Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 24, 2010

More light shed on Lebanese mistreatment of PalArabs

The law of unintentional consequences seems to be unbroken...

Last week, the Lebanese parliament debated whether to give Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon a smattering of rights. Of course, no citizenship or anything crazy like that, just whether they should be able to buy property. Christians were against it, Sunni Muslims were for it, and the idea was tabled for now.

The incentive for the sudden interest in improving the lives of Arabs with Palestinian ancestry in Lebanon? It was the realization that if the world cared about PalArab rights in Gaza because of the flotilla, they might wake up to sixty years of abuse by the Lebanese.

(For example, Lebanon forbade Palestinian Arabs in the Lebanese camps to do any construction altogether - even nails were banned - from the mid-90s to a few years ago.)

Even though some have known about how Lebanon mistreats its Palestinian Arab population for years, this realization never quite reached the mainstream Western world, as any complaints were always drowned out by the much louder war chants against Israel coming from that same vicinity of the planet.

But now that the Lebanese parliament has broached the subject, Comment is Free teaches its readers that Israel is not the only evil nation in the area:

The Arab world is rife with hypocrisy when it comes to the Palestinian issue. Arab leaders frequently and rightly cite the chronic human rights violations in which Israel engages, but fail to address the marginalisation of Palestinians within their own societies. Historically, Lebanese citizens have declared that naturalising Palestinians will act as a disincentive to their eventual repatriation and the exercise of their inviolable right of return. But this is a specious and cynical misrepresentation of the issue.

First, many diaspora Palestinians who have been naturalised in foreign countries, including myself, still seek to return to Palestine. Second, an individual ought to have the right to lead a complete and fulfilling life in his/her country of birth, irrespective of national or racial identity; it is not up to the Arab leaders to safeguard the Palestinian right of return against the prospect of a meaningful life lived outside Palestine.

Sounds like stuff I've been saying for years! Arab leaders, in the name of "unity," take away the free will of every Palestinian Arab to choose to become a citizen of other countries. As I mentioned earlier this year,

In the 1950s, Lebanon offered citizenship to many Christian Palestinians as well as Muslims who could prove Lebanese ancestry, and some 50,000 people jumped at the offer. A loophole that opened up in 1994 that offered citizenship was equally pounced upon and tens of thousands more became Lebanese citizens - many even falsifying papers - before that loophole was closed.

This is proof that the leaders are not conforming to the wishes of the people whose rights they are pretending to protect.

If you want to make a "pro-Palestinian activist" nervous, ask her one simple question: "Do you publicly support the right of Palestinians to become citizens of Arab countries if they choose to?" If you hear a sputtering response about "unity" and "compromising the right of return," you know that you are dealing with someone who doesn't give a damn about Palestinian Arabs.

The hypocrisy of those who pretend to love Palestinian Arabs is stark. It is sad that it takes a Palestinian Arab from America to notice exactly how much the Arab world discriminates against their Palestinian brethren - and how no one says a word.

(h/t bc)

Amnesty contradicts itself on definition of "occupation"

Amnesty International consistently refers to the Gaza Strip as "occupied" and Israel as the "occupying power." For example, in a recent press release, it says

After Hamas took control in Gaza in June 2007, the existing Israeli policy of closure was tightened to a blockade restricting the entry of food, fuel, and other basic goods....

As the occupying power, Israel bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza.

So in the case of Israel, Amnesty (and others) consider a closure of a territory over most of its borders to be "occupation."

Yet after the US and UK invaded Iraq, Amnesty in 2003 published a guide about the definition and legalities of a belligerent occupation. See how that definition, based on the Hague conventions, apply to Gaza:

The definition of belligerent occupation is given in Article 42 of the Hague Regulations:

"Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised."

The sole criterion for deciding the applicability of the law on belligerent occupation is drawn from facts: the de facto effective control of territory by foreign armed forces coupled with the possibility to enforce their decisions, and the de facto absence of a national governmental authority in effective control. If these conditions are met for a given area, the law on belligerent occupation applies. Even though the objective of the military campaign may not be to control territory, the sole presence of such forces in a controlling position renders applicable the law protecting the inhabitants. The occupying power cannot avoid its responsibilities as long as a national government is not in a position to carry out its normal tasks.

The international legal regime on belligerent occupation takes effect as soon as the armed forces of a foreign power have secured effective control over a territory that is not its own. It ends when the occupying forces have relinquished their control over that territory.

The question may arise whether the law on occupation still applies if new civilian authorities set up by the occupying power from among nationals of the occupied territories are running the occupied territory’s daily affairs. The answer is affirmative, as long as the occupying forces are still present in that territory and exercise final control over the acts of the local authorities.

In the first quote from Amnesty above, it is clear that they recognize that Hamas has taken over Gaza. By their own definitions, which are very clear in the case of Iraq, "occupation" occurs only is when the outside army has physical control of the territory on the ground, and when it can override the decisions taken by the local authorities.

Any way you look at it, Gaza is not under the "authority" of the IDF and such authority over Gaza cannot be exercised by the IDF without a return of a physical presence. If Gaza is considered occupied because Israel has the ability to control its own border with a hostile territory, then Israel must have been "occupied" by its neighbors before 1977 because they also controlled their own borders and stopped any trade with Israel. The idea is absurd, and has no basis in international law.

In fact, Amnesty goes on in its 2003 guide to demand specific responsibilities of the US and UK in Iraq, responsibilities that it would be loathe to request Israel perform in Gaza. These include maintaining law and order, protecting civilians from being tortured or coerced, and other provisions that necessitate an actual physical presence in the territory. (Goldstone's legal arguments were even more bizarre.)

Amnesty's definition of occupation given in 2003 is quite accurate and fully in agreement with the Hague definitions. When it changes that definition concerning Israel in Gaza, it is engaging in blatant hypocrisy.

"The One About the UN"

From No Laughing Matter, the people who brought you videos about Hamas and Iran, comes their dig at the UN:

(h/t Silke)

UNRWA's 1951 report: The beginnings of a welfare culture

As a follow-up to my post on the 1950 UNRWA report, here are some highlights from the 1951 report.

5.... In the large towns such as Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, there was, in addition, a fairly large floating population of unskilled labourers, working in the ports, or for the oil companies, who had migrated from the country owing to the pressure on the land. Since the last census under the Mandate was taken, as far back as 1931, such persons were mostly registered in their village of origin, although for many years they had lived and worked in the large towns. The effect of this unrecorded movement of population has been to introduce a double source of error into any estimates of the number of persons who could have become refugees; since more people came out of towns in Israeli-held territory than were registered there and fewer people were actually living in the villages of the area which was later annexed to Jordan.

Here is another source of error of counting the numbers of refugees: People who really lived in Jordan and the West Bank would work in the coastal cities for much of the year. They fled along with the other Arabs, but they had homes to go to. Even so, they seem to have been counted as "refugees" anyway.

15. Today, after nearly three years, the refugees are still scattered over 100,000 square miles of territory in five different countries; still dependent on relief and without knowledge of the future; the victims of circumstances they are unable to grasp. Legally, humanly and economically speaking, they are little better off than they were when they first left Palestine, since against the sporadic and low-paid work that some of them have found must be set the exhaustion of the resources that others managed to bring out. No government, except in Jordan, has proclaimed their right to stay.

28. The number of refugees housed in UNRWAPRNE camps has risen by some twenty per cent since May 1950, and is still rising. Many thousands of new applications are received each month. These originate from (I) families who have hitherto managed to maintain themselves in lodgings but are now too poor to pay the rent however small; (II) new arrivals from Israel; (III) refugees who have been evicted for quarrelling with the villagers or for cutting down the fruit trees for fuel; and, lately (IV), some considerable movement of the population in the search of water, particularly in Jordan, as a result of the severe drought that has dried up wells and cisterns.

Why were there new arrivals from Israel in 1950 and 1951? I am not aware of any expulsions or mass flight during that time period; on the contrary, as I showed in the previous post, Israel bent over backwards to accommodate the refugees and displaced persons. My only guess is that some Arabs either wanted to go to the same camps as their families; they were disgusted at the idea of living in a Jewish state; or they decided that it would be better to move to a camp with free lodging, education and medical care than to try to find jobs in Israel.

This next section is probably the most accurate description of how Palestinian Arab refugees thought, written before UNRWA became hopelessly corrupt:

(c) The morale of the refugee

32. Owing to his intense individualism, the refugee has little sense of solidarity with his fellows. The concept of giving increased relief to the very needy is incomprehensible to him, making it very difficult for the Agency to distribute welfare goods to special cases. In the same way, much persuasion is necessary before he is willing to contribute labour for the greater good of the camp, or even for mending his own tent, unless he is paid for it.

In 1951, Arabs from Palestine exhibited zero sense of nationalism or unity. The idea that they self-identified with a nation called Palestine is a joke. To be sure, they were attached to their homes, but these ties were familial and tribal, not national. As we saw during the 1948 war, Palestinian Arabs would not fight for any other villages besides their own.

33. To his natural individualistic tendencies has now been added the characteristics of the typical refugee mentality, and its passive expectation of continued benefits. In the crowded and abnormal existence that the refugee leads, moral values tend to deteriorate and the authority of the head of the family, which would formerly have kept such behaviour in check, has seriously declined; yet, in spite of this, he has retained his inherent dignity to a remarkable degree.

A welfare state generates laziness. To be sure, many Palestinian Arabs took the initiative and started finding jobs; tens of thousands moved to Gulf states in the 1950s and helped build countries there from scratch. However, the camps tended to attract the ones who felt a sense of entitlement, and they in turn bred more of the same. This mentality infested UNRWA itself over the years, as the agency lost interest in finding jobs for the PalArabs.

34. It is probably true to say that the refugees are physically better off than the poorest levels of the population of the host countries; and in some cases better off, in the way of social services, than they were in Palestine; but, in their minds, the overwhelming fact of being uprooted from their homes, dependent and yet insecure, is more than enough to cancel out these benefits.

The mentality can be understood in 1951, but the fact that it has become institutionalized today is one of the greatest failings of UNRWA. The report mentions a number of times how its services were very attractive to neighboring Arabs who were not directly affected by the war.

35. The United Nations, in particular certain of the great Powers, are considered by the refugee to be entirely responsible for both his past and present misfortunes, and for his future fate. They say that they have lost faith in United Nations action since, after more than thirty months, the General Assembly resolution recommending their return home, although not revoked, has never been implemented and no progress has been made towards compensation.

36. The relief given by the Agency is therefore considered as a right, and as such is regarded as inadequate. Individual efforts to explain the situation to them are usually in vain; the refugee will listen politely but in the end remains convinced both of the bitter injustice done to him, and the fact that little or nothing is being done to rectify it.

37. The desire to go back to their homes is general among all classes; it is proclaimed orally at all meetings and organized demonstrations, and, in writing, in all letters addressed to the Agency and all complaints handed in to the area officers. Many refugees are ceasing to believe in a possible return, yet this does not prevent them from insisting on it, since they feel that to agree to consider any other solution would be to show their weakness and to relinquish their fundamental right, acknowledged even by the General Assembly. They are, moreover, sceptical of the promised payment of compensation.

38. This sense of injustice, frustration and disappointment has made the refugee irritable and unstable. There are occasional strikes, demonstrations and small riots. There have been demonstrations over the census operation, strikes against the medical and welfare services, strikes for cash payment instead of relief, strikes against making any improvements, such as school buildings, in camps in case this might mean permanent resettlement; experimental houses to replace tents, erected by the Agency, have been torn down; and for many months, in Syria and Lebanon, there was widespread refusal to work on agency road-building and afforestation schemes.

This mentality became institutionalized, and eventually accepted by the UN. The nadir of the same counterproductive thinking that caused the 1951 refugees to tear down houses may have occurred in 1977, with UN Resolution 32/90, in response to Israel's having built permanent housing for Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The resolution called on Israel to return the Arabs to the camps rather than let them have real homes, thus showing how important the perpetuation of the "refugee" problem had become to the UN itself thirty years after it had started.

39. This then is rich and tempting soil for exploitation by those with other motives than the welfare of the refugee. Happily, there are defences that blunt this effort. There are enduring religious defences and there still exist resistant strengths of communal ties and leadership. There are sustaining services of food, shelter, health and education from many sources. There are refugees who left no assets in Palestine. There are refugees who wish to live in Arab countries. There are refugees who have sought and found new roots.

The refugees who no longer needed to be on the UN dole were therefore ignored in future reports, and the idea that all Palestinian Arabs are needy refugees became the conventional wisdom in part since UNRWA had no responsibility for the many who actually took control of their lives.

A car accident. A woman injured. Medics must transport her in an ambulance to a more modern facility to properly treat her. Then, they return back to their home hospital, knowing that they have done a good job in helping a human being become whole again.

But before the medics can resume their jobs, the ambulance is stopped by a higher authority.

Our Saudi heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice notice the ambulance, and when they see red, it is not from the flashing lights.

They see nurses sitting in the front seat.

Female nurses!

As everyone knows, this is an illegal mixing of the sexes, known as "khulwa."

Our heroes chased the ambulance and overtook it, forcing the driver and passengers to exit while they could interrogate them.

For an hour and a half.

After explaining the heinousness of their crime, the Muttawa/Hai'a allowed the medical workers to go on their way. Of course, the women were forced to sit in the rear.

The perpetrators were lucky, though. Firas Press reports that our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice uncovered another case of khulwa recently - a party where there were 11 men and 4 women together in the same room.

A Saudi court sentenced the party-goers, aged in their 20s and 30s, to 1-2 years of prison time and up to 80 lashes.

Jewish dance group attacked in Germany

Not by neo-nazis, but:

A group of mainly Muslim children and young people of Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian origin threw stones at dance group of the liberal Jewish congregation at a party in the district Sahlkamp in Hannover last Saturday. So far the police identified two suspects: a 14 year old German and a 19 year old North African.

They link the attack and anti-Semitic tendencies in Germany by these groups directly to the flotilla incident. But why do Iranians, Lebanese and North-Africans actually care? Don't tell me that they actually are just anti-Semitic? And the left buys their hatred when they misinterpret it for sincere criticism against Israel.

But did the Left ever ask themselves why these Muslim children and young people of Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian and North African origin do not care about NEDA, e.g.? Because they don't care about freedom, tolerance, (real!) human rights, and peace. And THAT should actually concern the Left.

Jordanians aghast at "Made in Israel" graduation gowns

Firas Press reports that students at Hashemite University in Jordan were upset when they saw the words "Made in Israel" on the outside of their graduation gowns.

The university investigated and claims that maybe the plastic bags the gowns were in were made in Israel, but not the robes, as Israeli clothing is much more expensive than Jordanian. The investigation continues.

This is the second blow that the university has suffered vis a vis Israel in the past year. It was also accused of cooperating with Ben Gurion University on a water desalination project. University officials defended themselves, saying that it was really a Cornell University project and that they never met with their Ben Gurion counterparts, and it was merely a technical project and not political.

A small victory: Hamas TV yanked from European satellite

Today, the European Noorsat satellite will stop relaying programs from Hamas' Al Aqsa TV.

From the Al Qassam website:

Al-Aqsa Satellite channel has announced that it would stop broadcasting via the French Noorsat satellite as of 8 pm Thursday after failure of negotiations with the French government.

Samir Mohsen, director of programs in Al-Aqsa, told the PIC on Wednesday evening that the channel would continue to broadcast on the Arabsat satellite.

The bureau urged Egypt to host Al-Aqsa on Nilesat in its capacity as a committed national, Arab channel.

The decision was made last week, as AP reported:

A France-based satellite provider is halting broadcasts of the Hamas TV channel to Europe and parts of the Arab world because of concerns that it spreads incitement, a station official said Tuesday.

The decision will deprive Gaza-based al-Aqsa TV of most of its viewers, said the channel's head, Hazem Sharawy.

The Hamas station — best known for its children's programs glorifying violence against Israel — is the centerpiece of a growing media operation of Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers. Losing the satellite provider will hamper the group's attempts to spread its message and raise funds abroad.

The decision to cut off the Hamas station came six years after a similar move by France and the U.S. against al-Manar, the channel of Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

In Paris, Eutelsat spokeswoman Vanessa O'Connor said that last week the French broadcasting regulator CSA ordered it to stop beaming the Hamas channel into Europe by June 26. Al-Aqsa TV is part of a package of channels transmitted by Bahrain-based satellite operator Noorsat, which passes them in a single signal to Eutelsat, O'Connor said.

Since this was written by AP's Ibrahim Barzak, you can expect that the story would downplay how bad Al Aqsa TV is:

In the past, Israel and others have repeatedly accused al-Aqsa TV of inciting against Israel, especially in children's programs.

One of its most criticized programs, Tomorrow's Pioneers, once featured a high-pitched Mickey Mouse rip-off called "Farfour" who encouraged children to fight against the occupiers of Muslim countries, while taking calls from kids who were praised for singing about fighting Israel.

After a wave of criticism, the station killed off Farfour with mock-Israeli soldiers beating him to death. But it has not toned down the message of its children's programs.

Al Aqsa TV was more than just inciting against Israel - it was blatantly anti-semitic, as it broadcasted many Friday sermons talking about how evil Jews were.

And the children's Pioneers of Tomorrow show also had no compunction about talking about Jews. I made a satirical video about it once, which showed some of the things broadcast:

AP goes on:

Hamas sees media outreach as a vital part of the movement's success.

It has another television channel that broadcasts from Lebanon, several affiliated Web sites, a radio station, a glossy magazine for its military wing and two newspapers printed in Gaza. The militant group has also produced a movie glorifying one their militants and created animations boasting about their capture of an Israeli soldier held for the last four years in Gaza.

Why does Israel not have a satellite channel that broadcasts to Europe and the US?

UNRWA's fascinating 1950 report

UNRWA's first report on its progress, A/1451/Rev.1, is a fascinating document on many levels. It describes its progress in the first six months of its existence.

Here are some excerpts:

HISTORY

6. When UNRPR was set up by the General Assembly, it was presumably with the idea that the problem would be resolved in a matter of months. During the summer of 1949 it became obvious that some other approach was needed, and the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East was dispatched to study and report on conditions and to make recommendations concerning future activity. After three months of exhaustive study in the field, the Mission's interim report to the General Assembly in November 1949(1) recommended the creation of a new agency, which would not only carry out relief on a diminishing scale, but would inaugurate a works programme in which able-bodied refugees could become self-supporting and at the same time create works of lasting benefit to the refugees and the countries concerned. The recommendations of the report were embodied in resolution 302 (IV) which provided for the setting up of UNRWAPRNE. The final report signed in Paris in December covered the subject comprehensively and has been accepted by the Agency as its guide.2

UNRWA did not intend at first to be a permanent agency. It really tried to provide jobs for the Palestinian Arabs and to work with Arab governments to help integrate them. The Arabs' recalcitrance is the single major reason we still have so many "refugees" today, and after a few years UNRWA gave up and turned into a giant, self-perpetuating welfare system.

NUMBERS OF REFUGEES

16. The Agency has accepted as realistic the figures set forth in appendix B of the first interim report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission, but recognizes that the numbers have increased in conformity with the extremely high birthrate of the refugees. There is reason to believe that births are always registered for ration purposes, but deaths are often, if not usually, concealed so that the family may continue to collect rations for the deceased.

17...The figures for Lebanon (128,000) are confused due to the fact that many Lebanese nationals along the Palestinian frontier habitually worked most of the year on the farms or in the citrus groves of Palestine. With the advent of war they came back across the border and claimed status as refugees. Only an exhaustive and expensive census, now under way although ardently opposed by those concerned, will divide worthy from false claimants.

18. The former Trans-Jordan and the portion of Palestine remaining in Arab hands and now annexed to the Hashimite Kingdom of the Jordan received the greatest influx of refugees of any of the countries adjacent to Israel -- probably more than half of all the refugees. For various reasons, the largest number of fictitious names on the ration lists pertain to refugees in this area. All earlier attempts at a close census of those entitled to relief have been frustrated, but a comprehensive survey, now under way, is achieving worthwhile results in casting up names of dead people for which rations are still drawn, fraudulent claims regarding numbers of dependents (it is alleged that it is a common practice for refugees to hire children from other families at census time), and in eliminating duplications where families have two or more ration cards. The census, though stubbornly resisted, will eliminate many thousands from the lists of refugees now in receipt of rations.

19. Unauthorized movement between camps, and sometimes across international boundaries, as well as deep-rooted reluctance of refugees to reveal personal information to census-takers, make it very difficult to obtain accurate statistics concerning them.

As far as I know, the census was never completed and the problems of exaggerated numbers of refugees remain, even today. A sense of entitlement will turn many people into lazy opportunists, and if they have no disincentive to act that way this behavior gets passed on to the next generation, and the following ones as well.

MORALE

26. Strangely enough the general morale of the refugees is higher than might be expected after spending more than two years in exile under most trying conditions. Real trouble-makers are confined to a very small proportion of the total number of refugees, and food strikes and work stoppages are generally considered to be the result of organized pressure groups.

27. During August, a campaign of bitter criticism of the Agency, its motives and personnel, was carried on in a large section of the Arab Press. The rather unvaried monotony of the charges gave indication of central inspiration. An organized series of work stoppages occurred in Lebanon in early September wherein small groups threatened the workers in such a manner that they declined to work for a time. The Syrian office of the Agency, located in Damascus, was destroyed by explosives and a bomb was thrown at a truckload of workers in Lebanon. Threats of violence have been made against individual employees of the Agency. It seems likely that the two campaigns--denunciations in certain sections of the Arab Press and violence--are closely related and spring from the same source which fostered the food strikes in the early days of the Agency.

Arab governments in general considered UNRWA the enemy, and they did everything possible to thwart any chance of solving the refugee crisis, instead wanting to use the refugees as pawns to pressure Israel. This attitude has not changed in sixty years.

REFUGEES IN ISRAEL

30. In Israel, the Agency has provided relief to two types of refugees, Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting, and Arabs in most instances displaced from one area in Palestine to another. Jewish refugees at first numbered 17,000 but, during the current summer, all but 3,000 of these have been absorbed into the economic life of the new State. Arabs on relief were first numbered at 31,000 but many have been placed in circumstances in which they are self-supporting, so that it was possible to reduce the number to 24,000 at the end of August 1950.

31. Recent discussions with the Israel Government indicate that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant to it, and the Agency was informed that already many of the 24,000 remaining refugees were employed and that all able-bodied refugees desiring employment could be absorbed on works projects if they would register at the government registry offices for that purpose. It was stated that they all have status as citizens of Israel and are entitled to treatment as such. It was claimed that after cessation of relief, aged and infirm refugees would be cared for under the normal social welfare machinery of Israel. The Agency was requested to share financially in a programme of re-establishment of displaced Arabs now within the boundaries of Israel.

How great a contrast is there between how Israel treated its Arab refugees and how the Arab nations did! Within a short time after the war, Israel managed to fully integrate every single Arab refugee as citizens (and they eventually allowed tens of thousands more to come into Israel for family re-unification.) Not only did Israel inform the UNRWA that its services would not be needed for long, but said that the very idea of an outside agency taking responsibility for its Arab citizens is repugnant!

So while the number of Arab claimants for UNRWA services went down from 31,000 to zero in a relatively short time, in every Arab country those numbers only increased.

Fully half of the report deals with specific works projects that were attempted to allow the refugees to find jobs. As we now know, most of these projects went nowhere because of fears by Arab countries that their Palestinian Arab brethren would want to actually stay in their countries as equal citizens.

The appendix of charity organizations and NGOs that contributed to help the Palestinian Arabs does not mention a single Muslim charity.

UNRWA just had a meeting where they described their financial problems in providing services - works programs are now tiny initiatives run by UNRWA itself, and in many ways UNRWA itself is a Palestinian Arab work program as it employs many descendants of refugees. It has become rabidly anti-Israel and intensely political.Even though there are far more "refugees" today than could ever fit in a nascent "Palestine," UNRWA still refuses to request that Arab governments do their part to reduce the number of stateless Arabs.

Jordan hosts some 41% of all "refugees" today. Yet Jordan was the only Arab country to extend citizenship to non-Jewish Palestinians. One must wonder, why there are still refugee camps in Jordan 62 years after 1948? The vast majority of camp residents are full Jordanian citizens! Yet, because UNRWA is now a mere self-perpetuating technocracy, Jordan has no incentive to integrate these citizens into its population even today - 60 years after Israel did exactly that.

PJTV - Richard Landes interviews Itamar Marcus

Check out this video that describes how Palestinian Arab leaders speak differently in English to Western audiences and in Arabic to their own people.

Richard Landes, of the Augean Stables blog and now also a correspondent for PJTV, interviews Itamar Marcus, director and founder of Palestinian Media Watch.

How many lies can Arab News fit in one article?

The (Saudi) Arab News started up a new section called "Gaza Bleeds," where it throws all pretense of journalist objectivity out the window.

One article it reproduces is a list of "records" that Israel supposedly has broken. Included are some statistics that are complete fiction, like Israel had deported 4 million refugees, or that it was "established upon the ruins of another nation that it destroyed; Palestine," or that Israel uses depleted uranium bombs, or that Israel has developed "abortion efficient, infant killing tear gas"...you get the idea.

Since everyone knows what monsters Israelis are, then all of these "facts" must be true by definition.

Another fictional article on the page quotes Iran's PressTV about a "secret CIA memo" that forecasts Israel's destruction that is equally fictitious.

It is important to read, though, because most Arab news sites try to pretend that they are objective and fact-based. Here, we see what Arabs really say to each other and to ignorant Westerners about Israel when no one is around to call them on it. These are the sorts of "statistics" and "facts" that we can expect are being bandied about in closed-door meetings on European and American college campuses; in private Free Gaza and Viva Palestina mailing lists, and on Arabic message boards and blogs. It is rare for the public face of English-language Arab journalism to be exposed this explicitly, but you can be sure that the anomaly is the exposure, not the dissemination.

The Aish.com sweepstakes to win a trip to Israel is almost over.

Second prize is an Apple iPad, which is now legal to use in Israel.

Click here to enter.

Full disclosure: For every entry done through this blog, I get a chance to win as well.

Egyptian coroner finds dead whistleblower died by "accident"

Suzanne mentioned the case of Khaled Said, the young Egyptian man who was abducted by police from a cafe and then beaten to death in front of witnesses.

Even though we have pictures of him that show he was beaten, the Egyptian coroner had initially pronounced that he died of "asphyxiation."

Well, human rights groups demanded an investigation, and guess what - the coroner agrees with the other coroner!

After performing a second autopsy on the body of 28-year-old Khaled Saeed, the young man from Alexandria allegedly beaten to death by police on 6 June, state coroners concluded that the victim had died of asphyxiation rather than as a result of police brutality, as is claimed by human rights activists.

According to a preliminary report, the second examination of the body--exhumed following demands by human rights watchdogs for a second autopsy--reconfirmed that Saeed had choked to death on a "foreign body." The report goes on to identify the "foreign body" in question as a packet of Marijuana, which had lodged in the victim's throat and prevented him from breathing. The report strongly suggests that the death had been accidental.

According to witnesses interviewed earlier by Al-Masry Al-Youm, Saeed had been forcefully searched by two police officers before being removed from a local Internet cafe in Alexandria. Witnesses say he was subsequently beaten to death on the sidewalk as passersby looked on.

Initial reports said the officers had demanded money from the victim. Members of Saeed's family, for their part, say the young man had been targeted because he possessed video footage of police officers engaging in drug deals.

Like the first examination, ordered by Attorney-General Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, the second autopsy brushed aside claims by human rights groups that the victim had been savagely beaten to death at the hands of police officers.

The second autopsy, performed by an independent, three-man committee appointed by official forensic authorities, "noted" the injuries, but concluded they had been sustained when police officers attempted to "control" the victim as he resisted arrest. "The injuries are light, and were not the cause of death," reads the report, which was sent to Alexandria prosecutors this afternoon. The report goes on to assert that examinations had revealed the presence of the drug Tramadol in Saeed's intestinal organs.

Leaked pictures of Saeed's dead body show his face bruised and badly shattered after the fatal encounter with police. His lips are cut and bloody, dangling over an obviously dislocated jaw. Eyewitnesses previously confirmed to Al-Masry Al-Youm that the beating Saeed received by police had been "excessive."

Last week, Muhammad Abdel Aziz, a lawyer with the Cairo-based El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, said that Saeed's head had hit a marble table during an initial assault inside the cafe, after which the young man was subject to an even more savage beating outside. “He screamed at them, saying, ‘I'm dying, leave me,' before falling to the floor,” said Abdel Aziz.

Family denies death of Hezbollah militant in Pakistan

I quoted Earth Times on Monday saying that a UN drone strike in Pakistan killed a Hezbollah member, Mohammed Ali Hamadi.

It turns out that this person is a well-known terrorist. He is (or was) one of the hijackers of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, along with, Imad Mugniyah, when a US Navy diver was killed. He is on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list.

His family is being quoted in Al Quds al-Arabi that he was not killed or that he was even in Pakistan but they are not saying where he is. Hezbollah has been silent on the matter.

World Cup: US vs. Algeria's Jewish goaltender (updated)

The Algerian goaltender in the US/Algeria game being played right now is Raïs M'Bohli, who I mentioned last month was being slammed by Algerian fans for not being a real Algerian - because his Algerian mother is Jewish and he was raised in France.

So far, he has made some nice saves.

UPDATE: The US won, no signs of any riots, M'Bohli did an excellent job, and he denies being Jewish.
(h/t research)