Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The last of Jewish Arabs

Heartbreaking story in the Economist:

The government of Yemen and its people are vociferously anti-Israel. Three of the country’s members of parliament were on the aid flotilla to Gaza that was lethally raided by Israeli commandos at the end of May. They were later given a hero’s welcome home. Yemenis rarely protest publicly against their own miserable circumstances at home. But when tensions rise in Gaza, they happily hold parades in Sana’a, the country’s capital. Comedies on television often feature stupid Israeli soldiers outwitted by plucky Palestinians.

Yet Yemenis also say they appreciate the heritage of their country’s Jews. In the Great Mosque in Sana’a’s ancient city, a guard, whispering as pious men pore over Korans, points out Jewish carvings. In the village of Jibla, south of Sana’a, locals show the star of David on an ancient synagogue, now a mosque. Market traders boast that their wares are made of traditional Jewish silver. A stern police officer gives a permit to a Jewish-American to let him visit an old Jewish village.

The village may soon be no more. The last hundred or so Yemeni Jews are set to leave after more than two millennia in the country. A century ago some 50,000 of them lived more or less peacefully alongside the Muslim majority, now numbering 23m. Life became harder for them after the creation of Israel in 1948, with outbreaks of violence against Jews.

Read the rest of the article...

Armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas - in Lebanon

From The Daily Star:

Three people were wounded Monday after a dispute between clerics loyal to the Fatah and Hamas groups in the Al-Buss Palestinian refugee camp turned into armed clashes, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

The clerics clashed over who would lead prayers at the camp’s mosque.

Al-Buss lies within the southern port city of Tyre.

The dispute started after Sunday’s iftar with an argument between Sheikh Hussein Qassem Maghreb, the Imam of the mosque, who is loyal to Fatah and members of the mosque’s committee, who are loyal to Hamas.

As the clashes broke out, Lebanese Army troops set a perimeter outside the camp to prevent the fighting from spreading while the Popular Palestinian Committee called for a cease-fire by both parties before organizing a reconciliation meeting.

Abu Mahmoud, a Fatah militant, and Fathi Chahine and Jamal Tahah from Hamas were wounded during the clashes.

To be fair, I've seen some heated arguments over who should lead prayers as well. This is exactly the same thing. Except for the weapons. But that's merely a cultural thing.

Is it problematic for Israel to accept support from Christian Zionists?

In the Boston Globe, James Carroll writes:

Christian Zionism is shorthand for the idea that the return of Jews to the Holy Land is a pre-requisite for the return of Jesus the Messiah, and the final redemption of the world. Believers who take this notion literally (and are understood, in that sense, to be fundamentalist) have been central players in the drama of Palestine for almost two centuries. A particular biblical verse seized the imagination of such Christians. (“O that the salvation Of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice and Israel shall be glad’’ — Psalm 56:6. St. Paul cited this verse in Romans 11:26, and Christians took it from there.)

No surprise, perhaps, that the enthused religious “awakenings’’ of 19th century evangelical Protestants therefore jelled around the literal restoration of Jews to their traditional homeland. We saw in a previous column how Catholicism regarded such return of Jews as anathema, but the so-called “restorationist’’ Protestant concern for Jews was not truly friendly. Rather, the restored Jews were only to be instruments of the final triumph of Christianity. Jews again in Israel would be faced with the choice of conversion or damnation.

Christian Restorationism drove a large European arrival in Palestine. The West Jerusalem area known as “the German Colony,’’ for example, was settled by millennial-minded German evangelicals who came to convert Jews. So, too, “the American Colony,’’ the vestige of which remains in the chic East Jerusalem hotel of that name. Indeed, Christian Zionism grew even more powerful in the United States than in Europe. Between a third and a half of all mid-19th century Americans were evangelical Christians, and this vision enlivened most of them. What began as an obsession of the devout became general, affecting even so religiously detached a figure as Abraham Lincoln. “Restoring the Jews to their national home in Palestine,’’ he wrote in 1863, “is a noble dream and one shared by many Americans.’’ Always, the imagined Jewish achievement was implicitly to be at the service not of Jewish vindication, but of an eschatological Christian triumph.

...The irony here is breathtaking. Pursuing an ultimate form of realpolitik, Israeli leaders happily collaborate with a reactionary American religious movement which, while having learned to downplay its Jew-denigrating End Time theology, nevertheless aims in its very essence at the elimination of Jewish faith. Israeli leaders, in their dependence on such Christians, exchange short-term benefit for long-term jeopardy. American Christian Zionism is a particularly lethal form of contemporary fundamentalism. Theologically uncritical and dangerously triumphalist, it is bad for Israel, Palestine, America, and peace.

Is it suicidal for Israel to accept support from Christian Zionists?

It is obvious from the full article that Carroll has no patience for fundamentalist Christians. He is an expert in historic anti-semitism from the Church. His antagonism for Jerry Falwell-types is very clear.

Yet the basic question is a question that many liberal Jews ask as well, and a great number of Jews are undoubtedly uneasy at the thought of collaborating with Bible-thumpers.

In the 19th century, Christian proto-Zionists in England and the US were overt in their reasons for wanting a Jewish presence restored to Zion. They explicitly said that this was a first step towards the conversion of the Jews. In unguarded moments, I would not be surprised if the current crop of Christian fundamentalists would admit to that same desire today.

However, when people or groups or nations cooperate, they only rarely do it for a single reason across the board. More often the relationship is symbiotic, where everyone brings something different to the table, including what they want to get out of it. To give a simple example, men often marry women for reasons far different than their wives had for getting married. Corporations merge for wildly different reasons. It doesn't mean that every such relationship is doomed, as long as each side fulfills the needs of the other.

As long as Christian Zionists have abandoned overtly trying to manipulate Jews into converting, and as long as their love for Israel is at least publicly unconditional, there is no real problem with welcoming their help. And if these ground rules change, it is not as if the relationship is only one way - the Jewish Zionists can freely choose to modify the terms as well.

Carroll's warning seems to be based more on his antipathy towards fundamentalists than on any real, concrete danger that Christian Zionists may represent. He just states categorically that they pose a "long term danger" to Israel. What, exactly, is this danger? Will they force Israel to do something that is against Israel's best interests? More to the point, why would any potential Christian Zionist influence on Israeli policy be inherently more dangerous than White House influence, or UN influence, or Jordanian influence?

Israel can decide on its own what the best course to take is. Carroll apparently is making the assumption that Christian Zionists are more likely to embolden Israel to reject a two-state solution or to hold on to larger areas of Judea and Samaria. He seems to take it on faith that this is inherently dangerous, yet he couches that political opinion in religious terms meant to scare Jews - specifically, Jews who are more tenuous in their Jewish beliefs.

There is an irony here. Carroll styles himself as being an advocate of inter-religious cooperation. His website describes "his long work toward Jewish-Christian-Muslim reconciliation" (an interesting word choice that implies that once upon a time there was peace between the three.) Yet fundamentalist Christians are working hand in hand with religious Zionist Jews in Israel - a cooperation that is symbiotic even as their ultimate goals are admittedly completely different.

Apparently, to Carroll, only some kinds of inter-religious cooperation that is considered praiseworthy.

Gaza's electricity woes deepen - but where are the candle photos?

From Ma'an:

A Gaza official said Monday that despite media reports to the contrary, the electricity crisis in Gaza has worsened.

Kin'an Obed, vice president of the Energy Authority in Gaza, said efforts to solve the fuel dispute had failed and scheduled daily power cuts of 8- to 12-hours continue.

Earlier this month, the sole power station in the Strip shut down for two days due to lack of fuel. Hospitals declared a state of emergency as life-saving equipment was left reliant on generators.

The Gaza government blamed the Palestinian Authority for failing to deliver fuel, while the PA said the Hamas-led government had neglected to transfer fuel payments to Ramallah.

In an effort to resolve the dispute, Obed said from September the government would deduct 170 shekels from salaries of employed residents earning above a certain threshold to enable payment to the PA.

Spokesman for the Gaza Energy Authority Jamal Ad-Dardasawi said only one generator at the power station is functional, and called on the Palestinian governments to put political rivalry aside and to resolve the crisis, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan.

Remember all those (often staged) images of Gazans with candles that we saw when Gaza's electricity woes were blamed on Israel? I was wondering if there were any similar photos from the wire services showing Gazans using candles during the current electricity crisis that is entirely the fault of Palestinian Arabs.

The only results only further prove the bias of the wire services against Israel.

Here is one of the most recent "candle" photos, taken in late June by a service called Demotix, during a late June shutdown that had nothing to do with Israel. Demotix is a user-generated photo service, used by many major news outlets, but I do not know who writes the captions - presumably the photographer.

A fuel shortage due to Israel's blockade forced the main Gaza Strip power station to shut down leaving about half the residents of Gaza without electricity, a power plant official said. Gaza, Palestinian Territory. 26/06/2010.

Even when Gaza's electricity woes are entirely Arab-driven, the only photos of candles you can find still blame Israel.

(If someone wants to research and publicize how Demotix is evidently allowing individuals to lie about the news in ways that get believed by major news outlets, who do not bother to fact check these stories, feel free to go down that path.)

Power outages in....... Egypt and Lebanon

Not only in Gaza...

The newspaper Dar al-Hayat mentions that more power outages will come to Lebanon as Egypt will temporarily stop providing electricity due to its own needs.

"Government's actions are the result of Egyptians feeling anger and resentment towards the continuing crisis of power outages in the country, which lasts more than a month."

There are concerns that the Egyptian electricity network will collapse due to the increased consumption. (@#$#% those air-conditioners).

And thus the Egyptian government decided to stop exporting electricity to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Libya.

In Gaza in the meanwhile, political bickering between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority result in massive electricity shutdowns.

Egypt supplies about 10 percent of electricity to Gaza.

Thus while the Arab brethern in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Libya have to suffer power cuts because of the new reasonable Egyptian export stop of electricity, the Gazans can have it all, but continue to fight about it.

The Toynbee-Herzog Debate

From Ha'aretz in 2007:

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) was an important British historian, who through his controversial theory on civilizations found a place in Israeli and Jewish awareness as an "anti-Semite." According to his theory, civilizations, like human beings, have life cycles that are marked by rises and falls. But the story of the Jewish people, who were determined to survive 2,000 years in the Diaspora only to rise again as a modern nation, did not suit his theory. Thus Toynbee described the Jews as a historic "fossil" - not dead, true, but also not really alive.

When he published his theory at the beginning of the 1960s, he was invited to a debate. The person who invited him was Dr. Yaakov Herzog, at the time Israel's ambassador to Canada, son of the former chief rabbi Yitzhak Herzog and the younger brother of Chaim Herzog, a brilliant scholar and diplomat. Many of Foreign Ministry officials were wary of this debate, which was reminiscent of the mythological word battles in the Middle Ages between Jews and Christians. In the end, however, all those who were present at the debate that took place in January 1961 in Montreal were convinced that Herzog had won.

An email correspondent brought this to my attention and asked if I could find the transcript of that debate. Well, not quite, but the Canadian Jewish Chronicle summarized the entire debate point-by-point, and even though it occurred nearly forty years ago, Toynbee's criticism of Israel sounds exactly the same as those of today's critics - except that Toynbee actually had some regard for the truth. Herzog's successful counter- arguments apply today as well as they did then.

Here is their description of the debate:

Professor Arnold Toynbee and Israel`s Ambassador to Canada, Yaakov Herzog, met in debate at Hillel House on Tuesday, January 31 at noon. At issue were the contentions which Dr. Toynbee had put forth in answer to the student body at an informal session held there last week.

During the course of his observations. Dr. Toynbee had compared the Israeli treatment of the Arabs during the War for Independence in 1948 with that which the Nazis had done to the Jewish people. He also questioned the legal right of the establishment of the Israeli state in a territory which was predominantly Arab.

Ambassador Herzog began addressing himself to the initial issue raised by Professor Toynbee. This point of view he had initially expressed in a book published in l954 wherein he made the comparison between the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis and the manner in which the Israelis dealt with the Arabs during the course of the Arab war to frustrate the United Nations’ decision to partition mandated-Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

At the very outset, Dr. Toynbee audibly agreed with the Ambassador that, in question of magnitude between the between these two events, there was no possible comparison. The Ambassador in turn, agreed with the point of view which Dr. Toynbee had put forth....that the answer to the human dilemma [between] the preservation of man or the destruction of the race lies in the willingness to take a moral leap which must oome from a deep sense of moral commitment.

‘What was the exact situation in newly-partitioned Palestine? Mr. Herrog asked. With the announcement of the United Nations decision in 1947, Radio Cairo promised a war of extermination and massacre. Even before the actual partition took place, vicious attacks on the Jewish settlement had become the order of the day. Inevitably, in every struggle, individual groups of military have been guilty of atrocities towards civilians. That this was never the attitude of the Israeli people has been fully established by subsequent history, the Ambassador continued. "We resisted in self- defence.' But the moment the war was at an end, the 200,000 Arabs within the country were fully integrated into the life and economy and enjoy full and equal privileges with all other citizens of the state.

Professor Toynbee agreed, in his address, with the Ambassador that in magnitude. there was a profound distinction between what happened to the Jews under Nazi control and the treatment accorded the Arabs. While insisting that in essence, the extensiveness of an atrocity is not
the determining factor, he conceded that this action was probably taken by military forces representing independent groups rather than by the regular forces. But what about the occupation of Arab-owned property?

Ambassador Herzog pointed out that 70 per cent of the land occupied hy the Israelis had not been privately owned. These were crown lands under Turkish control and with the establishment of the mandate, the rights were assumed by the British government. He also underscored Israel's constant willingness since the armistice to engage in definite negotiations promising full compensation to the former owners. These had fled from Palestine in response to the radio urgings from Egypt to leave during hostilities in order to return with the victorious Arabs.

If we are to think in humanitarian and moral terms, the Ambassador asked, how can we justify the action of the Arab states in putting the refugee problem in a political and demagogic framework?

Dr. Toynbee admitted that he, too, had asked the same question of Arab leaders and that he roundly condemned their refusal to participate in the resettlement of their fellow-countrymen who are now in camps within their borders. At the same time he underscored his conviction that the continuing displacement of the Arab refugees remains a grave moral issue.

To this, the Ambassador responded in practical tems. The Israelis have been willing since the
close of the fighting to negotiate a settlement including full compensation to those who left property and home behind. Thus far, the governments involved have adamantly refused to do anything about it. Furthermore, is it good political logic to ask Israel to take back peoples who left with the expectation to return with conquering, victorious armies and, who have, for the ensuing years, lived with the notion of hatred and revenge? To admit these peoples is tantamount to national suicide. ‘Is this to be expected of any state?

Finally. Mr. Herzog raised thc controversial issue of Professor Toynbee's reference to the Jewish people in terms of a “fossilized civilization." The Professor explained that he had merely applied this term in want of a more appropriate word fof description to indicate those civilizations which, while continuing to live, had temporarily ceased to function. "A fossil doesn`t die," the Ambassador objected. “but also doesn`t live." That this is not applicable to the Jewish c1vilization, he offered these distinct points in evidence. A civilization has survived which would be acceptable today to the very men responsible for its creation these two millenia ago. A national existence has been reborn. There has been an ingathering of peoples from seventy lands who have discovered spontaneously a common cultural link, that has assumed democratic forms in keeping with the best of western traditions and the only nation in the Middle East to have attained this stature. Finally, its own technological advancement has been a source of help and guidance to a great number of newly-formed states. This, he concluded. was ample proof that the Jewish civilization is not to be included in a fossil-labelled category.

The debate, which at the outset assumed the form of a high-level dialogue, concluded on the same cordial note, with expression; of good-fellowship on the part of both participants.

At least one newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen, agreed that Herzog's arguments won the day:

Two vignetttes from 1953

The cool thing about news archives is that you can find out details of history that are virtually unavailable anywhere else.

Take this throwaway part of an article in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle from 1953:

So in the aftermath of the 1948 war, you could not enter Egypt or Lebanon if you were Jewish. How many years did this apply to Jordan, Syria and "other Arab states?"

But how many times have we been told that Arabs were not anti-semitic, only anti-Zionist? Even though we know what happened to Jews in Arab countries after 1948, the hatred that Arabs had towards Jews even extended to foreign Jews - a not insignificant detail.

The only reason I found that out was because I was stumbling onto this one:

This was in 1953, when the Gulf was a few trillion dollars poorer than it is today. Yet instead of this same point being more relevant today, as it should be, it is all but ignored.

George Will on the "two state delusion"

Worth reproducing in full here:

'Twas a famous victory for diplomacy when, in 1991 in Madrid, Israelis and Palestinians, orchestrated by America, at last engaged in direct talks. Almost a generation later, US policy seems to have succeeded in prodding the Palestinians away from their recent insistence on "proximity talks" -- in which they've talked to the Israelis through American intermediaries -- to direct negotiations. But about what?

Idle talk about a "binational state" has long since died. Even disregarding the recent fates of multinational states, binationalism is impossible if Israel is to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. No significant Israeli constituency disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: "The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders."

Rhetoric about a "two-state solution" is de rigueur. It also is delusional, given two recent searing experiences.

The only place for a Palestinian state is the West Bank, which Israel has occupied -- legally under international law -- since repelling the 1967 aggression launched from there. The West Bank remains an unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, the disposition of which is to be settled by negotiations. But with constructive bluntness, Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to America, puts aside diplomatic ambiguity:

"There is no Israeli leadership that appears either willing or capable of removing 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes -- the minimum required to make way for a viable Palestinian state even with Israel's annexation of its three main settlement blocs. [Those blocs function as Jerusalem's suburbs.] The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops -- the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War -- and was profoundly traumatic."

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel's destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.

Rocket attacks from Gaza rose dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of UN resolutions deploring this? Zero. The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities. When Israel struck back at Hamas, the "international community" was theatrically appalled.

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon says, "Our withdrawals strengthened jihadist Islam," adding, "We have the second Islamic republic in the Middle East -- the first in Iran, the second in Gaza: Hamastan."

Israel's withdrawals include the one that strengthened the Iranian client on Israel's northern border, in southern Lebanon. Since the 2006 war provoked by Hezbollah's incessant rocketing of northern Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and possesses up to 60,000 rockets. Today, Netanyahu says, Israel's problem is less the Israel-Lebanon border than it is the Lebanon-Syria border: Hezbollah has received from Syria -- which gets them from Iran -- Scud missiles capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A leader of Hezbollah says, "If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

Because upward of a million immigrants have come from the former Soviet Union, today a sixth of Israelis speak Russian. Russian Israelis are largely responsible for Avigdor Lieberman's being foreign minister. Yoram Peri, professor of Israeli studies at the University of Maryland, says these immigrants "don't understand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car would be willing to even talk about relinquishing territories to its seemingly perpetual enemies." These immigrants know that Russia's strategic depth defeated Napoleon and Hitler.

Netanyahu, who's not the most conservative member of the coalition government he heads, endorses a two-state solution but says any West Bank Palestinian state must be demilitarized and prevented from making agreements with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran. To prevent the importation of missiles and other arms, Israel would need, he says, a military presence on the West Bank's eastern border with Jordan. Otherwise, there will be a third Islamic republic, and a second one contiguous to Israel.

So, again: Negotiations about what? And with whom?

The yarmulka goal

Last week, Yerushalimey sent me a link to this video showing an Israeli from Hapoel Tel Aviv scoring a goal against Red Bull Salzburg in Austria and then putting on a kipah in celebration:

From JTA:

The stunt earned [Itai] Shechter a yellow card and apparently garnered attention in Israel, where the gesture was widely interpreted as a triumphant gesture against the Nazi history of Austria’s past. Ynet reported that the kipah was given to Shechter by a cancer patient and a longtime Hapoel T.A. fan.

In an interview with One sport, declaring that he “would have put the kipah on even if they had put me in prison,” Shechter said the following (my translation from the Hebrew):

"I wasn’t trying to anger anyone. A young tzaddik gave [the kipah] to me in the airport. I told my friend that I’d put it in my sock and if, G-d willing, I score, I’ll wear it; I didn’t think this was a provocation. I wanted to say Shema' Yisrael. What was going on in my mind was that, 'I know that there are may Jews that are watching me from their home and are happy.'

The player received a yellow card for unsportsmanlike behavior, and I cannot understand why this is more offensive than any of the elaborate goal celebrations I have seen.

Anne Frank tree falls

From Reuters:

A giant chestnut tree that comforted Dutch diarist Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War Two collapsed in heavy wind and rain on Monday.

No one was hurt and the 150-year old tree fell across a fence, missing the Anne Frank House, which has been turned into a museum and was full of tourists.

"It broke off like a match. It broke off completely about one metre off the ground," a spokesman for the house said.

The tree was one of the few signs of nature visible to the Jewish teenager from the concealed attic she hid in for over two years during World War Two and it is mentioned in the diary which became a worldwide best-seller after her death in a concentration camp in 1945.

"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote in May 1944, not long before she was betrayed to the Nazis.

The tree had developed fungus and was set to be felled in 2007 due to concerns for the safety of the 1 million people who visit Anne Frank's house each year.

But officials and conservationists later agreed to secure it with a steel frame to prolong its life and saplings from the tree were planted last year in an Amsterdam park and other cities around the world.

A Dutch tree foundation, which fought to keep the tree alive with another support group, said horticulturalists had estimated the tree could still have lived for dozens of years.

Arnold Heertje, a member of the Support Anne Frank Tree group said there were no plans to plant a sapling on the site or preserve the tree's remains.

"You have to bow your head to the facts. The tree has fallen and will be cut into pieces and disappear. The intention was not to keep this tree alive forever. It has lived for 150 years and now it's over and we're not going to extend it," he said.

Hezbollah/Pasdaran

I just came across this graphic in a Lebanese newspaper:

The left is Hezbollah's logo. The right is the logo of the Pasdaran, known better in the West as Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Nothing surprising, although I do wonder who came up with their logo first.

The Arab "refugee" playbook hasn't changed since 1948

In the light of the recent news about how Lebanon slightly eased its onerous restrictions on Lebanese Palestinians, it is worthwhile to look back and see exactly how the Arab world's use of the Palestinian Arab issue has stayed exactly the same over six decades.

Here's an article from the Herald Tribune news service from August, 1958. Little has changed in the past 52 years.

Ralph Galloway's words are as true today as they were in 1954: "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. they want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."

There is one difference between 1958 and today: in 1958, people were still trying to find a way for Palestinian Arabs to be integrated in their host countries, or at least into the Arab world. Now, the world has given in to years of Arab intransigence and abuse of their "guests" and ignores the problem altogether.

No UN agency is tasked with solving the problem of stateless refugees. UNRWA long ago gave up on that idea. The world's collective head is in the sand, hoping that somehow these stateless millions will magically disappear if there is only peace between Israel and the Arab world. Yet even if there was a peace treaty, the problem would not go away, and the way that UNRWA has defined it, it will keep getting bigger and bigger.

No one is willing to stand up and say publicly that it is time for the Arab world to stop treating the Palestinian Arabs as cannon fodder against Israel. It is time for them to accept their responsibility for taking care of the people in their midst, the vast majority of whom have never lived in Palestine.

The Arab world is still keeping the Palestinian issue alive for one reason: to ultimately destroy Israel. That has not changed over the years. It has been obfuscated, it has been buried, but if you read this article and look at the debate in Lebanon over their Palestinians you can see that it has not changed.

Every Palestinian Arab who was born in an Arab country should automatically become a citizen of that country. Without this simple rule, no amount of treaties will defuse this looming crisis. It is a simple implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 7:

1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

2. States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.

Why has this been so roundly ignored by NGOs? Why has the world accepted Arab abuse of their Palestinian "brethren" as normal? Mostly, why does the world still blame Israel for the plight of people who are born in misery, raised in misery and die in misery in Arab countries under Arab rule suffering from Arab laws meant to keep them stateless and dependent?

The Arabs created today's "refugee" problem, and the Arabs are the ones than can solve it. Until the world opens its eyes to this simple truth and starts to exert pressure to that end, everyone is in danger.

A kibbutz in Rwanda

From the Rwanda News Agency:

It had been the longest journey.

Through desert sands, visa lines, bus rides and the pressing patience of waiting, Natty Mitali arrived at the gates of Zion. The young guitarist had taken the bus from Cairo, dusty and hard-skinned, a journey that had begun further south, near the heart of Africa.

“Like the old Israelites,” says Mitali, who goes popularly by Natty Dread in Rwanda, where he is one of the country’s most famous Rastafari musicians. “Right up to the border.”

It was 1983, and the world was looking dangerous. Israel had just gone to war in Lebanon. The Americans were pushing the Soviets. Mitali was fleeing problems of his own. Tensions between Tutsi and the majority Hutu were surging in his tiny sundrenched home of Rwanda.

His family had grown up as refugees in Uganda, and as tremors of ethnic violence pulsed Rwanda, Mitali moved to nearby Kenya and soon applied for an Israeli visa.

“It was my destiny,” he says.

THINGS IN RWANDA took a turn for the worse.

When the president’s plane was shot down in 1994 it sparked a genocide that in three months wiped out nearly one million Tutsi – including 18 members of Mitali’s family.

From afar in Israel, Mitali grew up, toiling as a farmhand and playing guitar at the Soweto Club on Rehov Frischmann. When there wasn’t enough money, he did like many, and took to the land. Mitali says his time working on the kibbutzim throughout the country – from Na’an to Amirim, Ein Gedi to Achziv, and Shefayim, where he met his first wife – gave him a sense of self, a sense of worth.

Now he has come back, part of a surging Tutsi diaspora flooding home with money and purpose to rebuild a new Rwanda on top of the ruins. They are the followers of President Paul Kagame, who grew up, like Natty Mitali, in Uganda before leading a rebel group to end the genocide.

Deep in Rwanda’s south, between banana plantations and tea fields, Mitali is making his own contribution, the thing that helped him through the darkest times – his own self-styled kibbutz, the Amahoro Youth and Cultural Village.

DESPITE ALL OF Rwanda’s economic progress – its economy grew by 11% in 2008, and it is considered one of the least corrupt countries in Africa – much of its countryside remains poor, and very young.

On over 15 hectares along the southern tip of Lake Kivu in between Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo including two islands, Mitali is setting up a school for some of Rwanda’s most vulnerable – orphaned children, kids taking care of younger siblings with no one else to help, AIDS victims, and child survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

From carpentry to tourism, courses in ecology and music, Mitali is seeking to at once resuscitate life and help develop the country.

Over 70 students, in an admittedly Zionist – and Rastafari – fashion, will work, learn and live together, trying their best to live off the land.

“My time in Israel enlightened me,” Mitali says. “Kibbutzim, collective farms, that’s how the State of Israel was born. Seeing people homeless, with no relations, no orientation, helpless in our present world, I felt the kibbutz kind of solution was the answer to the suffering.” Amahoro means “peace” in local Kinyarwanda, and Mitali envisions a sanctuary – top-notch facilities from a medical clinic to agricultural farms, basketball courts to an eco-lodge. Students won’t just be taught in classrooms, they will receive vocational training.

The plans are coming along nicely – land has been donated by the government, a senior minister is helping advise the project, and architectural designs are being reviewed.

“We are looking forward to it,” says Fabien Sindayiheba, the mayor of Cyangugu district where the school will be. “It will create employability for its graduates, especially for the youth.”

True to the Rwandan spirit not to depend on handouts, Mitali argues, the school will be offering something to the outside. Students will spend time mastering nature conservation and eco-tourism, hallmarks of the national development strategy. A guest house and lodge will be run by the school on one of its islands in Lake Kivu.

“We are socialist on the inside and capitalist on the outside,” says Mitali. “The kibbutz will be a great weapon for fighting poverty.”

Who is burning land in the West Bank again?

Palestinian Arabs and Israel bashers routinely claim that Israeli "settlers" are burning and uprooting Palestinian Arab crops and trees. Some of the stories are probably true, but the chsrges are often made with no evidence.

Yisrael Medad, however, came across some real burned crops and fields, and took pictures of the damage. Yet you won't read about this in any newspaper nor will you see any condemnation of this from any NGO.

Guess why.

Just another day in Gaza

Firas Press reports that Bashir Hammad, a Fatah leader in Gaza, was returning from an outing to the beach with his family when his car was stopped by Hamas troops.

The took him out of the car and shot him in both legs, in front of his wife and kids.

These sort of events seem to be on the increase again.