Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Recent clashes between Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Palestine Press Agency reports on a number of recent incidents showing increasing friction between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement, its largest rival in Gaza, as well as other Islamist movements.

While they usually cooperate, Islamic Jihad is more extreme than Hamas and has sworn to continue shooting rockets at Israel.

Last Thursday there was an armed confrontation between Hamas and Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades. Apparently, members of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades were mocking Islamic Jihad members and they retaliated by shooting. Hamas struck back, and someone ended up in the hospital after being shot in the legs.

Both groups are downplaying the incident.

Even people with academic robes can lie.

In an article at European Voice, entitled "The Gaza Prison,"current Oxford chancellor( also the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former European commissioner for external affairs) Chris Patten parrots lies about Israel and Gaza. Here's just one paragraph:

When I was in Gaza before the Second Intifada, there were many examples of entrepreneurial activity – factories and farms. Most of that has been stamped out. As the assault on Gaza ended in 2009, Israeli military bulldozers flattened factories. The imposition of a border zone has gobbled up 29% of the strip's agricultural land.

This single paragraph illustrates everything wrong about how Gaza is portrayed by purportedly well-meaning, educated people. It contains not only Palestinian Arab lies that Patten swallows whole, but also a lie that he himself wants to push.

Patten waxes eloquent about Gaza's economy before the second intifada (that he helpfully capitalizes, indicating perhaps a bit of approval for that spree of terror.) Then he states how bad it is now - implying that it is because of Israeli actions in 2009.

This is a lie.

The Gazan economy went south as a direct result of the intifada, not because of Israeli actions. There are two major reasons that 34% of Gazans are unemployed today. One is because Israeli companies pulled out of Gaza in the wake of the wave of terror that came out of Gaza starting in 2001 - including many attacks on the factories themselves. The Erez Industrial Zone limped along for a couple of years but finally had to shut down.

The other is that Hamas violently took over Gaza in 2007.

A chart of unemployment in Gaza from 1999-2006 shows clearly the effects of the first:

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Unemployment in Gaza	17	19.5	34.1	38.1	29.2	35.4	30.3	34.8

I don't have the detailed breakdown of unemployment since then, but between 2006 and today the rate had increased to over 40% - around the time of Hamas' takeover of Gaza - and is now back down to 34%, the same level it was at the start of the intifada.

In other words, the blame for Gaza's economic woes should go to the terrorist organiations that operate out of, and now run, Gaza. And the implication that Israel purposefully "stamped out" Gaza's industries is not only a lie, but a calumny.

Where did Patten get the information that Israel viciously and wantonly "flattened factories" at the end of Operation Cast Lead? While Goldstone claimed that there was no military purpose for Israel's damaging the Al Badr flour mill and the Sawfeary chicken farms, the IDF disputes both those accounts - and even Goldstone didn't claim that Israel worked to flatten factories after the fighting was largely over. The idea that Israel maliciously flattened factories in Gaza is a lie. This is a product of a fevered imagination, not what one would expect from a leader of an institution of higher learning who should know the difference between facts and propaganda he was fed during his visit to Gaza.

Finally, the supposed "fact" that Israel's buffer zone in Gaza - one whose purpose Patten is mysteriously silent about - takes up 29% of Gaza's agricultural land is also an easily proven lie.

What could cause a respected British academic and former diplomat believe - and propagate - lies about Israel? How much is his own willingness to believe those who lie to him, and how much is his desire to spread his own versions of these easily debunked lies? Perhaps most importantly, why is Patten silent on any possible reason that Israel might have to treat the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as a less-than-friendly territory?

Putting these questions together indicates that Patten is not just clueless, but malicious. It is more than sickening that a person in such a position of prestige has no qualms about writing such a shoddy and transparent piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

(h/t Paula from Philosémitisme Blog)

UPDATE: R-MEW has some background on Patten:

The ICG is led by former EU Commissioner for External Relations and current Oxford University Chancellor, Chris Patten, along with former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. Patten you may recall, rejected an inquiry in 2003 into the diversion of European taxpayer funds to finance Palestinian suicide bombers because he "needed an investigation like a hole in the head". In recent years, Patten's Oxford has been the recipient of over $300 million in donations from the Saudis. Arbour is famous for having originally endorsed the wildly antisemitic and oxymoronic Arab Charter of Human Rights while with the UN.

But I thought that "settlers" stole all the water!

From Ma'an:

Palestinian Authority police have dispersed two fights in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and the nearby Nuba village, detaining 15 suspected of involvement.

Police said a fight broke out at a public swimming pool, where suspects used clubs and pelted one another with stones. Five sustained various injuries, and five others were detained.

You mean, Hebron - the town of 70,000 Arabs held hostage by a few hundred Jews - has a swimming pool? But I thought that the settlers stole all the water of the West Bank for their own wasteful swimming pools and the poor Palestinian Arabs had none to drink, let alone swim in!

Here's a photo of a pool in Hebron that I somehow managed to find last year when the BBC had written a story about how Palestinian Arab water was all taken by evil Israelis.

And that is hardly the only swimming pool in the territories.

Recalibrating the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza" meme

For literally decades, we have been hearing about how Gaza was suffering from a "humanitarian crisis." Back in December 2007, a full year before the Gaza war, I enumerated how this "crisis" had been spoken about since at least 1993!

No one is saying that Gaza is a paradise. However, it not nearly as bad as it has been portrayed, and years of skewed and misleading coverage from NGOs and reporters with an agenda have succeeded in giving the world a very inaccurate picture of Gaza. As a result, Gaza has gotten much more attention, and much more money, than the tens of millions of people who really need it and who really are ignored.

In the wake of bloggers noticing Gaza's gourmet restaurants, spas, luxury hotels, the new mall, water parks and other resorts, the media has finally started to give a more nuanced view of Gaza. In this unintentionally funny piece in Slate, a clueless reporter is shocked that Gaza really isn't like sub-Saharan Africa:

GAZA CITY—Aid officials in Gaza all recite the same statistics: "44 percent unemployment [actually, 34%, we cannot expect a Slate reporter to actually check the facts, can we? -EoZ], 80 percent food-aid dependent, and 60 percent living on less than $2 a day." It sounds like a script they've grown tired of delivering to passing journalists.

After multiple rounds of similar briefings, I'm staring at Kamla Joudah's parlor in Nuseirat refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The warm beige tones of the furniture reflect the heat, and the walls gleam. The frequently cut power is on today, so the fan whirls. Tea and coffee are brought out on a small tray.

Kamla catches me appraising her home. "What are you looking at?" she asks, with some pique.
"Your house," I reply, "It's very nice."

She looks at me quizzically, "This is not Darfur," she snaps. The family members in the room burst out laughing as I blush.

The oft-recited statistics paint a bleak picture of life in the territory. But Gaza is a lot more complicated than the numbers suggest.

Comments like Kamla's are common here; everyone I speak to insists the coastal enclave is nothing like Somalia, Bangladesh, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. And people are indignant that I suggested it might be in the same league as those places.

Notice that the reporter went to what should be the worst place in Gaza - a refugee camp. Many Gazans live in their own houses, outside the camps. Her astonishment was at how good the worst part of Gaza was.

Yet journalists do not want to admit their part in this massive deception. Instead, they move the goalposts so that the "humanitarian crisis" is redefined to be a lot less crisis-like:

"There is food in Gaza. It's not a humanitarian crisis. There is no hunger, there is no starvation, but there is a crisis of another nature," says Mahmoud Daher, a World Health Organization official in Gaza, who was expressing his personal views, not those of his organization.

As Daher explains, the blockade has dramatically altered the standard of living for Palestinians in the territory. In three years, he assesses, Gazans have lost 20 years of economic development. And in that decline lies the root of the crisis in Gaza as he sees it.

"Inability to access quality care is a crisis, inability for people to produce and have access to jobs is a crisis, inability of people to get the quality of education that they are used to is a crisis, and above all [it is] a crisis of dignity—a crisis of humanity," Daher tells me.

Um, not exactly the same as starvation, is it? No flies buzzing around kids with distended stomachs and vacant stares. Instead, Gaza has to worry about the next 20,000 laptops that UNRWA is distributing to their kids.

The reporter doesn't ask about how Hamas is getting its money, or what restrictions on movement are from the Gaza de facto government. She doesn't ask about the flotillas bringing expired medicines to garner headlines. She doesn't ask about why the blockade exists to begin with. No, for her, Gaza seems to have sprung into existence in January 2009, and while she is shocked that her journalist colleagues have misled her since then, she needs to write an article about how bad things are, and that's what she'll do.

But she will not ask the basic questions: if Gaza is not so bad off, then shouldn't the billions it is receiving be better spent elsewhere? Shouldn't more of the burden for Gaza fall to their fellow oil-rich Arabs, rather than Westerners who should be putting their money in places like Bangladesh and the Congo? Why are the "human rights" activists so fixated on a territory whose poorest citizens are the envy not only of many Africans but even of poor Arabs in other countries?

(h/t Silke, who gave me a very nice compliment over at CiFWatch. Thanks!)

More on Arab sexual harassment of female "peace activists"

A few weeks ago I blogged about an attempted rape of an American "peace activist" in the territories, and the pressure to hush it up.

JoeSettler at The Muqata has uncovered more facts - including that this has been a known phenomenon among the anti-Israel community for a while, to the point that they even held a workshop about it on how women activists should deal with the apparently inevitable fact of their being harassed or attacked while being hosted by their Arab friends.

The cognitive dissonance of these supposedly progressive activists working to help a very regressive society somehow doesn't seem to take hold.

Just another week in the 62-year old siege of the Jewish state

It is worthwhile to step back and notice the events of the week:

A rocket was fired into Israel from Gaza, hitting a rehabilitation center. (Another attempted firing of a rocket exploded prematurely.)

Five or six rockets were fired from the Sinai towards Israel, killing a Jordanian.

And snipers from the Lebanese Army killed an Israeli officer and wounded another.

All of these attacks were unprovoked. All of them were intended to kill Israelis.

In other words, here was just another week when Israel was fired upon from all directions. Not a terribly atypical week, either.

With all of the insults that are hurled at the State of Israel every hour of every day permeating the media, it is easy to forget that Israel really is a nation surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want to see it disappear; and some of them are motivated to actually do something to help that process along.

The question isn't how can Israel act as bad as people say it does - the question is how come it doesn't! How can a tiny nation, literally surrounded by enemies, manage to keep its collective sanity and morality? How come there isn't martial law? How come Egypt has been in an official state of emergency for almost the entire time since 1967, and Israel isn't? How can Israel remain an oasis of Western values and of liberal standards when in such a constant state of alert against attacks from all directions?

Some people don't believe in miracles. But it is hard to look at Israel and think it is anything but.

Three lighter Gulf stories

From Gulf News:

A Saudi groom was slapped by his mother on his wedding night when he tried , in a romantic Cinderella-inspired touch, to put a shoe on his bride’s foot.

“The shocked mother was so infuriated by the sight of her son helping the bride wear her shoe that she slapped him amid the laughter of the women guests,” Okaz daily reported on Thursday.
“The groom had reportedly agreed with his bride that she walks into the reception hall wearing only one shoe and that her sister would carry the second shoe. The plan was that he would later take the shoe and put it on the bride’s foot in front of the guests. His family was not told about the perceived romantic gesture,” the newspaper said.

However, the groom’s mother became so upset that she hit and insulted him on the grounds that he did not behave as “a genuine traditional oriental man.”

The groom eventually left the reception hall in Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia and took his bride to the airport to fly to Malaysia for their honeymoon, the paper said.

In a separate incident in the same city, angry wedding guests left the reception hall after the families of the bride and groom screened a short film “that failed to respect privacy.”

According to Okaz, the short clip highlighted the different stages of the lives of both the bride and the groom, from their early years throughout school and adolescence, and ended with the couple hugging and exchanging a kiss.

However, some guests were shocked, charging that the clip was not acceptable and that it was inspired by movies screened on private television channels.

An attempt by a group of Gulf national women to enforce a dress code led a British tourist to strip down to her bikini at Dubai Mall.

A group of Gulf national women recently tried to enforce a dress code morally acceptable to them by distributing leaflets to women they found to be dressed inappropriately, a Dubai Mall official said.

A British tourist who was approached objected to the gesture and stripped down to a bikini she was wearing underneath in defiance.

Who knew Arabs read Mad magazine?

I just saw this cartoon in Al Quds al Arabi, about the many people in Lebanon recently accused of being Israeli spies:

(For those who don't understand my headline, see here.)

Latest Zionist outrage: Destroying fake graves!

Palestine Today reports on an outraged statement by the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, claiming that on Wednesday night, Israel bulldozed dozens of ancient Islamic graves in the Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem, calling it a "heinous crime."

Can you imagine? Jews destroying Muslim graves? How low can they go?

However, there seems to be another side to this story. From Arutz-7:

Following the exclusive Arutz Sheva report Wednesday morning that Muslims were enlarging the Mamilla cemetery with fake tombs, authorities removed the tombs by Wednesday evening.

Dozens of false tombs were “planted” just west of the cemetery, on land that is part of Independence Park (Gan HaAtzmaut) at city center. There were no graves beneath the tombs.

The fake tombs were removed by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israel Lands Authority.

A municipality employee told Arutz Sheva that the faux graves were apparently part of a plan to have the Muslim Waqf submit a demand for the additional land to be placed under Muslim ownership.

The Wednesday report included video of the fake graves.

Here was the statement from the Jerusalem mayor's office:

The Jerusalem Municipality located the illegal activity at the site yesterday. The Municipality has contacted the Israel Lands Authority as the owner of the land to return things to their former state. The Municipality will not allow extremist elements to act illegally to change the status quo.

A new Goldstone critique

Peter Berkowitz, at the Hoover Institution, takes a different tack on criticizing the Goldstone Report in a new article. His concern is much larger - that Goldstone represents a departure from the mores of international law and represents a danger for democratic, liberal nation-states:

Another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report’s recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists.

...Authoritative sources in international law assign primary responsibility for judgments about whether war has been conducted in accordance with the law of armed conflict to the judicial and other relevant organs of nation-states. That assignment is rooted in the larger liberal tradition’s teaching that nation-states — particularly those based on the consent of the governed and devoted to securing individual rights — are the best and most legitimate means of securing peace, exercising authority over the individual, and preserving political freedom. That teaching is bound up with the view that states are likely to be more sober in assessing the actions of other states than international organizations because states must bear the burden of any proposed reform or rule. In contrast, the Goldstone Report and its supporters appear to be animated by the conviction that judgments about the lawful conduct of war are best and primarily vindicated by international institutions, because of their superior objectivity, impartiality, and expertise. And they have shown themselves willing to disregard international law as it is in order to remake it as they believe it should be. One reason to prefer the allocation of responsibilities in international law as it currently stands to the Goldstone Report’s efforts to transform it are the report’s stunning defects. They illustrate that those who are responsible for the operation of international institutions are no less subject to the passions and prejudices that thwart the impartial and objective administration of law than the government officials in civilized nations, and in some cases may be more subject to such passions and prejudices.

...There is a danger that the spread of practices among international bodies and an accumulation of precedents concerning international law will weigh down the United States in the struggle that it shares with Israel and others to combat, in accordance with the law of armed conflict, transnational Islamic terrorism. Of course that will only happen if the U.S. recognizes such practices and precedents as authoritative. Encouragement to do so comes from powerful trends in American universities and law schools, where professors for going on a generation have been cultivating in their students the view, which animates the Goldstone Report, that critical judgments about the lawful conduct of war are indeed properly and in the first instance the province of international institutions.

That view is suited to a world in which all nation-states incline to peace and govern themselves in accordance with liberal and democratic principles. Unfortunately, that is not the world in which we live. Nor is it a world we can expect to emerge anytime soon.

The Goldstone report is not only flawed and biased - it is dangerous.

(h/t sshender)

Arabs worried that US will move embassy to Jerusalem

Al Quds al Arabi reports that there is concern among Arab analysts about the sudden US move to symbolically upgrade the status of the PLO mission in Washington.

Their fear is that this was a precursor for the Obama administration moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a move long favored by Congress and that would give President Obama a big boost among Jews in the US.

Since 1995, every US president has issued a waiver on the Jerusalem Embassy Act of Congress every six months.

I believe that the next time this comes up is in the end of November.

The Obama administration has excised the wording that the Bush administration had inserted in every waiver, which stated "My Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem."

I don't think that the US would consider moving the embassy unless Israel had already abandoned parts of the city.

Is this how Israel infiltrated Lebanese telecom? (updated)

In recent weeks there has been a rash of arrests of alleged Israeli spies in Lebanon, many of whom worked for Lebanese cell phone and land-line based communications companies.

Naharnet has this interesting article:

In the aftermath of the July 2006 war, Ogero landline phone network sought a tender for the purchase a computer software called "mediation" which provides for the transfer of phone calls received from cellular phones to the landline network and vice versa, in addition to detailed bills, As-Safir newspaper reported Friday.

This attracted bids from six top companies, As-Safir said, until a French firm finally got the tender.

According to the daily, however, the French firm in turn put forward software that bears the name "Kabira" which operates under "Star Ventures," a leading Israeli venture capital fund.

The newspaper said the identity of the Israeli company was not clear at first, but the low prices it offered stirred up doubt by a Lebanese company, prompting it to search for the firm's "family tree."

Here's the surprise: well-known businessmen and Israeli officers are in charge of managing and financing Kabira.

The ministry under Telecoms Minister Marwan Hamadeh at the time gave a simple explanation to the flow of inquirers: "We chose this bid because it was less by $3,000,000 compared to other tenders, without looking into the corporate identity."

UPDATE: commenter T34zakat notices that Kabira has a lot of investors, and Star Ventures is only one of them. Star Ventures is headquartered in Germany and has an office in Israel and Silicon Valley - not surprising for a VC firm specializing in software. This is far from a smoking gun; and there is zero indication from this that the Kabira software was created in Israel.

Who was behind Eilat/Aqaba rockets?

Zvi points out two separate Ha'aretz reports of who was behind the rockets that were shot towards Eilat on Monday.

One says that Hamas was behind it - but not Hamas in Gaza, rather Damascus leader Khlaed Meshaal, possibly itching to get back in the action:

The commander of Hamas' military wing in Rafah, Raed al-Atar, is responsible for ordering the firing of Grad-type Katyusha rockets at Eilat and Aqaba from Sinai earlier this week, Palestinian security officials say.

Security sources told Haaretz that according to an investigation by Palestinian intelligence, Atar was behind the rocket attacks authorized by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, without the knowledge of the Hamas military commander there, Ahmed Jabari.

But Palestinian security sources said Atar carried out the attack with the approval of the Hamas leadership abroad and with the backing of Iranian intelligence agents, who appear to have initiated the mission.

The sources said the attack had been approved by the Hamas politburo chief, Khaled Meshal, based in Damascus.

Atar, who in recent years has greatly increased his power and influence in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Hamas' armed wing, is now asserting greater authority over the tunnels in which goods are smuggled from Sinai into Gaza.

According to intelligence sources, a number of militants under his control crossed into Sinai through the Rafah tunnels, where they were met by Egyptian drivers and the Grad-type Katyusha rockets. They drove in off-road vehicles toward Taba on the Red Sea coast, avoiding security checks by the Egyptians.

Jordan has its own theories: an Al Qaeda offshoot.

A Jordanian political source told Haaretz yesterday that Jordan has exchanged intelligence with Egypt; the information Jordan now has suggests that it was not Hamas that fired the rockets, but a radical religious group that opposes the Palestinian Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip.

The assessment is that the group is Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, which collaborates with Sinai Bedouin who are at odds with the Egyptian authorities. The Jordanian source says Egypt is also not blaming Hamas but mentions "Palestinian factions" as responsible for the rocket attacks.

In May, a group of Shi'ite separatists in Yemen sent Haaretz documents claiming that Sami al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti citizen known as Abdullah al-Hajj, is in charge of Al-Qaida's activities against Israel from Palestinian territory. Mutairi was convicted of killing an American in Kuwait several years ago.

Mutairi, who was released from prison in 2007, sent to his supporters in the Gaza Strip a total of $850,000 through a Saudi citizen, Abdullah al-Dusri, who visited Gaza from Sinai carrying the money in a suitcase.

Mutairi gave orders to buy weapons in Sinai for militants in the Gaza Strip, and to purchase apartments in Khan Yunis and Rafah where the militants could hide.

The militant leader ordered his contacts in Gaza to hide the arms so they would not be confiscated by Hamas. One letter mentions that Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad had already acquired 25 Grad-type Katyusha rockets, which it hid in plantations in Sinai and Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas says that they would have been happy to take credit for the attack if they were behind it, but that they refuse to do any operations outside of "historical Palestine" - the entity that they define according to lines drawn less than a hundred years ago.

Palestine Today says that the Ha'aretz article blaming al-Atar is a pretense for Israel assassinating him, and that no Palestinian Arab officials said that.

Arabs resent Holocaust movies, and more from a new poll (Zvi)

From Zvi:

In this Shibly Telhami Brookings poll of Arab public opinion (warning - does not provide raw data or information about the methodology), slide #37 says an awful lot.

When you watch a movie or program about the Jewish Holocaust, which of the following is closest to your feelings?

(1) Resent that it brings sympathy toward Israel and Jews at the expense of Palestinians and Arabs
(2) I have mixed feelings
(3) Empathize with the Jews who suffered under the Nazis

2010 Results for (1), (2), (3) in that order:

Total:   59%, 29%, 5%
Egypt: 50%, 31%, 5% (Egypt's totals amount to 80-85%; perhaps many people refused to answer)
Jordan: 39%, 45%, 16%
Saudi Arabia: 59%, 37%, 5%
Lebanon: 20%, 59%, 21%
Morocco: 85%, 15%, 0%
UAE: 99%, 1%, 0%

As Benjamin Kerstein said in the recent Michael Totten conversation:

Anti-Semitism ultimately is a refusal to accord basic human decency to the Jewish people. It’s a refusal to relate to a certain group of people with the common human decency with which you would relate to anybody else.

The broad swath of public opinion in most of the Arab countries is fundamentally anti-Semitic.

When reading the results for Lebanon, it is worth reflecting that despite Leb's ongoing political train wreck and Hezbollah's viciously anti-Semitic propaganda, the results for Lebanon are nevertheless the least noxious (by far) in the Arab countries polled. This may well be due, in part, to the presence of the Christian (and particularly Armenian) minority, and also the fact that Lebanon, unlike the other countries polled, is a highly cosmopolitan society with large religious minorities.

Only Jordan and Lebanon have majorities who are even willing to grant the humanity of Shoah victims sufficiently that they have "mixed feelings" or sympathies rather than resentment.

The rabid self-pity and complete willingness to completely dehumanize Jews that is visible in the Moroccan and particularly the Emirati results is absolutely breathtaking.

Slide #39 touches on some points that we have discussed before.

When you see Palestinian civilan casualties in the conflict with Israel, which TWO of the following best describe your feelings:

(1) Empathy with the Palestinian victims
(2) Need for revenge against Israel
(3) Helpless
(4) Angry with Arab governments
(5) Angry with the US
(6) Angry with Palestinian leadership
(7) Same as whn I see other humans suffer
(8) Palestinians brought it upon themselves

2010 results, in (1)-(8) order: (second column represents the "need" for revenge against Israel - the honor/shame/revenge dynamic; in Jordan, this supposed "need" actually exceeds the sum of columns 1 and 7 (representing empathy).

59 47 35 21 16 12 08 01 TOTAL
55 51 41 15 16 16 06 01 Egypt
43 52 38 36 13 09 08 02 Jordan
60 48 38 29 14 0? 01 00 Saudi Arabia
38 40 32 40 15 15 19 03 Lebanon
78 40 16 24 17 07 18 01 Morocco
41 43 23 23 33 32 04 00 UAE

Stop and think about the consequences of the deeply distorted reporting that exists in the Arab world and in the mainstream media, in which Palestinian gunmen are labelled as "civilians" and in which clear Palestinian crimes are whitewashed, while Israeli actions are deliberately inflated and misrepresented as "war crimes." The consequences of such blood libels, journalistic malpractice and human rights fraud results directly in the growrh of hatred and subsequent bloodshed.

In addition, when Arab regimes, media, religious authorities, pure propagandists and other opinion shapers repeatedly issue "calls to action" that involve revenge, they reinforce this response, which reinforces this dynamic in the Arab world rather than preparing populations for peace. Moroccans, so completely unready to identify or sympathize with dead Jews, are are much more likely to consider sympathy with Palestinians as opposed to revenge. On the other hand, in no country does the percentage who think that there is a "need" for revenge against Israel drop below 40%.

If you sum columns 1 and 7 (based on the guess that most survey respondents would have picked either one or the other, but not both; without more information, this is not a particularly "safe" assumption) you get the following:
67% Total
61 Egypt
51 Jordan
61 Saudi
57 Lebanon
96 Morocco
44 UAE

The differences from country to country are interesting, though.

Scores reflecting anger at the Palestinians and/or their leadership (6+8):
13 Total
17 Egypt
15 Jordan
14 Saudi
18 Lebanon
19 Morocco
33 UAE

In contrast, here is the corresponding table for empathy with Israeli civilian victims.

When you watch Israeli civilian casualties in the conflict with the Palestinians, which TWO of the following best describe your feelings:
(1) Empathy with Israeli victims
(2) Revenge for the Palstinians
(3) Angry with Israeli leaders
(4) Angry with the US
(5) Angry with the Palestinians
(6) Same as when I see other civilians killed
(7) Israelis brought it upon themselves

2010 results in (1)-(7) order:

03 59 35 18 02 09 75 TOTAL. Total Empathy score (1 + 6) is 12%
02 65 25 14 02 13 78 Egypt. Total Empathy = 15
06 68 25 04 01 17 80 Jordan. TE = 23
07 50 44 14 02 06 77 Saudi. TE = 13
04 47 50 13 03 21 63 Lebanon. TE = 25
00 52 46 33 00 02 67 Morocco. TE = 02
01 46 59 33 00 02 59 UAE. TE = 03

The number of people who regard the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians as revenge for the Palestinians is obscene. The combination of a complete lack of sympathy for Israeli civilians and a complete whitewashing of Palestinian responsibility for their own actions, particularly in Morocco and the UAE, is absolutely disgusting.

Public opinion on the Iran nuclear question yields some results that are little short of insane. 81% of Egyptians who think that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons nevertheless say it has a right to its nuclear program. The Lebanese UAE, the Lebanese and the Jordanians really do not like this prospect.

This, of course, is why Iran needs to keep hatred of Jews and Israel burning among the Arabs; as long as it can pretend that its nukes would never be turned against the Arabs - which as I write these words reminds me of Hezbollah's lies about never turning its weapons against the Lebanese - much of the Arab street will blindly and foolishly support Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

Most of the respondents watch al Jazeera either as their first or second choice and get the majority of their international news from TV.

There is a lot more in the presentation than is covered in this post. You can view it here: Shibly Telhami Brookings poll

Lebanese claim order to shoot came "from the top" (updated)

From Naharnet:

The Lebanese army was instructed to open fire at Israeli troops in the tree-pruning operation that triggered a deadly clash between Israeli and Lebanese troops, Israel News reported.

U.N. peacekeepers in front of a picture
of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,
with an Arabic writing:
"we are full of surprises," (h/t Suzanne)

It said that during a late Wednesday meeting between UNIFIL and representatives of the Lebanese and Israeli armies, Lebanese army officer Abdul Rahman Shaitli said soldiers who opened fire on Israeli troops Tuesday were following instructions.

"Soldiers are instructed to open fire. This is the army's decision," he was quoted as saying.

Al Manar, Hezbollah's station, said the same thing.

To Western ears, this is ironic: the Lebanese Army (and, by extension, the government of Lebanon) is essentially admitting that, in full view of UNIFIL, they planned to break the terms of UN 1701 and start what could have easily devolved into a war. This is hardly how one would expect a responsible army or government to act.

Yet there is reason to be skeptical about this claim.

I first saw a Lebanese Army official saying this yesterday, in response to Israeli claims that a Hezbollah-aligned officer (or other rogue officer) decided to do the ambush on his own. The army therefore has at least four incentives to say that it came from the top: It wants to project an image of having full control over its soldiers; it wants to erase any indication that Hezbollah influences the army; it wants to take full credit for a decision that is wildly popular in Lebanon and it wants to contradict whatever Israel says.

On the other side, as Ronen Bergman noted in a WSJ article reproduced here, the timing seems more than coincidental - the event happened hours before a scheduled major speech by Nasrallah on the fourth anniversary of the end of the 2006 Lebanon war. And the LAF - and Hezbollah - knew about this dastardly tree-pruning operation for days, if not weeks. Bergman quotes Israeli intelligence as saying that a LAF brigade commander gave the order to shoot, and the LAF is now providing cover.

Israel should call their bluff. If what Lebanese officials are now claiming is true, then they planned an act of war and Israel should call for an international investigation of the incident. Such an investigation cannot have a bad outcome for Israel: either it would show serious problems in LAF command structure, including Hezbollah influence, or it will show that Lebanon is indeed acting recklessly in violation of 1701.

(Unless, of course, it is staffed with Goldstone-type people who will end up looking for and finding only evidence Israel started shooting first!)

UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald says it has evidence that indeed the orders came form the top:

A senior diplomatic source, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said preliminary investigations by UN personnel monitoring the border also indicated the Lebanese army planned the attack.

The source said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon advised Lebanese army commanders early on Tuesday morning that the Israelis would be removing a tree on their side of the border early in the afternoon.

Several hours before the Israelis moved in to begin that work, a senior Lebanese army unit arrived at the Lebanese village of al-Adeisa, which overlooks the site where the tree was to be removed, and took control of the area.

They were accompanied by several journalists linked to media outlets controlled by the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, the source said.

Shortly after 12.15pm, when the Israelis moved a crane close to the border fence to begin removing the tree, a Lebanese army sniper took aim at the commanders who were supervising the operation from a hill on the Israeli side of the border.

"The sniper was aiming for the most senior IDF officers present, not the person operating the crane where the alleged border infringement took place," the source told the Herald.

"These were not warning shots fired towards the area of the crane. Someone took careful aim at the Israeli commanders who were standing several hundred metres away."

One shot hit Colonel Dov Harari in the head, killing him instantly. Another shot caused shrapnel wounds to the chest of a captain, who is in hospital in a serious condition.

The source said questions were being asked about why a senior Lebanese army unit had arrived in the area in the hours before the attack, and why they were accompanied by journalists close to Hezbollah.

(h/t Daled Amos via email)