Nasrallah backs down in face of Lebanese pressure

We mentioned that a speech made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday caused an uproar in Lebanon. Among other things, Nasrallah accused the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, charged to investigate the murder of former prime minister Hariri, as working for Zionist interests. It is widely assumed that the STL will indict Hebollah members in the plot.

Lebanese politicians slammed Nasrallah for such a slur.

Now, Nasrallah has changed his tune, and says that he knows that "some undisciplined members of Hezbollah may be indicted by STL but not the party."

The plot to kill Hariri was well-planned, and of course Hezbollah had every reason to want to get rid of him. The idea that a rogue Hezbollah group managed to plan and execute the operation without other Hezbollah members knowing is simply ridiculous.

We will see if the tribunal will have the guts to mention Hezbollah, but since something like that could ignite a civil war, they might very well accept this face-saving attempt by Nasrallah as a way out. This way Hezbollah continues its stranglehold on Lebanese politics and military, Lebanon doesn't get sucked into another war and everyone wins.

Except for the Lebanese, of course.

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The story of Hayim Farhi - and the first Jewish-led army of modern times

A recent auction of American Judaica did very well, with many pieces getting triple the expected price.

One such item:

A beautifully bound copy of Joseph Schwarz’s Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine, Philadelphia, 1850. Translated by Isaac Leeser, this was Leeser’s personal copy accompanied by correspondence with the author. It realized a premium price of $68,880, more than tripling its estimate of $20,000-25,000

The book is available on Google Books and elsewhere, and it contains a fascinating story I was not aware of about Hayim Farhi of Acre.

Wikipedia has a much more readable account, so here is a mix of Wikipedia's and Schwartz's narratives:

Haim Farhi was born to a respected and ancient Jewish family in Damascus. His father Saul had established a banking business that flourished to the extent that it expanded to control Syria's finances, banking and foreign trade for nearly a century.[6][7]

He, and other family members worked as financial agents[8] (Turkish sarraf)[9] throughout the Damascus district, and contemporary sources often mention them as the 'real rulers of Syria'.[10]

They may also have mediated between the Jewish community and the law. They tried to alleviate the tax burden placed on the Jews of Safed. Haim Farhi succeeded his father as banker of the ruler of Damascus. He gained extensive influence with the Turkish government and became the adviser to Ahmad al-Jazzar, the ruler of Acre, probably thanks to his intrigues that led to the execution of the previous advisor, Mikhail Sakruj, a Christian merchant from Shfa'Amr.[11]

Al-Jazzar recognized his administrator's talents, acted upon his counsel, and provided relief, at Farhi's request, from the heavy taxation placed on the Jewish community.

Al-Jazzar was, nonetheless, a violent and cruel individual whose title 'al-Jazzar' means 'The Butcher'. He would often find a pretext to lash out in savage assaults and harm Farhi and others. In fact, al-Jazzar had his adviser's eye plucked out, cut off the tip of his nose, and severed his left ear.[12] A famous illustration of those days shows al-Jazzar sitting in judgment in front of his Jewish adviser, who is wearing an eye patch.

It was during the reign of al-Jazzar, in 1799, that the French general and future Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte tried to conquer the Damascus governorate. In February Napoleon and his army arrived from the south, captured Jaffa and massacred 2,000 Turkish prisoners. They then moved north, captured Haifa and the Jezreel Valley and laid siege to Acre. Al-Jazzar's troops, refusing to surrender, withstood the siege for one and a half months. A British naval force under the command of Admiral Sidney Smith came to the town's defense, and an artillery expert from the fleet, Antoine DePhelipoux, redeployed against Napoleon's forces artillery pieces which the British had intercepted from the French at sea.

Farhi played a key role in the city's defense. As al-Jazzar's adviser and right hand man, he directly supervised how the battle against the siege was run. At the culmination of the assault, the besieging forces managed to make a breach in the walls. After suffering many casualties to open an entry-point, Napoleon's soldiers found, on trying to penetrate the city, that Farhi and DePhelipoux had, in the meantime, built a second wall, several feet deeper within the city where al-Jazzar's garden was.

Discovery of this new construction convinced Napoleon and his men that the probability of their taking the city was minimal. The siege was raised and Napoleon withdrew to Egypt.

After the death of al-Jazzar in 1804, his son Sulayman Pasha succeeded to the Pashalik of Akko. Under him, the Jews enjoyed, according to one traveller, 'perfect religious freedom', and were relieved of the substantial fines they were frequently compelled to pay under al-Jazzar, and were obliged to pay only the customary kharadj.

Pharchi had a distinguished Mahomedan friend, who died suddenly, with his wife, and left quite a young child, only a few years old, called Abdalla, who was without any protectors, and was therefore educated in the house of the noble Pharchi, who viewed him as his own child, and had him instructed in all the necessary scientific branches; and in addition to this, Pharchi caused that Abdalla was appointed Pacha of Akko, after the decease of Seliman. He at first viewed Pharchi as his father, and followed his guidance to execute justice and equity in the land. But as early as one year after assuming the government, he commenced to act counter to this advice and instruction, and was reproved occasionally on this account by his venerable guardian. Abdalla now observed that he stood in his way, and that he would be a check on the exercise of his mere will and pleasure, and resolved therefore to get rid of him. He  endeavoured first secretly to accuse him of treason and other charges, to find thus an  opportunity to lay violent hands on him. The confidants of Pharchi revealed to him the terrible purpose of his ungrateful ward, and advised him to save himself by flight. But he declined  doing this, and he answered magnanimously that his flight would call down on all the Israelites of Palestine the greatest persecution, and might indeed cause their entire extermination, since the Pacha might be induced through his escaping, to wreak his fury on this innocent people. He added, that he was prepared for everything, and would bear patiently whatever might  occur, in order to save thereby, or at least to benefit in some degree, his own people.

Now it happened, on Thursday, the 28th of Ab, 5579 (August, 1817) [1820 in Wikipedia], which the pious Pharchi kept as a fast day (as the eve of the New Moon of the month Elul), and as he was about to take his supper, that an officer with his soldiers suddenly entered his apartment; his death-warrant was read to him, in which he was condemned on account of treason, and with the offence that his private Synagogue was built higher than the mosque of Akko, and several other diabolical charges and crimes; and this sentence was instantly executed. 

The day following his house and court-yard were ransacked and plundered, and a large quantity of gold, money, silver, and other valuable articles were carried to the Pacha, the monster and parricide. The corpse of this martyr he did not even permit to be interred, but ordered it to be cast into the sea; and when, the day following, it was carried again on shore, he ordered it to be taken out far into the sea, and then to be thrown into the water. The pious widow of Pharchi fled in all haste towards Damascus, but died suddenly on the road, and was buried in Zafed; and suspicion was entertained that she had been poisoned by the furies who surrounded the Pacha.

Abdallah then compelled the Jews of Acre and Safed to pay in full all the back taxes they would have owed had they not been exempted, through Farhi's good offices, from paying over the years.


This deed of terror excited universal consternation and mortal fear in all Palestine, especially among the Israelites; and the parricide now showed himself openly as the persecutor of the Jews in the Holy Land, and exercised such acts of violence and abomination among them, as are not perpetrated by cannibals and savages.

Here, Schwartz details some more specific atrocities that Abdalla visited upon the Jewish community; read the original for details.

Already this is a gripping tale, showing great Jewish influence in the Ottoman Empire as well as great antipathy on the part of some leaders. The two stories of how Al Jazzar maimed Hayim Farhi while he was his adviser, and especially of how Abdallah almost immediately turned against his Jewish step-father as soon as he became Pasha, are fascinating and more than a little scary. It shows that even though Jews rose to political heights under Muslim rule, their hold on power was always tenuous and second-class.

But the next part is, in some ways, even more compelling:

In Damascus dwelt the three brothers of the martyr Pharchi; they were the most distinguished and honoured men of the whole surrounding country, not only through their wealth and their extensive commerce, which was carried on to all parts of the Orient, but also for their great influence in Constantinople and other large cities and towns, and they were likewise famed for their honest and noble conduct.* Their names were Seliman, Raphael, and the youngest Mosé Pharchi; the last mentioned died in 5600 (1840), through the torture inflicted by Serif Pacha, as one of the accused for the murder of Father Thomas, in which this excellent man was, among others, charged with having taken part in the slaughter of that old priest, to make use of his blood at the celebration of the Passover. When these men learned the deplorable death of their beloved brother, they resolved to be revenged on his murderer, even at the greatest sacrifices. Through their great influence at Constantinople they succeeded in obtaining a firman (a decree), signed by the Sheich al Aslam,† literally, the chief of the faith, authorizing them to take hostile measures against Abdalla. It was a small matter with them, on account of their immense wealth, to engage Seliman Pacha of Damascus, Mustapha Pacha of Aleppo, and two other minor Pachas, who were under the jurisdiction of these two principal ones, with their soldiers, to take the field against Abdalla. A large force having thus been collected, the expedition passed over the Jordan in the month of Nissan, 5581 (April, 1821). Abdalla marched out against the advancing Pachas; and a battle took place at the bridge over Jordan called Djisr abné Yacob, in which he was defeated, and he fled in haste, retreating to Akko. The brothers Pharchi now took possession of all Galilee, deposed the officers appointed by Abdalla, and appointed others in their place.


The victors next laid siege to Akko, where the famine rose to such a height, that a single egg was sold at 70 grush,‡ which at that time was near six dollars, and a sheep at 900 grush, or 78 dollars. The siege was continued for fourteen months, during which period the Pharchis supplied the place of the Pacha in the country, and acted as governors. But it was decreed that Abdalla should not yet meet his deserts, and he was permitted to have a few years more indulgence. He succeeded, through treachery, to have the worthy Seliman Pharchi poisoned, through which means he died suddenly in the month of Nissan, 5582 (April, 1822). Mustapha Pacha likewise showed, by his acts and conduct in battle, that he was not true to the cause in which he had embarked.

Raphael Pharchi was therefore induced, shortly after the decease of his elder brother, to withdraw with Seliman Pacha to Damascus. Mustapha, it is true, maintained the siege till the month of Sivan (June), when he also withdrew to his own government.

Three Jewish brothers gained permission from the Grand Mufti of Constantinople to lead an army to defeat the Muslim butcher of Acre! And, for a short time, Jews acted as governors over parts of what is now northern Israel!

The story shows the dichotomy of Jewish existence under Muslim rule. Certainly far better than under Christian Europe  - yet the Muslim jealousy of Jewish influence helped start a series of Arab massacres of Jews that began with the Damascus blood libel of 1840, in which Mose Farhi was one of the accused.

(pictures from the farhi.org website)

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Hundreds of breaches in Egypt's Gaza tunnel wall

From the WaPo:

The smugglers who sneak consumer goods, cash and weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip have cut hundreds of holes in an underground steel wall Egypt is building along the border to try to stop them, two Egyptian security officials said Thursday.

Rare footage filmed by AP Television News before dawn Thursday showed one smuggler cutting through the barrier with a blowtorch. The smuggler, his face covered by a scarf, said it took him five hours to breach the obstacle.

As I predicted in May, "in a few months things will be back to normal in Rafah." I was off by a month.

But...

Hundreds of tunnels running under the Egypt-Gaza border deliver consumer goods to the Hamas-run territory, bypassing a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt three years ago. In recent weeks, Israel has eased its blockade by allowing most consumer goods into Gaza again through land crossings, and smugglers say they are more concerned about the competition from legitimate imports than about the wall.

Capitalism wins!

(Notice that while this article does teach us something new, it still falls into the "romantic smuggler" meme we discussed yesterday. Rich Western capitalists are bad; rich Arab smuggler capitalists are good.)


(h/t Daily Inquisitor)

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Israel a "strategic bonanza" to the US (Satloff)

Worth reading, assuming my embed code works. If not, just click here.

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Those Zionist trousers

Ian O'Doherty, in the Irish Independent, takes note of the Gaza Mall:

Gaza is, we're (un)reliably informed, the world's largest open-air prison. Indeed, in some of the more excitable circles of the anti-Israeli lobby, it's often referred to as a concentration camp; an analogy so obnoxious that it doesn't even merit mention.

And in a flyer for a fundraising gig organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement (they're not really anti-war, just anything to do with the Yanks and Israel), they said: "Since the Israeli attack in December 2009, which killed over 1,400, the people of Gaza have been suffering the worst conditions ever. Israel's continuous siege of Gaza and blockade of humanitarian aid makes even the basic necessities such as school material for children, medical supplies etc an impossibility (sic)..."

How terrible. But the Gazans have one thing to look forward to -- they opened a giant, fully stocked shopping mall this week.

And among the delights on offer are, according to its website: "air conditioning, a parking lot, security guards, a full service supermarket and a food court."

It also boasts: "Israeli trousers at reasonable prices."

So, you can hate the evil Zionist pig-dog entity that will soon disappear if Allah has his way (praise be upon him) but, in fairness, the Jews make comfy chinos, so we'll make an exception.

But just this once, mind.

It is amusing that the BDS'ers have been silent about how Gazans are so happy to have Israeli goods available to them again, after years of being stuck with crap from their fellow Egyptian Arabs.

In 1947, Arabs from Palestine who dared break the Arab boycott against Palestinian Jews were subject to firebombs and murders. When will we see calls from some ideological moron from Olympia, WA to punish the Gazans for helping the Israeli economy?

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Hamas investing in tourism instead of rebuilding

You know how the Gaza Strip is supposedly filled with destroyed houses and how there is no room to build anything new on account of how crowded it is?

Well, Hamas has somehow managed to find the money and space to build their own Islamic tourist traps that they subtly encourage Palestinian Arabs to visit.

And these places aren't public municipal parks. Rather, Hamas charges Gazans to come.

According to articles in Palestine Today and Palestine Press Agency, Hamas has recently opened a "tourist city" north of Beit Lahia that takes up 270 dunams (67 acres.) One park, 86 dunams large, it includes a zoo and pools (an Olympic-sized pool is under construction.) It also hosts religious seminars.

While admission fees are relatively modest - 3 shekels for adults - Hamas seems to be making its money off of the transportation fees, which seem to only come from buses coming from Hamas-sponsored mosques, and those fees can go as high as 50 shekels.

This park is supervised by Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad.

The article also implies that Hamas was one of the investors in the Gaza Mall, and while the mall's spokesman denies this, he refuses to publicize the names of the investors. Prominent Hamas ministers attended the mall opening on Saturday night.

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Using language as a weapon against Israel (Zvi)

From Zvi:

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There is a conscious strategy on the part of anti-Israel propagandists to misappropriate emotionally laden terms, distort and misapply them, and use them as weapons against Israel and Jews. Emotionally laden terms that normally are associated with hurting Jews are particularly favored, partly because these are emotion-laden words for Jewish supporters, and partly because the abuse causes both anger and real pain for many Jews - and as we've seen, hurting Jews is the objective.

Misappropriated, distorted and misapplied terms include:

* genocide - This is the ridiculous claim that Israel has committed "genocide" against the Palestinians, despite the latter's constantly increasing population.

* humanitarian crisis - misapplied to Gaza. We've been through this on this blog.

* massacre - as in "Jenin Massacre", the "massacre" that never happened;also used against Israel whenever Israel's enemies throw human shields at Israel during battle and the human shields get killed by accident.

* prison - misapplied to Gaza

* Holocaust - attempts to claim that it didn't happen, but at the same time to misappropriate it to represent things that bear absolutely no relationship to the Holocaust, such as fighting back against rocket-launching terrorists in Gaza, or the Naqba.

* Warsaw Ghetto - misapplied to Gaza; people have done this even on this blog. Anyone who even remotely understands what happened during the Holocaust, and particularly in the Ghetto, will never make this claim unless doing so with malicious intent.

* concentration camp - misapplied to Gaza; people have done this even on this blog. Same comment as Warsaw Ghetto.

* Apartheid - misapplied to Israel. Here's the obnoxious Ahmed Tibi, who is a Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, doing something that is actually rather funny. No, I don't like the guy, but yes, I'm amused by this. So anyway, back to Apartheid: were there black deputy speakers in the South African parliament during the apartheid years? Anyone? No? I'm so shocked... . The "Apartheid" claim is another one of these misappropriated and demonstrably misapplied terms that is just ... entirely missing the facts.

* anti-Semitism - Ths is the "Arabs are Semites" argument, which is used to pretend that "Arab anti-Semitism can't exist because Arabs are Semites"

* Nazis - This is the attempt to equate Israel with Nazism, both because the Left hate Nazis and can be led by the nose, and because it hurts Jews to make this comparison.

* "activist" - implies Gandhi or MLK; applied to militants, rioters, gunmen and even outright terrorists in order to whitewash them.

* peace activist - See "Activist". Particularly applied to violent and nonviolent members of anti-Israel hate groups. The "massacre of the peace activists on the MM". Even Israeli governmental and military personnnel are often clueless enough to fall into the trap of using the incredibly distorted language concocted by Israel's enemies, language that automatically puts Israel in the emotional wrong.

* War crimes - mutated to mean "anything Israel does"

* Proportionality - mutated to mean "Israel must allow terrorists to kill its people, because responding to terrorist attacks in any effective manner is forbidden"

* Zionism - Reinterpreted as racism by the UN General Assembly. Sure, that got repealed. Eventually. The damage had already been done. [The term Zionism nowadays is used as a simple synonym for evil by the entire Arab world and a good proportion of the far left. -EoZ]

* Martyr - a person who murdered Jewish (or Western) civilians and was killed while fighting in the name of slaughtering the Jews.

This list is only the beginning, and this list is only the list for English.

The misappropriation, distortion and misuse of emotion-laden words appears to seek several objectives.

1. These emotion-laden terms encourage listeners to turn off intellect and reason and instead engage in strong emotional reactions. This makes it easier for propagandists to influence their dupes to hatred and violence. The distorted terms are supported by lies, distortions and ridiculously superficial similarities, and by the ignorance or misplaced trust of the listeners, and by intimidation of people who dare to speak out and correct the record. Eventually the lies are simply assumed, and the emotion-laden terms have been misappropriated. People who buy into the lies become enraged. The language makes people who are neutral feel a gut level disturbance. And people with short attention spans don't stick around to learn the truth. They just keep hearing the misapplied words over and over again, in conjunction with Jews and Israel. It eventually has a subconscious impact. The subconscious impact, rather than the conscious impact, is the goal of the distortion.

2. There is an attempt to shift the meanings of these terms through endless repetition, such that while carrying heavy emotional baggage, the words have been shifted such that they now mean whatever the propagandists want them to mean. Nasty dictatorships love this stuff, which is why they engage in this kind of thing all the time. It deprives legitimate human rights groups of important words that they need to describe what the dictatorships are doing. When you see a group of dictatorships trying to reinterpret "Islamophobia" as criticism or embarassing the regime or upsetting Muslims, you know that you are witnessing this strategy at work (though in this case it is being targeted at the west in general, not just Israel). This is quite a vicious and disgusting little strategy, and it does a lot of damage on a lot of different levels.

These attacks are tied to the Big Lie strategy.

I should add that Israel and Jews are not the only victim of this kind of propaganda. Western democratic society as a whole is frequently attacked in the same ways. Israel and the Jews are unusual in that we live under a constant, very intense barrage of high-profile attacks, and that we have relatively few allies who are willing to stand up and say, "no."

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Scientific poll of Jew-haters agree - "Zionists" control the media

I found this amusing:

CNN's firing of a journalist for honoring the late Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah is a case of intellectual terrorism and Zionistic clout in western media, a poll finds.

Nearly two-thirds (65.99%) of respondents participating in the latest Press TV poll have described CNN's recent move to sack its Middle East senior editor Octavia Nasr as an instance of intellectual terrorism reflecting the influence of Zionists on mainstream western media outlets.

Meanwhile, over 20 percent of those polled believe that Zionists control the western media.

Less than ten percent of the participants maintain that CNN had the right to question Nasr's integrity.

The "poll," of course, was only of readers of Iran's PressTV, which means that it was already a wee bit weighted towards the antisemitic demographic.

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Very open thread

Real world stuff is intruding on my blogging life. I might not be able to blog for a while.

Until I manage to get back on-line, here's an open thread.

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The media meme of the heroic tunnel smugglers

For years, the Western media has been enamored with Gaza's tunnel industry. Reporters were keen to be lowered into the tunnels, lionizing the industry to sometimes outrageous degrees. 

The articles barely mentioned the fact that Hamas smuggled weapons as well through the tunnels. Even when Egypt would confiscate large caches of weapons in Rafah meant to be shot at Israelis, or when Hamas themselves bragged about the amount of weaponry and explosives they managed to bring through the tunnels, the mainstream media steadfastly downplayed that aspect of the industry and instead romanticized it.

The media also loved to characterize the smugglers as heroes of Arab capitalism, and ignored the fact that Hamas had de facto control over the tunnels and taxed them for its revenue - revenue that went towards more weapons, as Gaza's infrastructure was being paid for by clueless Westerners.

It looks like the love affair between the media and the smugglers is not over yet.

Now that Gaza is awash in consumer goods from Israel (that the media tried to downplay as well,) the new stories are about how horrible this development is - to the smugglers.

One very telling example comes from The Atlantic:

[A]t the Egyptian border, in the heart of Gaza's tunnel industry, there's little if any rejoicing at the blockade's dismantlement. As Israeli consumer goods saturate Gaza's markets, the tunnels have lost their clientele. Smugglers understand that their days are numbered, but there's nothing to replace the jobs the industry provided.

"Work has run dry. Every day is getting worse and worse. It's the end of the tunnel period," says Abu Mohammad, a tunnel owner who has made millions from the industry. "It's not just me suffering. It's everyone in this business. ... No one knows what will happen to us."

The resilient industry survived Israeli bombings, Egyptian gassing, and flooding. Days after the end of Israel's 22-day offensive in January 2009, activity in the tunnel zone was frenzied--generators hummed, pulleys screeched and loading trucks banged. Most recently, smugglers drilled through the steel subterranean wall Egypt began to construct last December.

Today, though, the tunnel district is eerily silent. Market traders have either bought Israeli or stalled orders in anticipation of new goods from the Jewish state. An estimated 10 percent of the tunnels are still operating, but even those work sporadically.

Most tunnels are concentrated about half a mile from the Egyptian border, in an area five miles long and less than two miles wide. They open up in neat rows, shaded by white and black plastic tents.

Abu Saber's tunnel is at the front line, closest to the Egyptian border. Rolls of smuggled iron sheet are stacked neatly at the passageway's entrance. The haul is Saber's first shipment in 10 days.

The sandy floor of his tunnel slopes downward, easing into the ground. Buttressed inside by iron walls, the tunnel is about five feet wide and high enough to walk only slightly hunched. Inside, it's muggy and dank, pungent with the smell of earth and human sweat.

Before the blockade was eased, Saber's tunnel, like many others, operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week and employed 10-12 people for each 12-hour shift, carting everything from chocolate to refrigerators. Now, Saber says, he's barely making enough hauling iron, steel, and ceramics--products that remain embargoed. And even profits on those have dropped dramatically.

"Before one ton of iron sold for $400 [U.S.], now it goes for between $150 and $200. These prices are not good enough for labor and expenses," Abu Saber laments.

How many ways can a single article make smugglers sound heroic? Gaza's economy has improved dramatically in a few short weeks, people who hate Israel are happily buying Israeli items - and the Atlantic spends 12 paragraphs talking about how the media's heroes are coping at the loss of their illicit businesses.

This is just a further example of how much the mainstream media is at the mercy of memes. Once a narrative is established, reporters act like sheep in following and expanding it - but rarely challenging it. This is why the stories out of Gaza all the same - poor Palestinian Arabs, heroic smugglers of consumer goods, Israel blockading essential goods, a looming humanitarian crisis.

Almost invisible are the stories about the upper and middle class Gazans, going to spas and even building mansions, eating out and working out and playing. Even rarer are the stories of Hamas' intimidation of ordinary Gazans, increasing religious legislation in the sector, tortures and killings.

The journalists are happy to follow but loathe to challenge. Hamas may be threatening and intimidating them but it doesn't take much to make journalists toe the line.

If you don't believe me, just try to find an article by a journalist that tried to find any weapons smuggling tunnels in Gaza. You won't. Grad missiles and anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons just magically appear in Gaza - but from reading the media you just couldn't figure out how.

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The other Gaza you don't hear about

We all know the Gaza that is supposedly suffering under the "humanitarian crisis." The media, the UN and other NGOs as well as anti-Israel organizations that masquerade as "aid" agencies all make sure of that.

We are slowly starting to learn about the parts of Gaza that are not doing nearly as bad as we have been taught, as stories about the Gaza luxury malls, luxury hotels, gourmet restaurants and  swimming pools show.

But there is another Gaza story that is being hushed up in the media - the story of how Gazans are suffering under Hamas rule.

Lorenzo Cremonesi, writing in Corriere della Sera, discusses exactly that. Here is a translation:

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He asks the foreign peace activists, who promise to return on the next flotillas, for a mixer for his band. But his request conflicts with the laws of the ruling regime in Gaza, the same regime the peace activists are helping to fight the Israeli embargo. "Our old mixer was confiscated by the Hamas police", he explains. "We are victims of a repressive religious government who, due to a distorted reading of the Quran, prohibits free music. We don't like their green Allah." The speaker is Basher Bseiso, the popular front man of rap group Fariq Salam ("The Band of Peace").

Jamal Abu Al Qumsan, 43, runs an art gallery in the "despair strip", as he calls it. "I thank all the democracy advocates around the world who are fighting the Israeli embargo on Gaza, but can you please equally denounce the repression of Hamas against intellectual freedom?"

These testimonies are but two of many such anecdotes one encounters in the area. The latest examples are attacks on youth organizations on the 23rd and 28th of June, when masked Hamas activists torched students' summer camps set up by the UN on the beach. At the end of May, on the exact same day Israeli commandos raided the Marmara's deck, the Hamas police stopped the activities of five local NGOs. "They want to force us to close down the mixed-sex camps", accuses Mohammad Aruki, a "Sharek" activist. "They are trying to exterminate secular culture".

This is another chapter in the cultural war that's been going on here for some time. Religious extremists are trying to prevent girls and women from going to the beach or smoking in public, they forbid unmarried couples from hanging out together in private and they view Western music and fashion as a danger to the "public's morals." Any request for explanations on these issues receives the same answer: "Our civil authority has nothing to do with it. Please contact the police". But the police's answer is "no comment". Yussef Ahmed, Deputy Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Committee Against the Siege concludes: "Israel has all the power. Hamas is just trying to govern the strip."

The problem is that the witnesses, the victims themselves, are afraid to talk. The Hamas has become the sole ruler, a kind of father/master to its people. Punishment doesn't only mean imprisonment or torture, but also ostracism, job loss and social isolation. Bseiso depicts Hamas' latest attack on him with anger: "I was riding my motorcycle when suddenly a group of armed men from the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades clung to me, threw me to the ground and beat me with clubs. A few days earlier they broke into our studio and confiscated cameras and video cassettes. I'm working on an anti-Hamas song now." Ibrahim Ghonem, another of the band's members, remembers that under the PLO conditions were much better. "Back then there were at least five rap bands. Now we are told that we are agents of the American Satan, that we are corrupting the youth. The result is that whoever can, leaves. Members of other bands got offers to perform abroad and never returned."

Jamal Abu Al Qumsan wasn't so lucky. Until two weeks ago he couldn't even sit or lie on his back due to beatings he received off and on for a week, a strange and very common punishment in the strip.

They are summoned to police centers in prisons. There is not much choice. The infamous Saraya, in the heart of Gaza city, was razed by Israeli bombing during "Cast Lead" in January 2009. But still the there is the Mashtal, the five provincial prisons, and Ansar, where are the heads of security services. Here begins the interrogation. "From seven in the morning to late evening, sometimes past midnight. The most common punishment is to stay against a wall in the full sun all afternoon and forced to exercise for no reason.... Only an occasional glass of water is allowed. And you must be punctual in the morning in front of the door, "says Jamal. He still went wrong. "I've been accused of bribing the girls to let them smoke a water pipe in the premises of my gallery, even sexual abuse. So they used belts and sticks. "

Torture chambers - but it could be worse. In the seafront former villa of the President of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Abu Mazen, prisoners would remain in isolation for months. You could say that the cellars are used as rooms for the torture for "enemies of Islam." Their techniques are refined. Some mechanisms are learned directly from Israeli jails. ... The psychological pressure is often more effective than physical.

In the prisons of Fatah in the West Bank, where the hunt for militants of Hamas remains open, the techniques are very similar. "The news from Gaza is the growing influence of the systems used by Iranian Basiji. The assault squads from a select group of the Ezzedin Al Qassam Brigades were directly trained by them. The aim is to impose a kind of complete and total political and cultural conformity. Anyone who does not follow the rules is at risk. And there are few heroes. Often enough some veiled threats get the desired effect, says a well-known local commentator, speaking under the promise of absolute anonymity. Asma Al Ghuol, a journalist committed to the defense of intellectual freedom, had his computer recently seized and personal threats for his public denunciation against the censorship of musicians and writers. A colleague who works with the al-Arabiya TV station was arrested a few days ago because agents saw he travelled by car in the company of a boy who was not a member of his family.

Abu Omar (a fictitious name), senior militant Liberation Front of Palestine, expressed his dissent in private: he produces wine hidden in Jabalia refugee camp and sells 100 liters per year. "It's my challenge against the ban imposed on alcohol by Muslims, against the interference in our private lives, as if we were under the Taliban," he said, showing a photo of Mohammad Hassan Hajazi, his friend and activist murdered by Hamas in January 2009 as they took advantage of the chaos generated from the Israeli attack.

The situation closely resembles that imposed against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the nineties until the 2003 war. The economic blockade and isolation generated enormous difficulties on the international regime, but it strengthened the internal government and indirectly provided legitimacy for even more serious abuses against their people. Atef Abou Saief, brilliant professor of political science at the local university Al Azhar, says "Hamas controls Gaza much better than a couple of years ago, even though its popularity is declining. But we can not verify this. Free elections, as in 2006, are now impossible. At best, if you go back to the polls, we'll see a deal under the table for the division of votes with Fatah. The theocracy of Hamas marked the end of the democratic dream. "

A well-known journalist, employed by foreign news agencies who absolutely asked to remain anonymous, commented: "The difference between Gaza and Iraq is that in the Palestinian territories in January 2006 the elections were swept neatly by Hamas against Fatah. The West is right to point the finger at governments that are not democratic. You can not accept democracy with only results that you like and reject undesirable ones. But now you do not notice that the popularity of Hamas in Gaza is in freefall. It's a curious situation and reflects the ancient Palestinian willingness to stand against those who always wins. If you go to the polls today in the West Bank you could obtain a majority Hamas, but Fatah could win in Gaza."

"Hamas is like Hitler, or rather, as the Islamists in Algeria," said Saief. "That's why Yasser Arafat until his death in November 2004, always refused to hold elections with Hamas. He knew that a free vote with the Islamic government would never have been carried out for the very obvious fact that the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood does not give any value to democracy. " It says here lies the weakness of Abu Mazen: allowing Hamas to run for election in 2006. ...

Saief repeats the theory that is the most popular from Gaza in Cairo: Hamas has no interest in jeopardizing the status quo, it is not looking for a real agreement with Abu Mazen, it will not work with or even have contacts with Israel. "Hamas is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The project has a more pan-Islamic and less nationalist agenda. Do not look for compromise, because [Hamas] sees Gaza as the revival of global holy war. That is at the expense of independent intellectuals and any entity in areas under its control," he adds. It can not be denied that the persecuted are generally PLO militants, or otherwise bound to the old face of secular Palestinian Left.

...Aruki stresses: 'For Hamas the this is a great debacle. Young people no longer want to fight. The Israeli blockade is terrible, it prevents any movement, we are in a great open-air prison. But the spirit of the two intifadas is dead. Once there were students who refused the few scholarships to go abroad so they could fight the Zionist occupation collectively. Today everyone wants to emigrate and they are not only blocked by Israel. Egypt is severely limiting people going through the Rafah crossing. And Hamas grants permission to leave only to its activists. The others are just subjects to convert to their reading of Islam."

---

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog which also translated some parts via Hebrew)

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Gazans disgusted at flotilla, Arab "aid"

From JPost:

Palestinians claim that most of the medicines sent into Gaza are past their expiration date, Al-Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

"They're bringing more harm than good," the article explained, describing expired medicines and broken supplies sent by different countries and organizations.

Mounir el-Barash, director of the donations department in Gaza's Ministry of Health told al-Jazeera that only 30% of the aid sent into the Gaza Strip is used.

Gaza officials also expressed anger at receiving burial shrouds for children from Arab countries.

The Al Jazeera article adds that some of the dialysis equipment sent by an aid convoy was useless, that despite calls for specific types of medicines the donors have not responded, and that the many tons of expired medicines must be buried in landfills - but they don't have the equipment to do so properly, and these landfills can therefore become an environmental problem.

As I've mentioned in the past, Arab donors have consistently reneged on their pledges to help Gaza.

I could be cynical and say that they do this deliberately in order to make Israel look bad, but I think the reason is simpler: Arab nations are no fans of Hamas and they (the Gulf states especially) like to donate money where their investments have a chance of paying dividends - and in Gaza, their money is wasted because there is no way for it to help solve the problems permanently.

(h/t Vicious Babushka and Jameel)

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Staged photo of the day

From Reuters:

Palestinian girl Hedayah al-Zanean, whose father is jailed in Israel, attends a protest in Gaza City July 19, 2010, calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. According to Waed, the Palestinian Prisoners Association, about 7,500 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli jails. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Do you think it is a coincidence that the girl looks like she is behind bars?

Well, here's a picture from last month by an AFP photographer that Honest Reporting noticed:

Here's one from 2002, no attribution:

I noticed a similar phenomenon two years ago, also from Reuters,where the fence that these children are behind had nothing to do with Israel:

(h/t Henry)

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Drilling hate into little children

Binyomin in the comments points us to a 2008 YouTube video, of what is said to be a 2-year old Muslim girl from New York named Fatima, answering rapid-fire questions about Islam in Arabic.

At 0:44, we see this exchange:

Here's the whole thing:

Note that this is not education. This is brainwashing a child to parrot back bigoted responses that she doesn't even understand, but her teachers will fill in the blanks after she already has been thoroughly brainwashed.

Also note that the commenters on the original video on YouTube are all, as far as I can tell, very proud of such a precocious little girl.

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Israelis tour the Temple Mount, PalArabs claim they stopped them

From Ha'aretz (h/t My Right Word):

Under armed police escort, Danny Danon, a deputy parliament speaker, toured the site of an ancient Jewish temple, a plaza home to the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, and said he thought Jews should be permitted freer access there.

A group of Muslim protesters shouted "Allahu Akhbar", or God is Greatest, as Danon, trailed by armed police and dozens of Israeli and Western tourists, strolled around the area known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

But despite the tense atmosphere there was no violence or confrontations during the lawmaker's hour-long visit.

Danon said he wanted a firsthand look at security procedures and to press the case for permitting Jews to pray at the site.

"There is full religious freedom for Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount," Danon said. "But it is more difficult for the Jew than the Muslim to go and pray on the Temple Mount. This is a distortion that must be corrected."

"If Jews want to go and pray on the Temple Mount then they should be allowed to do it," he added.

But the Palestinian Arab press reported a much different story:

Al Aqsa fighters thwarted plans of Jewish extremists

Citizens of the occupied city of Jerusalem and the territories of 1948, who were keen to show up early in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, frustrated extremist Jewish groups who stormed the holy mosque for the performance of Talmudic rituals and rites of and to place a foundation stone of a structure in the courtyards of Haram al Sharif, on the anniversary of what it calls the 'destruction of the Temple.'

I think that in this case Ha'aretz is a bit more reliable.

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