Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 13, 2011

East Coast readers - sign up for NORPAC Mission to Washington

Come join us in our largest event of the year, NORPAC’s
Mission to Washington

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Our 2011 Mission is set to be our most successful to date! In 2010 over 1000 NORPAC members met with 450 members of the House and Senate. Together, we can make a difference for Israel.

We look forward to seeing you at the Mission this year!

I have mentioned the two times I've gone on the NORPAC Mission to Washington and how gratifying it is. I don't know if I can make it this year but I highly recommend it for anyone who lives in the New York metropolitan area.

You won't regret it.

Martha Gellhorn on her June, 1967 visit to WB camps

I had once excerpted the Martha Gellhorn article in The Nation, October 23, 1967, about her visit to a Palestinian Arab refugee camps immediately after the Six Day War in 1967. In the wake of the article I posted yesterday from German magazine Cicero on a similar theme, I decided to post the entire article, since it is not available online.

We were drinking Nescafe in the cool, over-furnished parlor of an elderly refugee schoolteacher. A horde of charming, bouncing small children had been pushed out to make room for serious grown-up talk. The children all seemed to be the same age and were, oddly, the teacher's own sons and daughters and his grandchildren. His wife vanished, as is correct. His bright 22-year-old daughter, already the mother of four, crouched outside the door like a beggar, holding a bit of white cloth over her face, and listened.

In 1961, I had made a long tour of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) Palestinian refugee camps m Lebanon, West Jordan and the Gaza Strip, and I had been at this camp near Jericho before. It is disheartening. The world believes, because it is constantly told, that the Palestinian refugees have lived in physical misery for nineteen years. Middle-class refugees will confide, in private, that their poorer compatriots, those who remain in the camps. owned nothing at home and are no worse off now than before. The majority of refugees, educated, skilled, semi-skilled, live outside the camps and manage like any other Arabs.

The refugees' misery is in the head. They are sick in their minds from a diet of propaganda, official Arab dogma and homemade fantasy, which they have gobbled for nineteen years. Schooled in self-pity, encouraged to believe they are the worlds unique victims of injustice, they have never been allowed to forget the daydream past or to settle for the real future. Since the third Arab-Israel war hardly touched them, they learned nothing from it.

The schoolteacher was tired of fire eating and disabused with Nasser. But the rest of the company, three husky chicken farmers, men In their late 20s, a tall, pale, elegantly put together student from Amman University, and a cocky grammar schoolboy, were as devoted to Nasser as ever. Though all except the schoolboy (we took a vote) thought a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel would be a good thing, the young men felt that Nasser must decide.

They had personal problems from the war. The chicken farmers lacked transport. The schoolteacher said his wife was running out of kerosene for cooking, The grammar schoolboy's matriculation exams at Ramallah had been Interrupted; when would the Israelis arrange for him to finish? The university student was worried that the Israelis would compel him to repeat his second year instead of continuing straight Into his third year, as was fair, at Hebrew University In Jerusalem. He was stunned to hear , that Hebrew University teaches In Hebrew. I kept pointing out, in the face of these complaints, that the shooting had ended only ten days earlier .

Then, as on remembered cue, we went into the fantasy phase of conversation It consists of recounting how many acres of fine fields and orchards, what splendid houses, were left behind in Palestine and stolen by the Jews. There is competition In fantasy ownership: if you add up the lost acreage claimed by the inhabitants of any camp you usually arrive at a total larger than the whole recovered arable land of Israel. One very nice man in another camp told me that he had owned 11,000 acres of citrus groves: legend has it that once the Sultan of Turkey owned that much land in Palestine and sold it to the Rothschilds. But I think this ownership fantasy is the real human core of the Palestinian refugee problem, as opposed to the unreal Arab propaganda problem.

Half the refugees are under 18 years of age; Palestine is a myth taught in school and at home. I do not think that any of these people truly want to return to Israel - not unless the Israelis would give them the country, improved by decades of labor, and obligingly jump in the sea. What the refugees really want is money for their imagined lost possessions. They don't seem to know that, repeatedly since 1949, the Israeli Government has offered compensation, sometimes with conditions, such as a peace treaty, sometimes for nothing. Nor, apparently, do they know that these offers have always been angrily rejected on their behalf by the Arab governments. To accept compensation would be to end the Palestine Refugee Problem. The compensation is there and waiting, but it will never satisfy these people because it is based on fact, not fantasy. If your father owned a recorded 5 acres of land, and you believe he owned 500 acres, you are bound to feel bitter and cheated by an exact repayment.

"Why can't we go on a bus to see Israel?" the schoolboy asked. He was the best linguist. "What is it like?" How to put it quickly, m our limited mutual supply of words? "Everyone works very hard," I said. That is the basic description of Israel.

"Works very hard?" he repeated with horror, and was annoyed when I laughed.

"What do you think about the English and American planes for Israel?" he asked, black eyes gleaming.

"A lie. There were none."

"Every Arab believes it. There were. The planes helped the Israelis. What about the oil blockade?"

Translations into Arabic for the chicken farmers and the teacher, who understood no English.

"I think it will hurt the Arabs most. How will they live if they don't sell oil?"

"Russians will buy the oil," the boy said proudly, "and India and Vietnam. Arabs will not suffer."

"What would have happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won?" I was taking a little Gallup poll on that one. The university student translated and the six men muttered together for some time.

"Very terrible," the boy summed up. "All dead."

Out of the blue, remarks of the schoolteacher were translated. "Eshkol and Dayan are very good."

"Why does he say that?"

"Because all is peaceful," the university student said. "We must live in peace with the Jews."

"King Hussein is very good," the boy interrupted. "We like him very much now he went to Cairo to see Nasser " Repeated In Arabic; general nodding agreement. The schoolteacher looked weary and offered more coffee and cigarettes.

"Educated refugees make money and have a good life," the university student observed suddenly. "In Amman we go to our classes with girls. That is very good. Can I go back to Amman University because I cannot speak Hebrew?"

The visiting males filed out, thus freeing the bright 22- year-old daughter from veiled exile by the door. She spoke passionately; I feared that I had offended some mysterious female code. "What does she say?" I asked the boy, a friend of the family and too young to require a woman's hidden face and silence. He grinned, embarrassed by her outburst.

"She says: Finish Nasser. Finish Shukairy. Finish Hussein. Enough. Enough. Peace. Peace."

It is a great pity that Arab women have no voice in Arab politics.

Spain denies any involvement in "Israel boycott" ad (updated - But...)

From JPost:

A “public service” advertisement on Palestinian television calling for the boycott of Israeli goods is not being paid for by Spanish tax payers’ euros, Spanish Ambassador Alvar Iranzo told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

Iranzo was responding to a video posted Tuesday by the Palestinian Media Watch organization showing the ad, which has been running for the last week on PA TV. The advertisement announces at the end that it was sponsored by the Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development), ACSUR (a Spanish nonprofit organization), and the Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem.

Iranzo said the Spanish Foreign Ministry and its aid arm, AECID, both denied financing the advertisement, and that the NGO listed as a sponsor had sent a letter to the ministry saying it bore no direct responsibility for the video.

“We are the victims of this fraud,” the ambassador said.

He added that he had not yet contacted PA TV to determine how this had happened, but that the Spanish consulgeneral in Jerusalem would follow up on the matter. Iranzo said his first priority was to check with Madrid and find out if there was any Spanish involvement.

The Spanish envoy said the government was intent on seeing who was responsible for the advertisement and misuse of his government’s logo.

“The substance of the advertisement is in frontal opposition to the government’s opposition to any boycott of Israeli goods, much less a blanket boycott like the one insinuated in the video,” he said.

UPDATE: An email correspondent notes that the "Travel Palestine" website, which defines Palestine as covering the area from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, is also funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.

On Holbrooke's honesty in diplomacy (Judea Pearl)

From JPost, by Judea Pearl:

THERE ARE people whom you meet once and know you will never forget. I met Richard Holbrooke once, in Doha, Qatar, in April 2005 – a meeting I will never forget.

It took place at a high-profile gettogether called the US-Islamic World Forum. Organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, the conference was packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who, for two full days, diligently discussed the needs and means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to “progress toward settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.”

From the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to Rami Khouri, former editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon, almost every speaker ended his or her speech with a reminder that the Muslim world is not ready to accept reform for its own sake; reform is, in fact, a concession to America, and will be granted if, and only if, it “resolves the Palestinian problem.”

None of the speakers spelled out what “solution” meant to him or her; it was probably part of an unspoken agreement to avoid controversial issues for fear of spoiling the friendly atmosphere of renaissance and collaboration. It was only in private conversations that I discovered that, to most of them, the “solution” was unquestionably the same one proposed by Helen Thomas.

Richard Holbrooke spoke at the last session of the conference, addressing a large audience of Arab dignitaries, scholars and pundits. After repeating the great things that America can do for the Muslim world – in science, education, freedom, entrepreneurship and more – and after saying all the things that a seasoned diplomat would say on occasions like this one, he added one innocent remark that fell like a bombshell: “By now,” he said, “two and a half generations of Arabs have been brought up on textbooks that do not show Israel.”

The audience was stunned. I can still hear the pin-dropping silence as he calmly went on: “Such continued denial of reality, at the grassroots level, is a major hindrance to any peaceful settlement of the conflict.” (I am quoting from memory.)

I watched Holbrooke’s colleagues from the Brookings Institution to see how they reacted. Their faces were blank.

There were a couple of Palestinian women sitting next to me, and their faces looked like they had been caught cheating on an exam. One of them raised her hand and started to say something about checkpoints and occupation (“settlements” were not in fashion then), but in Holbrooke’s presence, she sounded more like someone complaining about the video cameras that caught her stealing.

Holbrooke answered her politely and comfortably: “Your textbooks do not show Israel on the map, and that does not help the peace process.”

There was no need for further elaboration. The elephant that everyone was pretending did not exist suddenly appeared in the room. Two days of hard deliberations, with Arabs pretending that “progress in the peace process” doesn’t really mean the elimination of Israel, and Americans pretending they have no reason to doubt it, had ended with a refreshing spark of honesty.

AT THE end of the Q&A session, I walked up to Holbrooke and told him how much I admired his presentation and the way he handled the question. He looked at me with some astonishment and said: “This is obviously one of the main obstacles to peace.”

He said it as if stating in public what everyone knows to be true – even in a place like Doha – is as natural as breathing.

This was the meeting I will never forget.

(h/t Herb)

Palestinian men ride horses during sunset on the beach of Gaza City January 12, 2011.

Wikileaks: Iceland's joke about Hamas

A number of new Wikileaks memos talk about Iceland. From February 2006:

Post discussed reftel points with Icelandic MFA Head of International Institutions Division Nikulas Hannigan February 10. Hannigan took note of U.S concerns about a new Palestinian Authority government that has not committed to non-violence, and he affirmed that Iceland generally supports the Quartet statements regarding Hamas. He stated that while Iceland contributes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (note: to the tune of U.S. $45,000 in 2004, according to latest available UNRWA figures), it provides no bilateral aid to the Palestinians and has none planned. He added that, as far as he knew, the Government of Iceland had no bilateral contacts with Palestinian representatives or
delegations.

Referring to Middle Eastern protests in response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Hannigan remarked that, given the current "Nordic profile" in that region, he did not anticipate that Reykjavik would soon initiate aid to the Palestinian Authority. (Note: An Icelandic newspaper reported last week that the honorary Icelandic consul in Amman had taken down the Icelandic flag outside her office for fear it could be mistaken for its Danish or Norwegian cousins. Another newspaper carried a column from an Icelandic journalist in Iran who reported that anti-cartoon demonstrators had told her that, had she been Danish, they would have killed her.) Icelanders have reacted with bemusement and distaste to radical Islam's violent hijacking of what they believe should have been a debate about good taste and freedom of expression.

From the following month:

Post discussed ref A points with Icelandic MFA Head of International Institutions Division Nikulas Hannigan March ¶16. Hannigan took note of U.S concerns about a Hamas government. He assured us that Iceland has no plans to receive any member of Hamas. Referring again to Arab revulsion at the Mohammed cartoons (ref B), Hannigan quipped that he did not believe Hamas planned any near-term visits to countries with crosses on their flags.

And in October 2006:

Hannigan, who also covers Middle East issues for the MFA, noted that the Government of Iceland agrees with the need for balance on UN resolutions concerning the region. As such, Iceland would continue to withhold its support for anti-Israel initiatives such as those described in ref A.

Saudi Arabia forces "news blogs" to promote Islam

From Fast Company (h/t Jihad Watch):

Saudi Arabia has enacted stringent new regulations forcing some bloggers to obtain government licenses and to strongarm others into registering. In addition, all Saudi news blogs and electronic news sites will now be strictly licensed, required to “include the call to the religion of Islam” and to strictly abide by Islamic sharia law. The registration and religion requirements are also being coupled with strict restrictions on what topics Saudi bloggers can write on--a development which will essentially give Saudi authorities the right to shut down blogs at their discretion.

The new regulations went into effect on January 1, 2011.

What the new regulations center around is a legal redefinition of almost all online content created in Saudi Arabia. Blogs are now legally classified as “electronic publishing” and news blogs (the term is not explicitly defined in the Saudi law) are now subject to the same legal regulations as newspapers. All Saudi Arabia-based news blogs, internet news sites, “internet sites containing video and audio materials” and Saudi Area-created mobile phone/smartphone content will fall under the newspaper rubric as well.

Under the regulations, any operators of news blogs, mobile phone content creators or operators of news sites in Saudi Arabia have to be Saudi citizens, at least 20 years old and possess a high school degree.

At least 31% of Saudi Arabia residents do not possess citizenship; these range from South Asian migrants living in poor conditions to well-off Western oil workers. All of them will find their internet rights sharply curtailed as a result of the new regulations.

The most telling--and dangerous-- detail in the new Saudi regulations is a provision requiring all news bloggers to provide the Saudi Arabian government with detailed information on their hosting company. This could easily allow the Saudi Arabian government to block access to a particular website across domains or to even force hosting companies to take dissidents' websites offline.

Non-citizens will still be allowed to blog on non-news topics. However, all Saudi Arabian bloggers--both citizens and non-citizens--are “recommended” to register with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information. In addition, blogs are now defined as falling under the Saudi Press and Publications Law.

This requires all publications created in Saudi Arabia to “include the call to the religion of Islam,” not to “violate the Islamic Shari'a rulings,” or to compromise national security or “public order.”

Posters on online forums, internet users who communicate on listservs and guests in online chat rooms are also “recommended” to register with the government under the law.

While the registration process is optional, it will serve as a likely coercion tool in the case of websites or blogs targeted by Saudi authorities. The regulations strictly classify and offer a bureaucratic taxonomy for all online media in a country with one of the most extensive censorship regimes in the world.

Arabic speakers can find a copy of the new laws as a Word document provided by the Saudi Arabian government.

The Saudi Arabian government has a long history of jailing bloggers who write about politics, corruption or religion. Now the situation may even get worse.

The story itself is evidence of the difference between a closed society and an open one.

It took twelve full days for the existence of these laws to make it to the Western media!

Any new law that is even contemplated in Western nations must go through at least somewhat of a transparent process. But this Saudi law was already on the books for nearly two weeks!

This is exactly why major human rights organizations need to be concentrating on closed societies rather than open ones. The open ones have checks and balances built in to limit the possibility of abuse. They have robust media, reasonably fair judicial systems and entire arms of the government meant to audit and check the powers of other government agencies.

But places like Saudi Arabia can crack down on basic personal freedoms without any worries. Here is a case where they did exactly that.

Human Rights Watch did mention it, to its credit, but it still took a week after the law was introduced.

(Correction: I hadn't seen the HRW article in my search; commenter Gabriel found it so I corrected the post that had said they didn't.)

Erdogan comes out in support of Hamas

From the Al Qassam website:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country stands by Hamas, calling the resistance movement an election-taking political party, and ruling out achieving peace in the region without them.

"We stand by Hamas when they are right, because the Hamas movement is a resistance movement. I do not see Hamas as 'terrorist'. They are people who defend the land, and it is a political group that entered the elections and won the elections," Erdogan told Al-Jazeera Wednesday night.

The Turkish premier accused those who call Hamas "enemies of democracy" of not giving the party a political opportunity. "They have been able to place all obstacles in front of them (Hamas) so they do not succeed in any way."

Erdogan urged Quartet head Tony Blair to include Hamas in the peace process, saying: "Peace will not come out of a Hamas-excluded table."

PA official accuses Hamas of being too peaceful

From Ma'an:

Spokesperson for the Palestinian security services in the Major General Adnan Dmeiri criticized Hamas on Wednesday, saying its leaders were adopting a two-faced and inconsistent policy, by calling for calm in Gaza and "escalating conditions" in the West Bank.

"Israel gets a free-of-charge calm," Dmeiri said, referring to a series of urgent talks the party held with militant groups on Wednesday to pass on a warning from Arab leaders about firing rockets at Israel.

The meeting at a Gaza City hotel came just days after Hamas said it would ensure militant factions obeyed a national consensus truce on rocket fire, following weeks of rising tensions along the border with Israel.

"Hamas considers calm an accomplishment in Gaza, but a crime in the West Bank," the official said in a statement, accusing the party of stepping up work against the Palestinian Authority with one hand, just as it deescalates in Gaza.

He said the move was one trying to evade national conciliation.

The "moderate" PA is criticizing Hamas' decision to avoid conflict with Israel. And not for the first time, either.

Just more proof that the PA doesn't regard peace as a goal, but rather as a tactic. Within that strategy, they welcome Hamas' unofficial role as "bad cop" and slam Hamas when they go off-script.

And the ultimate goal is anything but peaceful, at least if you are a Jew who happens to live in Israel.

Just imagine if Netanyahu said this

Let's pretend that Binyamin Netanyahu went in front of the Knesset and declared, "Jerusalem is a Jewish city, the heart of the Jewish nation, and If Jerusalem does not remain in Jewish hands, there will never be peace."

How many op-eds would be written by the next news cycle castigating the Israeli premier for making such a statement? People would say that this proves he is a warmonger, openly sabotaging the peace process and intentionally provoking the entire Arab world. Any terror attacks that follow would have this "context" mentioned, as the media would be quick to label Arab violence as a reaction to Netanyahu's intransigence.

Yet on Wednesday, Mahmoud Abbas said

"Jerusalem is the heart of the Palestinian cause, and unless Jerusalem is the capital of an independent Palestinian state, there will not be peace."

This was reported, without the least bit of embarrassment, by the official Palestinian Arab news agency, Wafa as well as on the Ministry of Information website. And Abbas says this practically every day.

Isn't this the exactly the same as a Mafia-style protection racket? Doesn't it sound suspiciously like "Do what we want, and no one will get hurt."

And then when they get what they want - they ask for more.

A cold dose of reality: How PalArabs in camps think (updated)

This is an amazing article from German magazine Cicero. A helpful email correspondent assisted with the translation.

Refugees from Reality

When Ingo Way visited the Palestinian refugee camp of Aida and met the people who live there. Startled and almost scared, he reports on their grim hope to "return" one day to a country in which many have never set foot.

The Aida refugee camp has been in Bethlehem since 1950. Today just over 3,000 people live there - descendants of those Arabs who fled during the war of 1948 from Israel. the Aida camp is maintained by the UNRWA and it doesn't look like one would imagine a "camp." Aida consists of massive houses and is thus more like a neighborhood than a camp - not even a slum. The entrance to the refugee camp is decorated with a gigantic key, written in English and Arabic, which reads: "Not for Sale". What is not for sale is not difficult to guess: the Arabian soil from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, which must not be abandoned for any peace treaty with Israel. Is this an uncharitable interpretation on my part? Let's see.

I enter the Lajee Center, a kind of community center for residents of Aida, with lounges, a tea kitchen, an Internet cafe and an exhibition space, in which they are presently showing a photo exhibition with pictures from several other refugee camps. Upstairs I meet Khouloud Al Ajarma, who according to her business card is the "Arts & Media Center Coordinator of Lajee Center." Khouloud was born 23 years ago in Aida; her grandmother came from a village in Israel that does not exist anymore. She studied in England, so she speaks with marked British accent. And she talks a lot - eloquent, fluent, confident. Khouloud does not wear a headscarf; instead she wears a pink knitted cap that covered her entire head of hair. On top of the pink sweater she is wearing a black jacket, a checkered skirt that covers her knees, but that allows a look at her black tights and fashionable ankle boots. I like Khouloud - she is educated and pretty with I've always liked British accents.

After her graduation, Khouloud returned back to Aida. She is aiming to "return" to Israel, although she has not been there before. "To remain a refugee is a political decision," she admits. Hence it is for her and for the other inhabitants of Aida out of the question to start a new life elsewhere, or to even become ordinary citizens of Bethlehem - because then they lose their refugee status conferred on them by the UNRWA. "We want no normalization," says Khouloud. "We want to remain refugees to exercise our right of return one day."

At this point something must be said about the UNRWA. The United Nations has two refugee relief organizations: the UNRWA for Palestinian refugees, and another, the UNHCR, for all other refugees in the world. And for all these UNHCR refugees their status will end after the first generation. The status of refugee is not inherited. And accordingly it is the responsibility of UNHCR to ensure that refugees get full civil rights in the countries in which they have fled. Life in refugee camps is a status that UNHCR resolves to end.

UNRWA has a completely different mandate. They regard it as their task to attend to the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, in Jordan and Syria, and they extend the refugee status over generations. And there is no end in sight. Khouloud is also, according to UN definition, a refugee - she would be even if she had stayed in England - and her children will be too. Khouloud's sister lives in Jordan and is married to a Jordanian. Through this marriage she is able to choose whether she wants to become a Jordanian citizen or remain a Palestinian refugee. She chose the latter. This inheritability of refugee status is an exception that the UN has established for Palestinians and for nobody else.

Khouloud doesn't protest this in any way. She says, "Yes, it is a special privilege. But this special privilege is our due. Why? It's about justice!" Tt is therefore not surprising that Khouloud doesn't grant any importance to the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. "Our people do not want a two-state solution. Our leadership is not acting in our name. And the Israelis know that as well." But what do "the people" want, what does Khouloud want? "It's about the right of our country," she says. "To renounce this right would not only be a betrayal of the refugees, it would be a betrayal of Palestine. That's not what our martyrs died for."

I get a little queasy. Before me is not a screaming fanatic like Shirin A., but a young woman with a Western education that speaks with a quiet and serene voice of blood and soil as if she were discussing an upcoming business meeting. She speaks very clearly of what they wish for: a single state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, in which all Palestinians, the descendants of refugees from 1948 and are now scattered all over the world return to live, can return to live. Toclarify the scale: In the wake of Israel's independence war of 1948 left about 700,000 Arabs left the territory of present-day Israel. Some were forced, some went voluntarily, hoping to come back for a victory of Arab armies. But the Arab states lost the war they had begun. Today there are between four and five million people who hold the status of "Palestine refugees". Khouloud even speaks of eight million. If it were up to her, they would all be allowed to settle in Israel.

For Khouloud it seems to matter little that this will never happen by peaceful means. Because for the Israeli side, it is unacceptable - it would be the end of Israel as a Jewish state. "Why do we need a Jewish state?" Khouloud asks rhetorically. "Surely we can all live together in a democratic state of Palestine." This would, she says, of course, have a "Palestinian majority. " And what would happen to the Jewish minority in such a state? "Such small things," says Khouloud, "are not important. For them a solution will eventually be found."

What I find so frightening about Khouloud Al Ajarma is not so much her complete lack of self-criticism. It's not so much her radicalism -in comparison, the settlers spokesman David Wilder from Hebron comes across as a conciliatory pacifist (and he, by the way, represents only a tiny minority of Israeli society). What really frightened me is this: No representative of the UN, who built the schools and community centers in Aida, nor the EU, who gives the refugee camps such as this financial support, nor the employees of all the Western aid agencies and NGOs that are active here- none of them would tell Khouloud straight out that her demands are not only inhuman - because of course they count on the expulsion and disenfranchisement of Jews in Israel, and this is still the most favorable interpretation - but also unrealistic. Not one says, "You will not get your demands. Work instead towards a peaceful compromise with the Israelis, advocate for a two-state solution and waive your threatening right to return. Finally take over responsibility for yourself and your own people, build an infrastructure and tear down the refugee camps. Stop getting nannied by the UN and the EU, get a grip on things yourselves." No one tells them this because no one thinks that way. No one is bothered by the graffiti, which is found on every house, showing an undivided Palestine and reaffirming the explicit Palestinian claim even over Greater Tel Aviv. And that's the most depressing experience I have had in the Aida refugee camp.

I go back to the checkpoint, countless Christian tourists are with me in the queue, others approach me, little boys trying to sell us wooden flutes (recorders.) Once on the other side, I take a deep breath. I have the feeling to return to something that the writer Michael Klonovsky - also during a trip to Jerusalem and also reluctantly - called "my own value system." And I enjoy that feeling.

(h/t Silke)

UPDATE: SoccerDad reminds me of another enterprising reporter - the famous Martha Gellhorn -who actually bothered to speak to Palestinian Arabs who were in camps, in 1961 and 1967. Sounds very familiar!

Hamas Deputy Director General of Police Mansour Hamad announced that Hamas arrested 150 people during 2010 for practicing witchcraft.

While Hamas characterizes most of the practitioners of magic to be swindlers, this information was discovered during a workshop held by the religious affairs ministry entitled "Dealing with the phenomenon of witchcraft and sorcery, and its impact on the individual and society" that was held today in Gaza City.

The religious affairs minister went through the history of sorcery and said that it is affecting the stability and cohesion of families, today.

The meeting ended with a call to educate people about witchcraft, carefully keep track of the phenomenon, let people know how serious it is and hold the practitioners responsible for their actions.

(h/t Folderol)

Wednesday linkdump

Hezbollah forced the collapse of the Lebanese government, ahead of the expected indictment of Hezbollah members to be handed down "within hours or days." Meryl Yourish noticed an interesting quote:

Alloush, a former lawmaker, expressed concern about possible street violence encouraged by Hezbollah and the movement's patrons in Tehran.

"At the end of the day, it's an Iranian decision," he said.

Because, in the end, Hezbollah is merely a wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon will never be free as long as Hezbollah has effective veto power over the government.

Lee Smith at Tablet talks about the problems of reporters believing Arab statements when the Arabs have a tendency to, you know, lie. (h/t Silke)

Jennifer Rubin talks about another elephant in the room: that Muslim countries aren't quite as tolerant of religious freedom as Western countries. Shouldn't American foreign policy be pushing these human rights issues?

The State Department awarded a multi-year, multimillion dollar contract to an organization with ties to Blackwater, apparently for securing US consulate personnel in the West Bank. Hamas is complaining, calling it a "scandal" and saying it proves the collusion between the PA, the CIA and Israel. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said it is "aimed at protecting the security of the occupation and the liquidation of all the defenders of the Palestinian cause."

Which sort of makes it sound like Hamas considers US diplomats to be legitimate targets, doesn't it?

And, from JTA, "Former French actress and national sex symbol Brigitte Bardot is leading an animal rights campaign against ritual kosher and halal methods of slaughtering animals."

Jerusalem Arabs wouldn't be thrilled about dividing the city either

From Jackson Diehl in WaPo:

One of the givens of the Middle East peace process is that Palestinians are eager to be free of rule by Israel and to live in a state of their own. That's why a new poll of the Arabs of East Jerusalem is striking: It shows that more of those people actually would prefer to be citizens of Israel than of a Palestinian state.
The poll, conducted in November, may be something of an embarrassment to Palestinian political leaders, who lately have been insisting that Israel should stop expanding settlements in the eastern half of Jerusalem -- in effect giving up any claim to it -- as a precondition for the resumption of peace negotiations. This week the demolition of a hotel in an Arab neighborhood in preparation for the construction of Jewish housing prompted fresh criticism of Israel from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, while a leaked memo from European Union diplomats stationed in the city proposed that EU governments recognizeEast Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state.
The awkward fact is that the 270,000 Arabs who live in East Jerusalem may not be very enthusiastic about joining Palestine. The survey, which was designed and supervised by former State Department Middle East researcher David Pollock, found that only 30 percent said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestine in a two-state solution, while 35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship. (The rest said they didn't know or refused to answer.) Forty percent said they would consider moving to another neighborhood in order to become a citizen of Israel rather than Palestine, and 54 percent said that if their neighborhood were assigned to Israel, they would not move to Palestine.

The reasons for these attitudes are pretty understandable, even healthy. Arabs say they prefer Israel's jobs, schools, health care and welfare benefits to those of a Palestinian state -- and their nationalism is not strong enough for them to set aside these advantages in order to live in an Arab country. The East Jerusalemites don't much love Israel -- they say they suffer from discrimination. But they seem to like what it has to offer. Remarkably, 56 percent said they traveled inside Israel at least once a week; 60 percent said access to its Mediterranean beaches was "very important" or "moderately important" to them.
"Quite clearly there is a discrepancy between people's attitudes and the assumption that Palestinian neighborhoods should be part of Palestine," said Pollock, whose work was sponsored by Pechter Middle East polls and the Council on Foreign Relations. "That's not actually what the people want."

If those who think that the wishes of Jews are not as important as the infinitesimal chance of peace that dividing Jerusalem would supposedly create, what about the wishes of the Arabs of Jerusalem?

(h/t Steve)