if we can even call them that- sees you as nothing more than an insect that they can crush the life out of it by the heels of their shoes.

This is precisely why I didn't want to know the Story of Khaled Said, a 28 year old Alexandrian man, who got killed on the hands of two policemen a few days ago. And the story is equally disturbing and terrifying in its simplicity: He simply was sitting in a Cyber Cafe, when two policemen walked inside and demanded the ID's of everyone who was sitting there. When he refused to give it to them, they grabbed him, tied him up, dragged him out of the Cafe, took him to a nearby building where for 20 minutes they beat him to death, smashing his head on the handrail of the staircase, while he screamed and begged for his life, and as people around watched helplessly, knowing that if they did something, they would be accused of assaulting a police officer, which would pretty much guarantee them a similar fate. This went on for 20 minutes. Think about that. You are beaten to death, by those who swore to protect you, while the people in your neighborhood watched silently, and as your pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears. 28. Not yet married. Still having the rest of your life ahead of you. No More.

After the police discovered he died, they took the dead body to the Police station, where the Police Officer ordered them to throw it back on the street and call an ambulance, in order not to be held responsibly for him. When his brother- who had the american citizenship- found out, he went and confronted the head of the Police in his neighborhood, who told him that the story isn't true, and that his brother was a known drug offender and that he died from asphyxiation, for swallowing a bag of drugs when the police caught him with it.

(WARNING: it's too graphic to publish it here immediately, so I put a link)
This is Khaled after his "Asphyxiation"

When the story went out, and people saw the pictures, they were of course enraged. About a 1000 people gathered after the Friday prayers to protest in front of the police stations, and there are plans to do sit ins and demos this entire week, demanding that people take action, before they become the next Khaled.

After all the protests by Egyptians who don't buy it that he had died as a result of drugs, there will be a second autopsy. This Tuesday we will know the results.

And then the authorities are more worried about an Egyptian football player whose colleague is Israeli... makes you wonder.

(UPDATE by Elder: Apparently, Said's crime was being a whistleblower about the police themselves. He seems to have had a video showing the police dividing up a drug stash and money and talking about taking some it for themselves. The video is now going around Egypt.)

Lawsuit against Egyptian soccer star for "normalization"

From Al Arabiya (Arabic) (h/t for initial translation Ali)

Famous Egyptian lawyer, Nabih Al Wahsh, filed a lawsuit demanding that Egyptian soccer player Emad Moteab be stripped of his citizenship because of "normalization."

Moteab joined Belgian soccer club Standard Liège, whose squad includes Rami Gershon, an Israeli soccer player. Moteab signed the contract without any reservation over the fact that there is an Israeli, which created an "unprecedented situation."

The lawyer goes on to argue that Motaeb knowingly joined the Belgian team despite Egyptian hatred for Israel.

Motaeb is very popular in Egypt, having scored a last-minute goal against Algeria to bring Egypt close to World Cup competition last November.

Al Arabiya quotes a prominent Egyptian scholar Gamma al-Banna (brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, but considered much more liberal) who said that there is nothing wrong with Motaeb being on the same team as Gershon, as long as he doesn't become friends with him. Hatred for Israel is a given, he says, but asking him to not be on a team with an Israeli is going a little bit too far.

The newspaper does bring up the question of whether the Egyptian should refrain from hugging the Israeli when a goal is scored.

It's summer camp time in Gaza!

It's time for summer camp - that time of year when Hamas and Islamic Jihad can inculcate young men in the ways of murder and jihad!

Palestine Today writes that Islamic Jihad summer camps will enroll some 10,000 youngsters between the ages of 12 and 16 this year.

Hamas camps will have far more than that amount. Hamas claims that they have over 5000 campers in Gaza City alone, and they are expecting 100,000 campers altogether in 600 camps.A report about Hamas camps from two years ago can be seen here.

And how can I talk about summer camps in Gaza without showing my video, "Hello Martyr, Hello Fatah"?

Who's preparing the Second Flotilla?

The main donor of the two Second Flotilla ships, "Free journalists ship" (dubbed as the Naji Al-Ali ship) and the Mariam-ship, is no-one else than PalArab businessman Yasser Qashlaq, who recently bragged that the Second Flotilla will include more than fifty ships.

Who is Yasser Qashlaq? (also more in this video on Samar Hajj and general Mustafa Hamdan (although I could not find out what his role would be in this second flotilla event):)

And I found another video on the martyrdom wish of some of the Flotilla passengers in May (the first scenes you might have seen already):

Today's anti-semitism is brought to you by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

MEMRI quotes Ahmadinejad in a speech he gave on Wednesday:

The Jews Are "the Filthiest and Greatest of Criminals, Who [Only] Appear to Be Human"

"...Sixty years ago, they [i.e. the West] gathered the filthiest and greatest of criminals, who [only] appear to be human [i.e. the Jews] from all the corners of the earth, organized and armed them – on artificial and false pretexts, fabricating information and inventing stories [hinting at the Holocaust]. They gave [the Jews] propaganda and military backing so that they would occupy the lands of Palestine and uproot the Palestinian nation..."

Oh, he also spoke about Iran's plans for world domination and his desire to bring down the US government.

Back in 2005 and early 2006, I warned about Iran's objective and plans for literally taking over the world, not only becoming a rival superpower to the US, but of supplanting it. Those old posts hold up pretty well. I underestimated the Arab antipathy towards Ahmadinejad but if he gets the bomb, they would change sides very quickly.

Ahmadinejad has been remarkably consistent in his words and actions, and the West has simply not been able to put together an effective and unified answer. Little has changed since 2005, and that is our fault - because Iran has made its strategy plain for years.

Scenes from a Gaza supermarket, toy shop

These are screenshots from a new Al Jazeera English report on the "Gaza siege."

Truly heartbreaking.

(h/t Jed)

Girl on Syrian TV: "Allah, turn Jews into apes and pigs!"

Syria Truth reports that a Syrian TV program, called "Men of the Sun," showed a girl of no more than six years old calling on Allah to turn all Jews into apes and pigs.

The weekly program is aimed at Arab residents of the Golan Heights.

According to the article, a young girl first spoke about solidarity with Arabs in Gaza and the Golan. Then the child launched a diatribe, asking Allah to once again transform Jews into apes and pigs.

I won the weekly WoW award (updated)

For the third time in four years, I have won the weekly Watcher of Weasels award for best non-Council post of the week.

My winning post, Gaza: The “Staggering quality of the very ordinary”, was tied with Pajamas Media's I’ve Become an Enemy of the People for Speaking the Truth About Islam. The Watcher himself broke the tie in my favor. (The Council winner, also decided by tiebreaker, was Mere Rhetoric's takedown of NYT flotilla coverage, NYT: “Angry Israeli Commandos” Turned “Ship Of Protesters Into Bloodbath”.)

My previous winners are:
"Archaeological Temple Artifacts Drive PalArabs Crazy" (2006)
" Islamist strategy vs. Western tactics" (2008)

Other nominated posts over the years included:
Abbas Is Now the 'Political Wing' of Hamas
Very Interesting Arabic Editorial in Falasteen
The Perfect Weapon
Grim Milestone
The Extremism and Bigotry of PA 'Moderates'
November 1947 and Annapolis déjà vu
Rachel Corrie , the video

Thanks to Soccer Dad for the nomination and tiebreaker!

UPDATE: While on trivial topics, this blog passed the 8000 post mark recently.

UAE to deport hundreds of Palestinian Arabs

The UAE is planning to deport hundreds of Palestinian Arab teachers, to replace then with local teachers.

Some of these teachers have lived there since the 1970s.

Abu Dhabi is claiming that the reason is because of security, pointing to some ties that some teachers have with Hamas. Critics of the move dispute that accusation.

This is not the first time this has happened; last year another 350 teachers were forced to leave.

The UAE employs thousands of Palestinian Arabs, although none of them are eligible for citizenship, no matter how many years they or their children reside in the country.

Wisdom from Breath of the Beast

From Breath of the Beast:

It is a classic human tragedy, the injustice of “splitting the difference”. The Israelis are asking only for their half of the loaf- only that to which they are entitled. The Arabs are asking for the whole loaf- the destruction of Israel. To the orthodox peace-seeker who is both intimidated by violence and morally compromised by progressive ideologies such as the political realism I discussed in my last post, it seems “only fair” to split the difference and give the Arabs three quarters of the loaf. By insisting only on mere survival, the desire for peaceful coexistence and the right to protect her people while her enemies have been calling officially and working diligently for her destruction and elimination, Israel has allowed the prevailing sentiment in this debate to be pushed inexorably toward the side of her enemies.

This is the reason that Israel is the only country in the world whose “right to exist” is always in the debate. Friends constantly assert it as if it needed to be said and enemies often get away with behaving as if she doesn’t. While most people claim to believe that Israel has the right to exist and protect her citizens, more and more of them howl in protest at every attempt she makes to do so. More and more people around the world find it possible to rationalize each anti-Israel murder and terror attack as an expression of Arab passion and dedication while the bland logic and humble honesty of the Israelis are, increasingly, seen as stubbornness, bigotry and troublemaking.

Read it all.

And read the posting before it as well.

Easing the blockade does not make much a difference.

An interesting article on the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip was published today in Commentary Magazine:

Preventing Hamas from importing missiles and other sophisticated weaponry from Syria and Iran is the blockade’s primary function. There’s a secondary goal, as well, and it’s this one that has drawn the most criticism from the United Nations and Western activists. Israeli blockade-enforcement authorities have not only blocked construction materials such as cement, they’ve also been prohibiting seemingly random items like coriander, nutmeg, and musical instruments, while allowing in cinnamon, frozen meat, and medical supplies.

Critics describe the Israeli blockade as “collective punishment” against Gaza’s entire population, and it does look that way when perusing the list of prohibited items, but the items on that list aren’t outright banned. Aid organizations can import all the cement and coriander they want for reconstruction and food distribution. The restrictions only apply to private-sector importers, and even then, only “luxury” items and construction materials that can be used for military purposes are blocked.

“Humanitarian products are delivered on a daily bases to the Strip,” said the spokesman for COGAT, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “Food products are delivered almost without restriction—with the exception of luxury goods, which the average Gazan cannot afford, but which are purchased by the wealthy and corrupt leaders of Hamas.”

“Why would we want to transfer items that only Hamas members could afford?” said an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson I contacted. “International aid organizations basically get to bring in whatever they want. So if there are certain luxury food items that we wouldn’t transfer to the private sector in Gaza, the aid organizations will get them. The same applies for construction materials, which we won’t let in unless it is going to aid organizations, since we are able to know where they end up (for building houses rather than bunkers, kassams, etc.) with a higher likelihood than if they were sent in privately.”

Michael J. Totten concludes:

As most Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on aid organizations for their basic needs, they are not adversely affected by the blockade. So easing the blockade won’t help much, if it will help them at all.

UPDATE: the link to the Commentary Magazine was incorrect and directed you to an also interesting article by Evely Gordon: New Poll Shatters Myths on Gaza Blockade and Settlement Freeze. I fixed the link and it will now direct you to the right article by Michael Totten.

IHH leader tells members to throw soldiers overboard, plus more (VIDEOS)

A new video of IHH leaders exhorting members to throw the Jews into the sea: (Suzanne beat me by minutes, but graciously deleted her post when she saw mine.)

Peaceful humanitarians!

Here is another new video, taken from Israel's ITIC website, showing IHH preparations for battle, including their cutting the metal bars with specialized tools smuggled on board the ship and dividing members into teams.

Remember, the equally peaceful humanitarians from Hezbollah are planning to send ships to Gaza in the next couple of days as well.

A handy-dandy list of banned "settlement" goods

The Palestinian Authority, through a group called Karama, has a webpage that lists all known products that they are boycotting because they are supposedly manufactured by Jews on the "wrong" side of the Green Line.

The PA regularly stages public burnings of these products.

The irony, of course, is that the same factories that create these products employ thousands of Palestinian Arabs. The Barkan Industrial Area, for example, employs some 2500 Palestinian Arabs alone. (It also explodes the myth of settlers all being religious fanatics from Brooklyn: the Barkan settlement was founded and is run by secular Israelis, and it is only 25 km from Tel Aviv.)

If you want to support the right of Jews to live with full rights in their historic homeland, you should purchase these items - and we should thank the boycotters for making it easier for us to find these products.

Karama's page of banned goods is here. An English list of products, including where you can buy them in Europe, is here, courtesy of a Shiite website.

And now that Israel is adding items that can be sent to Gaza, there's a whole new market for many of these goods!