Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Midweek Links by Ian

Islam is ‘a religion of war,’ says son of Hamas founder on a visit to his ‘beloved Israel’
Mosab Hassan Yousef rejected his Islamist upbringing to help Israel fight terror. If he had the chance, he says, he’d tell his father: ‘Leave Hamas. You have created a monster’

"Mosab Hassan Yousef has a knack for controversy. The son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, he has already broken every taboo in the Palestinian book. He has worked for Israeli intelligence and converted to Christianity. Now he is developing a new film which is sure to be no less sensational: a biography of the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam."

British MP George Galloway: The Syrian Revolutionaries Are "Servants of the Crusader Powers"

Why Is the Peace Process Dead?

The peace process is dead because a majority in the Arab and Muslim world still has not come to terms with Israel's right to exist.

Jew Hunting Season Open in France by Guy Millière

These organizations remain blindly silent : for them, Muslims are "victims of racism" and therefore cannot be racist.

Man claiming al-Qaida link takes hostages in France

TOULOUSE, France - A man claiming to be a member of al-Qaida has taken four hostages in a bank in the southwestern French city of Toulouse, including the bank manager, police officials said on Wednesday.

Index Ventures Raises $442 Million Sixth Early Stage Fund

The firm, founded in 1998 with headquarters in London, focuses strictly on technology companies and will invest two-thirds of the fund in Europe and Israel and the rest in the U.S.

Israel's neighbors are the biggest human traffickers

This map comes from a new report from the US State Department on human trafficking.

The Middle East is even worse than Africa in this regard.

The categories:

Tier 1: Countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards.
Tier 2: Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
Tier 3: Countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

There seems to be only one Tier 1 country in the entire region.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

For World Refugee Day: Abolish UNRWA

1.

From the PA's official WAFA news agency:

RAMALLAH, June 20, 2012 (WAFA) – Number of refugees registered in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) totaled 5.1 million in 2012, according to a statistical review on the current status of the Palestinian refugees published Wednesday and prepared by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on the eve of the International Day of Refugees.

UNRWA's statistics this year say that there are 5,115,755 registered "persons," but only 4,797,723 "refugees." As a footnote states:

Recent digitisation of UNRWA’s registration records enables us to present more detailed beneficiary statistics. Other registered persons include those eligible to receive services.

Which means that UNRWA is providing services to 318,032 people that even UNRWA does not consider refugees!

2.

Out of those 4.8 million UNRWA "refugees," 1,979,580 live in Jordan, 727,471 live in the West Bank and 1,167,572 live in Gaza.

Nearly all of the Jordanians - lets say 1.8 million - are Jordanian citizens, and cannot be considered refugees.

All of those living in Gaza and the West Bank live in what they consider Palestine, so they cannot be considered refugees by any definition.

Which means that we can cut out 3.6 million from the rolls, today, leaving 1.1 million left.

3.

The remaining "refugees," live in Lebanon and Syria. 436,154 are registered in Lebanon and 486,946 registered in Syria.

But UNRWA itself admits that the number of "registered" refugees in Lebanon does not reflect reality. Even though it gets funding for 436,000 refugees in Lebanon, there are only about 240,000 Palestinian Arabs who are actually receiving UNRWA aid there. The other 200,000 or so are gone - many became citizens, many moved out of Lebanon to Europe.

Ever since the early days of UNRWA, the Palestinian Arabs have lied to the agency to inflate their numbers. They didn't register deaths and they added people who were not refugees to the rolls.

In Jordan, most of the stateless Palestinian Arabs are from Gaza who left in 1967. They weren't expelled, they weren't threatened, they weren't forced out: they left for the simple reason that they didn't want to live under Israeli rule. (Most of those who left the West Bank for Jordan felt the same, most of those left after the war, not during. Of course, they were already Jordanian citizens.) Which means that they aren't refugees either, by the official definition of the term - "A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality..."

While I don't know if the Syrian statistics are as skewed as the Lebanese, we can assume a large error in these statistics altogether; perhaps only 700,000 people who are truly deserving of UNRWA aid in Syria and Lebanon.

4.

Of course, descendants of refugees are not considered refugees forever by any definition besides UNRWA's. The UNHCR has specific cessation clauses that define how a refugee loses that status; UNRWA has none. In reality, the only people who can remotely be considered refugees are those who were born in Palestine before 1949, who live outside the territories and who do not have citizenship.

In the West Bank, 3.7% of the Arabs are over 65 years old. If that number is roughly accurate all over the Middle East, that means that there are, at most, 30,000 Palestinian Arab refugees today. (This is not counting the refugees who are of Palestinian descent who were expelled from Iraq, Kuwait and elsewhere; UNHCR counts about 94,000 of those.)

The number that UNRWA uses is inflated by over 160 times the reality. And they do it for only one reason: to keep their bloated bureaucracy alive.

5.

It is worth reading the UNHCR Global Trends report released for World Refugee Day. While it mentions the UNRWA "refugees" in passing, it seems almost embarrassed to include them in the statistics of real refugees in the world.

UNHCR's report make it clear what a refugee organization is supposed to do: to solve the problem, not to perpetuate it. UNHCR manages to resettle or repatriate hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons every year, an astonishing record.

And from reading the literature from UNHCR and comparing it to that of UNRWA, one can only come to one conclusion:

UNRWA must be abolished.

Israel's desalination miracle

The amazing thing about this article is that it was originally written in Arabic, at Lebanon's As-Safir:

Since the beginning of the Zionist project, Israel's founding fathers drew up a roadmap so that the rising entity would not only survive, but flourish. Water played a central role in how this entity was shaped, whether it involved underground or surface water — such as the Tiberias or Al-Hawlah Lakes — or salt water, like that found in the Mediterranean Sea or the Gulf of Aqaba.

Over time, the conflict between Israel and the Arab countries over both freshwater and salt water intensified, whether it was over the Jordan River tributary or the Straits of Tiran. For decades, many predicted that the war over water resources would become the most virulent in the region.

However, after combining technology with money and political, regional and international changes, the water resources issue has been revisited from another angle. It is possible that the talk about gas discovery in the Mediterranean Sea and the possible outbreak of conflict over gas — whether between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or even Egypt — has overshadowed the issue of water. Talking about fresh water as a probable cause of conflict has ceased.

Clearly, part of the reason why the focus on fresh water has shifted, at least from the Israeli side, is due to Israel’s successful investment in water desalination projects.

Some people in Israel talk about this issue as if it were a miracle. The state, which would have gone to war for water resources, realized that desalinating water is not only less expensive than war, but it can also become a profitable investment.

[Israel], a state once desperate for fresh water, has now become a country wishing to export it — or at least the technology that can produce it.

Media reports have emphasized Israel’s satisfaction with the water issue after seven austere years during which it faced scarcity, especially in surface water and groundwater. For years, water experts had been adjusting the “red line” for water in Israel. However, their satisfaction stems mainly from the water desalination projects that were established on the Mediterranean shore, described by some as one of the “largest in the world.”

Currently, there are five desalination facilities in Israel that are either complete or nearly complete, the largest of which is in Hadera city. In addition to these, there are two facilities in Ashkelon, Palmachim, Soreq, and Ashdod. By 2013, these facilities are expected to desalinate approximately 600 million cubic meters of water annually. This is nearly four times the amount pumped from Tiberias Lake each year.

At this point, half of the running water in Israeli homes comes from water desalination plants. Israelis stopped relying on rain water years ago; now they resort to sea water to meet their needs. The IDE Company (a subsidiary of Delek Group) and Kail Company played an important role in transforming Israel into a major player in the desalination field. The two companies have established desalination plants not only in Israel, but also in many countries around the world.

Ironically, Israeli experts said that the idea of water desalination is very old, and that the Phoenicians were the first to come up with it. “The first scientific article written about water desalination in history was published by Arab chemists in the eighth century,” they added. An Israeli expert said that, despite the great difference between today’s facilities and those set up in the past, the underlying principle “has existed for hundreds of years, at least.”

J-Street endorsed congressman sponsored anti-Israel resolution

Yesterday, I reported on a one-sided anti-Israel resolution that was considered (and tabled for further consideration) by the North Carolina Democratic Party st their state convention this past weekend.

The resolution, which blames only Israel for all problems of the area and calls to recognize Hamas as a peace partner, was sponsored by the 4th Congressional District of North Carolina, which includes Chapel Hill.

(See Page 12, name of resolution:
26. BRINGING A JUST PEACE TO THE MIDDLE
EAST: ISRAEL AND PALESTINE (4TH CD) )

The member of Congress representing that district is David Price, an eleven term congressman.

J-Street, the purportedly pro-Israel organization, enthusiastically endorses Price:

Apparently, J-Street agrees that US military aid to Israel must be eliminated, that Hamas must be recognized, and that the PLO bears no responsibility for anything.

Can J-Street explain to us exactly what makes this one-sided joke of a resolution "pro-Israel" and why they are soliciting money to donate to this nutcase? I'd really love to know.

(h/t Hard Little Machine and Bella Center)

Reuters vs. the truth about the Temple Mount

From Reuters:

Jews call the raised ground at the eastern edge of Jerusalem's Old City the Temple Mount, while Muslims know it as the Noble Sanctuary.

Jews "call" it the Temple Mount, but Muslims "know" what it really is.

A senior Muslim official involved in the plan said one to two million foreign pilgrims could visit Al-Aqsa annually if access were free and unimpeded.

"It would protect Al-Aqsa and also provide an enormous boost to the Palestinian economy," he said. He asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Jerusalem was traditionally a stop for Muslims on overland routes to or from the annual Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

What they found was a tranquil esplanade with two jewels of Islamic architecture, an elegant mosque highlighted by arabesque stained glass windows and the octagonal Dome of the Rock clad in ornate tiles and topped by a gilded cupola.

Millions could visit, just like the good old days before the Jews came along, right?

I've already shown how damaged and forsaken the Dome of the Rock was in the late 1800s and early 1900s in two web posts and a video.

But I found a color image of the Temple Mount taken in the 1950s, when millions of Muslims were free to visit as much as they wanted on the way to Mecca, or otherwise.

It doesn't look at all the way that Reuters makes it sound: (Click to enlarge.)

The dome wasn't golden - it was gilded in 1960 (and again in 1994.)

The plaza wasn't filled with pilgrims, but with weeds. And the Dome was in disrepair.

You can see it was even in worse shape in these two videos I spliced together, made in 1954 and a small part in the late 1940s or 1950:

Does it look like Muslims were flocking to the "Noble Sanctuary"?

Reuters keeps going:

This is also where Judaism's two Bible-era Temples once stood, the first destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the second leveled by the Romans in 70 AD. The Western Wall, the last remnant of the second structure, is one of the most sacred sites in Judaism.

Oh, as an afterthought, a couple of Jewish temples also happened to be on top of that hill.

And what might the most sacred site in Judaism be, hmmm? Considering that this is an article about the Temple Mount, it seems as if Reuters is deliberately avoiding the tiny little fact that it it Judaism's most holy spot.

(Also, the Kotel is not the only remaining remnant from the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, as much of the entire western wall - far beyond the Kotel - and much of the southern wall are still there. There may be other remnants of the Temple under the Mount if the Waqf hasn't yet destroyed them. )

Links!

From Ian:

Elie Wiesel rejects Hungarian award over Nazi memorial
Nobel laureate outraged by Budapest’s May 27 ceremony for Jozsef Nyiro, a WWII parliamentarian

"Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel says he’s repudiating a Hungarian award he received in 2004 because top officials from Budapest recently attended a ceremony for a Nazi sympathizer."

BDS Fails
Israel to host 2013 under-21 soccer championships

Facebook Acquires Facial Recognition Technology Company Face.com For Nearly $60 Million

“Founded in 2007, the Israel-based start-up offers both desktop and mobile products which scan a user’s photos to identify faces, essentially making tagging photos with people’s names much simpler. And Facebook has no dearth of photos to scan — at last count, users on average upload approximately 300 million new photos to Facebook’s site every day.”

Chalk this up as a win too, an overrated book.
Only Israelis speak Hebrew right? Alice Walker says no to Hebrew ‘Purple’

Well worth a read, from 2011: Howard Jacobson: Why Alice Walker shouldn't sail to Gaza
“Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.”

Also, Fresno Zionism's highly amusing story of Palestinian Arab rapture.

I reported on Sunday that there was a protest at the US embassy in Amman over the weekend against reclassifying Palestinian Arab refugee status to be in line with the UN's definition for all other people.

I had the feeling that it was staged and that the protesters were far from representative of the vast majority of Jordanian Palestinians, most of whom prefer to stay in Jordan. As I had noted in an Independent article from 2009:

He seems perplexed when asked which is his country – Jordan or Palestine. "We have no security here, but we are Jordanians," replies Mustapha, who lounges on a mattress in a two-storey cement house down the road while one of his five daughters offers tiny glasses of steaming herbal tea and cardamom-scented coffee. "Everything I have is here. This house. My car. My job. What would I have in Nablus or Be'ersheba?" he declares. "My children know nothing but Jordan. And we will stay here."

That determination, echoed repeatedly through the dilapidated cement homes that line Baqa'a's gravelly streets and dust-filled shops, is precisely what terrifies Jordan's East Bank establishment.

Mudar Zahran, a Jordanian Palestinian and well-known writer, added a comment to give context to this demonstration:

Less than 35 people attended this protest. This is a fake Jordanian-intelligence backed protest, this was called for by the Jordanian intelligence service, and the majority of Palestinians refused to attend as I have advised them openly not to so. This protest of 35 people was organzied by the my own cousin, Omar Abu Latifa, a known-intelligence agent operating at Hitten refugee camp, who has been instructed by his officers to confront my effort, nonetheless, the turn out number...less than 35, from two million refugee camps residents. Please spread my response.

Report: Current malware against Iran much more sophisticated than Flame

From the Washington Post:

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected critical intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage attacks aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware was designed to secretly map Iran’s computer networks and monitor the computers of Iranian officials, sending back a steady stream of intelligence used to enable an ongoing cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the so-called Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues about what is believed to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

The article goes on to say that Israeli blunders led to the discovery of Flame, without any corroborating details.

It seems quite likely that (as Latma implied last week) a lot of these cyberwar leaks are meant to improve the image of the White House in an election year.

(h/t Lenny)

Gaza rocket misfires, kills 2-year old girl. Lying Arabic media blame Israel. (update)

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian toddler was killed Tuesday evening in an explosion south of Gaza City, medics said.

Emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya said in a statement that Hadil al-Haddad, 2, was killed and her brother was injured in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

A Hamas medical official told Reuters the cause of the child's death was not clear. Witnesses said she was killed when militants launched a rocket close by.

An Israeli military spokesman told Ma'an the army had not attacked that area. He said the army's initial investigation suggested al-Haddad's death was caused by a failed rocket launch by Palestinian militants.

The terrorists are lying, as usual, saying that it was an Israeli bomb that killed the girl.

Zionist war planes bombed a house just west of Al Farouk Mosque near al-Zaytoun neighborhood, which led to the death of Achhad Hadeel Ahmed Al-Haddad, 2, and wounding her brother, 3, was slightly wounded.

And according to the source, warplanes targeted rocket a house belonging to Said Haddad, which is located in a densely populated area.

But notice that this means that the terrorists are shooting rockets from a densely populated area - using thousands of people as human shields, and endangering them as well.

Hamas media quote emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya as saying that the girl was killed by an airstrike as well. This is notable because he has publicly lied before, and yet continues to be quoted by the mainstream media as if he has credibility.

Fatah media also blames Israel, saying it was a "shelling" and no an airstrike. WAFA, the official PA news agency, blames Israel as well, quoting an "eyewitness" saying that she was killed form a missile from a warplane.

Kudos to Ma'an English for actually doing real reporting.

UPDATE: The BBC tweets that Hamas knows they are lying. (h/t CHA)

UPDATE 2: Ma'an Arabic reports it incorrectly.

1967: "Jews would become fish food"

In an article in Al Wasat (Bahrain), an Egyptian talks about how he feels thatthe events happening in Egypt today are like a second "naksa" [setback] - comparable to Egypt's defeat by Israel in 1967.

His language about how he remembers 1967 is interesting:

Second major setback!

I lived through the first setback as an Egyptian teenager. At the time, in the hearts of all Arabs living in Egypt, we waited for the promised victory over the Zionist enemy. This victory did not come...

In the first naqsa, Arabs lost the battle in a humiliating manner, and lost large parts of their home countries, and the many setbacks were enormous in their thoughts, as the images in Egyptian media showed them that victory was just around the corner, and that the Jews will become food for fish! The devastating defeat was harsh for all of their dreams.

North Carolina Democrats propose anti-Israel resolution

From The Daily Caller:

The North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) is seriously considering passing a resolution that would criticize Israel for its “illegal occupation” of Palestine, the latest in a long line of controversial moves coming out of one of the major battleground states President Barack Obama’s team is banking on to win re-election.

The resolution didn’t pass at this weekend’s NCDP state convention, but was tabled and referred to the executive committee for further consideration later. It attacks the United States for providing Israel with “$3 billion annually in military aid,” while the “Israeli occupation, disenfranchisement and impoverishment of significant numbers of the Palestinian population, and Israel’s overwhelming military might and its role as the only nuclear power threaten stability in a region witnessing increased demands for democracy and an end to autocratic rule.”

In the resolution, which is titled “Bringing a Just Peace to the Middle East: Israel and Palestine,” the authors accuse Israel of using “this aid to continue its illegal occupation, demolition of Palestinian homes, expansion of existing illegal settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land, and a continued blockade of essential goods from Gaza, a blockade causing a U.N.-documented humanitarian crisis.”

The resolution also says that the United States’ aid causes “violence and insecurity to Israelis, Palestinians, and helps subvert any prospect for peace.” It also accuses Israel of “human rights violations” and “illegal occupation” that “violate international and U.S. law.”

If it ends up being passed, the resolution would mean the NCDP “would hold its elected congress members and senators accountable for helping end our government’s role in continuing the Israeli Palestinian tragedy by making the human rights of both peoples central to U.S. foreign policy by ending Israel’s illegal occupation, by advocating for a viable Palestinian state, and membership of that state in the United Nations.”

It would also, if passed, mean the NCDP would advocate its congressional delegation bring “all parties, including Hamas, to the table to negotiate an end to the Israeli Occupation and a secure peace based on the 1967 borders,” among other things.

This resolution was the only one that didn’t pass at Saturday’s NCDP convention – but the party is still considering it, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

Here's the full text of he draft resolution:

WHEREAS, U.S. provides Israel $3 billion annually in military aid;
WHEREAS, the Israeli occupation, disenfranchisement and impoverishment of significant numbers of the Palestinian population, and Israel’s overwhelming military might and its role as the only nuclear power threaten stability in a region witnessing increased demands for democracy and an end to autocratic rule;
WHEREAS, Israel uses this aid to continue its illegal occupation, demolition of Palestinian homes, expansion of existing illegal settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land, and a continued blockade of essential goods from Gaza, a blockade causing a UN documented humanitarian crisis;
WHEREAS, U.S. military aid has caused increased violence and insecurity to Israelis, Palestinians, and helps subvert any prospect for peace;
WHEREAS, Israel's human rights violations and its illegal occupation and settlements violate International and U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act of 1976; and
WHEREAS, the escalating tension between Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world in the Middle East threatens the peace and stability of the region and the world;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the North Carolina Democratic Party hold its elected congress members and senators accountable for helping end our government's role in continuing the Israeli Palestinian tragedy by making the human rights of both peoples central to U.S. foreign policy by ending Israel's illegal occupation, by advocating for a viable Palestinian state, and membership of that state in the United Nations;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the North Carolina Democratic Party urge its Congressional delegation to support the following principles that will insure a just and secure peace for both peoples, including:
Bringing all parties, including Hamas, to the table to negotiate an end to the Israeli Occupation and a secure peace based on the 1967 borders;
An immediate end to settlement expansion and removal of existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem;An end to Palestinian house demolitions;
A halt to further construction of the wall;
An end to the Gaza blockade;
The establishment of a nuclear free zone in the Middle East;
Redirecting U.S. Military aid to Israel to promote social and economic development for peace in both Israel and Palestine;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the North Carolina Democratic Party press our NC Congressional delegation to demand the State Department implement Federal legislation that prohibits use of U.S. military aid to support human rights violations, breaches of international law and UN Security Council Resolutions.

Notice that the entire draft resolution demands nothing from the Arab side.

(h/t Evan Pokroy)

Israel's peace plan of 1967 (Yaacov Lozowick)

Yaacov Lozowick - writer, historian, former regular blogger and now the head of Israel's state archives - has a fascinating article about the political discussions in Knesset in the days after Israel's victory in the Six Day War with newly declassified information.

Read the whole thing including the links, but here are large excerpts:

At the end of the Six Day War Israel controlled wide tracts of territory, and someone had to decide what to do with them. Israel's Cabinet first discussed the question at length on June 18-19th, a week after the war. The minsters decided the Sinai and Golan would be returned to Egypt and Syria for peace. Jerusalem would not be re-divided. The deliberations about the West Bank were not concluded.

The immediate context: There were intense post-war diplomatic maneuvers going on at the United Nations. Abba Eban, Israel's Foreign Minister, needed orders. The deliberations in Jerusalem were not intended as a fundamental policy statement, but rather as a hurried set of directives to Eban. Many of the ministers feared that showing cards or appearing conciliatory would harm Israel's ability to negotiate. Although their deliberations were classified as Top Secret, any number of times they stopped short and refused to say how far they might be willing to go, for fear their positions might leak. (They seem mostly not to have, which is what makes the document so interesting).

The broader context: The ministers had spent the previous five weeks under intense pressure, frantic preparations for war, even more frantic attempts to stave it off by diplomatic means, and – crucial for understanding the present document – the collapse of the internationally sanctioned framework for Israeli-Egyptian co-existence put in place in 1956 when Israel had been forced hurriedly out of the Sinai. Then there had been the week of war itself. Rather than suffering destruction Israel had won an astonishing victory. Yet the ministers seem to have expected the great powers to re-apply the pressure of 1956. The BBC, as they repeatedly mentioned, had already begun to report about harsh Israeli measures in Jerusalem's Old City, and they expected growing international impatience. Most of them thought Israel's forces would be back behind the previous lines within two months.

Ideologically they were a diverse bunch: this was a National Unity government, with representatives from four socialist parties, two liberal ones, one orthodox party and a nationalist one. They were all Zionists. They were all men. (Golda Meir, their next leader, was not in the government). None were young: Moshe Dayan, at 52, and Yigal Allon at 49 were the only ones not born before WW1. Some had been adults before that war, and all were adults before WW2. All had lived their lives in a world where wars changed borders and moved populations. None had ever met an NGO – the very concept lay decades in the future – and they had no trust in the United Nations even as they recognized it as an important international forum.

Yet while their perspective was different than ours, the positions they staked were mostly cool-headed – the parts they agreed on, and the parts they didn't. They all hoped there would be no more wars. They intended the new conditions to be leveraged into a stable and just coexistence with the Arab world. They assumed the fate of the Arab refugees from 1948 was the irritant that was motivating the conflict and that it could now be resolved.

They implicitly accepted that land could not permanently be taken from sovereign nations by act of war. So they all accepted that the Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan would eventually be returned to their owners. Syrian-born Eliyahu Sasson, one of only two non-Ashkenazi ministers and the only one who explicitly grounded his position in a life-long acquaintance with Arab culture, insisted that since no Arab government would make peace with Israel, the Golan and Sinai should be returned for something less than full diplomatic peace. Stringent demilitarization and freedom of Israeli shipping should be enough. Most of his colleagues didn't want to be so pessimistic, but interestingly, Menachem Begin agreed. When in 1978 he agreed to evacuate Israeli forces from the entire Sinai, pundits the world over hailed his flexibility and willingness to change course. Well: read the transcript and you'll see that Begin actually got more in 1978 than he had expected in 1967. In 1967 he was willing to evacuate the Sinai for less than full diplomatic recognition and peace.

In the event, the resolution at the end of the meeting was that both areas would be held until peace was agreed. The West Bank and Gaza were another matter, however.

Sometime in the 1980s the general perception of the conflict changed. No longer seen as Arab rejection of a Jewish State, the conflict was understood as a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which the Arab world would maintain only until the two central protagonists reached an accommodation. Since the Israelis and Palestinians have not yet reached accommodation this proposition has never been tested, a fact which contributes to its explanatory power. 1967, however, was before the 1980s, and participants and observers the world over saw the conflict as an Arab-Jewish conflict, with the local Arabs playing a subordinate role; they were not generally referred to as Palestinians.

I know this is hard to believe, but it's true.

This dissonance of historical perspectives is essential to understanding the discussion about the future of the territories. Israel's entire Cabinet in 1967 agreed that Egypt and Jordan had no more claim to Gaza and the West Bank than Israel did, as all three had conquered them through war; since Israel was now in possession it had superior claim. There were serious disagreements, however, as to what that meant.

...Jerusalem: everyone in the room agreed Jerusalem must remain united in Israeli hands, even if this meant Hussein would refuse to reach an agreement which would take the Arab population off Israel's hands in return for some sort of peace. The lines of the city had not yet been drawn, and the official decision would be taken later that month, but those were (important) technicalities. Left to right, atheists to believers, no-one had any doubts. If there was any apprehension regarding Jerusalem, it was that the Christian world would refuse to countenance Jewish control of the city and would relaunch the demand for internationalizing the city.

The victim of terror at the Egyptian border

From Ha'aretz:

The Defense Ministry contractor killed in a terrorist attack along Israel's southern border early Monday has been identified as Saeed Fashafshe, a 35-year-old Israeli Arab resident of Haifa.

Fashafshe, who was married and a father of four, worked for a company owned by his brother which was contracted by Defense Ministry for jobs along the Egyptian border.

An initial investigation revealed that three terrorists penetrated the fence along the border between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, placed an explosive device on Philadelphi Strip near Be'er Milka, and waited for Israeli vehicles to pass by.

Fashafshe's cousin, Amar, said that Fashafshe spoke to his brother, Maher, at about 6 A.M., and told him they were being shot at, when the phone call disconnected.

Amar, who also works for the company, described Fashafshe as "a great guy and father of four small children," adding that "he has already worked for the company for seven years. He lives in a kibbutz in the south and comes home to Haifa on the weekends."

Amar also said that, while the two were always aware of the dangers involved with their work, "we never talked about it."

I'm not seeing any Arabic media getting too upset over the murder of a "1948 Palestinian" by their fellow Arabs.

(h/t Zvi)

Russia, China wargames with Iran and Syria? (updated)

From Iran's Fars News:

The Iranian, Russian, Chinese and Syrian armies are due to stage joint amphibious exercises along the Syrian costs in coming weeks, informed sources revealed on Monday.

According to informed sources, 90,000 forces from the four countries will take part in the land and sea wargames due to be held in Syria.

Ground, air and sea forces as well as air defense and missile units of the four countries will take part in the exercises.

Sources also said that Egypt has acceded to grant passage to 12 Chinese warships to sail through the Suez Canal, adding that the military convoy is due to dock at the Syrian harbors in the next two weeks.

Russian atomic submarines and warships, aircraft carriers and mine-clearing destroyers as well as Iranian battleships and submarines will also arrive in Syria at around the same date.

Syria plans to test its coast-to-sea and air defense missiles in the wargames.

A sum of 400 warplanes and 1,000 tanks will also be used in the exercises.

A Syrian official, who asked to remain anonymous, had informed two weeks ago that the drills would be conducted in Syria soon.

Unofficial sources also said the four countries are now busy with taking swift preparatory measures for these biggest-ever wargames in the Middle-East.

In a similar vein comes this story from The Telegraph:

Russia confirmed that it was preparing to send an elite unit of marines to its naval base in Syria on Monday, sharply raising the stakes in its confrontation with the West over the future of the Assad regime.

The planned deployment was designed to send a powerful signal that Russia would not tolerate foreign military intervention in Syria, according to a Western defence source.

It was apparently ordered after the Kremlin came to conclusion that Western powers were preparing to circumvent the United Nations Security Council – where Russia holds a veto – by unilaterally authorising Nato military action in Syria. The source said that Russia had "completely misunderstood" Western intentions.

Classified US satellite images last week indicated that loading work had begun on two amphibious landing vessels, the Nikolai Filchenkov and the Caesar Kunikov, at the Crimean naval base of Sebastopol.

After initially remaining silent on the subject, a senior naval commander yesterday confirmed that both ships would shortly be heading to the Russian base at the Syrian port of Tartus, the Interfax news agency reported.

And:

The British marine insurer Standard Club said it had withdrawn cover from all the ships owned by Femco, a Russian cargo line, including the MV Alaed.

"We were made aware of the allegations that the Alaed was carrying munitions destined for Syria," the company said in a statement. "We have already informed the ship owner that their insurance cover ceased automatically in view of the nature of the voyage."

The MV Alaed picked up its cargo of Mi25 helicopters – known as "flying tanks" – from the Russian port of Kaliningrad, where they had been sent to the state-owned manufacturer Mil's "Factory 150" for servicing and repairs.

They were originally sold to the Syrian government by Moscow, its major arms supplier, at the end of the Soviet era.