Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 29, 2010

Massive Gaza rally planned today to celebrate a terrorist leader

All week, there have been a number of events in Gaza to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the death of Islamic Jihad co-founder Fathi Shiqaqi.

Shiqaqi was first Sunni terrorist leader to find Koranic justification for suicide terrorism.

He was assassinated in a Mossad operation in Malta on October 26, 1995.

The commemorations reach their peak today with a planned rally in Gaza, to be attended by all factions and not just Islamic Jihad members. It will be broadcast on satellite TV.

The rally will emphasizes that the Palestinian Arabs support the approach of jihad and resistance, and reject any "defeatist" options or compromises that would waive what they consider their basic rights to all of Palestine.

Because the rally goes against all of Western conventional wisdom about how moderate most Palestinian Arabs are, it - and its themes - will be all but ignored by the media.

Here are some pictures from Islamic Jihad parades through Rafah and Khan Younis yesterday. (The last two pictures are dated from six months ago, so either the camera time was not set or Palestine Today is not quite telling the truth about the rallies....)

UPDATE: Here are pictures from the rally.

Egypt arrests group planning to bomb US ships in Damietta

Egyptian security authorities arrested 14 men from the city of Damietta last Tuesday, saying that they formed a terrorist cell called "Soldiers of Allah," and seized weapons and explosives, saying they 'were planned to be used in terrorist attacks'.

The group held meetings in the home of one of their leaders, 35-year old Subhi Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is a pharmacist. They were planning to carry out terrorist operations against a number of commercial ships in the port of Damietta. Police secretly videotaped recorded a number of these meetings.

Police raided the home of the leader of the cell, and arrested its members, and seized weapons and explosives and a variety of books containing information on the manufacture of grenades, time-bombs and remote-controlled bombs, as well as cash and mobile phones.

The main target was to be U.S. ships in the port of Damietta.

Report: US plan for Israel to lease settlements from PA

Asharq al-Awsat reports that the US and Israel are in secret negotiations in Washington to define the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian Arab state.

According to the sources, the agreement that the US is pushing involves recognition of a Palestinian Arab state exactly along the 1949 armistice lines in return for Palestinian Arab agreement to lease parts of "Arab" eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to Israel for somewhere between 40 and 99 years.

This is an American proposal, coming in response to Israeli insistence that the US adhere to the letter that George W. Bush sent to Ariel Sharon that large settlement blocs would remain under Israeli control.

The sources said that the idea of leasing land was floated during the 2001 Taba negotiations, but for 6-9 years and not for many decades.

The US and Israel declined to confirm or deny the report. A State Department spokesman said "We are in constant contact with Israel. This is part of our strong and solid commitment [to the peace process.] Some are public communications, and some are private, and of course we do not announce non-public communications."

Egyptian elections coming up

The Egyptian regime is having major problems trying to keep the elections legal, and yet marginalizing the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt has made the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan, "Islam is the Solution", illegal for use on campaign posters.

Even though the MB is not allowed to run, they back independent candidates who subscribe to their positions.

From The Canadian Press:

Egyptian security detained 65 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday while they were hanging election posters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for next month's parliamentary vote, police said.

The arrests are the latest in the government's crackdown on the popular Islamist group, the strongest opposition to Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker and candidate Hussein Ibrahim said the campaigners were arrested while hanging posters for one of the group's four female candidates.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said the workers violated an election law banning the use of religious slogans.

Hussein said the posters contained the phrases "God is great" and "Praise be to God," common phrases not associated exclusively with the group. He accused the government of targeting the group.

"This is the beginning of a blatant election fraud since the ruling party candidates' posters were left untouched although they contained full verses of the Qur’an (Islam's holy book)," he said.

The ban on religious slogans by Egypt's Electoral Committee forced the group to forgo its longtime slogan "Islam is the Solution" in favour of substitutes like "Change Is Our Path."

Tuesday's arrests bring the number of Brotherhood members arrested to about 250 since the group announced on Oct. 9 its decision to participate in the elections. Police say they have detained 160 in the past week alone. Thirty remain in custody.

That's not the only drama in Egypt's election campaign, though:

Egypt's largest liberal opposition party Wafd threatened on Tuesday to boycott a parliamentary election next month after state television refused to air its political advertisements.

A spokesman for the party, Mohammed Sherdi, told a news conference Wafd would boycott the election "if the government's obstinacy towards the Wafd party and the refusal of its right to air political advertisements continues."

Wafd was the first to announce it would contest the November election after Egyptian dissident and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei called for a boycott.

Sherdi said state television refused to air the advertisement because it was not approved by the election committee.

"But this campaign has nothing to do with the election. It is a political advertisement for the group that has been in the works for five months," he said.

The head of the state broadcaster, Osama al-Sheik, said on Monday that television would air such advertisements only if they were approved by the election committee.

And to add to the mess, inject Jimmy Carter.

Carter offered to monitor the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood was enthusiastic about the idea, but Mofid Shehab, Minister of Legal Affairs and Parliamentary Councils, said that any outside observers would prejudice the sovereignty of the Egypt.

It is a really ugly situation. If true, free elections were held, the extremists would do well - but it does not appear that they can win, because they are running for less than half the available offices.

However, the government seems to be running roughshod over all possible candidates, not just Islamists.

Any way you look at it, Egyptians have no freedom and no democracy. But before free elections can be held, a few years of true freedom needs to come first, so the people can make truly informed decisions. This means freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, not to mention freedom of religion.

The government might be better than some of the alternatives but it is sacrificing freedom altogether, and the result is that all Egyptians are losing.

Autumn open thread

My cell phone camera might not be nearly as good as a dedicated camera, but in the right conditions it can do OK. I took this shot this morning.

Who does the AP consider an "extremist"?

Here are all the recent stories I could find by AP that used the word "extremist" as a factual statement, not as a quote:

October 19: A northern Virginia man who warned the creators of the animated TV show "South Park" that they risked death for mocking the prophet Muhammad is scheduled to plead guilty to supporting an al-Qaida linked terrorist group, according to court records....Prosecutors say that Chesser tried twice in the last year to travel to Somalia and join al-Shabab as a foreign fighter. ...After his latest attempt to leave the country, Chesser apparently tried convincing FBI agents he had renounced his extremist views and said he would work for the FBI if the government helped him travel to Africa, according to the affidavit.

October 21: Radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki lunched at the Pentagon as part of a program to reach out to moderate Muslims in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a military official said Thursday....The report said he had also been investigated by the FBI in 1999 and 2000 for having been "contacted by a possible procurement agent for (Osama) bin Laden" and for connections to extremist fundraising groups.

October 23: A U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida on Saturday urged Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, calling it a duty and an obligation....He spoke in Arabic in the video, which was made available by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity.

October 27: US drone strikes killed up to six militants in Pakistan's tribal belt on Wednesday, targeting the extremist Haqqani network and a compound harbouring foreign fighters, officials said.

October 27: An American who was arrested on suspicion of having links with al-Qaida has been charged with the murder of a Yemeni soldier and the wounding of another during a failed escape attempt....U.S. officials say Mobley, who grew up in Buena, N.J., traveled to Yemen more than two years ago with the goal of joining a terror group and that the U.S. government was aware of his potential extremist ties long before his arrest.

In all of these cases, the word "extremist" is used to refer to murderers and/or supporters of terror groups with a long track record of murders and terror attacks.

(AP also uses the word in quotes when referring to, say Democrats accusing Republican candidates of "extremism.")

But one other group in the world also gains that title in AP's world: right-wing Jews:

October 20: In the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinians said Jewish settlers set fire to a girls school near the northern city of Nablus. The school was found vandalized with Hebrew graffiti on the wall reading "regards from the hills." The fire caused minor damage. The incident appears to be the latest action in a campaign extremist Jewish settlers call the "price tag."

Admittedly, arson is not something to belittle - but why is it called "extremist"?

Even more glaring was this report from yesterday:

Israeli police and stone-throwing Arabs clashed in northern Israel on Wednesday as a group of extreme right-wing Israelis tried to march through the Arab Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm.
Hundreds of police clad in riot gear fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse angry Arab youths, many with scarves wrapped around their faces, who burned tyres and hurled stones in protest ahead of an extremist rally in their town.

Tensions were high as around 20 Israeli demonstrators from a group called "Our Land of Israel" turned up for a march calling for a ban on the radical wing of the Israeli Islamic Movement, which is led by the firebrand preacher Sheikh Raed Salah.

"Death to terrorists!" they shouted, waving banners reading: "Make the Islamic Movement illegal," and "Death to Raed Salah," although they were prevented from marching by police who hemmed them in with three coaches, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

While some may disagree with these protesters, they hardly have a track record of political assassinations or mass murders. Their protest was peaceful, if provocative. Their targets are terrorists and those who incite terror (like Raed Salah, who constantly makes up stories about Israeli plans to desecrate the Al Aqsa Mosque and has more that a bit of anti-semitism.)

Here we have a planned, legal, peaceful rally. Arabs who opposed it burned tires and threw stones. By any sane standard, the violent protesters should be labeled "extremist," not the Jewish protesters.

But in AP's worldview, nationalist Jews who claim disputed land and who protest Islamic terror incitement within their own country are regarded the same way as Al Qaeda.

(h/t Zach, also see Meryl Yourish)

UPDATE: After I wrote this I see that Just Journalism, the British media watchdog, caught The Independent and the BBC also using far more pejorative terms for right-wing Jews than for extremist Arabs.

Iran and Saudis likely joining UN women's rights agency

From AP:

Iran, where a woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning, is likely to become a member of the board of the new U.N. agency to promote equality for women, prompting outrage from the U.S. and human rights groups.

Some rights groups are also upset that Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive and are barred from many facilities used by men, is also vying to join the governing body of UN Women.

The General Assembly resolution adopted in July that merged four U.N. bodies dealing with women's issues into a single agency with greater clout to represent half the world's population calls for a 41-member executive board, with 35 members chosen by regional groups and six representing donor nations.

The Asian group has put forward an uncontested 10-nation slate that includes Iran, U.N. diplomats said, and Saudi Arabia has been selected for one of two slots for emerging donor nations.

Robin Shepard comments:

This is as big a farce as the dictatorship-ridden UN Human Rights Council. But, more than that, it provides yet another illustration of the impossibility of squaring notions of multilateralist, global governance with liberal-democratic principles. Whatever one’s views of the Bush administration, which pulled out of the Human Rights Council, this is one point they understood with complete clarity. Sadly, that is something one can’t necessarily say of their successors who seem almost as bemused as the hapless Europeans.

Zvi notes in the comments:

The western world insists on pretending that the UN - which due to its inclusion of non-democratic and brutal regimes is fundamentally a non-democratic organization - is able to advance human rights. It insists on granting undue influence to blocs of dictatorships. But the fact that dictators protect themselves and their allies from even modest censure by holding seats on the UNHRC, while turning the UNHRC into a political weapon against Israel, shows that this insistence is not only unhelpful, but actually kills people.

Now Islamist regimes are applying the same lesson with regard to UN Women.

The stench of hypocrisy is overpowering.

Egyptian Christians in trouble

Israel Today, a Christian Zionist publication, refers to Raymond Ibrahim's recent piece in writing an update on the dangers facing Egypt's Coptic minority:

Egypt has parliamentary elections coming up next month and an important presidential election next year. As with similar regimes throughout history, the current rulers of Egypt need a scapegoat to take the voters’ attention off its disastrous social and economic policies (after all, rigging elections is so tedious).

Unfortunately for Egypt’s 10 million Christians, they are the perfect scapegoat in an increasingly radicalized Muslim society.

To stir up the public against the Christians, Egyptian Muslim clerics and media outlets have circulated a claim that the nation’s Coptic Christian minority is importing weapons from Israel in preparation for an assault on Egypt’s Muslims.

The claim originated on the pan-Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera, which ensured that just about every Egyptian Muslim, if not ever Middle East Muslim, was aware of the unfounded assertion that Egypt’s Christians were preparing for war with the aid of the hated “Zionist entity.”

Speaking on Al Jazeera on September 15, prominent Egyptian Muslim cleric Mohammed Salim al-Awwa declared that Egyptian Christians were “stocking arms and ammunition in their churches and monasteries - arms imported from Israel, no less, as Israel is at the heart of the Coptic Cause - and are preparing to wage war against Muslims.”

Other reports have included rumors that the Christian assault has already begun, and that Christian women who have converted to Islam are being kidnapped and tortured by the Copts.
Since those reports first started circulating last month, the Barnabas Fund, an organization that provides assistance to persecuted Christian communities, says that at least 10 large Muslim demonstrations against Christians have taken place in Egypt.

At least one Muslim group is calling for a “bloodbath” to be perpetrated against the Christian minority.

Further inflaming Muslim passions was an official Egyptian government body’s insistence that the Coptic Church formally apologize after one of its clergymen criticized a verse from the Koran that refers to Christians as “infidels.” The leader of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, promptly apologized, but the Muslim anger was not appeased.

It concludes:

Tellingly, the international media has almost completely ignored this story, while not failing to provide prime headline real estate whenever Israeli Jews build a few houses that upset the Palestinian Arabs.

That the construction of Jewish apartments can result in emergency UN meetings, official condemnations and weeks of front page news, but the persecution and potential slaughter of Egypt’s Christians cannot is evidence that the international community’s motives are not truly humanitarian in nature.

A new weapons route from Iran to Gaza?

From Ha'aretz:

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza.

Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship.

Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked in Lagos' port for a few hours only, unloaded 13 containers and sailed on.

The bill of lading said the shipment consisted of building materials, Nigerian State Security Service spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar said.

"On opening the first container, the service operatives discovered rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives," Ogar said, adding the weapons were concealed among crates of floor tiles.

A senior defense source said preliminary information suggests the weapons' seizure has exposed a possible new arms smuggling route from Iran to Hamas, via Africa. He said the Iranians may have run into difficulties sending arms to Hamas via the Red Sea to the Sudan region and from there to Gaza via Sinai, following the beefed up international supervision on the movement of Iranian ships.

"Perhaps the Iranians were planning to unload the weapons in Nigeria and transfer them by land to Sudan and Sinai," the senior source said.

Meanwhile, Arabic media quote Yediot Aharonot in Hebrew as saying that Hamas has tested a locally-manufactured rocket that has a range of 80 km, enough to reach the heavily-populated center of the country, as well as Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets with a 70 km range.

Hamas is also said to have anti-aircraft rockets.

Jordanian "honor killer" has sentence reduced

From Al Arabiya:

A Jordanian man was condemned to death on Wednesday for killing his raped teenage niece to "cleanse" the family's honor, but the sentence was later commuted to 10 years in jail.

"The victim's family has urged the court to reduce the sentence, and it was commuted to 10 years in prison," a criminal court official told AFP.

Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan, but in the case of so-called "honor killings," a court usually commutes or reduces sentences, particularly if the victim's family urges leniency.

Last year, Jamil, 41, shot his 16-year-old niece Abir eight times in different parts of her body after she was raped in 2008. The court did not provide the surnames of the victim or her uncle.

"In his confession, he claimed that he killed the girl to cleanse his family's honor," the official said, citing court papers.

Abir gave birth to a baby boy two months before her murder, and her family kept the child, he added.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered each year in Jordan in the name of honor, despite government efforts to fight such crimes. Parliament has refused to reform the penal code to ensure harsher penalties.

In 2006, Pew Research asked people throughout the world their opinion of Jews.

The country that came in dead last, with 98% saying that they do not like Jews, was Jordan. (Egypt came in at 97%.)

That's all the background you need to understand this:

It has been a while since Israelis entering Jordan were first required to deposit items of a Jewish-religious nature in order to cross the border for "security reasons." Most recently, Israelis have been asked to removes their yarmulkes.

A., an Israeli businessman who visits Jordan often was amazed when he was asked to leave his yarmulkes in a safe on his most recent visit to the country. "We know tefillin are confiscated and we recently heard brimmed hats were being taken, so we came with regular hats," he told Ynet.

"The man in the counter asked us to take off our hats and we thought it was standard procedure for passport control. But when the man saw the yarmulkes, he took us to the tourism police. The officer there said that the ban to wear yarmulkes was 'for our own benefit,' put it in the safe and gave us a form with which to receive the yarmulkes when we return."

Perhaps that is just because they are anti-Zionist and not anti-semitic? Not quite:

A. said that in light of such limitations he makes a point of not staying in Jordan for more than a day in each visit. "I don’t carry tefillin so I can't stay the night," he said. "What's really annoying about the whole thing is that together with us at the border crossing was a group of post-army youngsters with IDF training t-shirts who were so obviously Israeli citizens. They didn't give them any hard time, while with us they insisted."

Even if you agree that the border guards are simply protecting the Jews for their own good, it means that Jordan's government admits that its citizens are rabid Jew-haters - and it has no interest in doing anything about it.

Well, not quite true. They are willing to do something.

Because when Pew Research returned in 2008 to ask the same question about Jordanian attitudes towards Jews.

And Jordan refused to allow that question from even being asked!

(h/t Joel)

Lauren Booth sets the record straight about her Islamic adventure

Al Quds al Arabi, the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper, interviewed Lauren Booth about her conversion to Islam.

First, she said that she simply converted to Islam, not to any particular sect within Islam. I guess she needs to get past page 60 of the Koran to make such a decision. She said she did it after returning from Iran, not in Iran.

Some newspaper mentioned that she swam in Gaza in a bikini the last time she was there. She denies this, saying she kept her clothes on and swam early in the morning so no one would see, and anyway now that she converted all of her sins are gone so it doesn't matter, but she might sue the newspaper that claimed she was in a bikini.

Well, I did find a picture of her at the beach in Gaza...

At her Iranian employer PressTV, she adds:

It is definitely not easy for a Western woman to convert to Islam. Everything that you have been shown about the way that Islam is treated in the West says to you that this is going to be difficult.

Your practices and your daily life are going to change. We only like changes that come out of diet but someone suggesting a new gym routine, or to, actually, commit to praying 5 times a day, to commit changing your lifestyle, to commit trying to be a better person and to understanding Islam and to make that into your life.

It took her about three seconds to convert to Islam, and her love of the spotlight is giving her headlines that she adores. And she's saying that it is difficult?

Anyway, I'll let Julie Burchill have the last word:

It's hard to know where to start when describing the sheer ickiness of Booth. That she works as a paid stooge for the murderous Iranian regime's television channel has to come pretty near the top. A woman, choosing to act a front for a gang of thugs who uphold the punishment of death by stoning for adulteresses! This is surely Stockholm Syndrome gone gaga.

Her entirely inappropriate addiction to the spotlight, although she was obviously designed as one of Nature's plus-ones, is another stand-out feature. A failed actress, a mediocre hack, it's pretty fair to say we would never have heard of her had her half-sister not married a man who became Prime Minister. And now her meal-ticket is Mohammed.

Yes, it seems that even the faith she was raised in isn't narrow-minded, patriarchal and oppressive enough for the sensation-hungry Booth, who having tried everything else is so jaded that she can only get a kick from self-denial. (There does seem to be a particular affinity between Catholics and Muslims – Jew-hating is a great bonding agent.) And a kick it is – she describes her engagement with faith in terms that veer between the drooling of a clammy adolescent ("this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy") and that of a recovering alcoholic clinging desperately to the wreckage of her sobriety ("I haven't had a drink in 45 days!")

We've all done embarrassing things, but the spectacle of Booth attempting to rap in the celebrity jungle does seem to indicate that she is the sort of dweeb who would do anything to get in with the tough kids – who she now perceives as being the Muslims.

Maybe like a lot of Western cowards, she thinks that if she sucks up to Islamism hard enough she will be spared its rage. Personally, I prefer to aspire to the words of the great Spanish anti-fascist activist Dolores "La Pasionaria" Ibarruri; "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

As I pointed out in this column a while back, the website Iranian.com, a voice of the country's exiles, recently ran a photo of Miss Booth in full modesty drag, with the headline HAS THIS WOMAN GONE MAD? and the comment "in donning the hijab, she is kowtowing to the very fundamentalism that holds the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in its hands ... To use the language that Booth might to describe Israel's excesses, it is shameful and disgusting that she a) works for Press TV, and b) agrees to wear Islamic headgear on screen."

What sort of woman freely converts to a religion which supports the oppression, torment and murder of thousands of Christians, homosexuals and spirited women, worldwide, every year? The sort of woman who writes love letters to a serial killer, I reckon. Still, might as well look on the bright side. Go on, Lauren, treat yourself to a full-face and – most essentially – mouth-covering burka!

If your Iranian paymasters and puppet-masters won't spring for it, I'd be more than happy to.

Wednesday afternoon links

Israeligirl: Cultural Oppression in Iran

Haaretz: Israeli Arab activist (and head of an NGO network) admits to spying for Hezbollah

Backspin: The Legal Niceties of Hamas Executions

Soccer Dad: Wanting peace more than the Palestinians

Sultan Knish: When Jewish Windows Break

Remember the nutty anti-semitic article about how Jews leaving the White House is a bad omen for America? Well, it now has a new audience - readers of the Arab American News! (h/t Dan)

Your tax dollars paying for PalArab pensions

A couple of weeks ago:

The European Commission decided, on 5 October, to provide an additional financial package worth €61.4 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territories under the 2010 budget. Some €41.4 million will go towards helping the Palestinian Authority meet its salary obligations for teachers, doctors and nurses in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But apparently some of that €41.4 million is going elsewhere:

The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Dr Salam Fayyad, and the European Union Representative, Christian Berger, on Wednesday, signed a €41.4 million (Dh152.05 million) financing agreement, which will help to cover the expenses of the Palestinian Authority until the end of 2010.

These funds will cover the Palestinian Authority's salaries and pensions through PEGASE, the European mechanism for support of the Palestinians.

The €41.4 million financing package will contribute to the payment of civil servants' salaries and pensions, both in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, for November and December 2010.

Maybe to Europeans, pensions are considered so basic as to be the same as salaries, but doesn't it seem a little strange that a cash-strapped pseudo-government like the PA is paying people who contribute nothing towards building a state?

Which map is offensive?

Imagine that the State of Israel published maps showing its boundaries looking something like this:

This map would include parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as well as all of Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

Do you think it might offend people? Would it spur a huge set of angry demonstrations and op-eds, accusing Israel of expansionism and having aggressive, militaristic goals? Would Jordan be justified in reducing diplomatic ties because of an official map that takes a chunk of that country away?

It turns out that this map roughly represents the boundaries of Palestine requested by the Zionist Organization and presented at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It is also not far off from what most people in the early 20th century would have considered to be historic Palestine, although it explicitly excluded Amman and the Hejaz Railway.

Nowadays, of course, Israel is not demanding these boundaries for itself. A map like this one would be considered highly offensive, and in all probability if the Israeli government would publish even one copy of such a map as reflecting the desired borders of Israel it would result in UN resolutions condemning it as incitement.

Now look at this picture of Mahmoud Abbas published in the PA's Al Hayat al-Jadida yesterday, via MEMRI:

He is holding a map of "Palestine" carved in stone - and Israel doesn't exist.

Is that not offensive?

(Note again that the PA has no territorial designs on any Arab country, even when they are part of historic Palestine. Only Israel.)