Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

The Faisal Riding Club of Gaza

On a Friday evening on the edge of Gaza City, the tables at Faisal are beginning to fill up.

A group of young women wearing brightly-patterned headscarves and high heels beneath their jilbabs order ice cream and fruit cocktails; elsewhere men are puffing on water pipes.

But the main attraction is not the company, the menu, nor the refreshing evening breeze that blows off the nearby Mediterranean coast. People come to watch the horses.

Faisal is Gaza's only riding club, open for the past five years and, despite the Israeli blockade and its grim economic consequences, doing rather well. It started with a nucleus of Arabian horses bred in Gaza, but this has been recently supplemented with horses from Egypt and Syria imported through the tunnels dug beneath the border at the southern end of the Strip.

"We choose the horses over the internet, looking at video clips," said chief trainer Ahmed Abd Ali. "We also take advice from our trading partners in Egypt."

The horses are led through the bigger tunnels, but even then it is sometimes a tight fit, according to Abd Ali. Some reach the Gaza end with minor scratches, and some appear a little frightened by the journey. "But we have no choice, there is no other way to get them," he said. The animals are already trained but the trainers allow them a few weeks to recover from the tunnel ordeal before putting them to work.

The club has built up its membership to around 120, with more riders coming for ad hoc lessons. Its monthly fees of around 300 shekels (£52) are a considerable commitment, even for Gaza's elite families. But, says Abd Ali, "we are in a good position" with numbers increasing.

The riding club is part of a circuit frequented by affluent Gazans. Next door is Crazy Water Park, a swimming centre with chutes and slides. There is a burgeoning number of seafront cafes, and a new shopping mall opened in July.

The article goes on to point out "access to these facilities is limited to a tiny stratum of the population."

Algeria refuses to allow Abbas to visit

Mahmoud Abbas, on his way back from Washington, stopped off in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.

According to Palestine Today, however, Algeria refused to allow him to visit that country.

The reasons for Algeria's move were not clear, but the article says that a number of years ago Algeria gave a large sum of money to the PA - and then discovered that millions of dollars from their donation ended up in secret personal accounts owned by PA officials in Morocco.

Algeria is also reportedly not happy with the fact that Abbas only contacts them to demand money.

A hopeful story (for a change)

From Ma'an:

On 27 August, a Palestinian 4-year-old, Abdul-Hayy Salhout, fell from a balcony at his family's home in the Jabal Al-Mukabbir village in occupied East Jerusalem.

Doctors at the Hadassah Medical Center spent eight hours trying to revive the toddler in the ICU, where he died six days later. Abdul-Hayy's parents decided at the time to donate his organs.

According to the Israeli news site Ynet, the boy's liver has since been successfully transplanted to a critically ill 7-year-old Israeli boy. A kidney was given to an 8-year-old girl, also Israeli, whose body has accepted it. The other kidney went to a 55-year-old Israeli man, and he is in good condition too despite concerns of rejection due to the age difference.

"My son arrived at the hospital in very serious condition, and it was impossible to save his life. But we're so happy to see him alive inside other people," Abdul-Hayy's father told Ynet. "It makes no difference to us whether the recipients speak Arabic or Hebrew, because saving a human life is the same."

When the British jailed shofar-blowers (video)

Five years ago I wrote about the time period between 1930 and 1947 when the British forbade any Jew from blowing the shofar at the kotel, and how every year some Jews would get arrested for blowing the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur.

This episode been turned into a moving video by Toldot Yisrael and the History Channel.

"Echoes of a Shofar" is the premiere episode in the "Eyewitness 1948" short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael and the History Channel. It is the centerpiece of an educational pilot program being developed with The iCenter and made possible through the generous support of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Under a British law in Palestine passed in 1930, Jews were forbidden to blow the shofar at the Kotel, pray loudly there, or bring Torah scrolls, so as not to offend the Arab population.

Despite this restriction, for the next seventeen years, the shofar was sounded at the Kotel every Yom Kippur. Shofars were smuggled in to the Kotel where brave teenagers defiantly blew them at the conclusion of the fast. Some managed to get away - others were captured and sent to jail for up to six months.

Six of these men are still alive.

Two weeks ago, these six men returned to the scene of their "crime". Armed with shofars, they recounted their individual stories and blew shofar again at the Kotel.

This is their powerful and inspiring story.

(h/t Cher)

Soros pledges $100M to HRW

From the NYT:

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, plans to announce on Tuesday that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch to expand the organization’s work globally.

Now they can double the number of reports slamming Israel!

Hamas resentment at Iranian pressure?

This comes from the anti-Hamas Palestine Press Agency, so take it with a grain of salt, but the newspaper reports that Hamas is growing increasingly upset at the strings that are being attached to Iranian cash.

According to the article, Iran is pushing Hamas to execute "collaborators," something that Hamas is not keen on doing right now because it wants to cultivate a less violent reputation.

This week, Hamas plans to publish some of the alleged confessions from "collaborators" who turned themselves in.

Egypt finds more weapons caches

From Ma'an:

Egyptian police took control of nine weapons caches across the Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, nearly a week after discovering three stores in the same area.

All of the stores, officials said, were ready to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip.

Several types of weaponry were discovered in the hideouts, located in northern and central Sinai neighborhoods as well as the southern border city of Rafah and the port city of Al-Arish, police told Ma'an.

Egyptian forces said they found machine guns, ammunition, over 170 anti-aircraft shells, 90 artillery shells, 200 bullets of varying sizes and anti-tank landmines. Additionally, 100 kilograms of TNT explosives were seized by Egyptian security from a hideout inside a cemetery in Rafah.

The real question is - how many of these caches are making it through?

The supposedly pacifist "Free Gaza" movement obviously has no problem with weapons smuggling. Their entire goal is to allow Hamastan to be considered a sovereign entity with full rights to bring in all the weapons they want. As they write:

[T]hey are not terrorist as promulgated by the colonial rhetoric; they are freedom fighters who want their legitimate rights...

And the unfortunate fact is that there is very little daylight between the mainstream media position and that of Free Gaza. Which is why you will never, ever see any wire service or major newspaper refer to Hamas' weapons smuggling as an "obstacle to peace."

PalArab in Florida tries to buy Uzis - think BDSers are upset?

From WSVN (Miami):

A Palestinian national has been arrested in South Florida after he was accused to attempting to purchase hundreds of stolen weapons.

Abdalaziz Aziz Hamayel, a Palestinian national with deep ties to the West Bank, was arrested and accused of trying to buy a large amount of weapons. According to a criminal complaint against Hamayel, the suspect attempted to purchase 300 weapons, which he knew were stolen, and the weapons were headed to "his people."

The criminal complaint said, "Hamayel contacted the confidential source to discuss the weapons and explosives he was requesting for purchase...Hamayel specifically requested a quantity of 300 M-16 rifles, 9mm handguns, UZI submachine guns, silencers and grenades."

Hamayel was also interested in buying remote detonation devices, like a cell phone detonator.

I just can't help wondering whether BDSers would come out publicly against or for the idea of a Palestinian Arab purchasing Israeli-made Uzis to kill Israelis.

Today's example of Abbas' moderation

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Authority would "not leave Gaza or the West Bank to Hamas or others,” President Mahmoud Abbas told the Kuwait-based daily newspaper Ar-Ray on Tuesday.

The interview followed one in the Ramallah-based Al-Ayyam newspaper on Monday, where Abbas said that if he was forced to concede on key issues such as refugees or borders during the next round of direct negotiations with Israel, he would "pack my bags and leave."

MEMRI translates the Al Ayyam piece (h/t Joel):

PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas stated in Tunisia that he would not relinquish any of the Palestinian's basic principles, and that he would resign before abandoning the right of return.

Is the insistence on the "right of return" Elephant #17?

Reactions to Time's slander

It seems that the full article is even worse than the excerpts.

See:

Honest Reporting

The reference to the "blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land" is particularly telling. Vick appears to subtly reject Israel's historic claims to the land and to imply that Israelis are at fault in the conflict, since the land really belongs to the Arabs.

Bret Stephens at WSJ:

Journalism aside, there's also a moral dimension here, especially for a magazine that recently devoted its cover to the question of whether Americans are "Islamophobic." That dimension is known as the delegitimization of Israel—the idea that the country ought not to exist. Insisting that Israel be wiped off the map, as Iran's leaders do with such numbing frequency, is one method of delegitimization. Suggesting that Israelis don't care about peace—not all of them, of course; there's always a remnant of politically anguished Israelis to be found, quoted and celebrated for the purposes of native standing and moral cover—is another.

Which of these methods does more lasting harm, the malignly blunt or the well-meaningly insidious? Probably the latter: It shapes a climate of supposedly respectable opinion that doesn't hesitate to tar one nation the way it never would any other. Or did I somehow miss the Time covers devoted to why Russians don't care about democracy, or Kenyans about corruption?

Victor David Hanson at NRO:

In fact, Vick argues, the Jews are so obsessed with making money that they don’t much care what happens in the future: “The truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still define their country by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away, but Israelis say they have moved on.”

You see, Vick has discovered that the rather worldly Israelis, after stealing their land from Arabs, don’t much care for the hard negotiations that the Obama administration is now engaged in (“big elemental thoughts”), not when it is a matter of — yes, making money: “With souls a trifle weary of having to handle big elemental thoughts, the Israeli public prefers to explore such satisfactions as might be available from the private sphere, in a land first imagined as a utopia.”

Soccer Dad has a larger roundup.

"Rape by deception" case was really "deception by media" case

In July, this story became pretty big - here's the AP version, but it was all over the media:

Lying for sex. It happens all the time.

Yet a married Palestinian man has been ordered jailed for 18 months for having sex with an Israeli woman after giving her the impression he too was Jewish, as well as single and interested in a relationship.

His conviction of "rape by deception" has drawn charges of racism and questions about whether courts should be delving into this fraught topic.

Saber Qashor, a 30-year-old father of two, says he was approached by the woman in September 2008 on a downtown Jerusalem street where he had parked his motorcycle, and introduced himself as "Dudu," a common Israeli Jewish nickname.

Within half an hour they were having sex in a Jerusalem office building stairwell.

After nearly two months, he was arrested and told the woman had accused him of forcible rape. Last week, he was sentenced to prison and fined 10,000 shekels ($2,500) for "rape by deception," an offense that may be unique to the Israeli legal code.

"This is a case where it is obviously not rape but fraud, and it smells of racism," said historian and commentator Tom Segev. "It's a real ugly example of how basic values in this country are deteriorating."

All of these articles were written based solely on the Arab man's interview. The victim did not speak to the press. The conclusion was often simple: that Israelis are inherently racist and would never convict an alleged Jewish rapist under such circumstances. For example, Andrew Sullivan (via The Volokh Conspiracy)

But it’s the visceral emotional core of this that is so offensive. It’s about racism, religion and the risk of miscegenation. It’s about the deep disgust of some Israeli Jews toward Arabs, upheld by the courts. It’s a variant of the racial sexual panics of the Jim Crow South.

Other examples here.

Now, Ha'aretz (in Hebrew only) found the victim, and her story is completely different.

Elizabeth at MidEast Youth translates and summarizes the belated Ha'aretz investigation; here is her summary:

Last week, Haaretz daily published a long expose on the matter (my full translation below), revealing what was behind the plea agreement. The report shows, that the victim, B., was raped by her father since she was six-years-old, and was later forced into prostitution by him. At the time of the rape, B. was staying in a women’s shelter after another sexual assault by her father. According to B.’s testimony, first revealed in the Haaretz report, after Kashur claimed that he was a Jewish bachelor, he enticed her to come into a stairwell in a Jerusalem building, where he brutally raped her. B. was left bleeding, beaten up and half naked by Kashur.

Following the rape, B. was hospitalized in a mental institution, where she was investigated by the police. The Prosecutor’s office decided to charge Kashur with rape and sexual assault based on B.’s testimony and other evidence. When B. later appeared in Court to give her testimony, which was confused and contradictory at times, she was confronted by the Defense attorney with her past occupation as a prostitute and her father’s abuse and rape from an early age. The court appearance left B. severely traumatized. When the Defense learned that B. previously filed 14 complaints against her father and other men for sexual assault, it asked to cross-examine B. once again about the past complaints, while focusing on a number of them that didn’t result in an indictment and convictions due to contradictions in her story. The Defense planned to use B.’s past complaints to shatter her credibility. Wanting to avoid another traumatizing event, the Prosecution formulated a plea bargain with the Defense that reduced the charges to “rape by deception”. Essentially, using the threat of once again subjecting a vulnerable rape victim to a traumatizing interrogation, the Defense was able to reach a plea agreement with greatly reduced charges, which didn’t correspond with the facts of the incident.

The Israeli media has failed to thoroughly investigate this matter, resulting in widespread victimization of a rapist and mockery of the “gullible” woman. B. was victimized and abused by her surrounding from an early age, and unfortunately, the Israeli and foreign media, pundits and the blogosphere, victimized her once again.

Not only was the victim's pain minimized, but the entire case was looked upon in opinion pieces and blog posts as yet another example of Israeli racism against Arabs, when in fact it was nothing of the sort.

Will we see retractions? Not very likely. Even Ha'aretz hasn't put this report out in English (they alluded to it here), so the lazy employees in Israel from AP and Reuters aren't aware of this update to begin with, since they use English Ha'aretz as their main source for their "reporting."

90.7% of PalArabs want to destroy Israel

As Time magazine castigates Israel and Israelis for not truly wanting "peace," a recent poll by AWRAD (Arab World for Research & Development) shows how Palestinian Arabs think.

This poll gives a long list of possible answers and asks which ones are "Essential," "Desirable," "Acceptable," "Tolerable" or "Unacceptable."

Some of the results are at odds with the conventional wisdom, to say the least.

IMRA highlights a few of the results. To put it mildly, they show an unwillingness to compromise that are orders of magnitude worse than the most intransigent, hawkish, right-wing Israeli leaders have ever been:

With regards to the final status of Palestine and Israel please indicate which of the following you consider to be Essential, Desirable, Acceptable, Tolerable or Unacceptable as part of a peace agreement.

Historic Palestine – from the Jordan River to the sea as a national homeland for Palestinians
Essential 78.2% Desirable 12.5% Acceptable 4.3 Tolerable 3.1 Unacceptable 2.0

Two state solution – two states for two peoples: Israel and Palestine according to UN resolutions
Essential 17.7 Desirable 15.7 Acceptable 13.6 Tolerable 15.2 Unacceptable 37.7

The number of refugees returning to Israel should be limited to family members and numbers agreed between Israel and Palestine

Essential 3.7 Desirable 7.8 Acceptable 11.9 Tolerable 16.9 Unacceptable 59.6

Palestine should be demilitarized, including the disbanding of militias and
the standing down of the military.

Essential 7.8 Desirable 5.5 Acceptable 4.0 Tolerable 7.6 Unacceptable 75.0

All of Jerusalem (East and West) should remain in Palestine

Essential 84.1 Desirable 10.3 Acceptable 2.2 Tolerable 1.6 Unacceptable 1.7

Other results include:

A majority saying that Israel should be de-militarized (41% Essential, 26% Desirable)

All the settlers should leave the Occupied Territories and settlements closed
Essential 90.8 Desirable 6.3 Acceptable 1.4 Tolerable 0.8 Unacceptable 0.7

Dismantle most of the settlements, move settlers to large blocks and exchange land
Essential 9.6 Desirable 9.0 Acceptable 10.0 Tolerable 17.9 Unacceptable 53.6

Resist occupation through violence to achieve a state
Essential 36.7 Desirable 18.7 Acceptable 16.8 Tolerable 14.0 Unacceptable 13.7

This is not some Israeli right-wing commissioned poll, but from a Palestinian Arab institution.

All of the conventional wisdom that says that Palestinian Arabs want a two-state solution and to live in peace with Israel is wrong. Other polls are constructed in such a way so that it appears that this is what they want, but that is a means to an end, not the desired end itself.

Which is why this poll will not get any publicity in the mainstream media. This is why there will be no Time articles about how Palestinian Arabs do not want peace and how compromise is not in their vocabulary. The mdeia simply cannot deal with these simple truths, so it will ignore the facts.

And, instead, blame Israel.

(h/t sshender)

Another reason the "peace process" is a farce (Samson)

Samson, in the comments, writes:

There are many reasons why these "peace talks" are doomed to failure, most of them well known to the readers of this blog and nearly everyone else. Yet another reason, not often acknowledged, is that the Arabs (and Palestinians in particular) hate the "peace process" and everything about it, including any possible outcome. Americans (well, at least their Presidents) have come to love the whole thing, right up to the handshakes on the White House lawn. For the Arabs, this is yet another humiliation, just the kind of thing they hate more than anything in the world - a bunch of Christian Americans and Europeans supervising their "negotiations" with the hated Jews! For the Palestinians, not particularly well respected among their Arab brethren to begin with, this is the ultimate sign of their inferiority. No wonder they resist direct negotiations.

More important, however, is the discordance between a negotiated settlement and victory, which is what they crave. The idea of 62 years of futile "struggle" followed by a negotiated peace that gives them anything less than 100% of Israel simply doesn't fit into their "narrative." Their national myth requires them to "recapture" "Palestine" with an armed struggle against the evil Jewish Zionists, not settle for the West Bank and Gaza (or less than that) without Jerusalem thanks to US or other third-party intervention. Not that obtaining a state was ever that serious a goal for them compared with destroying Israel in the first place, but even a deliberately deceptive negotiation in which the "agreement" is viewed as the first step in complete and ultimate victory is not enough. Let's face it, the Palestinians have a pretty shallow hold on nationhood to begin with, with little history of accomplishment other than terrorism and suicide bombers, and it just wouldn't do to have their moment of national birth come without martyrdom, armed struggle and victory.

It's not hard to see why they are jealous of the State of Israel, which really does have a long and remarkable pre-history, and whose moment of rebirth occurred as a genuine struggle for survival and nationhood against absurdly long odds. Not that further sacrifice or heroics was what the Jews wanted, needed or asked for, but just as the English can thank the Nazis for their "finest hour", so, ironically, can Israel thank the Arabs. Of course, when Olmert said in 2005 that "....We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies...." he had a point, but sadly, the war is not over, only transformed yet again into a different type of conflict. It cannot be resolved militarily at this point, but any attempt to end it by a "peace process" is doomed for the above cited and many other reasons.

Hazak ve'ematz my friends, the fight for Israel must continue.

About that Time cover story....

A number of people are upset over Time magazine's cover story for the September 13th issue:

I would like to read the entire article (still not online) to give an honest opinion, but from what we can see so far it seems fairly certain that Time magazine sees no distinction between "peace" and "the peace process."

For example, while the cover talks about "peace," the blurb describing the article says:

The Good Life And Its Dangers (Cover)
Israelis feel prosperous, secure--and disengaged from the peace process. Is that wise?

The cherry-picked example given in the online article teaser says:

In the week that three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They're otherwise engaged; they're making money; they're enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still define their country by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away, but Israelis say they have moved on.

From what we can see, Time is making a major mistake that many on the world are making.

To say that Israel, or Israelis, don't care about "peace" is so off-base that it borders on calumny. But to say that Israelis don't care about an inherently flawed "peace process" that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people over the years is perfectly reasonable.

The title on the cover, and the cover itself, are very clearly implying that Israelis do not care about peace itself. The Time editors do not seem to understand basic English. Right now, there is peace, by and large.

On the other hand, Israelis know that the almost automatic result of giving more concessions is terror, not peace.

Hezbollah was not dismantled when its supposed raison d'etre disappeared when Israel withdrew behind UN-drawn borders - on the contrary, it was strengthened. Hamas didn't get weakened by Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - it moved into the vacuum left by an impotent PA, that just happens to be Israel's "peace partner." What person it their right mind would support moving into act 3 of this drama?

Meanwhile, Abbas himself said "[i]n the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." Hate to break it to Time, but that is the definition of peace - Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are living together, cooperating on security, and the economies of both groups are improving.

Making more parts of the West Bank Judenrein is not going to improve things; evidence indicates that the opposite is true.

There are many other reasons to be skeptical of the peace process. Last time I listed them, I had 16 of them, and they are not going away.

This does not mean that Israel doesn't care about peace. Israel's actions since the Intifada have reduced the number of victims of terror - and number of victims of IDF actions in the West Bank - by a huge amount. Israelis can travel on buses and go to restaurants without fear. West Bank Arabs are also prospering.

Isn't that what peace is all about?

Labor Day weekend open thread (updated)

On another micro vacation and not near a computer. So here's an open thread to tide us all over.

UPDATE: Now even opener! And threadier!

Still a few hours away from a normal computer.