....but Oxfam blames Israel for Hamas power cuts!

Oxfam, a major human rights NGO, is pushing a false narrative of Israeli responsibility for Gaza's power plant problems. This press release, published at Palestine News Network, proves once again that many NGOs are hopelessly biased against Israel and are equally afraid to criticize Hamas.

The Gaza Strip is inching towards a total collapse of essential services as fuel supplies from the tunnels beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt have reportedly ground to a halt.

With the blockaded enclave's only power plant shut down for long hours daily, the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza are being affected across the board, with impending life threatening consequences in health services.

Since Israel put Gaza under total blockade in 2007, only limited amounts of fuel for Gaza's power plants were allowed to enter the enclave, prompting the government in Gaza to procure fuel from Egypt through the Rafah tunnels.

...Oxfam partners Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan have both stressed the responsibility and obligations of Israel as the occupying power, to provide for the wellbeing of the civilian population under occupation, with international humanitarian law requiring it to allow the passage of fuel for the Gaza power plant. Israeli restrictions on fuel supplies via the overland crossings, imposed in 2007, caused massive shortages, leading the authority in Gaza to seek alternate solutions in fuel supplied through the tunnels.

Then why did they stop taking the fuel from Israel?

There was one week on November, 2010 when Israel transferred over 1.7 million liters to the Gaza power plant. Normally it transferred about a million liters a week. Then Hamas started refusing to get reliable amounts of fuel from Israel and chose instead to get smuggled fuel from Gaza. And now Oxfam is blaming Israel for Hamas' refusal to take in millions of liters of fuel that Israel is more than willing to provide!

Not only that, even though the press release was published today, Oxfam still refuses to complain about Hamas' refusal to accept fuel from Egypt going through Kerem Shalom!

Oxfam has the story exactly wrong. Israel is willing to provide fuel and Hamas is refusing to accept it. Yet the word "Hamas" is not to be found in the entire press release.

Oxfam's press release here is proof positive that this so-called "human rights organization" has less interest in the well-being of Gazans than in slamming Israel for a problem that Hamas is wholly responsible for.

This is more than just bias. This is evidence that Oxfam is actively working to promote Hamas' false narrative of the problem. And when NGOs support the terrorists against the free world, we have a problem.

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Gaza tweeters blame Hamas for blackout

Interesting tweets from Gaza Youth Break Out:

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

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I can't shut up any more. Call me a zionist, call me spy but the truth must be revealed. #Hammas is responsible for the #GazaBlackOut

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

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#Gaza power plant has fuel and it's not running because of orders issued by Int. minister Fathi Hammad & Head of political bureau meshaal

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

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Fathi Hammad bought 50,000 electricity generators from #Egypt & smuggled it through the tunnels and wanted 2 sell it in #Gaza.#GazaBlackout

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

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Hanneya was having ameetings in iran & he needed a story to get some money from his allies & his story was cutting the electricity on#Gaza

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

Usually when #Gaza is dark. Hammas leaders blame Israel for it but now they're blaming #Egypt . Since when Egypt provides Gaza with fuel?

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBOHow come All Hammas leaders houses are lit up and all the other houses in #Gaza has no electricity?

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBOHow come Al Nasser street is lit up in the middle of the day while most of the houses r dark?facebook.com/photo.php?fbid…

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

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The legislative council in gaza is having asession in the dark during the day. HAVE MERCY ON US & STOP IT facebook.com/pages/Gaza-You…

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

Everyone in #Gaza knows that Hammas is behind the #Blackout but they prefere 2 shut up because you simply can't say a word against hammas.

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

 

When Abu Shamale director of Al-dameer HR organization said electricity company has fuel, Hammas told him shut up or you'll be fucked.

Gaza Youth Break Out @GazaYBO

#Hammas should stop using people's misery and should stop accusing #Egypt of shits Hammas is responsible of. #FuckHammas

I can't verify the truth of all the accusations, but it shows that at least some people in Gaza aren't as credulous in accepting Hamas' lies as most major Western media is. The photo of the legislative council seems to be recent, though - we saw similar daytime shots years ago.

(h/t Israel Awareness)

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Pro-Qaddafi Libyan TV anchorwoman dead (update: no)

Remember Halah al-Misrati, the Libyan newscaster who bizarrely defended the regime on TV by brandishing a pistol during her show?



She is now reportedly dead:

Libyan State TV anchorwoman, Halah al-Misrati, was found dead in her jail cell in the Libyan capital on Friday, according to Al Arabiya’s correspondent in Tripoli.

The National Transitional Council has not yet commented on the news.

However, media sources loyal to former leader Muammar Qaddafi have confirmed her death in her cell.

Misrati is remembered as a staunch loyalist to Qaddafi and for her verbal assault on anti-Qaddafi fighters during the uprising last year.

She will also be remembered for her strange antics on TV, including brandishing a handgun in the air as she warned rebels of trying to oust Qaddafi.

Misrati is also most famous for the “fatwa” she issued on air concerning the United Nations Security Council condemnation of Qaddafi’s violent suppression of the protests.

UPDATE: Al Quds al Arabi quotes her as denying she's dead.

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Palestinian Arabs stone Christian tourists on Temple Mount

First, the lie that is being published by countless Arab media:

Dozens of Palestinian residents foiled, on Sunday morning, an attempt by dozens of fundamentalist Israeli Zionist settlers to break into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem.

Local sources reported that the settlers gathered near the Al-Magharba Bridge, that leads to the Al-Magharba Gate, west of the Al-Aqsa mosque, while dozens of Israeli policemen were deployed in the area.

The police allowed the settlers through and prevented all Palestinians, aged 45 of under, from entering the area while on their way to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque, an issue that led to clashes between the Palestinians, and the Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Now, what really happened:

Police arrested three Palestinians during clashes with stone-throwers who targeted tourists at the Temple Mount on Sunday.

Three officers were wounded during the clashes, Police Spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said, describing the incident as a "disturbance on the Temple Mount."

Stone-throwers attacked a group of Christian tourists that were visiting the site. At least 40 officers entered the Temple Mount to deal with the situation, where Rosenfeld said some 50 Palestinians were participating in the rock throwing.

Police arrested three suspects on the scene who were involved directly in the attacks.

Despite Palestinian claims of religious Jews trying to storm the Temple Mount, police said that no Jews were around the site.

The incident came after unfounded Palestinians reports that a group of "religious [Jewish] Israelis" tried to "storm" the Temple Mount - where the Aksa mosque and Dome of the Rock are located - on Sunday morning, according to Jordanian semi-official newspaper Ad-Dustour.

Palestinian sources claimed over the weekend that a group of Jews would attempt to storm the Temple Mount in order to "strengthen Israeli sovereignty over the site," according to the Jordanian newspaper.

The official PA news agency, of course, is pushing the lie, making it indistiguishable from Hezbollah's media in embracing incitement and falsehoods rather than the truth.

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Some context about Khader Adnan

Khader Adnan, a Palestinian Arab who has been on a hunger strike since December, has become a cause célèbre among trendy leftists and the human rights community for being held in administrative detention without formal charges.

Here is typical coverage from Al Jazeera, from Friday:

Sixty-one days. That is how long it’s been since Khader Adnan has eaten.

The 33-year-old Palestinian was taken from his home in Arrabeh village near Jenin in the occupied West Bank at 3:30am on December 17. One day later he began his hunger strike to protest against the "humiliation and policy of administrative detention". Adnan, like hundreds of other Palestinians, was arrested under a military order that Israel has named "administrative detention", which allows prisoners to be held without charge or trial for periods of up to six months, spells that can be renewed indefinitely.

Sahar Francis is a lawyer with Addameer, a prisoner rights groups based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and a member of Khader Adnan’s legal team. She visited the hunger striker in Ziv hospital in Safad, Israel, on Friday.

She described her client, who remains shackled to his hospital bed, as "mentally perfect, but physically very weak".

Adnan is being called "heroic." Thousands rallied for him in Gaza and the West Bank. Twitter users elevated him to sainthood status.

There are two major points about the situation that have been woefully under-reported, though.

One is that Adnan is a leader of Islamic Jihad, the most hard-line terrorist group in the territories. He has been a leader of the group for years, calling for Islamic Jihad to continue to have weapons even under PA rule. He was arrested by the PA as well, and even embarked on a hunger strike against the Abbas regime while in PA jail only a year previous to the current hunger strike.

The other is that administrative detention is perfectly legal and necessary.

An Israeli military judge rejected an appeal by Adnan last week, saying he had reviewed the evidence and found the sentence to be fair.

Israeli military officials generally use administrative detention to hold Palestinians who are believed to be an imminent risk to the country’s security. They say that if the evidence against the accused was made public, it would expose Israeli intelligence-gathering networks in the Palestinian territories. They say the process is under full judicial review by Israel’s military and the Supreme Court.

These policies were created not by Israel but by the British during the mandate. In fact, they were originally much more sweeping.

Administrative detention is a critical tool in the fight against terrorism. It does need to be monitored closely to ensure that it is not abused, and it needs to be used sparingly, but it cannot be abolished without putting countless people in danger.

Israel is hardly the only Western democracy to apply administrative detention rules on suspected terrorists. The US has much looser standards on who can be detailed - witness Guantanamo Bay. Great Britain, Ireland and Australia each have rules allowing people to be detained without charge under varying circumstances. Most European countries have administrative detention rules for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, even if they have no ties to terrorism.

The European Convention on Human Rights states:

the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so;

In other words, the concept of arresting someone under suspicion of planning a terror attack is well supported in Western laws and even humanitarian law. And for good reason - it is cometime necessary to stop acts of horror.

Certainly it is reasonable to demand evidence; it is equally reasonable for evidence to be suppressed if there is reason to know that the revelations may compromise security further, as long as there is a decent judicial system in place to guard against abuse.

We do not know the specifics of Khader's case.

But we do know that Israeli legal systems have been reviewing the case every step of the way. We know that Khader is a leader of a terrorist organization. We know that the PA considered him a threat as recently as September 2010.  And we know that only about 10% of Israeli prisoners are being held under administrative detention rules; hardly evidence that they are being routinely abused.

And we know one other thing: None of those "human rights" activists who have jumped on the Adnan bandwagon are telling the entire story about him or about administrative detention.

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Libya weapons spreading throughout the region

From Reuters/Al Arabiya:

Algerian security forces have found a large cache of weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles, which they believe were smuggled in from neighboring Libya, a security source briefed on the discovery told Reuters on Saturday.

The find follows warnings from governments in the region that instability in Libya after the end of Muammar Qaddafi’s rule is allowing weapons taken from Qaddafi’s arsenal to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda’s north African branch and other insurgent groups across the Sahara desert.

The weapons cache was discovered in the desert about 60 km (40 miles) south of In Amenas, an energy-producing Algerian region near the border with Libya, said the source, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The source said the cache was located following a tip-off from a smuggler who had been arrested. He said it contained a “large quantity” of arms including the shoulder-launched missiles - a weapon which, in some variations, could be used to bring down an aircraft.

“This weapons seizure shows that the chaos in Libya is dangerous for the whole region,” the source said.

There was no official confirmation of the discovery from the Algerian government and there was no way of independently verifying the source’s account.

Western security experts tracking arms which have disappeared from Qaddafi’s looted arms depots say the shoulder-fired missiles - also known as man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS - are one of their biggest concerns because they could be used with relative ease by insurgent groups.

Qaddafi’s forces had about 20,000 of the missiles, according to a U.S. government task force which is trying to locate the missiles. The task force says most of the missiles are still inside Libya, in the hands of militias loosely allied to the interim leadership that took over after Qaddafi’s rule was overthrown last year.

Security officials in North Africa say the worst-case scenario is that al-Qaeda’s north African wing, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), could use one of the missiles to bring down a commercial airliner coming in to land or taking off at an airport somewhere in North Africa.

There have been fears - and some evidence - that Libyan weapons have made it to Gaza for months now.

How secure are army weapons in other countries that are achieving "spring"?

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