A Muslim's journey from anti-semite to Zionist

From Kasim Hafeez in TheJC:

The reality is that there is real anti-Israel and antisemitic feeling on British university campuses. How do I know this? Because until recently I was antisemitic and anti-Israel. Until recently, I was the one doing the hating.

Growing up in a Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers. My views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies where speakers predicted Israel's demise.

My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

There was also constant, casual antisemitism around me. My father would boast of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified.

What changed? In Waterstones one day I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section. To this day I don't know why I actually pulled it off the shelf, but I picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel.

In my world view the Jews and the Americans controlled the media, so after a brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda".

But I decided to buy it, eagerly awaiting the chance to deconstruct it so I could show why Israel had no case and claim my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.

As I read Dershowitz's systematic deconstruction of the lies I had been told, I felt a real crisis of conscience. I couldn't disprove his arguments or find facts to respond to them with. I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong?

I decided to visit Israel to find the truth. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

As an outsider, I ask why so many in the Jewish community are closing their eyes to the constant stream of anti-Israel hated spewed out from all facets of British society.

And while pro-Palestinian organisations burn Israeli flags, urge boycotts of Israel and protest against appearances by Israeli politicians or artists, UJS's response is shameful. It is not the time for UJS or any other group to engage in hollow flag-waving to show their "progressiveness". Let Israel's democratic history speak for itself.

Instead of meekly trying to avoid coming across as too pro-Israeli or too Zionist, it is time to make the facts known, to defend Israel against delegitimisation. It is time to stem the tide of Israel bashing before it becomes even more mainstream and consumes even more people like me.

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"Palestine": A cause or a state? (Taheri)

Amir Taheri in Al Asharq al Awsat writes a provocative essay:

A recent creation, the modern state is the political expression of a nation’s existence. One must first have a nation and then look for a state to express its existence.

Is Palestine a nation, in the modern sense of the term as described by Herder at the end of the 18th century?

You might be surprised, even angered, by this question. However, none of the dozens of political parties that have claimed to represent the Palestinians in the past seven decades ever described itself as national.

Words such as “nation” and “national” do not feature in the designation of such movements as Al Fatah and Hamas. Instead, they, and many other smaller ones, use adjectives such as “Islamic” or “people’s”. The subtext is that the Palestinians are, at most, “a people” but not a nation. They are regarded as part either of a larger, and mythical, Arab “nation” or an even more problematic Islamic Ummah.

Wedded to leftist or Islamist ideologies, Palestinian political formations systematically rejected the concept of the nation, the backbone of modern statehood.

The contrast with modern national liberation movements throughout the world is telling. For all of them the word “nation” is the key to their identity. Thus, we have the African National Congress in South Africa, and the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria. Even Communist-dominated Vietcong described itself as a National Liberation Front.

Islamist or leftist, Palestinian political movements treat Palestine as a “cause” rather than a political project.

But what is that “cause”?

This was clearly put by Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in a speech in Tehran on 3 October. “Our aim,” he said, “is liberating all of Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In other words, the cause is not to give Palestinians a state but to destroy Israel.

Ramadan Abdallah Shallah, leader of the Islamic Jihad for Palestine was even more explicit. “When we come to power we shall not allow the Zionist regime to live a single moment,” he said in Tehran.

According to the daily Kayhan of 4 October, both men paid tribute to “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei as the man who should have the final word on Palestine.

Mishal said: “The esteemed Commander of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khamenei, is our Guide and Leader. His wishes will be the cause of the Palestinians. Our sovereign and master is Khamenei.”

This, of course, is not the first time that Palestinian leaders have auctioned “the cause”. There was a time when Abdel Nasser was bootlicked as “guide and master”. In 1991, Yasser Arafat sold “the cause” to Saddam Hussein. A few years later in Oslo, he re-sold it to Shimon Peres.

In his speech, Khamenei promised that, once Israel is destroyed, he would organize a referendum in which Palestinians from all over the world and some citizens of Israel would decide what to do with “liberated Palestine”. Mischievous tongues in Tehran say that one option could be to attach “liberated Palestine” to Khamenei’s “imamate” empire. This is not fanciful. After all, Nasser, too, had hoped to annex “liberated Palestine” for his Arab Republic. Saddam Hussein had dreams of turning Palestine into Iraq’s “counter on the Mediterranean”, a scheme that would have also required the destruction of Jordan as an independent country. Hafez al-Assad fancied Palestine as part of “Greater Syria”.

Mishal and Shallah’s flattery towards Khamenei implies that there is no Palestinian “nation”. A sovereign nation would not demand that the leader of a foreign country decide its future.

The quest for a Palestinian state starts with the Palestinians themselves. They must decide whether they are a modern nation or a fragment of larger entities beyond their control.

...[A]s a member of the United Nations, a state cannot adopt the destruction of another UN member as its “cause.”

Palestine must choose what it wants to be a “cause” or a state.

I would add that Hamas explicitly calls for the creation of a pan-Islamic state of which "Palestine" would be a part.

Taheri is correct even in regards to the PLO. The PLO's charters from 1964 and 1968, even though they are titled the "Palestinian National Charter," say nothing about the "Palestinian nation" but quite a bit about the "Arab nation." Neither of them call for a "Palestinian state."

It is not news to readers here that the primary Palestinian Arab goal has always been to destroy Israel and not to build a state. But Taheri has stumbled on to a very interesting proof that a state is not their goal.

(h/t Zvi)

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Report: USAID halts operations in PalArab territory

Al Quds al Arabi reports that USAID has suspended all of its projects in the Palestinian Arab territories.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee had halted some $200 million in funds for the Palestinian Arabs, it was reported earlier this week, and these were USAID funds.

Some projects have halted already, some can run for a few weeks before running out of money. According to a PA official quoted in the article, the projects that are affected include "roads, water, health and other projects related to state building."

He also said that the White House is exerting efforts to lift the ban but there is no timeframe for such a decision

Some 50 Arab employees have already been asked not to work, and a couple of hundred more will lose their jobs by November.

USAID money to the territories is earmarked for governance, rule of law, civil society, health, education, social services, economic development and humanitarian assistance.

US funds that goes directly to the Palestinian Authority has not been affected.

In the Arab world, especially in Egypt, there have been recent protests against USAID, with people charging that it is a spy agency. Egypt has recently rejected USAID funds because of conditions saying, among other things, that they cannot be used for terrorism.

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2 Arabs arrested for the double murder of the Palmers

From YNet:

Two Palestinians from Halhul were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion they murdered Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan near Kiryat Arba last month. The two were arrested following an investigation involving the police, the Shin Bet and the IDF.

Asher Palmer z"l

A gag order has been placed in the identities of the detainees and the details of the investigation.

During their interrogation, the suspects admitted to throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The stone was hurled from a driving car. Police are also looking into the possibility that the two are behind 17 other cases involving stones being hurled at Israeli vehicles.

Initially the police had described it as a tragic car accident.

The stone was large enough to shatter the windshield and break the steering column. To hurl that from a moving car can only be described as premeditated murder. Of course, the Palestinian Arab leadership condones stone throwing (and Molotov cocktails) as "non-violent resistance."

Indeed, no Palestinian Arab official has condemned the murders.

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"Iran's Bushehr will be the next Chernobyl"

From Fox:

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a "tragic disaster for humankind," according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a "great likelihood" that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document, which has been passed to The (London) Times by a reputable source and is attributed to a former member of the legal department of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by "second-class engineers" who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world's most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has "no serious training program" for staff or a contingency plan for accidents.

The document's authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it. It also echoes fears in the nuclear industry about the safety of a secretive project to which few outsiders have been granted access.

There was a similar story about the lack of safety precautions at Bushehr in the Telegraph last January:

The Russian scientists' report to the Kremlin, a copy of which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, concludes that, despite "performing simple, basic tests" on the Bushehr reactor, the Russian team "cannot guarantee safe activation of the reactor".

It also accuses the Iranian management team, which is under intense political pressure to stick to the deadline, of "not exhibiting the professional and moral responsibility" that is normally required. They accuse the Iranians of having "disregard for human life" and warn that Russia could find itself blamed for "another Chernobyl" if it allows Bushehr to go ahead.

And from Bloomberg in March:

The 1000-megawatt power plant at Bushehr combines a German- designed plant begun under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in the 1970’s and Russian technology installed over the last decade. Safety questions have raised concern among some nuclear-power experts and in neighboring countries such as Kuwait, which is vulnerable in the event of a radiation leak since it is downwind about 170 miles (275 kilometers).

Nuclear experts cite potential safety issues due to the hybrid design, Iranian nuclear inexperience, the Islamic state’s reluctance to join international safety monitoring programs, and the unknown reliability of some of the original components.

Bushehr also sits at the junction of three tectonic plates, raising concerns that an earthquake could damage the plant and crack its containment dome, or disrupt the electrical supply needed to keep it safe, said Dr. Jassem al-Awadi, a geologist at the University of Kuwait. Bushehr was hit with a 4.6 magnitude temblor in 2002.

However, I received an email last March from someone who knows a great deal about a great many things who said:

Nuclear engineers are consistent that Bushehr can't produce the Chernobyl effect because it's water cooled and not graphite moderated. It was the use of graphiteto moderate the Chernobyl reactor's heat regime that enabled it to yield the high-energy explosion and spew radiation around the globe. The VVER-1000 former-Soviet design reactor isn't as full of failsafes as most Western designs, but nuke-heads say the model has been much improved. Under earthquake conditions like those besetting Japan, it would be likely to perform much like the Daiichi complex at Fukushima -- that is, key systems might well fail, but exposure of the core is next to impossible.

(h/t Silke, Daled Amos, JD)

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PLO ambassador in Brazil: "Israel must disappear"

From Reinaldo Azevedo in Veja-Brazil, Brazil's most popular magazine:

Imagine the scandal if an Israeli diplomat said: “The Palestinian Authority should disappear.” On Friday, Alzeben Ibrahim, the Palestinian ambassador in Brazil, told a group of university students that “Israel should disappear.”

To leave no doubt as to what he meant, he added, "And this is not the ambassador of Iran or President Ahmadinejad who is speaking."

Thus it was evident that he did not mean Israel must disappear from the West Bank, but wiped off the map as Ahmadinejad preached.

Knowing that Hamas, which also says that Israel must disappear, will not stop shooting rockets into Israel, Alzeben said: "Israel is preparing provocations for a new conflict. Be skeptical of the origin of the next rocket departing from Palestine. " So he is saying he has counterintelligence information where Israel is infiltrating agents into Gaza to fire missiles at Israel itself, understand?

By saying that "Israel must disappear," Alzeben illuminates the nature of the "struggle" which many experts, including ours, refuse to admit.

When the Palestinian Authority refuses to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" and wants to make the return of the so-called "refugees" this is a cause for future generations to be guided. When it cannot eliminate "that Israel" using weapons, it is dreaming to one day eliminate it via demographics.

(h/t Daily Alert via Honest Reporting.)

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Some good news stories about Israel

A new report came out ranking the world's leading nations for innovation and technology. Some of the results:

The first map charts the percentages of economic output countries devote to R&D investment. The U.S. ranks sixth. Israel is in first place, followed by Sweden, Finland, Japan, and Switzerland, which make up the top five. South Korea, Germany, Denmark, and France round out the top ten. Canada ranks 13th.

The second map charts scientific and engineering researchers per capita. The United States ranks seventh. Finland takes the top spot, followed by Sweden, Japan, Singapore, and Denmark. Norway, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand round out the top ten. [For some reason, Israel is not listed at all in the full report in this category, probably the authors could not get complete data. -EoZ]

The third map plots innovations, measured as patents per capita. Now, the United States takes first place, followed by Japan, Switzerland, Finland, and Israel. Sweden, Germany, Canada, Denmark, and Hong Kong round out the top ten.

By combining all three of these measures, we end up with an overall Global Technology Index, a broad assessment of the technological and innovative capabilities of the world’s leading nations. The United States ranks third. Finland takes the top spot, followed by Japan. Israel’s fourth place finish may come as a surprise to some. But as Dan Senor and Saul Singer argue in Start-up Nation, Israel has relentlessly pursued an economic development strategy based on launching innovative firms. Israel has the highest concentration of engineers in the world—135 per 10,000 people, compared to 85 per 10,000 people in the United States. Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Korea, Germany, and Singapore round out the top ten.

From Business Week, September 22:

Never mind the collapse in confidence in Europe, the Palestinian proposal for United Nations recognition and heightened tensions with neighboring Egypt and longtime ally Turkey. The Israeli economy just keeps growing faster than the rest of the developed world.

The International Monetary Fund this week raised its forecast for the country and cut its estimate for the global economy on the impact of the European debt crisis. Israel's gross domestic product will expand 4.8 percent this year, according to the Washington-based lender. That's up from an April forecast of 3.8 percent and triple the pace for the average of the 34 advanced economies.

Citigroup Inc. said on Sept. 18 it would establish a new Israeli research center and Standard & Poor's a week earlier raised the country's credit rating. It cited the discovery of two gas fields off the coast of Israel that hold an estimated 25 trillion cubic feet of the fuel. Mellanox Technologies Ltd., the 12-year-old Israeli adapter maker part-owned by Oracle Corp., says sales will grow 80 percent in the third quarter.

“The Israeli economy is very vibrant,” Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a Sept. 20 interview with Bloomberg Television. “We enjoy very low unemployment and nice economic growth and this is mainly because we managed to develop very advanced high tech industries and very strong exports.”

Israel ranks third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI's list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.

“Israel's exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology,” said Jean-Dominique Butikofer, a fund manager who helps oversee about $1 billion of emerging- market debt at Union Bancaire Privee in Zurich, including quasi- sovereign Israeli bonds. “They're not exporting Gucci bags. If there's a slowdown, these are the kind of assets that are good to have.”

Venture-capital backed Israeli technology companies raised $364 million in the second quarter of this year, a 77 percent jump from the $206 million raised in the year-earlier period, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Moneytree report. Seventy-six companies raised funding in the three-month period, compared with only 60 last year, the report said.

“One reason that the economy continues to do well is the component of innovation and ability to adapt to a changing environment,” Citigroup Israel Managing Director Ralph Shaaya said in explaining the New York-based bank's decision to locate a research center in Israel. ‘There is a rich pool of talent in the high tech sector. The propensity for innovation is high.”

From Israel HaYom:

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with universities on the Top 200 World University Rankings list from Times Higher Education (THE), which is released annually in conjunction with the start of the new school year.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem ranked 121st and Tel Aviv University placed 166th.

I am getting more and more convinced that Israel's long-term security is best served by having a strong economy, one that not only serves the needs of Israelis by keeping it economically independent but one that has such a large impact on the world that nations would themselves directly feel the loss if Israel is not secure.

Think of it this way: China's human rights record is abysmal, but because the economic potential there is so gigantic the world overlooks that issue. So even if Israel is losing the PR battle to BDS-supporting haters, a strong economy would go a great way towards muting their whining.

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Syria again enters Lebanon, kills farmer

From Now Lebanon:

Syrian troops entered Lebanese territory on Thursday and shot dead a Syrian living in a remote border area of the eastern Bekaa region, a security official told AFP.

"At around 2:30 p.m. in an area called Saaba, next to Aarsal, Syrian troops entered Lebanese territory and opened fire on farmer Ali al-Khatib, a Syrian national," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"His body is still on site and a probe is underway."

He said Khatib was married to a Lebanese and lived in the area, where the border is not clearly delineated.

A government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the incident and said it was unclear why Khatib was targeted or how he was killed.

"The area in question is very remote and right along the border," he said.

Earlier this week, Syrian tanks entered the same region in a brief incursion that raised fears of the revolt against the regime in Damascus spilling over into Lebanon.

As I mentioned earlier this week, there had been three previous incidents of the Syrian army crossing the Lebanese border, and as far as I can see, no formal protests on Lebanon's side.

(h/t CHA)

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Photo of the Zionist flag at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair

From the St. Louis Jewish Light:

Most Jews are very familiar with the flag of Israel, which stands alongside the American Stars and Stripes at many synagogues, but few are familiar with its origins or with the startling fact that the first time the Zionist flag flew over a public building on an official occasion was at the 1904 World's Fair right here in St. Louis!

When the World's Fair (officially named the Louisiana Purchase Exposition) was being organized, Michael Stiffelman, a local Zionist leader, won the support of Jules Aubere, a non-Jewish newspaperman, to persuade the Fair's board of directors to approve a request to publicly fly the Zionist flag alongside those of other countries atop the Hall of Nations. According to the late Moses Joshua Slonim, a famous local Zionist leader in his book, "The Struggle for Zion's Rebirth," which was extensively quoted by the late Jewish historian, Dr. Walter Ehrlich in his definitive "Zion in the Valley," the flag snapped proudly in the breeze, alongside the Stars and Stripes of the USA, the British Union Jack and the French Tricolor.

A striking photograph of the Zionist flag fluttering above the Hall of Nations appeared in the 1926 anniversary edition of The Modern View, a local Jewish newspaper published in St. Louis from 1900 through 1944.

This really is a stunning photo.

The proto-Israeli flag was introduced and displayed on a balcony outside the Stadt Casino Musiksaal in Basel, Switzerland during the First Zionist Congress in 1897, but the 1904 World's Fair may indeed have been the first time it was officially flown at a non-Zionist event.

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Muslim jihad in Spain - against dogs

From Soeren Kern in Hudson-NY:

Spanish authorities are investigating the recent deaths by poisoning of more than a dozen dogs in Lérida, a city in the northeastern region of Catalonia that has become ground zero in an intensifying debate over the role of Islam in Spain.

All of the dogs were poisoned in September (local media reports here, here, here, here and here) in Lérida's working class neighbourhoods of Cappont and La Bordeta, districts that are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants and where many dogs have been killed in recent years.

Local residents say Muslim immigrants killed the dogs because according to Islamic teaching dogs are "unclean" animals.

Over the past several months, residents taking their dogs for walks have been harassed by Muslim immigrants opposed to seeing the animals in public. Muslims have also launched a number of anti-dog campaigns on Islamic websites and blogs based in Spain.

In response to the "lack of sufficient police to protect the neighbourhood," 50 local residents have established alternating six-person citizen patrols to escort people walking their dogs.

In July, two Islamic groups based in Lérida asked city officials to regulate the presence of dogs in public spaces so they do not "offend Muslims." Muslims are demanding that dogs be banned from all forms of public transportation including all city buses as well as from all areas frequented by Muslim immigrants.

Muslims in Lérida say the presence of dogs violates their religious freedom and their right to live according to Islamic principles.

When will they release the dog beheading videos?

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Yom Kippur War hurting Gazans in 2011

Today, Egypt is celebrating what it considers its victory in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

This is a state holiday, with parades and air force overflights.

Because it is a holiday, Egypt closed the Rafah crossings to and from Gaza, imprisoning 1.5 million people.

Just sayin'.

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Pat Condell - The Great Palestinian Lie (video)

Refreshing to hear someone just speak the truth.:


(h/t Lisbeth)

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Joseph's tomb vandalized with swastikas and anti-semitic graffiti

From YNet:

Unknown assailants have scrawled graffiti, including swastikas, on the walks of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. Soldiers and worshippers arriving at the holy site on Wednesday night, exactly one year after the completion of its renovation, rushed to erase the graffiti.

Shomron Regional Council head Gershon Mesika placed responsibility on the "Palestinian police terrorists."

When the first soldiers and worshippers arrived at the site, they immediately painted the graffiti in white and the prayer began.

Council head Mesika responded to the vandalism at the site, saying that "only barbarians could do such a horrible thing. People capable of desecrating such a holy site in a pathological manner do not deserve to be called humans."

CNN adds

The Israeli Civil Administration filed a complaint with the Palestinian Authority.

Israel HaYom:

The vandalism at Joseph's Tomb included anti-Jewish writing as well as swastikas.

Israel's chief rabbis expressed their outrage at the attack. In a joint statement, Rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger said it was "unacceptable that holy places become the targets of attacks of revenge between religions."

The chief rabbis called on the leadership of all the faiths in the Holy Land and across the world to loudly denounce the attack on Joseph's Tomb, as well as introduce into their flocks great respect for holy places.

The worshippers should have photographed the desecration before whitewashing it; the only photos available now don't show much:

It will be interesting to compare the world reactions to this outrage to those for the arson at a mosque in northern Israel on Sunday.

Israel announced that they had made an arrest in the mosque arson.

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Egypt, Hamas, and maybe Jordan causing lulav problems

A few weeks ago, Egypt confirmed a story I had in August that the country would refuse to export palm fronds - lulavim - that religious Jews use in the upcoming Sukkot holiday.

UPI reports that Egyptians were smuggling lulavim to Israel in defiance of the ban, although it is not clear how exactly this was being accomplished.

According to some sources, after the Egyptian ban, Israel then tried to get the lulavim from Gaza:

Israeli officials will temporarily lift a ban on agricultural exports from the Gaza Strip to allow the entry of palm fronds used to mark a Jewish holiday, a newspaper report said Wednesday.

Maariv, a Hebrew-language Israeli daily, said the defense ministry agreed to alllow 100,000 lulavs to enter Israel from Gaza on a "one-time basis" ahead of Sukkot, which starts next week.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized importing the lulavs from Gaza to avert a "crisis" caused by Egypt's refusal this year to approve the sale of the fronds, Maariv reported.

This gave UNRWA's spokesperson another opportunity to slam Israel:

"What a revealing double standard," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.

"When Israel's theocratic echelons need agricultural produce for a Jewish religious celebration, imports from Gaza are authorized, yet since June 2007 this has apparently been an insurmountable security threat.

"Now the truth is laid bare," Gunness told Ma'an.

Gunness did not mention that Israel restricts exports from Gaza not only for security reasons but also to retain some leverage over Hamas. Security is not only stopping the smuggling of weapons.

Anyway, this move that would have injected much needed cash into Gaza's economy was stopped - by Hamas.

Israeli traders will buy between 70,000 and 100,000 lulavs – palm tree fronds that are one of the Four Species of Sukkot – from Jordan. Another initiative – to buy 50,000 lulavs from Gaza traders who smuggled them into Gaza from Sinai – was vetoed by the Hamas terror group that rules over Gaza.

I wonder if Gunness will issue a statement on how Hamas is subjecting Gazans to collective punishment.

As far as the Jordanian lulavim are concerned, things aren't going so smoothly either. Religious website bhol.co.il reports that 85,000 lulavim are being held up at the Jordanian border for unspecified reasons.

Israel supplies some 650,000 lulavim from local sources.

The Sukkot holiday starts on Wednesday night.

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Journalists, NGOs complain of Hamas restrictions

From Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders is worried by the Hamas interior ministry’s adoption of new rules for foreign journalists that will restrict their access to the Gaza Strip.

Under the new rules, adopted on 25 September, every foreign journalist wanting to visit the Gaza Strip will have to apply in advance to the interior ministry in Gaza, and processing the application could take several days.

Journalists submitting applications will have to include a photocopy of their passport and ID photos, and will have to name a “guarantor” in the Gaza Strip.

The official PA Wafa news agency adds:

A number of foreign employees and local journalists in Gaza complained of restrictions imposed by Hamas on the entry of foreigners into the sector, forcing them to pay 'access control' fees in order to make more money for its treasury.

The sources added that a number of journalists and staff of institutions that support humanitarian projects in the sector remain in Jerusalem, and refuse to come to Gaza because of the restrictions.

One expatriate staff member told Wafa, "We have no problem with the registration of in and out of Gaza; the problem in the payment of funds to Hamas. To give money to Hamas means funding a designated terrorist organization and the legal [complications] may result in suspension of relief projects in Gaza. "

Sources told Wafa that Hamas imposes restrictions on foreigners in order to monitor local journalists who work in the sector in addition to acquiring funds from the so-called 'access control' levy.

Hamas charges about $10 to any foreigners who want to stay in Gaza, and the procedures required to register before entering takes at least five days.

A local journalist who refused to be named said, 'if a foreign journalist wrote material critical of Hamas, the local journalist, who acts as his assistant and translator, is the one who bears the responsibility and this constitutes a threat to it. "

The journalist added that there are numerous restrictions faced by journalists in Gaza and they can not shoot or write anything about what is really happening in Gaza behind the scenes.

That last part I hadn't heard of before. Since most foreign journalists cannot get around Gaza without locals, Hamas leans on the locals and threatens or punishes them if their guest writes anything that Hamas doesn't like.

Even the bravest reporters would hesitate before writing something that would put their friends and colleagues in danger. Not that there are any brave reporters in Gaza who are willing to report negatively on Hamas to begin with.

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