Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

PA wants ancient Jewish cemetery at Mount of Olives

The Internal Security Ministry and the Housing Ministry announced that millions of Shekels will be invested to boost security at the Mount of Olives site in Jerusalem, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.

The new plan will include hundreds of cameras and sensors, and will increase the activities of the border police at the site, according to the report.

The fact is that it is dangerous, even today, for Jews to visit the graves of their loved ones and ancestors on the Mount of Olives.

And that mountain is considered "occupied."

While many people discuss the issue of the Old City of Jerusalem in any final status discussions, there is very little written about the Mount of Olives. Yet that ancient burial ground has no sanctity nor history for Arabs or Muslims (although it has meaning for Christians.) There should be no question that this holy spot should remain under Jewish control.

And yet, last month, Ehud Barak hinted that the Mount of Olives can be placed under a "special regime" - meaning, at least partial Arab sovereignty.

Last year, JCPA published an important summary of all the issues around the Mount of Olives:

The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, that the Palestinians demand to transfer to their control, is the most important Jewish cemetery in the world. The area has constituted a religious and national pantheon for the Jewish people and the State of Israel, containing the tombs of the illustrious dead of the nation over the course of 3,000 years and serving as a site for Jewish gathering and prayer at the time of the ancient Temple and even prior to it.

Under Jordanian rule, Jewish access and the continued burial of Jews on the mount was prohibited, despite Jordan's explicit commitment in the Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Agreement of 1949. During the period of Jordanian rule, the cemetery was destroyed and desecrated, and 38,000 of its tombstones and graves were smashed to smithereens.

Since Jerusalem's reunification, burial ceremonies were renewed at the site and large sections of the cemetery were rehabilitated. Nevertheless, attempts by Palestinians to damage the cemetery have never totally abated, and there have been periodic attacks on Jewish mourners escorting their dead for burial.

Previous Israeli governments that consented to discuss arrangements in Jerusalem with the Palestinians rejected their demand to transfer the Mount of Olives to PA sovereignty and control. Nevertheless, those governments were prepared to give their assent to the transfer of neighborhoods that control the access routes to the mount. Should any such agreement be implemented in the future, it could endanger freedom of access to the site and continued Jewish burial there.

In any future arrangements, in order to allow continued Jewish burial on the mount, Israel must guarantee freedom of access to the site by controlling the arteries leading to it, as well as the areas adjacent to it. On the previous occasions that Israel transferred areas that included Jewish holy sites to Palestinian control, the Palestinians severely encumbered or refused to allow Jewish access to these places. Sometimes these sites were even severely damaged.

This is not an issue that Israel can compromise on.

Hamas raids journalists syndicate, agriculture group

Today, Hamas broke into the headquarters of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in Gaza, and then summoned the members of the Board of Directors of the Association for interrogation.

They also raided the headquarters of the Association of Agricultural Engineers of Gaza, expelling the board of directors and taking it over.

Remember when experts said that Hamas would naturally mellow when they were forced to do day-to-day running of the Gaza Strip? It sure looks like, over time, they are getting really good at this governing thing!

Daily Mail reports what the territories are really like

A must read from Peter Hitchens at the Daily Mail. Here are some large excerpts, but read the whole thing.

It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.

There are dispiriting slums that should have been cleared decades ago, people living on the edge of subsistence. There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out.

But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that. In fact, the true state of the Gaza Strip, and of the West Bank of the Jordan, is so full of paradoxes and surprises that most news coverage of the Middle East finds it easier to concentrate on the obvious, and leave out the awkward bits.

Which is why, in my view, politicians and public alike have been herded down a dead end that serves only propagandists and cynics, and leaves the people of this beautiful, important part of the world suffering needlessly.

For instance, our Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently fawned on his Islamist hosts in Turkey by stating Gaza was a 'prison camp'. This phrase is the official line of the well-funded Arab and Muslim lobby, who want to make sure Israel is seen by the world as a villainous oppressor.

But if you think Israel is the only problem, or that Israelis are the only oppressors hereabouts, think again. Realise, for a start, that Israel no longer rules Gaza. Its settlements are ruins.

No Israelis can be found inside its borders. And, before you say 'but Israel controls the Gaza border', look at a map. The strip's southern frontier – almost as hard to cross as the Israeli boundary – is with Egypt. And Cairo is as anxious as Israel to seal in the Muslim militants of Hamas.

Gaza was bombed on the day I arrived in retaliation for a series of rocket strikes on Israel, made by Arab militants. Those militants knew this would happen, but they launched their rockets anyway. Many Gazans hate them for this.

One, whom I shall call Ibrahim, told me how he had begged these maniacs to leave his neighbourhood during Israel's devastating military attack nearly two years ago. His wife was close to giving birth.

He knew the Israelis would quickly seek out the launcher, and that these men would bring death down on his home. But the militants sneered at his pleading, so he shoved his wife into his car and fled.

Moments after he passed the first major crossroads, a huge Israeli bomb burst on the spot where his car had been. The diabolical power of modern munitions is still visible, in the ruins of what was once a government building.

It looks as if a giant has chewed and smashed it, and then come back and stamped on it. If you can imagine trying to protect a pregnant woman from such forces, then you can begin to understand how complex it is living here, where those who claim to defend you bring death to your door.

For the Islamist rocket-firers are also the government here, supported by Iran and others who care more for an abstract cause than they do for real people. They claim that their permanent war with Israel is for the benefit of the Palestinian Arabs. But is it?

Human beings will always strive for some sort of normal life. They do this even when bombs are falling and demagogues raging. Even when, as in Gaza, there is no way out and morality patrols sweep through restaurants in search of illicit beer and women smoking in public or otherwise affronting the 14th Century values of Hamas.

So I won't give the name of the rather pleasant establishment where young women, Islamic butterflies mocking the fanatics' strict dress code with bright make-up and colourful silken hijabs, chattered as they inhaled apple-scented smoke from their water-pipes.

Their menfolk, nearby, watched football on huge, flat-screen televisions. Nor will I say where I saw the Gazan young gathering for beach barbecues beneath palm-leaf umbrellas.

Of course this way of life isn't typical. But it exists, and it shows the 'prison camp' designation is a brain-dead over-simplification. If it is wrong for the rich to live next door to the desperate – and we often assume this when we criticise Israel – then what about Gaza's wealthy, and its Hamas rulers?

They tolerate this gap, so they are presumably as blameworthy as the Israelis whose comfortable homes overlook chasms of poverty. [This is also an oversimplification. In Judea and Samaria, the Arab houses visible from the Jewish communities are almost always larger and far more opulent than the biggest "settler" homes. Of course, there are some poor Arab villages, but they are not by any means the only ones. - EoZ]

Then there is the use of the word 'siege'.

Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes, and where European Union and other foreign aid projects pour streams of cash (often yours) into the pockets of thousands? Once again, the word conceals more than it reveals.

In Gaza's trapped, unequal society, a wealthy and influential few live in magnificent villas with sea views and their own generators to escape the endless power cuts.

Gaza also possesses a reasonably well-off middle class, who spend their cash in a shopping mall – sited in Treasure Street in Gaza City, round the corner from another street that is almost entirely given over to shops displaying washing machines and refrigerators.

Siege? Not exactly.

What about Gaza's 'refugee camps'? The expression is misleading. Most of those who live in them are not refugees, but the children and grandchildren of those who fled Israel in the war of 1948.

All the other refugees from that era – in India and Pakistan, the Germans driven from Poland and the Czech lands, not to mention the Jews expelled from the Arab world – were long ago resettled.

Unbelievably, these people are still stuck in insanitary townships, hostages in a vast struggle kept going by politicians who claim to care about them. These places are not much different from the poorer urban districts of Cairo, about which nobody, in the Arab world or the West, has much to say.

It is not idle to say that these 'camps' should have been pulled down years ago, and their inhabitants rehoused. It can be done. The United Arab Emirates, to their lasting credit, have paid for a smart new housing estate with a view of the Mediterranean.

It shows what could happen if the Arab world cared as much as it says it does about Gaza. Everyone in Gaza could live in such places, at a cost that would be no more than small change in the oil-rich Arab world's pocket.

But the propagandists, who insist that one day the refugees will return to their lost homes, regard such improvements as acceptance that Israel is permanent – and so they prefer the squalor, for other people.

Those who rightly condemn the misery of the camps should ask themselves whose fault it really is. As so often in the Arab world, the rubbish-infested squalor of the streets conceals clean, private quarters, not luxurious and sometimes basic, but out of these places emerge each day huge numbers of scrubbed, neatly-uniformed children, on their way to schools so crammed that they have two shifts.

I wish I was sure these young people were being taught the principles of human brotherhood and co-existence. But I doubt it. On a wall in a street in central Gaza, a mural – clearly displayed with official approval – shows an obscene caricature of an Israeli soldier with a dead child slung from his bayonet.

Next to it is written in Arabic 'Child Hunter'. Other propaganda, in English, is nearby. My guide is embarrassed by this racialist foulness. I wonder how so many other Western visitors have somehow failed to mention it in their accounts.

I was still wondering about this as I travelled to the short distance to the West Bank, where Israel still partly rules. I was the recipient of hospitality in many Arab homes – a level of generosity that should make Western people ashamed of their cold, neighbour-hating cities.
And once again I saw the outline of a society, slowly forming amid the wreckage, in which a decent person might live, work, raise children and attempt to live a good life. But I also saw and heard distressing things.

One – which I feel all of us should be aware of – is the plight of Christian Arabs under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. More than once I heard them say: 'Life was better for us under Israeli rule.'

One young man, lamenting the refusal of the Muslim-dominated courts to help him in a property dispute with squatters, burst out: 'We are so alone! All of us Christians feel so lonely in this country.'

This conversation took place about a mile from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where tourists are given the impression that the Christian religion is respected. Not really.
I was told, in whispers, of the unprintable desecration of this shrine by Palestinian gunmen when they seized the church in 2002 – 'world opinion' was exclusively directed against Israel. I will not name the people who told me these things.

I have also decided not to name another leading Christian Arab who told me of how his efforts to maintain Christian culture in the West Bank had met with official thuggery and intimidation.

My guide and host reckons there are 30,000 Christians in the three neighbouring municipalities of Bethlehem, Beit-Sahour and Beit- Jala. Soon there will be far fewer.

He has found out that 2,000 emigrated between 2001 and 2004, a process which has not stopped. What is most infuriating about this is that many Christians in Britain are fed propaganda blaming this on the Israelis.

Arabs can oppress each other, without any help from outside. Because the Palestinian cause is a favourite among Western Leftists, they prefer not to notice that it is largely an aggressive Islamic cause.

And in this part of the world, political correctness does not exist. Picture yourself on a comfortable sofa in an apartment in a West Bank town. Nearby runs the infamous, absurd, barrier dividing the Arab world from Israel.

Think about this wall. I acknowledge that it is hateful and oppressive – dividing men from their land, and (in one case) cutting across the playground of a high school. But I have concluded that it is a civilised response to the suicide bombing that led to its being built.

My host, a thoughtful family man who has spent years in Israeli prisons but is now sick of war, has been talking politics and history. His wife, though present, remains unseen.

Suddenly he begins to speak about the Jews. He utters thoughts that would not have been out of place in Hitler's Germany. This is what he has been brought up to believe and what his children's schools will pass on to them.

The heart sinks at this evidence of individual sense mixed up with evil and stupidity. It makes talk of a 'New Middle East' seem like twaddle. So, are we to despair? I am not so sure.

Even in notorious Hebron in the south, famous for its massacres and its aggressive Israeli enclave, the mall culture is in evidence three miles from this seat of tension. And on the road from Hebron to Jerusalem stands a cut-price supermarket so cheap that Israeli settlers and Palestinians mingle happily at the cash tills.

I might add that an Arab intellectual, sitting in a Gaza cafe, recalled for me the happy days when Gazan women used to wear short skirts (now they all wear shrouds and veils) and you could get a beer by the beach.

But perhaps best of all was the comment of the Arab Israeli who mourned for 'the good old days before we had peace'. It may well be that no solution to the problem of Israel is possible, and that it will all end, perhaps decades from now, in a nuclear fireball.

But if outside politicians, more interested in their reputations than in the lives of Arabs and Israelis, would only stop their search for a final settlement, might it be that people – left to their own devices – might find a way of living together, a way that was imperfect, but which no longer involved human beings being dissolved into hunks of flying flesh by high explosive?

How many years did it take a journalist to actually write the truth about Gaza and the West Bank?

(h/t Joe)

Jericho celebrates "10,000th" anniversary

From Al Arabiya:

The Palestinians on Sunday marked the 10,000th anniversary of the founding of Jericho, an oasis town in the West Bank that may be the world's oldest city.

The festivities included a special cabinet meeting chaired by prime minister Salam Fayyad that was to be followed by a 4.5 kilometer (2.8 mile) foot race, a military band and fireworks.

"This occasion is not only a celebration, but is part of a national project to complete the building and preparation of the Palestinian state," Fayyad said at the opening of the ceremony.

The date chosen for the anniversary -- 10/10/2010 -- was mostly symbolic.

AFP notes, however, that the planning for the event was a bust:

Jericho's 10,000th anniversary was intended to showcase the revival of the West Bank town: instead, it risks revealing how far they still have to go, say residents.

When the Palestinian Authority announced the celebrations in 2007 it was to herald the completion of new infrastructure projects and highlight the economic recovery of the ancient town after years of unrest following the 2000 uprising.

But the resulting low-key celebrations, as they enter their 11th millennium, have left even the town's mayor underwhelmed.

"I imagined that on Jericho's 10,000th anniversary we would have (US) President (Barack) Obama visit us, that we would have world leaders," Mayor Hassan Hussein said ahead of Sunday's ceremony.

Instead, the birthday for what may be the world's oldest city will be marked by a special Palestinian cabinet meeting, a military band, a 4.5-kilometre (2.8-mile) "marathon" and some fireworks.

And the one project everyone thought would be completed on time, a Russian-built museum, will not be ready for inauguration until Wednesday.

"It's going to look like a graduation ceremony," said the mayor.

[S]everal high-profile infrastructure projects that had been planned to coincide with the anniversary have not yet got off the ground.

Kamel Hemeid, the governor of Jericho and the Jordan valley, blamed this on Israeli restrictions and international donors who had not given enough aid to several projects, including a 50-million-dollar water treatment plant.

Local residents were sceptical of the government attempts to blame Israel, especially given a recent surge in tourism and the removal of the main Israeli checkpoint on the road from Jerusalem.

"The problem is not Israeli barriers," says Raed Daraghmeh, 38, the manager of a sprawling restaurant outside the 9,000 year-old ruins of Tel al-Sultan, which predate Egypt's pyramids by 4,000 years.

He blames the low-key celebration in part on a failure to involve the private sector, describing the planning as a "top-secret mission."

"I've been here, and for the past three years there has not been a single brochure to tell people that there will be an anniversary celebration."

Good news coverage from PA newspaper

In case anyone thinks that Palestinian Media Watch only highlights stories that make the PA's media look anti-semitic, xenophobic or politically extremist, here is a counter-example of what can only be described as positive coverage - of Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.

Last week a fire was set to carpets and copies of the Quran inside a mosque near Bethlehem. In a positive move, the PA official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida gave prominent first page coverage to the solidarity visit of Israeli "settler rabbis" and "dozens of settler-supporters of peace" who came to the mosque to express condemnation of the arson. The PA daily published a picture of the visit and reported that the rabbis brought new copies of the Quran to replace the burned copies.

In another positive note, two days later the same PA daily showed a picture of Israeli - Palestinian coexistence by publishing a picture of a Palestinian harvesting his olives to the accompaniment of an Israeli sitting right next to him under the tree playing his guitar.

The caption to the picture was:
"Settler from Kiryat Arba plays his guitar while a [Palestinian] resident gathers the olive harvest."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 8, 2010]

The following are texts from two articles in the official PA daily giving prominence to the rabbis' visit:

"Six settler rabbis conducted a solidarity visit to the village of Beit Fajar, near Bethlehem, bringing with them copies of the Quran. Dozens of settler-supporters of peace and hundreds of Palestinians, expressing solidarity, gathered to receive them at the entrance of the village. After handing over a box containing 20 copies of the Quran, to replace those which had been burned in the mosque, Rabbi Menahem Fruman said: 'This land is the land of peace, and Allah will take revenge on those who set fire to the mosque.'"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 6, 2010]

"Yesterday, a delegation of Jewish religious leaders visited the town of Beit Fajar and examined the destruction caused by the fire two days ago. They emphasized that the Jewish religion is innocent of the perpetrators.

The delegation included Fruman, rabbi of the settlement of Tekoa - a settlement which is situated on the land of the Taqoa village and in which settlement construction work is continuing, as well as Rabi Aharon Lichtenstein and Rabbi Alex [sic - should be Shlomo] Riskin.
Bethlehem District Governor, Abd Al-Fatah Hamail, received the delegation inside the mosque, and said that the Palestinian side appreciates the visit, but wants real actions that will help towards the capture of the criminals who carried out [the vandalism]. He described the fire in the mosque as a cheap act, far removed from human moral values, and reflecting the degree of hatred and animosity of the perpetrators, who represent a great threat to both Palestinians and Israelis...

Hamail said that the Palestinian people desires a just peace... and emphasized that the three [monotheistic] religions are tolerant religions, far removed from fanaticism and hatred, since all of them have explicitly established freedom of religion and the need for mutual respect.
Hamail called upon the Israeli side to investigate the circumstances of this action, and questioned whether the Israeli security [forces] have really been unable so far to discover the perpetrators.

The delegation of rabbis emphasized that the aim of their visit to the town of Beit Fajar was to express solidarity with the residents and with the Muslims of Palestine. They said that those who had carried out the action are singularly far removed from the Jewish religion, and announced that the expression, "Allah is great" is an expression that belongs to all three [monotheistic] religions, since God is greater than all such actions. They emphasized that they seek peace and justice.

They expressed the hope that peace will be attained in the Holy Land, because the monotheistic religions are based on coexistence and peace."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 6, 2010]

(h/t Joel. See also Jeffrey Goldberg's take.)

2000 blue and white balloons to greet Ahmadinejad (updated)

Arutz-7 reports that Ayoub Kara, a Likud Druze member of the Knesset, plans to launch 2000 blue and white balloons at the northern border when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Lebanon:

“We are planning to fly 2,000 balloons across the northern border to Lebanon when Ahmadinejad comes for a visit Wednesday,” Kara told Voice of Israel radio. “The balloons represent the fact that the Jewish people have come home after 2,000 years of exile, and they are not going anywhere.” Kara, who is himself not Jewish, said that he appreciated Israel's freedom and democracy – and that were it not for the Jewish people, the entire Middle East would look like Iran.

“It was my idea to organize the event, and I am hoping that thousands will come,” Kara said of the rally, set for 11 a.m. Wednesday in the northern border town of Metulla.

This is a major headline in Asharq al-Awsat.

(And, yes, I just designed the graphic.)

UPDATE: Speaking of Israeli balloons over Lebanon, remember this? The hate-Israel crowd at Mondoweiss still believe it.

"The Girl of Adnan and the Fortitude of the Arabs"

Looking a little further at the joint Zionist/Palestinian Arab narrative history book, I see something I had never heard of (page 9, Arab side)

[Ormsby-Gore's] report ignored an important incident which reflects the political mood in Palestine at the time. This incident was a theatrical event, “The Girl of Adnan and the Fortitude of the Arabs,” which took place in Jerusalem on the nights of the eleventh and twelfth of April 1918 as part of the Al-Rashidiyyah Forum. Lights were focused on a large relief map of Palestine. Under the map the following verses were written:

Oh land of Palestine which was blessed
Oh auspicious land of the children of the Arab nation,
Oh God’s own beloved land, don’t lose hope.
I love only you.
We will redeem you with our souls
And travel the road of travail
Gathering light from Arab East and Arab West.
Until Palestine will shine,
Radiant as the sunrise.

Now, it is true that there was a smattering of specifically Palestinian Arab nationalism before 1920. However, the mainstream Arabs of Palestine supported a pan-Syrian nationalism, and Palestine was traditionally a part of southern Syria. Even the Mufti supported a Syrian Arab state that included Palestine. So while this event may have occurred, it is an overstatement to say that it was an "important incident."

Outside of this book, I cannot find a single reference to this event on the Internet, in English or in Arabic (assuming I am translating it right.) I think it is far more likely that this event, if it happened at all, was of minor significance and its importance is being pumped up now in order to strengthen the near-myth of Palestinian Arab nationalism.

(I would also love to know what the boundaries of "Palestine" were in this "large relief map." Certainly it was not congruent with British Mandate Palestine, so the map itself would be highly interesting - begging the question of why Palestinian Arabs are no longer interested in the portions of Palestine that lay beyond the Jordan.)

One would think that a history textbook would use facts that are easily verifiable. Terming this event an "important incident" when that incident is nearly impossible to corroborate seems to be more the domain of history researchers, not textbook publishers, and if they are going to assert this event they should point to a source.

A tiny glimpse at the Arab narrative

Commenter T34zakat points to an early English draft version of the history textbook that is supposed to show both the Arab and Zionist narrative.

I commented back that I was not thrilled with the book beginning its history with the advent of modern Zionism leading up to the Balfour Declaration, because it gave short shrift to thousands of years of Jewish history beforehand.

But glancing at the Arab narrative, I saw this gem on page 6:

The Balfour Declaration is considered a political gain for the Zionist movement at the expense of Arabs and Muslims, who originally owned the Holy Land.

How anyone can write such a sentence without their head exploding from cognitive dissonance, I have no idea. The implication is that Islam predates Judaism, which might be the Islamic perspective but no real historian could ever say that with a straight face.

If I have the stomach and the time for it, I'll keep looking through it.

But Israel should teach the truth about the Nakba

Continuation from previous post...

Of course, we still need to grapple with what Israel teaches its students. It seems to me that only one thing needs to be taught: the truth. If Israeli schools completely ignore talking about some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs having left their homes, some of them (but far from the majority) forced out by the Haganah and IZL, they are failing. If they teach the skewed Palestinian Arab narrative of forced dispossession and unending massacres, they are failing worse.

Yes, teach the Nakba - but teach what really happened. Of course it was a catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of people, but the continuing catastrophe of what has happened to them since 1948 at the hands of their Arab brothers needs to be taught as well.

Yes, there were some massacres and Israel should be embarrassed - but there was also heroism, there were also miracles, there was also the overriding moral imperative to survive and beat back an onslaught that was literally meant to be genocidal.

Teach about how Palestinian Arab nationalism was weak to nonexistent in 1948. Teach how Jordan and Egypt's occupations of "Palestinian" land were not protested. Teach the history of the Mufti and his terror sprees against Jews (not Zionists - Jews.) Teach about how Arab refugees in Israel were integrated into society while those in Arab lands were treated like garbage, and still are. Teach about how UNRWA has ensured that the "refugee" problem will fester until Israel is destroyed.

All of these need to be taught. It doesn't mean that Israeli youngsters shouldn't feel the appropriate sorrow for the suffering of their enemy, but it also doesn't mean that they should forget that they are still the enemy, and the moral imperative is to ensure your own survival before worrying about that of those who tried, and still desire, to destroy you.

For an example of what must be taught, here is an article that I have quoted years ago, from Dorothy Bar-Adon in the Palestine Post, August 17, 1948. In it she discusses how she feels bad over the fact that her neighboring Arab village fled - but also says exactly why they cannot return. It strikes the perfect balance between humanity and self-preservation. Acknowledging the fact that 1948 was a disaster for Arabs in Palestine is not a violation of the Zionist narrative; it should be part and parcel of it - but it must be put in the proper context of the time and the place.

Because the alternative was unimaginably worse.

PA throws away huge PR victory. Because they hate Israel that much.

Ha'aretz had an exclusive story today that looked very embarrassing to Israel:

The Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry approved the use of a history textbook that offers the central narratives of both Palestinians and the Zionist movement, marking the first time that the accepted Israeli position is being presented to schoolchildren in the West Bank.

The textbook, which has been banned from use by the Israeli Education Ministry, is the result of a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Swedish collaboration to promote coexistence through education. It will be taught in two high schools near Jericho, the Palestinian Education Ministry said.

Next week, the Education Ministry is scheduled to summon the principal of a Sderot area high school for "clarification" after he had permitted the use of the textbook by students in a special supplementary educational course.

Aharon Rothstein, the head of the Sha'ar Hanegev high school, may be reprimanded for allowing students to reference a textbook entitled "Learning the Historical Narrative of the Other," a project initiated by Prof. Dan Bar-On of Ben-Gurion University and Prof. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University.

"Unfortunately, the Palestinians are further along than the Israeli Education Ministry when it comes to acknowledging the other side of the conflict," said an official involved in administering the textbook in the Sha'ar Hanegev school. "While [the Palestinians] approved the project, here they are summoning the principal for clarifications. This is a highly embarrassing situation."

Any news story that would make Palestinian Arabs look more liberal than Israelis would be a huge PR victory; a devastating riposte to those who contrast the openness and liberalism in Israel and the hate and intolerance in the PA administered territories.

So, predictably, the PA threw it all away:

A Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education official denied on Monday approving a textbook which teaches schoolchildren the Zionist and Palestinian narrative.

A member of the PA ministry's curriculum committee Thwarwat Zaid rebuffed a report in Israeli daily Haaretz that the textbook had been approved and said the committee neither knew of the book nor read it.

The PA had a choice to win a huge propaganda victory - or let some of their high school kids learn the Zionist narrative along with their own. The thought of teaching anything remotely resembling Zionism was so repulsive that they'd rather throw it all away.

(to be continued - what Israel needs to teach)

UPDATE: See also my posts on the textbook itself.

A Jordanian who gets it

From The Qudosi Chronicles, an srticle by Mudar Zahran:

Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians has always been globally approached with standardized heavy criticism made to Israel. The main charges waved in Israel’s face have always been “the Disapropriate use of force” and “discrimination”.

Israel’s critics, either willingly or out of ignorance, choose to overlook the way many Arab countries mistreat Palestinians. Some Arab countries are almost never blamed for what they have been doing to the Palestinians for decades. Such selective recognition of facts by Israel’s critics is bizarre when weighed by truth instead of myths.

In December of 2008, Israel launched operation “Cast Lead” against Hamas which was launching rockets on Southern Israel on a daily basis. This operation has resulted in the death of more than 1,400 Palestinians, many said to be civilians; an absolute tragedy, nonetheless, those criticizing Israel fail to recognize that the number of causalities is small comparing to Gaza’s population of 1.5 million, considering the high density of Gaza’s population per square kilometre, the number suggests the Israeli forces were very cautious in carrying out their attacks, despite the fact that they were chasing a moving target, Hamas militants. If Israeli forces were targeting Palestinian civilians, the number of the dead would have reached tens of thousands.

On comparison; in 1976, Lebanese militiamen butchered 2,000 Palestinians; almost wiping out the entire population of Tell al-Zaatar refugee camp within days. This was revisited again in 1982 in Sabra and Shatelah massacre; where, in less than four days, Lebanese militiamen killed thousands of women and children who posed no threat as most Palestinian fighters had left then to Tunisia. Two years ago, al-Jazeera satellite network aired rare footage of Palestinians running to Israeli soldiers for refuge from the massacre.

Furthermore, most Arab atrocities against Palestinians have included documented rape cases, even of children, while not a single rape case has been reported against Israeli forces in more than sixty years of operations.

Arab governments’ oppression of the Palestinians does not stop at bloodshed and wholesale slaughters, in fact the more troubling aspects of the way they treat Palestinians is in the systematic long-range exclusion and discrimination. In Arab countries where Palestinians make up a good percentage of the population; they are deprived of all basic necessities, starting with education, down to basic healthcare. Even at countries that have granted the Palestinians citizenships, the Palestinians stand helpless and banned from every potential to improve their livelihoods.

Israel, on the other hand, has always allowed Palestinians to work there and to get paid in Western standards, and even had allowed them generous access to healthcare. In fact, Israel has also welcomed Palestinians as visitors, patients and even as investors, this generosity was only limited when Hamas started bombing Israeli civilians with no signs of an end in sight.

The complexity Israel has with Palestinians revolves around security rather than ideological issues; Israel does not have an aim to enslave the Palestinians for life or purposely degrade their humanity. While many Arab countries have designed their systems to discriminate and humiliate the Palestinians, squeezing them into illiteracy and poverty while milking them for tax money.

This has become most visible recently with calls in some Arab countries to revoke citizenships of all Palestinians there and actually to force them to seek local guarantors to obtain residency, thus enslaving them for life.

This comes as a deeper shock for Palestinians when they see Israeli Arabs, with many of them describing themselves as “Palestinians in Israel”; those are full citizens of Israel with access to all privileges. Israeli Arabs are fully represented inside the Knesset while Palestinians, in their Arab homeland, are allowed only symbolic presence in parliaments, even at countries where they are the majority. And while some Arab countries selectively withdraw citizenships from Palestinians, many Arab Knesset members do not hesitate to speak against Israel with no fear of losing their citizenships or entitlements.

Still, while the world is most vocal about Israeli military operations, it fails to recognize that Israel has been dealing with non-stop unrest on its soil since the breakout of the Intifada in 1987. Had that Intifada taken place in any Arab country, it would have ended within the first couple of weeks with an Arab army killing more than ten thousand Palestinians, most being civilians. Examples of this are countless and in all Arab countries hosting Palestinians; yet the world seems to think this reality is too overrated to recognize.

Today, with peace negotiations up and running, some Arab governments seem to want to butcher the Palestinians again on the altar of dictatorship by worsening their living conditions and making their lives more miserable, just to secure a better negotiating position or merely a seat at the negotiations table. Not to mention that many of those actually would rather see the negotiations fail in order to keep more international aid money flowing to them for “hosting” the Palestinians.

Quoting a commentator on one of my articles; “the Palestinians, do obviously need a break from their sworn Arab friends”, and perhaps they can reconnect to them when they have learned a lesson or two from their Israeli “enemies”.

Meanwhile, the world will remain silent about the Palestinians’ suffering at the hands of some of their “brothers”, as it’s too occupied with Israel.

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian of Palestinian heritage. Zahran attended Southern New Hampshire University, graduating with two masters. He has served as a strategist for the American Embassy in Amman, reporting to it and the American Embassy in Baghdad until recently. During his time there, Zahran covered major political issues for the embassy. His work has been reported to senior officials in DC, including the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Treasury and DHS.

Zahran writes for several Arab media outlets and has been basically banned from many for his approach towards taboo issues in the Middle East, nonetheless, his articles are available on the Arab Times, the most read Arab newspaper online, and they are highly circulated on Arab internet media. Zahran writes op-eds for the Jerusalem Post. Zahran has also served as an economist and a researcher respectively at the Japanese and the Australian Embassies in Amman. He is considered an insider on Jordanian and Iraqi politic. Zahran is currently a researcher at the University of Bedfordshire, where he will secure a Ph.d in 2011.

(h/t EBoZ)

Al Jazeera thinks I'm an expert in Egyptian politics?

I just got this email:

Hello,

Greetings from London. I hope you are well. This is Gouri and I work at the Listening Post, Al Jazeera's weekly media review show. Our broadcast takes a critical look at global media.

For this week's broadcast we are preparing a report on press freedom in Egypt following the sacking of one of the country's most critical editors Ibrahim Eissa. I came across your blog post and your knowledge of the report would strengthen the analysis of our report. Would you like to take part in the show as a GVV?

If so, you could consider the questions below:

1) Why do editors like Ibrahim Eissa pose such a threat to authorities in Egypt? What is it about their work that bothers them so much?
(2) Is the crackdown on the media now a knee-jerk reaction with the upcoming elections in mind, or is this a trend?
(3) Who is pushing back at the limits of freedom of expression in Egypt? How are they getting away with it?

Alternatively, feel free to formulate your own statement, our only request is that you stay to the media angle of the story. All you would need to do is a record a 30-40 second video clip of your answers. You would need to own or have access to a webcam or camcorder. Record your response (please frame your head and shoulders in the shot and talk directly to the camera) and save it to a .mov or .wmv file. Then upload the file to www.yousendit.com making the recipient address listeningpost@aljazeera.net or you could try and email the file directly
to me.

We are editing this report early this week so our deadline is tomorrow. I appreciate it's short notice but do you think you'd be interested in taking part?

Kind regards,

Gouri

The post I made on the topic didn't even include any editorializing on my part.

Unfortunately, I had to decline my chance to be a video star on Al Jazeera.

Eissa's firing remains a very hot topic in Egypt; I've seen interesting op-eds on the issue but I certainly do not understand all the politics behind it. Even if I wanted to out myself on Al Jazeera!

Why isn't Egypt importing Gaza vegetables?

We have seen reports about how the tunnel trade in Gaza has been reversed from imports to exports. Many fruits and vegetables are more expensive in Egypt than in Gaza.

Over the weekend, an Egyptian man became enraged over how much his wife paid for tomatoes, and threw her off the second-floor balcony. She was badly injured.

So why doesn't Egypt import Gaza vegetables? As far as I can tell, there is no agreement with Israel prohibiting Egypt from doing that. The Rafah crossing is not optimized for trucks, but certainly some amount of goods could be sent through.

Just asking...

Gaza man sets son on fire. Moonbat blames Israel. (updated)

From Ma'an:

A father from Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza killed his son by setting fire to him because the boy refused to help the family pick olives, police said.

Security forces identified the father as AN, and said the 40-year-old threatened to torch his son Mohammed, 14, when he refused to help him harvest olives. The father then sent the boy's brother to get Benzene and gave him 2 shekels ($0.50) to buy a lighter.

Police said AN chased Mohammad into the bathroom, and poured fuel over him. The boy managed to escape and ran towards his grandmother's house next door, but his father caught him and set alight to him. Mohammad's grandmother told police that she opened the door to find her grandson's body burned.

This is a tragic story of a murder (Arabic coverage quotes the father as saying he just wanted to scare his son, not kill him.)

But check out the first comment in the English version of the story in Ma'an:

1) Maureen / Australia 10/10/2010 22:35
Jabala refugee camp. Without Zionist occupation of Palestine, families would not be struggling, physically and mentally, to exist under a Zionist strangle hold.

This is the new version of anti-semitism among the Left. If an Arab kills an Arab, it must be the "Zionists'" fault. The sheer lack of ability to think clearly, the amount of hate that it takes to blame a case of a father murdering his own son on Israel, shows that extreme leftist anti-Zionism has nothing to do with Zionism - it is just a new manifestation of anti-semitism, using Israel as a proxy for Jews. (But calling out this fact exposes one to accusations of watering down the term "anti-semitism.")

Nowhere did I see any Arabs blame this murder on Israeli "occupation." Their hatred is endemic, to be sure, and when they speak to Western media they will indeed blame everything on Israel, but at least they know deep down that they have to take at least some measure of responsibility for their actions.

Some on the extreme Left, however, just cannot help but to look at every single event that occurs in the Middle East through the glasses of their intense hatred for Israel. To them, bereft of the ability to think logically, Israel represents the ultimate evil, and the ultimate source for all evil. Israel is, to these moonbats, Satan. Therefore, if anything bad happens anywhere, it must be traceable back somehow to Zionists, or, often, Jews who are assumed to be Zionists.

It is a sickness, no less than traditional anti-semitism. I once named this "misoziony" to distinguish it from old-style anti-semitism and to deflect the criticism that the latter term brings up.

To the credit of most of Ma'an's commenters, Maureen was roundly criticized for her statement. Yet there are plenty of websites out there - some prominent - that espouse Maureen's way of thinking.

UPDATE: I've seen plenty of pictures of dead "martyrs" in the PalArab media, but I still cannot wrap my head around this: they are publishing pictures of the dead boy.

More cars stoned in Silwan (video)

Israel's Channel Two interviews a woman, Keren Levy, who (along with her daughter) passed by the exact spot that David Be'eri was ambushed by rock throwers on Friday. She was hysterical as she shows the large rocks that managed to break her window.

For some reason, the international media that was on the scene must have moved on at that point.

During the interview, the Israeli journalists get attacked themselves by stones.

David Be'eri is also interviewed in this segment, describing why he had no choice - either to keep driving or to use his own weapon, which would have been worse.

This is what the Palestinian Authority proudly describes as "peaceful resistance."

(h/t Joel)

UPDATE: Arab residents of Silwan were interviewed by Israel's Channel 2. Some said how much they hated the Jews in their neighborhood, including Be'eri, but off the record others said that they felt that Be'eri had no choice and they would have acted the same.

This indicates how fearful Arabs are of saying anything that can be construed as being the slightest bit sympathetic towards Israel - they are in fear for their own well-being. Yet Western reporters never factor this into their dramatic interviews with poor Palestinian Arab victims of Israeli aggression.