Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 06, 2011

A bit of nonsense in a NYT op-ed

The New York Times' jihad to mainstream Hamas continues today, with an op-ed by Nathan Thrall called "Hurting Moderates, Helping Militants." Guess who the "moderates" are?

In Gaza, the number of Salafi jihadis — austere militants willing to kill those they don’t consider true Muslims — has grown significantly since 2006. Many of them are former Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who see Hamas as caving to Israel while getting only blockades, closed border crossings and military incursions in return.

Five years of isolation have not dislodged Hamas, revived the peace process, strengthened Fatah or ensured Israel’s security. Most of the Gaza Strip’s imports now pass largely unimpeded through tunnels that are wide enough to carry cattle, cars, anti-tank missiles and foreign radicals.

Nor has isolating Hamas persuaded most Palestinians to embrace the alternative model in the West Bank, where undemocratic practices remain common, local leaders lack popular legitimacy, and tight security coordination with Israel is routinely denounced.

Instead, blockading Gaza and isolating Hamas have given rhetorical strength to militants who argue that the Islamist movement has erred by holding its fire against Israel and failing to impose Islamic law. As a result, Hamas is slowly losing members to more radical groups.

On Monday, Hamas self-defeatingly sought to bolster its flagging Islamist credentials by mourning the death of Osama bin Laden and praising him as an Arab holy warrior ...

Here's Thrall's bizarre train of thought: Hamas is losing members to more-extreme Salafist groups because it is viewed as not being radical enough by some.

So, according to Thrall, Israel must embrace Hamas, which would moderate its views to accommodate Israel's new friendship.

But according to his own words, this would make more radicals leave the group and strengthen the Salafists because they would look at Hamas as selling out!

On the one hand he is claiming that extreme radical Islamists are pushed there by the relative moderation of slightly less extreme radical Islamists. On the other hand he claims that by Israel embracing the slightly less extreme radical Islamists they will moderate and make peace with - which will again push their members towards extremism!

Thrall also fails to explain why (as he admits) even Islamic Jihad is losing members to the Salafist groups - when Islamic Jihad has not moderated one bit.

Not to mention his equally nonsensical assertion that the entire reason Hamas condemned Bin Laden's death was not because of its clear ideological affinity to Al Qaeda, but as a way to restore street cred among the Salafists.

This is, again, a willful blindness on the part of people who are so wed to the idea that peace with Hamas must be possible that logic and facts go out the window just to prove the unprovable. People to whom the "peace process" is a religion cannot lose their faith, so they must spin more and more crazy theories just to shore up their "flat Earth"-style beliefs.

Sorry. The earth is round, Obama was born in Hawaii, 9/11 wasn't an inside job and real peace between Israel and Islamic movements like Hamas is impossible. Hamas and other Islamist movements must be defeated, not embraced. While victory is difficult, as in any war, it is imperative.

Anyone who claims otherwise is simply ignoring reality and discarding facts for half-baked beliefs.

(h/t David G)

Wave your Flag - Israel Independence Day video

Great video (single tracking shot) by Aish.com:

Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, is on May 10th this year.

(h/t Joel)

NYT's Ethan Bronner: When wishful thinking trumps facts

Ethan Bronner in the New York Times has a scoop!

One day after celebrating a landmark reconciliation accord for Palestinian unity, Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said on Thursday that he was fully committed to working for a two-state solution but declined to swear off violence or agree that a Palestinian state would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So what were Meshal's exact words?

Here is everything he is quoted as having said on the topic:

"The whole world knows what Hamas thinks and what our principles are. But we are talking now about a common national agenda. The world should deal with what we are working toward now, the national political program.

"[This is] a Palestinian state in the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital, without any settlements or settlers, not an inch of land swaps and respecting the right of return [of millions of Palestinian Arab "refugees" to Israel itself.]"

Asked if a deal honoring those principles would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Meshal said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

He added: “When Israel made agreements with Egypt and Jordan, no one conditioned it on how Israel should think. The Arabs and the West didn’t ask Israel what it was thinking deep inside. All Palestinians know that 60 years ago they were living on historic Palestine from the river to the sea. It is no secret.”

Did the words "two-state solution" escape his lips? Did he say he was prepared to recognize Israel under any circumstances? Did he even imply that? No - he actually said that he would continue to encourage violence against Israelis:

“Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor. But resistance is a means, not an end.”

He added that over the coming months, as Hamas and Fatah work out their differences, “we are ready to reach an agreement on how to manage resistance.” He noted that Hamas had entered into cease-fires with Israel in the past and that it was ready to do so in the future. There is one in effect right now. But his broad principle, he said, was this: “If occupation ends, resistance ends. If Israel stops firing, we stop firing.”

Asked if he thought nonviolent resistance was a useful approach for the Palestinians, he replied, “Unfortunately, nonviolence doesn’t work against the Israelis.”

So perhaps Bronner, who has been covering the area for a few years now, assumes that Meshal's statement that Hamas would end violence if the "occupation" ends as somehow accepting a two-state solution?

Only one problem. Hamas considers all of Israel "occupied." And you don't even have to look hard to realize this - just Google for the word "Occupied" in the English-language Qassam.ps website, run by Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.

Here you see that Israel's "occupation" includes Ashkelon, Lod, Ashdod, Netivot - and all of the land "occupied in 1948."

Is Bronner this ignorant, after reporting about Hamas for years, not to know what their keywords are? Is it really possible that he doesn't know how Hamas has been playing this same semantic game for years, including in the pages of the NYT op-ed section? Has he not ever heard these same Hamas leaders saying, explicitly in Arabic, that their goal is to destroy Israel - and they have never abandoned that goal in any language?

It is a scary thought that an evidently bright guy is this clueless about the subject that is supposed to be his area of expertise by now.

But even worse is that nothing Meshal said can be remotely construed even in English as implying that he would accept Israel's right to exist, the very definition of a two-state solution.

The only possibility is that Bronner, like so many other Westerners, is infected with "wishthinkitis," a disease where what you want to hear overrides what people actually say. Those with wishthinkitis have the aural equivalent of rose-colored glasses, where every word uttered - no matter how vile and bigoted - is turned into sunshine and flowers.

Those suffering from this condition lose all ability to think critically, to look at things objectively, and to report things accurately. It apparently never entered Bronner's mind to ask some simple questions of Meshal:

If you get all of your demands for every inch of the territories, would you then support a peace treaty with Israel?
Do you agree, today, with every word in the Hamas Charter? If not, what specifically do you disagree with?
If you do not agree with it, is there any other document that you can point to that describes Hamas' goals and objectives precisely? (Shouldn't be hard because Meshal told Bronner that "the whole world knows what Hamas thinks and what our principles are." Will they be only temporarily subsumed under the PA, or permanently?
Do you still support a single Islamic state stretching from North Africa through the Gulf?
Do you consider Spain to be occupied Muslim land?

These are only some of the real questions that should be asked from someone like Meshal. No matter what he answers, it would be newsworthy - either to Westerners or to his fellow Arabs, or both.

Unfortunately, those with wishthinkitis cannot ask the hard questions, and they cannot follow up double-talk answers with decent followup questions. Because they are so thrilled with what they heard, even if it has no relationship with what was actually said.

Palestinian Arabs become more Islamist

In a new Near East Consulting survey of Palestinian Arabs (from Wafa):

57% identified themselves as Muslims first, 21% identified themselves as Palestinians first, 19% as human beings first and 5% as Arabs first.

This surprised me, as I would have swapped the "Arab" and "Muslim" categories. Certainly these numbers would have been much different before 1967. It indicates the increased Islamism of the Palestinian Arabs.

Indeed:

The increase in adherence to religious identity is also reflected in the system preferred by the Palestinian people.

About 40% of the respondents said that they believe that the Islamic caliphate is the best system for Palestinians, 24% chose a system like one of the Arab countries, and 12 % prefer a system like one of the European countries.

Again, this is in contradiction to previous polls that indicated that Palestinian Arabs admire Israel's democracy to any other system, but those polls probably didn't mention the caliphate as an option.

Put together, it looks like pan-Islamism has nearly replaced pan-Arabism in the minds of Palestinian Arabs, which does not bode well if their restless neighbors are also heading in that direction.

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

The sham "unity" agreement (NewsRealBlog)

My latest post at NewsRealBlog puts together the fake signing ceremony in Cairo with other things I've been blogging about over the past day.

On Wednesday, Khaled Meshal of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah came together in Cairo and publicly signed a historic reconciliation agreement, in front of a room filed with supporters from the Arab world and the international community.
Didn’t they?
Actually, they didn’t.
Al Quds al-Arabi mentions, almost in passing:
Notably, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not sign the agreement, as expected, and neither did Mr. Khaled Meshaal of the Islamic Resistance Movement ‘Hamas.’
The New York Times noticed this as well:

In what appeared a sign of lingering friction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not share the podium with Abbas and the ceremony was delayed briefly over where he would sit. Against expectations, neither signed the unity document.

That wasn’t the only weird thing that happened at the ceremony that was meant to signify a new chapter in harmonious intra-Palestinian Arab relations. There were actual public disagreements on stage, concerning who was to speak, where people were to sit, and how Mahmoud Abbas should be described (as the “president of Palestine” or as the leader of Fatah.) In fact, from all appearances, Hamas is not recognizing Abbas as the real president of the “unified” leadership!
Put all of this together and the real picture begins to emerge: the entire “unity” agreement is a facade meant to placate Westerners (as well as restive Palestinian Arabs who are eying the revolutions and demonstrations happening around them.) In reality, Hamas and Fatah hate each other as much as ever.
There are no indications that Hamas is giving up any of its security or political power in Gaza. Quite the opposite: Hamas yesterday brazenly executed an alleged “spy,” which according to Palestinian Arab law must not happen without presidential approval.
Also in Gaza yesterday, Palestinian Arabs celebrated this wonderful “unity” by showing posters depicting one of their other heroes:

Why is the Western world believing–and supporting!–this sham that is meant to ultimately create a terror state, one that will not compromise in the least on its major goal of destroying Israel?

Gazans celebrate "unity" - with posters of Osama

From Getty Images via Daylife:

Palestinians hold pictures depicting Osama bin Laden, as they march to celebrate the signing of a reconciliation deal between bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah, on May 4, 2011 in Gaza City.

The yellow flags are for Fatah.

Don't they look like they deserve a state?

Turkish foreign minister meets with Islamic Jihad

Palestine Today reports that Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with the leader of the Islamic Jihad terror organization yesterday.

PIJ leader Dr. Ramadan Shallah along with other top Ilamic Jihad officials were in Cairo to attend the Hamas/Fatah unity celebration, as was Davutoglu. They met at the residence that the Turkish minister was staying.

Unlike Hamas, Islamic Jihad does not even pretend to be anything other than an Islamist terrorist group.

Jerusalem Arabs again prefer to live in Israel than "Palestine"

From YNet:

A recent survey conducted by Pechter Middle East Polls, in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations, ahead of the possible Palestinian bid for statehood in September, revealed that given a choice, the majority of east Jerusalem residents would prefer to remain Israelis.

The survey sampled 1,039 Palestinians living in all 19 neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, and was supervised by Dr. David Pollock.

Perhaps the most striking finding regarded the residents' citizenship preference, after a two-state solution is reached: When asked if they preferred to become citizens of Palestine or remain citizens of Israel, only 30% chose Palestinian citizenship. Thirty five percent chose Israeli citizenship and 35% declined to answer or said they didn’t know.

When asked if they would move to a different home inside Israel if their neighborhood became part of Palestine,40% said they were "likely to move to Israel" and 27% said they were "likely to move to Palestine" if their neighborhood became part of Israel.

What makes these numbers more amazing is that they reflect attitudes shaped by decades of media incitement against Israel and of generations being inculcated with an ethos of a fake historic Palestinian Arab nationalism.

The idea that 40% would actually pick up and move their families to live in Israel is in itself astonishing, and proves more than anything else that Israel treats its Arab citizens better than they expect to be treated in "Palestine."

(h/t Joel)

Did Abbas and Meshal sign the unity agreement? (UPDATE)

From Al-Quds al Arabi (Arabic), discussing the Hamas/Fatah unification ceremony in Cairo:

Notably, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not sign the agreement, as expected, and neither did Mr. Khaled Meshaal of the Islamic Resistance Movement 'Hamas'...

It may be possible that I am interpreting the autotranslation incorrectly, but I don't think so. The writer goes on to mention the other disagreements Abbas and Meshal had as far as protocol, seating, speaking and so forth.

I know that representatives from Hamas and Fatah signed the agreement a few days ago.

I cannot find any photos or videos showing Abbas or Hamas leaders actually signing anything, at a ceremony that was specifically meant to celebrate exactly that!

There's a story here.

UPDATE: ChallahHuAkbar tweeted George Hale from Ma'an this question after my blog entry (so did NGO Monitor), and he answered:

According to this report, no. It says assistants signed on behalf of both officials.

So why didn't Abbas sign....and why is no one asking him about this?

Iran says the Syrian uprising is "different"

Yesterday I noted, half-jokingly, that Iran supports and encourages all popular revolutions - except in Iran and Syria because those protesters are Zionist stooges.

Once again, one cannot satirize people who are already off the deep end.

From Now Lebanon:

Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Ghandafar Roken Abadi said Thursday that Tehran “understand the basis of all the legitimate demands of all people of any region in the world, whether in Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya or Bahrain,” but added that “everyone knows the situation is different in Syria.”

“What is currently occurring in Syria is a political vendetta conducted by the US and Israel, and this is [a] clear and explicit [project] to separate Syria from the Resistance plan,” the National News Agency quoted him as saying.

In other news, Israel's Channel 10 uncovered a secret document showing that Syria's president is bringing in Hezbollah to quash the protests.

(h/t Joel)

Iran says revolutions will reach Europe

From Tehran Times:

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has stated that the European nations will certainly rise up against their governments, which are blindly following the policies of the United States and the Zionist regime.

The Leader made the remarks during a meeting with thousands of teachers on Wednesday on the occasion of the National Teachers’ Day....

“People’s awakening in the Middle East and North Africa is the continuation of the Iranian nation’s great movement, and this awakening will certainly spread to the heart of Europe,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

He went on to say, “The European nations will certainly rise up against their politicians and leaders who made them submit to the cultural and economic policies of the U.S. and the Zionists.”

On the important role the teachers can play to push ahead the Islamic awakening, the Leader said the teachers should raise public awareness and strengthen unity and solidarity through developing talents and training strong-willed, faithful, insightful, committed, and knowledgeable students.

He also said that the most important obligation of the education system is training the people who are capable of safeguarding the principles of the Islamic system and promoting the Iranian nation’s great movement.

But when people rise up against Iran or Syria, they are just proving they are Zionist stooges.

Reagan wasn't the last actor in the White House

A fascinating look behind the scenes of Obama's speech to the nation Sunday night, from Reuters photographer Jason Reed:

This photo was not taken during the speech!

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

Obama's re-enactment

Poynter.org researched the history:

Doug Mills, New York Times photojournalist and former Associated Press staffer, says it has been done this way “always, always … well, as long as I have covered the White House, going back to the Reagan administration. We [still photographers] have never, never, never, ever been allowed to cover a live presidential address to the nation!”

Poynter’s Senior Faculty for Visual Journalism, Kenny Irby, explains, “The most obvious concern is noise. The 35mm cameras emit shutter noise, that would be multiplied by several photographers and increased by the echo which resonates off of the marble floors. The other visual distraction is the placement of the teleprompter that impedes the photographers’ line of sight to the president.”

That article concludes:

It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end. The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.

In the meantime, anyone who uses these recreations should clearly disclose to the reader the circumstances under which they were captured.

Apparently, wire service photographers will happily descend that slippery slope between news and acting.

This is of course not nearly as bad as the fauxtography and staged photos we are so used to seeing coming out of the Middle East. Even so, one would hope that the White House would not be acting like Hezbollah in even this small way.

(h/t PB)

Great article: "There's Something About Winning"

From the Jewish Journal, by David Suissa:

I’ll never forget sitting with a group of intellectuals several years ago, at the height of the messy war in Iraq, and discussing why President Bush and America had fallen so low in the esteem of the world. One great mind after another offered sophisticated analyses. My head was spinning.

Finally, someone piped up: “Everything would be different if Bush were winning the war.”

At which point a distinguished professor from Israel said: “This is brilliant! Bush’s real problem is that he’s not winning!” I sat there, slightly stunned, thinking: How can something so complicated lend itself to such an easy insight?

I reflected on that insight the other night when President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden after a nearly 10-year pursuit. Here was a president who had suffered relentless criticism for his handling of foreign affairs. And now, as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on his blog: “Our President, in the blink of an eye, has gone from a hyper-criticized, seemingly-swamped possibly-one-term leader to an American hero, a commander-in-chief who calmly oversaw the killing of the greatest mass murderer in American history.”

And why did he become a hero? Not because he made one of his inspiring speeches or announced a brilliant new policy.

He became a hero because he got a win. It’s as simple — and as complicated — as that.

We love to teach our kids that life is not about winning and losing but “how you play the game.” That may be true when you’re dealing with people of good faith. But when you’re dealing with people who are out for blood, it’s a good idea to know how to win.

Naturally, Jews and Israel have always been juicy targets for people out for blood. So, how should one deal with such aggression?

I found a wonderful answer last week in a shoe store, of all places, on trendy St. Denis Street in downtown Montreal. The French Canadian owner of the store, who has been there for 25 years, decided last year to carry a woman’s shoe line from Israel called Beautifeel. Well, wouldn’t you know it, within a few months, a vicious boycott campaign was under way against the store, led by a popular local politician, Amir Khadir.

To give you an idea of the tone of their campaign, one of the boycotters’ leaflets had an oversize image of a woman’s shoe stomping on a pile of buried naked bodies — reminiscent of those horror shots of emaciated bodies you see in Holocaust documentaries. Written on the shoe was “Beautifeel. Made in Apartheid Israel.” On top was the headline, in French, “Boycottons la boutique Le Marcheur” (“Let’s boycott the boutique Le Marcheur”).

Week after week, the boycotters recruited large and noisy crowds to hand out the leaflets and implore people not to enter Le Marcheur. Their mission was to pressure the owner, Yves Archambault, to stop carrying the Israeli shoe line so that the neighborhood would be “apartheid free.” But Archambault refused, out of principle. It didn’t seem right to him that he should be told how to run his business. His business suffered, but he held firm.

The story hardly ends there. The Jewish community in Montreal got wind of the boycott and went nuts. A “buycott” campaign was launched, and Jews from all over the city came to buy shoes at Le Marcheur. A woman bought a hundred pairs. Archambault became a local hero.

Meanwhile, creative minds went to work producing counter leaflets mocking the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement as “Boycott Derangement Syndrome,” explaining the discrimination and hypocrisy inherent in the movement. These leaflets gave people the Israeli side of the story. Archambault did his own research and found out that the Israeli shoe company (besides making great shoes!) hired women, minorities and Palestinians and treated their employees very well. The Quebec General Assembly drafted a unanimous resolution condemning the boycott and supporting the store.

And what happened to the initiator of the boycott, Amir Khadir? He went low-key and stopped coming to the demonstrations. Apparently, he concluded that the backlash might not be good for his political future.

I tell you this story not to remind you of the insidious global movement to demonize the Jewish state. That’s old hat by now. I’m telling you this story because it’s a tribute to the noble virtues of fighting back and winning.

Too often, we recoil at the idea of fighting. It leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We dread the thought of “lowering ourselves to the level of mudslinging.” We prefer notions like “engagement” and “bridge building.”

But the nasty boycotters of St. Denis Street who used Nazi imagery to malign an Israeli shoe company were not looking for engagement or bridge building. They were looking for blood — and a victory.

Faced with such aggression, how else to respond but to fight back?

Yes, in such cases, life is a zero sum game. One side wins, and the other side loses. The Jewish community of Montreal, with the support of a brave French Canadian shoe merchant, fought back ferociously and smartly against what it perceived as a grave injustice to the State of Israel. And, guess what — they won.

It’s not as dramatic as taking down bin Laden, but we’ll take it.

(h/t Max)

The fruits of "unity:" Hamas terror TV being broadcast in West Bank

Palestine Today reports that in the wake of the Hamas/Fatah agreement, Hamas' "Al Aqsa TV" is now resuming broadcasts from Ramallah.

That station is known for showing blatantly anti-semitic shows as well as the famous "Pioneers of Tomorrow" children's show inciting hate against Israel. I once made a humorous video about that show:

Here's MEMRI's page for the station you you can see the fine quality of Hamas Terror TV for yourself.