Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Press releases from Israel and US concerning Gaza

From Israel:

Prime Minister's Office - Statement

Following the Israeli Security Cabinet Meeting (June 20th 2010)

Israel’s policy is to protect its citizens against terror, rocket and other attacks from Gaza. In seeking to keep weapons and war materiel out of Gaza while liberalizing the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza, the Government of Israel has decided to implement the following steps as quickly as possible:

1. Publish a list of items not permitted into Gaza that is limited to weapons and war materiel, including problematic dual-use items. All items not on this list will be permitted to enter Gaza.

2. Enable and expand the inflow of dual-use construction materials for approved PA-authorized projects (schools, health facilities, water, sanitation, etc.) that are under international supervision and for housing projects such as the U.N. housing development being completed at Khan Yunis. Israel intends to accelerate the approval of such projects in accordance with accepted mechanisms and procedures.

3. Expand operations at the existing operating land crossings, thereby enabling the processing of a significantly greater volume of goods through the crossings and the expansion of economic activity.

4. Add substantial capacity at the existing operating land crossings and, as more processing capacity becomes necessary and when security concerns are fully addressed, open additional land crossings.

5. Streamline the policy of permitting the entry and exit of people for humanitarian and medical reasons and that of employees of international aid organizations that are recognized by the GOI. As conditions improve, Israel will consider additional ways to facilitate the movement of people to and from Gaza.

6. Israel will continue to facilitate the expeditious inspection and delivery of goods bound for Gaza through the port of Ashdod.

Israel welcomes cooperation and coordination with its international and regional partners in implementing this policy and will continue to discuss with them additional ways to advance this policy.

The current security regime for Gaza will be maintained. Israel reiterates that along with the U.S., EU and others, it considers Hamas a terrorist organization. The international community must insist on a strict adherence to the Quartet principles regarding Hamas.

Hamas took over Gaza and turned it into a hostile territory from which Hamas prepares and carries out attacks against Israel and its citizens. The Israel Defense Forces will continue to prevent the flow into and out of Gaza of terrorist operatives, weapons, war material and dual use items which enhance the military capability of Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. Israel calls on the international community to stop the smuggling of weapons and war materials into Gaza.

Gilad Shalit is approaching four years in captivity. The international community should join Israel in strongly condemning those who hold him captive and in redoubling their efforts to secure his immediate release.

From the White House:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_______________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 20, 2010

Statement by the Press Secretary on Israel’s announcement on Gaza

The President has described the situation in Gaza as unsustainable and has made clear that it demands fundamental change. On June 9, he announced that the United States was moving forward with $400 million in initiatives and commitments for the West Bank and Gaza. The President described these projects as a down payment on the U.S. commitment to the people of Gaza, who deserve a chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank. These announcements resulted from consultations with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Today, the United States welcomes the new policy towards Gaza announced by the Government of Israel, which responds to the calls of many in the international community. Once implemented, we believe these arrangements should significantly improve conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, while preventing the entry of weapons. We will work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet, and other international partners to ensure these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as possible and to explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including greater freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank. There is more to be done, and the President looks forward to discussing this new policy, and additional steps, with Prime Minister Netanyahu during his visit to Washington on July 6.

We strongly re-affirm Israel’s right to self-defense, and our commitment to work with Israel and our international partners to prevent the illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza. As we approach the fourth anniversary of the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, we call again for his immediate release, and condemn the inhumane conditions of his detention.

We believe that the implementation of the policy announced by the Government of Israel today should improve life for the people of Gaza, and we will continue to support that effort going forward. We urge all those wishing to deliver goods to do so through established channels so that their cargo can be inspected and transferred via land crossings into Gaza. There is no need for unnecessary confrontations, and we call on all parties to act responsibly in meeting the needs of the people of Gaza.

Rabbi who interviewed Helen Thomas speaks

I posted a couple of days ago the hysterical reactions from some Israel-haters that Helen Thomas was "ambushed" by an ADL operative with the specific goal of getting Helen Thomas fired.

Here's that "operative's" own words, from the WaPo:

The day began with security checks. Then to the press room. A glimpse of former president Bill Clinton scurrying by with Vice President Biden. A press conference in the East Room with President Obama. An impromptu interview with the White House's mashgiach, the supervisor of the kosher kitchen preparation. Adam and Daniel were documenting the events for their Jewish teen Web site, ShmoozePOINT.com. I was interviewing people about Israel for a feature on my Web site, RabbiLIVE.com.

I thought that if I could create videos of short anecdotes about Israel -- the food, archeology, history and personal experiences -- they might go viral on the Internet and be a nice promo campaign for the country. I had started the project just a few weeks before.

Even as a rabbi, I did not count on divine intervention.

We were on the White House front lawn when I told the teenagers that approaching us was the most famous reporter in the world -- Helen Thomas, a veteran who had covered presidents from Kennedy to Obama. We stopped her. I told Thomas that the young men were starting out in the press corps and hoped to be reporters. She kindly shared notes about journalism with us. "You'll always keep learning," she said. It was an honor.

Then I asked: "Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybody today." Like saying a password to enter a new, secret place. "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied, and "go home" to Poland and Germany. We were in.

The gentle give and take has now been broadcast, transcribed and thoroughly dissected. However, a strict transcription misses the accuracy of the audiovisual. Only in the director's cut, the video, are the nonwords, the sound, the noise, the true reaction. And that was my "oooh."

"What were you thinking when you said 'oooh,' rabbi?" asked Fox News, as did many of the other national and international media outlets that probed and jabbed for my innermost thoughts. Well, I was thinking "oooh." Oooh. Most heard it the first time. Certainly during the multitude of reruns, "oooh" became part of the song. It was a response by a rabbi to Thomas's comments, and it was from my soul.

I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.

She didn't say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.

And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, "I'm from Arab descent." That's it? That's all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents' stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?

In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I've listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it's now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It's about an ingrown, organic hate. It's a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore.

My "oooh" was the sound of the shofar ram's horn calling a loud primal tikeya, the extended ancient whole note from my very core. My existence was being erased....Can we just rip away the history of Jews in Israel like a Band-Aid, one quick motion across the centuries? Oooh.

One may disagree on fences and rights of return. There have been handshakes, summits, accords, cease-fires, negotiations and boycotts. It's all been on the table, under the table or sometimes tabled. But the connection between the Jew and Israel is valid, historical, ancient, modern, spiritual and eternal. The relationship is beyond the state of Israel. It is a unique relationship of a religion to a land. The Jews are "bnai yisroel," the children of Israel. Even when they are away, they are connected. Even during exiles and diasporas, they are connected. Even during inquisitions, pogroms and a Holocaust, they are connected.

My grandmother used to kibitz, "Friends you choose; family you're stuck with." The Jew is stuck with Israel. There is no ungluing the connection. It is beyond the ambiguous term "chosen people"; they are "the people who have no choice." It is more than a religious belief; it is a value and a moral barometer of the Earth. History, truth, integrity and the foundation of our world are not negotiable.

And this is of course the point. Thomas wasn't offering a political opinion; she was revealing an ugly hate. One cannot separate her words from the purely anti-semitic idea that Jews have no connection with Israel. Her many defenders are pretending that she was "only" speaking about the "territories" - as if that it is any less heinous to say that Jews should make the center of their historic land Judenrein - but her words and the context of her age make it clear that to her, "Palestine" is any land that is controlled by Jews in the Middle East - no more, no less.

Today's pictures of impoverished Gaza

All of a sudden, after Israel agrees to allow more goods into Gaza, wire services are showing pictures of what Gazans have easy access to. From Daylife:

Gaza supermarket - Israeli items for sale

More Israeli items for sale

Reflection of market

Gaza beach - man selling candy

Gaza beach this weekend

Flying a kite at the beach - with an interesting pattern....

Selling food on the beach

Maybe this is why there will be so many flotillas this summer - Gaza beaches look like a pretty nice place to be. (Until the women want to wear swimsuits; then things can get ugly....)

(h/t Backspin)

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.