Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 21, 2013

11/21 Links Pt1: Al-Quds are only sorry they were caught, Bibi: No nukes for Iran’s ‘dark regime’

From Ian:

Tom Gross: Al-Quds seems only to be sorry that they were caught out

As I wrote last week, a better outcome would have been for Brandeis to work with Al-Quds to ensure that this kind of activity never happens again, and for the Al-Quds president unequivocally to condemn this kind of behavior to his students. It seems clear that Brandeis would also have preferred this.
But the fact that in his new statement yesterday, Al-Quds President Nusseibeh (described as a “moderate” by Ha’aretz and the New York Times) not only fails to properly condemn the Fascist-style rally, but says it is all the fault of the “Jews” for having the temerity to ask for Fascist rallies not to be held on the main square on campus, has left Brandeis no choice but to take the difficult decision to suspend relations with Al-Quds.
The Al-Quds president’s statement is very revealing. It is carefully written so as to barely mention the rally itself, suggesting it was a fringe event (when in fact it is the third student rally praising suicide bombers to be held on campus this academic year). Like the other rallies, the Nov. 5 rally was clearly produced with some financial and logistical backing which calls into doubt the notion that it was a fringe event. Rather than being sorry that such a hate-rally took place, the Al-Quds president’s statement makes it sound like he is only really sorry that they were caught.

What Americans Don’t Know About Palestinian Culture

But the point about campus activities at Al Quds is that there is nothing exceptional about large groups of students demonstrating their hate for Israel and their devotion not to Palestinian nationalism but its extreme Islamist adherents such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that call for the death of Jews. Such groups are not just welcome at Palestinian schools but an essential part of the fabric of student life as well as the general culture.
Thus, the shock here is not that Brandeis (if not Bard) has been alerted to the true nature of their partner and even a respected front man like Nusseibeh. Rather, it’s that it never occurred to anyone in authority at Brandeis that this was the inevitable result of any cooperation with Al Quds. If it had or if more American academics got their heads out of the sand and realized the cancer of hate that is still the dominating feature of Palestinian political culture, the assumption that Israel is the villain of the Middle East conflict might be challenged more often.

Roy Amlot in The Times: Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian children with relative impunity

Beyond the specifics, however, the smear that Israeli soldiers murder Palestinian children with impunity is part of a larger lethal narrative advanced by anti-Israel activists and some Guardian “journalists” which we’ve addressed previously. Indeed, no matter how absurd the charges that the IDF targets innocent Palestinian kids, such morally reckless memes evoking the specter of unimaginable Jewish malevolence have become so ingrained in the Islamist and extreme-left imagination that the facts regarding such libels become almost irrelevant.
However, as it is the job of professional journalists to distinguish between proven facts and unsupportable accusations, we eagerly await a clarification by Amlot (or Times editors) which includes details on the supposed ‘impunity’ granted to Israeli soldiers who allegedly have ‘killed Palestinian children’.

Huffington Post Serves as a Mouthpiece for Hamas

In the article, Almodallal voices her support for standard-issue genocidal Hamas threats (that all of Israel should be wiped out, as it sits on Palestinian land), and her belief that Hamas has a bad reputation not because of its terrorism, genocidal threats, or suicide bombings, but because of “unfair Israeli media.” Her new job, she says, is to make the Palestinian issues “more human” to the outside world.
Ironically, earlier this year, another pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel propagandist, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin – who happens to be one of the top hosts of HuffPostLive, its video “news” service – described his job in almost identical terms: as being “to humanize” the Palestinians.
If you define “humanizing” a culture as whitewashing terrorists and publishing false, incendiary propaganda about their victims (namely Jews), then HuffPost’s senior management (which repeatedly claims it is a “nonpartisan” news operation) has been allowing Shihab-Eldin to fulfill his “job”.

Azerbaijan jails Iranian for plot against Israeli embassy

Hasan Faraji, 31, was arrested in late October after he was seen wandering near the embassy, Azeri news site APA reported. A security guard stopped him for questioning and, after refusing to cooperate, Faraji was detained and taken to a nearby police station. He was later sentenced to 30 days in prison, but there was no indication from the report why he was incarcerated.
According to a Channel 10 News report on Wednesday, Azeri police claimed they had discovered photos and blueprints of the Israeli embassy in Faraji’s apartment.

Drifting from US, Liberman calls to diversify foreign policy

“For many years, Israel’s foreign policy has been one-directional toward Washington,” he said, speaking at the Sderot Conference for Society. “I support multi-directional foreign policy.”
Israel’s foreign policy “should not focus solely on the United States,” he added, according to Army Radio.

Moroccan parliament moves to outlaw contacts with Israelis

The bill was proposed by five parties in the Moroccan House of Representatives — including that of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane. Introduced earlier this summer, and largely unnoticed at the time, it was given the heading “Criminalizing Normalization with the Israeli Entity.”
The proposed law seeks to prohibit attendance at or support for any “activity in Morocco in which a natural or legal person holding Israeli citizenship or being resident of the Israeli entity contributes, participates, or attends."

Palestinian official accuses ‘fool’ Bush of colluding in Arafat’s death

A Palestinian Authority official accused former US President George W. Bush of colluding with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in the assassination of PA President Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Media Watch revealed Wednesday.
During an interview with official Palestinian Authority television on November 10, Jibril Rajoub, a former security official and Fatah member who currently heads the Palestinian soccer association, said it was “clear” that Israel was not alone in killing the Palestinian leader.

PMW: Song glorifying violence at PA cultural event: "No force can remove the weapon from my hand"

Netanyahu vows: No nukes for Iran’s ‘dark regime’

The Iranian government is reminiscent of “dark regimes of the past” that tried to wipe out the Jews and then conquer the world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday in Moscow, vowing to deny Iran nuclear weapons.
“The Iranians deny our past and repeat their commitment to wipe the State of Israel off the map. This reminds us of the dark regimes of the past that plotted against us first and then against all of humanity,” Netanyahu said in an address to Russian Jewish community leaders.

Iran has all but become Nazi

There were other troubling features in his rare public appearance, but stripping Jews of their humanity was the lowest point. The world has looked the other way. It is not lending its ears. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton have tried to play dumb, as if the subconscious malice-filled campaign coming out of Tehran has been somehow lost on them. They yearn for a deal, at any price. Despite the draft agreement being taken off the table -- because France had sobered-up in the nick of time -- Iran now wants to discuss it again. But it wants more than that -- it also wants to punish the West; it seeks revenge after the West slammed the brakes and did some thinking.

John Bolton: Obama’s ‘Deal’ Will Let Iran Get the Bomb

Secretary of State John Kerry has spared no effort to avoid another Geneva debacle, almost certainly making more concessions to Iran to secure agreement. The failed deal was certainly wretched from America’s perspective, involving countless problems and deficiencies. This week’s deal will be worse.
It is no answer that Obama is seeking merely an “interim” understanding with Iran. “Interim” concessions have a way of getting locked-in, as seemingly ad hoc trade-offs freeze into permanence. Indeed, Obama’s “step-by-step” approach itself tells Tehran’s mullahs how desperately Obama wants a deal, and how willingly he ignores the reality that Iran’s nuclear program has never been peaceful.

Israel starting to consider 'day after' Iran agreement

Israel’s main problem with the proposed deal is that it freezes Iran’s program but does not dismantle it or significantly roll it back, in exchange for sanctions relief that Jerusalem believes severely weakens the pressure on Tehran. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Tuesday that in accepting this agreement, the world would be demonstrating that it “is willing to deceive itself.”

Israel Warns US: Iran Building ICBMs for YOU, Not for Us

Tuesday evening, Nov. 19, Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev told CNN’s Jake Tapper that it isn’t just Israel in Iran’s cross-hairs, but it is the U.S. itself that is an intended target of Iran’s nuclear weapon.

Israel, Gulf in ‘strange alliance’ against Iran

There seems little chance of major diplomatic breakthroughs between Israel and the Gulf’s array of ruling monarchs and sheiks. But their shared worries over Iran’s influence and ambitions already has brought back-channel contacts and “intimate relationships” on defense and other strategic interests through forums such as the UN, said Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the world body.
The stepped-up anxieties on Iran could bring new space for the Gulf-Israel overlap.

Obama’s Israel Spat Boosts Iran’s Leverage

By downgrading the alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia and trying to delegitimize his critics as warmongers, the president has strengthened Iran’s bargaining position and made it less rather than more likely that there will be a satisfactory conclusion to both the current negotiations and those that will follow. Rather than allowing diplomacy to succeed, what he has done may have ensured that Iran will never be convinced to give up its nukes by any means short of a use of force that no one wants.

Despite critique, Jewish groups continue Iran push

A day after columnist Thomas Friedman blasted Jewish groups for allying with Saudi Arabia in what he described as a push to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Jewish Federations of North America issued a statement calling for strong caps on Iran’s nuclear program. In a resolution passed by the JFNA’s executive committee, the organization aligned itself closely with the policy advocated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, insisting that any diplomatic solution reached in nuclear talks with Iran must result in the “complete dismantling of Iran’s capability of producing nuclear weapons and ensure mechanisms for ongoing verification of Iranian compliance.”

Iranians will ‘cut your throat,’ ex-US official warns negotiators

“The Iranians are known as great rug merchants, not for nothing,” the 92-year-old former US secretary of state George Shultz told the BBC in an interview. “They’re good at this business of smiling, encouraging you on and then cutting your throat, so you have to be tough-minded, you have to be realistic.”

Al Arabiya Chief: Obama Boosting Iran’s Confidence to Become Nuclear Country

“The ideal solution is to insist on preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, however, the involvement of U.S. President Barack Obama’s government in six months of negotiations boosts Iran’s confidence that it can force the international community to accept it as a nuclear country, despite all the offers, guarantees and promises made to stop this from happening,” Al-Rashed said, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Egypt: Two Dead in Clashes at Cairo University

More than 1,500 students had marched earlier from the university campus in Cairo's Nasr City to Al-Azhar’s central administrative building, the state-owned Al-Ahram news website reported.
When the students attempted to storm the building, security forces intervened and forced them to return to the campus, an Al Arabiya correspondent reported.

Kerry: Muslim Brotherhood 'Stole' Egypt's Revolution

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday accused the Muslim Brotherhood of “stealing Egypt's revolution”, AFP reported.
In a speech to a forum on enhancing links between private sector businesses and diplomatic security agencies, Kerry said "the best antidote to extremism is opportunity."

IDF Blog: Hezbollah Indoctrinates Youth with Messages of Hate and Murder

The ICRC again twists international law to damn Israel (updated)

Juan Pedro Schaerer, "head of delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and occupied territories," writes in the Jerusalem Post:

It is not the ICRC, but rather the facts on the ground that determine whether a territory is under occupation. The facts are such that the Israel Defense Forces established their presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in June 1967, and exerted their authority there in place of the Jordanian authorities who were no longer able to exert their own authority.

The West Bank and east Jerusalem were “actually placed under the authority” of the IDF in the sense of Article 42 of the Hague Regulations of 1907. In other words, the facts on the ground were such that they fell squarely into the definition of occupied territory, which is codified in Article 42, a provision that also reflects international customary law.

This has not changed in the 45 years that have past since the occupation of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, was first established. Israel continues to effectively control this territory.

In addition, international humanitarian law does not require that the territory occupied by a foreign army must belong to a sovereign state. The purely factual criterion used is that a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army – which is the case in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Since at this point Schaerer is only quoting the Hague Regulations, perhaps he should look at the title of the section that Article 42 falls under on the ICRC website:

SECTION III
MILITARY AUTHORITY OVER THE TERRITORY OF THE HOSTILE STATE

While this isn't proof positive that the Hague Regulations do not apply to non-state entities, it is also proof that Schaerer's blanket statement is not as clear cut as he pretends. He gives no source for his assertion, and based on primary sources, his statement is only that - an assertion.

The Geneva Conventions shed no additional light on this question, so as far as actual texts of international humanitarian law are concerned, Schaerer's statement is not supported at all.

The ICRC can interpret all it wants, but its interpretation is only that. To characterize it as definitive is deceptive, and that is what is happening here.

Regarding settlements, it is long established in international law that settlement activities by an occupying power in an occupied territory are unlawful.

Population transfers for the purpose of establishing settlements are forbidden under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether people are being directly transferred or indirectly transferred through incentives, encouragements or other measures facilitating their settlement in the occupied territory.

This is explicitly addressed in the Fourth Geneva Convention, for good reason. Such transfers are prohibited because they lead precisely to the demographic and other changes in the territory which occupation law was designed to prevent.

This is a flat-out lie.

I have many times dissected the text of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, and I have even dug up the travaux préparatoires that show that when the article was drafted not a word is said about transfer that is voluntary or even encouraged.

Indeed, international law writings, when discussing transfer of populations, are very careful to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary transfer.

Some transfers are said to be voluntary but are in fact involuntary. An example Egypt's expulsion of British subjects in November 1956. Egypt force them to sign an Arabic document where they stated that they were leaving of their own free will and relinquish any claims against Egypt. That is a case of involuntary transfer because the transferees were not given a choice.

The definition of voluntary transfer is very simple: "For the transfer to comply with human rights standards as developed, prospective transferees must have an option to remain in their homes if they prefer."

Nothing in any international law source insists that a nation forcibly stop its citizens from voluntarily moving, but that is apparently how Schaerer is purposefully misinterpreting Geneva.

Moreover, Schaerer characterizes the primary purpose of Article 49 as to "demographic and other changes in the territory which occupation law was designed to prevent." This is also a lie. All of the discussions recorded in the travaux préparatoires center on forced population transfer because of the obvious human rights issues that deportation and forced transfer entails, of forcibly uprooting people from their homes. Nobody said a word about demographic changes being an issue at least in that paragraph.

Thus, when the international community regards the Israeli settlements in the West Bank as unlawful, it does so simply because of that very prohibition, and not because of an opinion of the ICRC.

As I have shown, the source texts do not support Schaerer's interpretation. The ICRC might have some support for its position, but some legal scholars have proof for the opposite. That is why it is clearly, by definition, the ICRC's opinion.

This article proves the opposite of Schaerer's intention. By simply looking up the sources, we see that the ICRC is creating its own interpretation of international humanitarian law specifically to target Israel.

UPDATE: A lengthy comment at the JPost site is worth reading in full: (h/t Ian)

Mr. Schaerer's OpEd raises more questions than it provides answers. For starters, the most obvious one is why is the ICRC so inconsistent in applying the same rules to so many similar situations? To wit, if "It is not the ICRC, but rather the facts on the ground that determine whether a territory is under occupation." as he claims, how come the ICRC didn't apply the same criteria when Jordan illegally occupied and annexed the West Bank and Egypt did the same with Gaza in 1948? Similarly, how come the ICRC has never said a word regarding the (exceedingly brutal) invasion, occupation and annexation of Tibet by China in 1950 (which is still ongoing)? And what about Northern Cyprus, still illegally occupied by Turkey since 1974, and Morocco still illegally occupying the Western Sahara since 1975? Oh, I also forgot two provinces of Georgia still illegally occupied by Russia since 2008? In all these cases, the facts on the ground certainly proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the territories in question are under occupation. Additionally, all these territories were acquired through wars of aggression, making them illegal, whereas Israel's occupation of the West Bank was the result of a defensive war, which makes it lawful. And yet it is on Israel that the ICRC keeps picking mercilessly, the only case of lawful occupation, while ignoring all the illegal ones! Could it be that the ICRC is scared to offend the culprits in all these other cases, whereas it knows it has nothing to fear from Israel in terms of retaliation? If not, how come the ICRC doesn't have extensive delegations of expatriates and local employees (as it does in Israel where they criss-cross the country taking care of every need of the Palestinians) in Tibet, Northern Cyprus and the Western Sahara? This is the core of the problem the ICRC faces when it keeps accusing Israel of something it is not guilty of while ignoring the countries who are really guilty of the offenses it accuses Israel of: by accepting to apply a double standard against Israel alone, the ICRC has shed much of its credibility as a so-called neutral agency. International law applies equally to all nations, or it applies to none, but it can't be applied to just a few and ignored by the rest.

Next Mr. Shaerer states: "Population transfers for the purpose of establishing settlements are
forbidden under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether people are being directly transferred or indirectly transferred through incentives, encouragements or other measures facilitating their settlement in the occupied territory." That is a blatant exaggeration of what the IVth 1949 Geneva Convention actually says. The article in question, Art.49, Para. 6, says "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Better yet, the ICRC's own commentary on the Geneva Conventions, regarded by most international law scholars as the most reliable interpretation of the GC, specifically says with regard to this provision that "[This clause]... is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories." This article was meant for the likes of Nazi Germany, and rather than Israeli settlers who moved to the West Bank of their own free will, it applies perfectly to the colonizers and settlers imported en masse by China in Tibet, Turkey in Northern Cyprus and Morocco in the Western Sahara. And yet... the ICRC has never said a word about these cases! Israel should stop being so nice and bend over backwards to please the ICRC when the same ICRC has proven itself incapable and unwilling of applying the same rules it wants to impose on Israel while ignoring more blatant cases of violations of the IVth GC. When it does, and proves to be the neutral agency it claims to be, it would then be welcomed back, although its interpretation of international law leading to the conclusion that the IVth GC is applicable to the West Bank remains faulty to this day anyway.

Finally, Mr. Schaerer promises us that "the ICRC envisages engaging in a series of open forum events in 2014", that is, to discuss "the discrepancies between international humanitarian law and certain policies implemented by Israel in the occupied territories". I trust that the real situations of illegal occupations I have mentioned will be prominently debated - in particular the question as to why the ICRC keeps harping on Israel and says nothing about these cases when in fact they meet far better the definition of belligerent occupation than Israel ever has. If not, this promises to be a completely moot and useless exercice.

Jean-Jacques Surbeck
Former member of the ICRC Legal Division in Geneva, Switzerland from 1974 to 1984 (now living in the US).

Khamenei graphic falsely implies IDF uses dogs to attack elderly women

This week, in a speech to tens of thousands of volunteer Basij militiamen in Tehran broadcast live on TV, Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei referred to Israel as an "unclean, rabid dog," which in Persian culture is one of the worst insults possible.

He repeats this in a new tweet and Facebook post, together with a graphic:

What was happening in this photo?

The original photo caption was:

An Israeli army dog attacks a Palestinian woman as soldiers try to stop it during an army raid in the West Bank village of Obadiyah, near Bethlehem, Wednesday, March 21, 2007. The troops were searching for a wanted militant from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades who managed to escape.

I also saw the photo here with the same caption but different photo credit.

And there is video, which was immediately seized by the Arab world as if the IDF was attacking the woman and not trying to help her:

Another photo (right) of the same dog attack is also popular on anti-Israel sites. Its caption adds that "the woman received medical attention from the troops on the scene."

While the video was edited to make it look as if the solders are detaining the woman, in fact they were helping her.

Context is everything, and the Israel haters have no compunction about twisting facts.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics came out with their latest quarterly labor report.

Last year, the PCBS said that 15,000 Palestinians worked in the settlements. Now, the number has increased to 20,000.

Last year, some 90,000 worked for Israelis on both sides of the Green Line. In the second quarter it increased to 96,000, it has now increased to 103,000.

Nearly one in seven West Bank Arabs work for Israelis.

61% of them work in construction.

The average daily wage for those working in PA-administered areas in the West Bank is NIS 88.3 compared and NIS 59.3 in Gaza Strip. In contrast, the average daily wage for those working for Israelis increased from NIS 172.1 in the 2nd quarter to NIS 178.9 in the 3rd quarter, over double the wages of those that work in the PA areas,and a 10% increase in wages over last year. In PA areas, the wage during the same time period increased only about 1%.

I believe this is the first time that Israeli wages have doubled Palestinian Arab wages.

This means that about one third of total wages in the PA ruled areas come from Israeli employers. The impact to the PA economy if there was an international border between their state and Israel would be devastating, although the World Bank never looks at that statistic when it blames Israel for the PA's economic woes.

Somehow, over a hundred thousand people manage to travel to Israeli-controlled areas every day, past all those checkpoints and "apartheid walls" and guard towers we keep hearing so much about. While they do have to wait in long lines to enter Israel, it is clearly worth it.

Khamenei tweet reveals all

This is a tweet from Iran's Supreme Leader and Grand Poobah, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, on Monday:

He who resorts to #terrorism is devoid of reasoning 20/7/94 #Beirut
— khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 19, 2013

From JPost today:

An Iranian national was arrested in Azerbaijan two weeks ago on the suspicion he was planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in Baku, Channel 10 reported on Wednesday.

Hasan Faraji, 31, was arrested by Azerbaijani police after displaying "suspicious behavior" while wandering around the Israeli embassy in Baku on October 31. Faraji, who resisted arrest, was sentenced to 30 days of administrative detention, according to the APA news agency

According to Channel 10, Faraji is a part of the Iranian Quds Forces, a special unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard that, among other roles, is tasked with planning and executing terrorist attacks against Israeli targets overseas.

Azerbaijani police raided Faraji's house, where it found plans and photographs indicating on his intention to commit a series of terrorist attacks against Israelis at the embassy.

But I thought terrorism was devoid of reasoning?

By the way, Khamenei has been very upset at France recently:

Unfortunately, some Europeans go towards #Zionist officials & pay them lip service & humiliate their nation. #France
— khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 20, 2013

Supporting miserable #Zionist regime will be a great dishonor to the Europeans. But the #French nation itself should find a remedy for that.
— khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 20, 2013

Egypt jails Syrian Palestinians. So why do they treat them this way?

You know how the Arab world loves to say that Palestinians are their highest priority?

Well, not so much.

From Reuters, finally picking up on a story I've had for months:

Of the 2 million people who fled Syria's civil war, none may have it worse than Palestinians, who have known no other home than Syria but do not have Syrian citizenship and have therefore been denied even the basic rights secured for other refugees.

The United Nations says the Egyptian government has refused it permission to register Palestinians from Syria as refugees and give them the yellow card that allows them to settle. As a result, hundreds of Palestinians civilians have ended up detained in police stations, with no place else to go.

If the family [on the ill-fated boat that was intercepted] were Syrian citizens, once detained they would most likely have been permitted to leave Egypt for refugee camps in other countries in the region, says Human Rights Watch.

But because they are Palestinians they have been given no other option but to camp out in a police station indefinitely, or somehow make their way back to the war zone in Syria.

Turkey and Jordan will not accept Palestinians from Syria and Lebanon will only allow them to pass through for 48 hours.

So they live at the four storey police station in Alexandria, where cold winter wind blows in from the sea and families of Palestinians sleep on blankets on cement floors.

They receive one meal a day from an aid group. Many pass idle days praying. The sounds of children crying echo through the drafty chambers.

All those who spoke to Reuters asked that their names not be used to prevent reprisals by the police.

Among some 300,000 people who have fled Syria to Egypt are an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Palestinians, many born in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, established in 1957, which was nearly destroyed by air strikes earlier this year.

The overwhelming majority of the Palestinians have never set foot in the Palestinian territories and have considered Syria their only home. But Egypt refuses to allow the United Nations refugee agency to treat them like other refugees from Syria.

"It is the view of the government of Egypt that Palestinians fall outside of UNHCR's mandate," said Teddy Leposky, a UNHCR spokesman in Cairo. "UNHCR has therefore not been able to provide assistance or advocate effectively on behalf of Palestinian refugees in Egypt."

Hundreds caught in Egypt without the proper documents or apprehended trying to leave for other countries have been detained indefinitely without criminal charge, say lawyers representing them.

"(Prosecutors) have ordered them released, but national security has ordered them detained until they are deported," said Mahmoud Belal of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights.

The reason Egypt doesn't allow UNHCR to register the Palestinian Syrian refugees is also because of its history of treating Palestinians like dirt.

Between 1948 and 1967, Egypt did not allow any of the (real) Palestine Arab refugees to settle in Egypt. They moved them all to Gaza, effectively making Gaza into - you guessed it - an open air prison.

UNRWA was allowed to work in Gaza, but not in Egypt proper, because there were no refugees there.

Now, Egypt says that the Syrian Palestinian refugees don't fall under UNHCR, but under UNRWA - which is not allowed to work in Egypt!

So from this article we see that Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are explicitly discriminating against Palestinian Arabs. Yet these are the very same countries that insist that they are the biggest defenders of Palestinians!

How to reconcile the two?

Because to the Arab world, and even to Palestinian Arab leaders themselves, the entire point of Palestinian Arab nationalism is not to help Arabs whose ancestors happened to live in British Mandate Palestine from 1946-48 (the UNRWA definition of refugee.) No, for them, "supporting Palestine" is just a code phrase for "destroying Israel."

And keeping Palestinian Arabs stateless and miserable is a key part of that plan, in the hopes that one day they will "return" to flood Israel and destroy the Jewish state.

Even if it takes another 65 years.

As usual, every inconsistent Arab position and action vis a vis the Palestinian issue makes perfect sense when you look at it through the right prism.

(h/t Yoel)

11/20 Links Pt2: How did Arafat get so rich? Netanyahu: Islamists taking us to the Dark Ages

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Islamists taking us back to the ‘Dark Ages’

“Radical Islam wants to take us to the past,” he said. “We march toward the future; they, to the Dark Ages. We aspire to open our society to everyone — men, women, minorities, to the right to be different. They want oppressive uniformity, rigid doctrine.
“And they want to support all this with weapons of mass destruction,” he added, alluding to Tehran’s alleged attempt to produce nuclear weapons. “We cannot allow them this. I think it would be a grave mistake to repeat the mistakes made with North Korea, another closed society with tough and aggressive doctrine.”

Hollande visits graves of French school attack victims

French President Francois Hollande visited the Jerusalem graves of the victims of the attack on a Toulouse Jewish school.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied Hollande to the cemetery on Tuesday. They were joined by members of the Sandler and Monsonego families, who recited Kaddish.

Palestinian Incitement’s Exposure Seen as Israel’s ‘Front Offense Around the World’

Also in October, Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministers Yuval Steinitz penned a New York Times op-ed titled “How Palestinian Hate Prevents Peace,” focusing on anti-Israel messages in the PA’s television and radio stations, public schools, summer camps, children’s magazines, Web sites, and Facebook pages.
Steinitz’s angle was no coincidence. His article was “virtually completely based on material that we have supplied his office,” says Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). While top Israeli officials attribute a lack of success in the current negotiations to PA incitement, the exposure of that incitement in the PA’s official media outlets is “Israel’s front offense around the world,” Marcus tells JNS.org.

Frederick Forsyth: So exactly how did Yasser Arafat get so rich?

I have seen acres of breast-beating journalism about the Palestinian misery but never an examination into where all the donated money has gone over the years. For this is certain: Arab donors and a generous non-Arab world have donated many billions to the Palestinian cause.
Take the Gaza strip. It is a bloc of land 25 miles long and six miles wide on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
Its northern and eastern borders are Israel, its 11-mile southern border is Egypt and its western border the glittering Med. Over the years since the founding of Israel in 1948 literally billions of pounds have been donated to help its people have a decent life.
If it had been invested shrewdly and well Gaza today could be a mini-Monaco. It could have a deepwater freight port, a flourishing fishing port and a leisure harbour crammed with the yachts of wealthy visitors. It could have resort hotels on the sea and farms, ranches and orchards in the hinterland producing nutritious food.

Elliott Abrams: Palestinians from Syria: The worst treatment of all

But there is another story here: the way UNRWA's special treatment of Palestinians has backfired. It is not just a whim that the government of Egypt does not allow UNHCR to treat Palestinians the way it treats all other refugees, for in fact Palestinians are the only refugees over whom UNHCR has never had jurisdiction. When those fleeing Syria attend UNHCR or UNRWA schools, or receive medical attention at UNHCR or UNRWA clinics, that division is perpetuated and deepened. Once upon a time, Palestinians thought this special status was a great boon. For Palestinians fleeing Syria it's hard to see it that way today. UNRWA can now add to its achievement of perpetuating "Palestinian refugee" status the achievement of separating Palestinians from all other Syrian refugees. And now we can use the word refugee without quotation marks, for we are speaking of people born and raised in Syria and now driven from their homes there. This is just another piece of evidence that UNRWA has outlived its usefulness and is doing more harm than good for Palestinians.

Georgetown University to Host Member of Egypt’s Nazi Party

Georgetown University’s Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Center for Christian Muslim Understanding is scheduled to host a Dec. 5 event on “Egypt and the Struggle for Democracy.”
The event features a slew of speakers sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Coptic Christian Ramy Jan, who cut his teeth on the Egyptian political scene as a member of the country’s Nazi Party, according to multiple sources.
The event is scheduled to take place all day at Georgetown’s ICC auditorium and feature a keynote address by Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.).

Terra Incognita: The Haniyeh family health plan in Israel

The story sent shockwaves through Israel’s media and abroad. It was paired with the usual responses of “look at Israel, Israel treats the children of its enemies and its enemies only want to kill Israel’s children.” One writer noted, “it’s what they [Israelis] do; it’s who they are.”
But there is something off about this story, and others like it. The reports of Israel’s medical care for Palestinians, including Palestinians involved in violence against Israel, goes back many years. Alan Dershowitz highlighted it in his book The Case for Israel.

'Hamas PM's granddaughter returns to Gaza 'clinically dead' after Israeli doctors unable to save her'

The one-year-old Amal Haniyeh was admitted in serious condition to Schneider Children’s Medical Center for Israel in Petah Tikva on Sunday after being diagnosed with an acute digestive tract infection, source in Gaza said.
Israeli doctors reportedly deemed her chances of survival as slim and returned her to a hospital in Gaza City.

The Guardian Walls Out Israelis, Suicide Bombers, and Balance

An interactive feature at The Guardian look at walls and barriers around the world. From the US-Mexico border, to the 2,500 mile barrier separating India and Bangladesh, along with 99 walls separating Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, call it “wall-to-wall coverage.”
Israel’s security barrier is featured too.
Harriet Sherwood (with some credited assistance from B’Tselem) has plenty of comments, photos and videos of Palestinians talking about how the wall impacts their lives.
Left outside The Guardian gates, unfortunately, are Israelis sharing how the security barrier impacts their lives. That would mean addressing the deadly Palestinian suicide bombers who wreaked havoc in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during the second intifada.

What about the Grand Mufti’s desire to ‘liquidate the Jews’ doesn’t Robert Fisk understand?

His claim that the pro-Nazi Haj Amin was merely attempting to “help the Palestinians” represents an extraordinary obfuscation.
As a CAMERA report (based on documentation in a book by Jennie Lebel titled ‘The Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism‘) makes clear, Haj Amin’s desire to ‘help the Palestinians’ was superseded by a greater passion – to annihilate the Jews.

Funniest Temple Mount Propaganda Video Ever

This PressTv clip can only work with an audience that can’t tell the difference between the Temple Mount compound and the Western Wall plaza. Anyone who does know that those are two sites, each with its own distinct appearance that look nothing alike, realizes that this 2 minute clip which offers lavish descriptions of how the Jews are storming Temple Mount every day, with the support of police – has not a shred of a film to back it up.

Polish Forbes sorry for defaming Jewish groups

The Polish edition of Forbes magazine apologized for three articles about the restitution of prewar property of Jewish communities that targeted the leaders of Poland’s organized Jewish community and several Jewish organizations.
The apology for the articles published in September was published Monday on the magazine’s website.

Pope Francis Condemns Kristallnacht Memorial Protests

During a special memorial ceremony on Nov. 12 attended by Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders in Buenos Aires to mark the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a small group of protestors from the ultra-traditionalist Catholic group Society of St. Pius X disrupted the proceedings, shouting “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple.”
Pope Francis told a group of Latin American religious leaders visiting the Vatican that preaching intolerance “is a form of militancy that must be overcome.”

German university opening Europe’s first school of Jewish theology

In what is being called a landmark moment for the Continent’s Jewry, Europe’s first university-level school of Jewish theology is set to open Tuesday at the University of Potsdam, situated just outside Berlin.
“The opening of the School of Jewish Theology marks a historical milestone in the training of liberal and conservative rabbis and is unique both in Germany and Europe,” university president Oliver Günther said in a statement.

David's Sling shoots down ballistic missile in trial

The Ministry of Defense and the US Missile Defense Agency (MSA) held a successful test of the David's Sling air defense system on Wednesday morning, in which a ballistic missile was shot down and destroyed.
David's Sling is designed to intercept intermediate and short-range rockets and cruise missiles, and should be effective against a good portion of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal.

Israeli-Palestinian Arbitration Center Opens

Given the political disputes and the apparent lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, some are surprised to learn that the volume of trade between Israel and the Palestinian territories is $4 billion annually. Yet, there has been nowhere to turn in cases of commercial disputes.

Gomez Mill House, Oldest Jewish Site in North America, Approaches 300th Anniversary

The oldest Jewish site in North America is not Newport’s famed Touro Synagogue, or any other synagogue. Rather, it is a stone structure tucked away on the west side of the Hudson River, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.
Due to its multiple uses and inhabitants over the centuries, the Gomez Mill House—built in 1714 in Marlboro, NY—is one of the best-kept secrets in American Jewish history, and also holds a unique place in greater American history. With its 300th anniversary approaching, its story may very well become familiar to a much broader audience.

18th Century Haggadah, Found in Garage, Expected to Sell for £500,000 at Auction (VIDEO)

An 18th-century Haggadah found by chance in a Manchester garage is promising to offer a huge payday for its owner, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
Created for the Oppenheimer banking dynasty in 1726, the auction house handling the sale says it could fetch up to £500,000, or $805,000.

Ancient Jewish Altar Found in Shilo

An ongoing archaeological dig in the ancient Jewish village of Shilo in Samaria (Shomron) has turned up a stone altar dating back thousands of years.
The altar is believed to date back to the period from roughly 1,200 BCE to 600 CE known as the Iron Age.

The magnificent Maccabee mansion found under a home

Underneath the four-story modern house, 18 years of digging revealed what Siebenberg calls “the perfect continuation of Jewish history in one place.” The base layer has emptied burial caves from the era of King David and King Solomon some 3,000 years ago.
Above that are the remains of a Hasmonean mansion inhabited by children of the Maccabees – the heroes of Hanukkah fame — who ruled Judea from 142-63 BCE after liberating it from the Syrian-Greeks.

Israel Daily Picture: Another Photographic Treasure Trove Discovered: 120-Year-Old Colored Slides from Chatham University, Part 1

In the need for library and archival preservation, modern technology is certainly a friend of antiquity. Vintage photographs, some stored for over a century in old libraries, are now being digitized and often posted Online. Such is the case with this treasure of "Holy Land Lantern Slides" we found in Chatham University's archives.
Chatham University, a 150-year-old women's undergraduate school in Pittsburgh, digitized their slides in 2009. According to Rachel M. Grove Rohrbaugh, the school's archivist and public service librarian, "most of the slides roughly date to circa 1880-1900. We don’t have specific information on the photographer(s) or how they were used here at Chatham, but they were likely used for instruction in world history or cultural studies."

EoZNews: Interview with Dexter Van Zile

Dexter Van Zile is the Christian Media Analyst for CAMERA. He has done some great research and debunked many outrageous claims by anti-Israel Christian groups, and he speaks to audiences in the US about the dangers to Christianity in the Middle East.

We had a nice discussion last night, before he was to speak at a function in New York. We spoke about supersessionism, the belief that some Christians have that they have replaced Jews in God's universe which naturally leads to the belief that Jews do not deserve their own state.

Other topics included the hypocrisy of some Christian groups in holding Jews to an impossible standard while not asking anything from Israel's enemies (often citing scripture,) Palestinian Christian anti-semitism and the psychological curse of dhimmitude.

He's a very nice guy, too.

The video is 17 minutes, longer than I would prefer, but I think you will learn something.

He mentions Mark Durie, you can see more about him here. (h/t Ian)

Yesterday, I noted that at a pro-Palestinian Arab rally at San Francisco State University the organizers handed out stencils to people could paint placards saying "My heroes have always killed colonizers."

I have since found out that they also handed out stencils of a picture of Leila Khaled, the PFLP terrorist who was involved in two plane hijackings and several other terror attacks.

The president of SFSU, Les Wong, issued a statement that pretty much says that he won't bother to do anything about incitement to murder on his campus. You know, free speech and all that. But he is disturbed. Oh, yes, there is concern.He will hold meetings. Everything will be fine.

San Francisco State University is recognized worldwide for making social justice a strategic priority; it is an integral part of our DNA. As president, I was deeply disturbed by incendiary language that marred an annual commemoration of a cultural mural on campus.

On November 7, 2013 members of the campus community gathered to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the installation of a mural honoring Edward Said. Nearby, several student organizations were staffing tables to raise awareness of their groups' activities. One table was set up to allow passers-by to create their own placards with a pre-made stencil, which read, “My heroes have always killed colonizers.”

I am dismayed by the glorification of violence that this message conveys. There is no place at SF State for celebrating violence or promoting intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism or any other form of hate-mongering. We are a university community committed to furthering civil dialogue. Each of us must remain vigilant in working to achieve this goal.

The university is a place where dialogue, debate and the marketplace of ideas are cherished. We must also maintain a safe environment. Engaging in expressions that threaten and intimidate are counter to these goals. In addition to conveying my firm commitment to a safe and civil campus environment directly to any students involved, I will be meeting with members of the campus community to express my concerns, and to learn more about their perceptions of our current campus climate. University leadership will continue to gather information about this occurrence and address it appropriately. We prize our role as a forum for open discourse and we will continue to work toward a campus culture that cherishes civility.

You see the concrete steps he is taking? He'll talk to people and express concern! With luck, in a few months people will forget the whole sorry business.

Meanwhile, the groups that sponsored the disgusting display are going ballistic that anyone could dare criticize them: (UPDATE: They took down the FB page. Others have made copies, as did I, screen shot to the right.)

Zionists: Hands off our San Francisco State University Students!

Support AMED and GUPS against a Zionist smear campaign/charges of Anti-Semitism

Dear Friends of AMED and GUPS:

This is an urgent message to make you aware of and call upon you to support the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) at San Francisco State University. We have been subjected to a smear campaign by Tammi Benjamin and AMCHA Initiative.

...Aiming at invoking xenophobia and enlisting the “war on terror” in order to portray Palestinian campus activism as dangerous, illegal and outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, Benjamin refers to Leila Khaled as “a member of the U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)…. responsible for several plane hijackings, suicide bombings that killed several Jews, and the assassination of a Jewish member of the Israeli Knesset.” Had she done a quick search as academics usually do, Benjamin would have found that Leila Khaled’s image is a popular icon frequently used by Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike to symbolize Palestinian women’s roles in anti-colonial resistance and to counter Orientalist and racist portrayals of Arab (and Muslim) women as docile, oppressed and unable to speak for themselves.

See? They aren't celebrating a terrorist, they are celebrating a symbol of female empowerment through terrorism! How dare anyone criticize their feminism!

As for the second stencil MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS, contrary to Benjamin’s claim, Palestinian students were not calling for the murder of Jews or Israelis. In fact, the implication of Benjamin’s argument --that all Jews have the same political stands vis-à-vis Israel or that all Jews are colonizing Palestinian lands, lends itself to anti-Semitism. And notwithstanding her simplistic linkage of Said’s anti-colonial intellectual work, the Palestinian Mural anniversary, Palestinian students, and AMED, the stencil was not originally created to specifically target Israel. It was more inclusive of the plight of Indigenous people and their historical resistance everywhere.

How dare anyone criticize a call to murder that was meant to be inclusive! It was originally meant against all white people - how can anyone object to that!

Sure, in this case, it was being pushed by the Palestinian Arabs and its only possible interpretation is to murder Israeli Jews. But don't call them antisemitic! Calling them antisemitic only increases antisemitism!

This response is an almost comedic example of what Richard Landes calls "demopathy," the usurping of the language of human rights and democracy when it suits one's political purposes, no matter how much those purposes are against human rights. I recently proved that BDS advocates do this quite consciously.

The GUPS invoking feminism and inclusiveness to justify calls to terror and murder is worthy of a master satirist.

And their demopathy don't stop there. Check out their petition to President Wong, insisting that he condemns those who condemn terrorism:

We are concerned over our own safety and the safety of our friends, allies, and all those standing in solidarity with our movement, especially when their photos and names have been posted online as if to make them a moving target for violence.

This belligerent smear campaign meant to slander the Palestinian movement on campus has directly created a hostile environment that makes it impossible for us to express our views and exercise our academic freedom.

We call upon you, President Wong, to:

Condemn this smear campaign

Uphold our academic freedom as a core value of SFSU

Ensure our safety and the safety of all

It is very interesting that they object to the publicizing of the photo above, when they are the ones who originally posted it on IndyMedia!

(h/t Pro Israel Bay Bloggers, Bob Knot)

Al Quds University has partnerships with MANY other universities worldwide (UPDATED x4)

As I reported on Monday, Brandeis University cut ties with Al Quds University over its shameful tolerance of hate on campus and its blaming "extremist Jews" for bringing it to light.

The question is, what other universities does Al Quds partner with?

In its 2006 annual report, Al Quds wrote:

In the field of academic cooperation and scientific research, the (Al-Quds) university continued to open new horizons of cooperation with numerous international universities in the US. These include: Columbia, Brandeis, Dearborn, Wayne State University, MIT, Tufts, George Mason, and Leslley. The (Al-Quds) university has excellent ties with numerous German universities like Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe and the Berlin Free University. The same is true regarding French universities like Paris 4, Paris 8, Bordeaux University and Lille University. We also have agreements with the Ricardo Palma University in South America, and more.

With regard to Canadian universities, especially Toronto and McGill and other universities, the (Al-Quds) university has had good ties with them for some time.

In addition, Al Quds has a partnership with Bard College, written up in the New York Times and funded by USAID and George Soros' Open Society Foundation.

USAID seems to do a lot with Al Quds.

York University in Ontario has expanded agreements with Al Quds.

George Washington University Medical school has a joint program with Al Quds.

Rutgers worked on a joint brain research study with Al Quds funded by National Institutes of Health..

Harvard has jointly published an anti-Israel report with Al Quds.

Oberlin created a joint program with Al Quds and Tel Aviv University.

Purdue has a water resource management program with a number of schools, including Al Quds and Technion.

American Universiy Law School partners with Al Quds.

The New School has a "co-existence initiative" with Al Quds.

Smith College.

Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the National Technical University of Athens in Greece partner with Al Quds and two other Palestinian Arab universities on environmental issues.

(h/t @afagerbakke, Ibn Boutros, Josh R.)

UPDATE: I found Al Quds 2011 annual report. It also mentions Syracuse U, Montana U, Tufts U, Drexel U, Berkeley U and Babson College in the US; Western Ontario U, British Columbia U, McGill U and Toronto U in Canada, and many European universities including and Napoli University, Santa Anna University, Turin U, Ferrara U, Verona U, Antwerp U, Marie Curie U, Renne U, and Bordeaux U.

UPDATE 2: After Brandeis cut ties, Al Quds' president condemned the rallies when asked explicitly by Times of Israel. In English, naturally.He's nervous. (h/t Bob Knot)

I found the original outrageous statement in Arabic on the Al Quds site.

UPDATE 3: Syracuse U has cut ties with Al Quds. (h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE 4: Bard said it will maintain ties; GW Medical School said it will re-evaluate ties. (h/t Bob Knot)

11/20 Links Pt1: IDF hits Gaza Weapons site, AQ Cmr: Target American Civilians in Attacks.

From Ian:

NYT: Where are your bloody photos?

Public Editor of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan took the bold, and important step in acknowledging the volume of reader outrage following the cold blooded murder last week of 19 year old Eden Atias as he slept. The NYT admitted an error of judgment. So why have they chosen to leave the offensive news item unchanged?
Sullivan was responding to our collective horror at not only the newspapers inability to frame the report around the appropriate context of the murder (we had to suffer much ink decrying settlements as the catalyst for current tensions and the cloudy outlook for peace) but the lead photo was not related to the victim as would be expected in any news environment when reporting such an event. The photo editor’s choice? The murderers’ mother surrounded by supporters at home.

PA TV aired encrypted message from soldier’s alleged killer

According to a translation by the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, on May 16, the presenters of the Palestinian TV show “For You” read the following statement during a segment dedicated to messages for security prisoners held in Israel:

Before we end, we have greetings for Nour Al-Din Amar from his brother Abu Wasim [Nidal Amar] and from the family. They say to you that they are well, and that your mother is healthy again. They tell you that “the calf will soon be in the cage, and we’ll celebrate the freedom of all prisoners.”
“For You” is the most frequently watched show among Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, according to Walla.

Terrorist sent coded message via official PA TV about planned kidnapping of soldier

IDF Strikes Terror Tunnels, Weapons Factory in Gaza

The IDF carried out multiple airstrikes Tuesday evening in the Khan Younis area in Gaza. IDF sources say the strikes hit their intended targets – a weapons factory and two tunnels built by terrorist groups.
So far, Gaza media outlets have not reported casualties as a result of the attack.

IDF Targets Weapons Manufacturing Facility in the Gaza Strip

IDF Blog: First-Person Testimony: I Watched a Firebomb Aimed at a School Bus Fly Towards Me

Shoval is a combat photographer for the IDF. It’s his job to document the IDF’s activities in Judea and Samaria, and terrorist attacks committed against Israeli civilians in the area. In a terrifying moment last week, he found himself caught in the middle of one of those attacks.
Last week, I saw my life flash before my eyes, and felt the terrible fear of dying.

Report: Israel Defense Forces Searching Northern Border Towns for Hezbollah Tunnels

A senior security source told the website that Israel, citing the recent discovery of two tunnels from the Gaza Strip, is increasingly worried that Hezbollah might have established a passage connecting south Lebanon to northern Israel.
Israeli concerns prompted a survey of the village of Metula, located near the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, the source said.

Hamas Tunnel-Digging Unit Uncovered

Al Jazeera, the Arab media network based in Qatar, sent a correspondent to accompany a group of Hamas diggers who were filmed below ground preparing infrastructure for firing rockets. Using electric jackhammers to dig a tunnel through the packed rock, sand and soil, the Hamas operatives described their preparation for the inevitable next round of hostilities with Israel. They can spend weeks at a time underground without being detected, one operative explained.

Gazan Lion Cubs Named After Missiles, Fighting

The male and female cubs were born Monday, reports AFP.
One is named "Fajr (dawn)" after the Fajr missiles Hamas fired at Israel, while the other is named "Sijil (clay)" after the Hamas name for Pillar of Defense, "Operation Stones of Clay." (h/t Bob Knot)

Ramallah shooting targets car of top Fatah official

Unidentified gunmen in Ramallah opened fire Tuesday morning at the car of Sufian Abu Zaida, a senior Fatah official.
Abu Zaida, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, was not in the car when the attack took place, shortly before 7 a.m. At least 20 bullets hit the vehicle.

There is no credible US military option, and 9 other pointers from Jerusalem

As has been publicly unmistakable for the past 10 days, Israel and its key ally the United States are deeply at odds over the terms of an interim deal that may well be concluded shortly between the P5+1 countries and Iran. As talks on that deal resume in Geneva on Wednesday, the following are 10 pointers and insights on Israel’s assessments, positions, and possible actions.

US Military Chief: We Would Back Israel in Event of Iran Strike

According to the International Business Times, Dempsey noted that the US still has a 'deep obligation' to Israel in the event of a military conflict with Iran. Dempsey declined to give details, but emphasized that the two countries still have a special alliance during this period of heightened tensions in the region. "That is why we are in constant contact and collaboration with them," he confirmed.
CNN notes that Dempsey also credited Israel with being "an example of what could be" in the Middle East. "If we had one of my Israeli counterparts sitting here, they would tell you that most of the Arabs living in Israel have a better life than the Arabs living in the rest of the region and that is true," he said.

Negotiation 101: Democracies Keep Agreements, Dictatorships Cheat

President Barack Obama will attempt to convince Senators from both parties today that Congress should not slap new sanctions on Iran for failing to halt nuclear enrichment. But there are many reasons to reject the president’s request, especially the fact, noted today by former Bush administration official Douglas Feith, that while democracies tend to keep agreements, dictatorships like Iran and the Soviet Union routinely violate them.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Feith warned Americans not to trust Obama’s promises that sanctions, once relaxed, could be strengthened again:

Iran concedes recognition of its ‘nuclear rights’

Since the start of talks on Iran’s nuclear program, Iran has asserted it has a right to enrich uranium — and the United States has disagreed. Both have refused to budge over nearly a decade of negotiations. Until now.
Iran has suddenly gone public with a significant concession on the eve of a new round of talks with six world powers this week in Geneva. It still insists that it has a right to the program, but it now says that the six no longer need to publicly acknowledge its claim,[!] opening a way to sidestep the dispute and focus on more practical steps both sides can agree on.

France says Iran comments on Israel complicate nuke talks

Hollande was referring to comments attributed earlier to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaking to a gathering of the Basij force, which is controlled by Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard.
In them, the Iranian leader referred to Israel — “the Zionist regime” — as “the rabid dog of the region.”
Speaking to some 50,000 members of the paramilitary volunteer militia, Khamenei also said Israel was ripe for collapse.

Iran’s State-Owned Natural Gas Company Faces Collapse

Iran’s state-owned gas company said over the weekend that it is facing collapse, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The chief executive officer of state-owned National Iranian Gas Company said the company has declared bankruptcy with a debt of $4 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Ronald Lauder Says ‘Only France Stands Between Us and a Nuclear Iran,’ Mocks Wendy Sherman

Lauder also mocked the U.S. point person in the negotiations, Wendy Sherman.
“The chief U.S. negotiator in Geneva is a person named Wendy Sherman, she was the point person who negotiated with Kim Jong-il to keep North Korea nuclear power free, and we all know how well that turned out,” he said.

For Obama, Iran Talks Are Also About Testing the Limits of American Jewish Power

Not only has the White House defined Israeli concerns as manipulative and deceptive, but they have also gone a step further, by identifying the threat to global peace as Israel’s temerity in voicing such concerns, rather than Iran’s decadelong push for a bomb. AIPAC’s push for another round of sanctions, administration officials say, will limit President Barack Obama’s diplomatic flexibility with the Iranians and set the United States on “a march to war.” Further congressional pressure on the Iranians, the New York Times says, is “urged on by Netanyahu.”

Israelly Cool: Iranian Jews Thank Khamenei For Non-Existent Anti-Nuclear Fatwa

The Iranian Jews are a persecuted minority that will do whatever it takes to keep living, and openly supporting Iran and Khamenei like that is expected. I cannot blame them for the useful idiots they have become.
The media and anti-Semitic online hacks , however, will push this story as far as they can in an attempt to discredit Israel by claiming that “Real Jews support Iran”. (h/t Bob Knot)

What was the true target of the Beirut bombing?

Solomon suggested that the Iranian cultural attaché at the embassy in Beirut, Sheikh Ibrahim Sayyed Ali Ansari, who appears to have been killed in Tuesday’s blast, may yet prove to have been a high-level target. For one, he said, he worked in the same part of the embassy as Shateri, and, as was the case in Argentina during the 1994 AMIA bombing and Mohsen Rabbani’s involvement there, the cultural attaché is frequently a Quds Force member. Moreover, he said, over the past month alone Ansari had met with Sheikh Hashem Safi al-Din, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and the heir apparent to Nasrallah, should his life unexpectedly end; Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy Sec. Gen. of Hezbollah; and Muhammad Raad, the ranking member of Hezbollah’s parliamentary delegation.

Car bomb in Sinai kills at least 10 Egyptian police

The officials said the car bomb struck the bus on the road between the border town of Rafah and the coastal city of el-Arish. The soldiers belong to the 2nd Field Army, which is doing most of the fighting against militant Islamists waging an insurgency against security forces in Sinai. The bus was on its way to Cairo, the officials said.

Al Qaeda Commander Clarifies: American Civilians Fair Game

His clarification of Al-Zawahiri's fatwa does appear to be consistent with recent statements by the Al Qaeda chief in which he praised the Boston Bombing - which specifically targeted American civilians - and called for more "lone-wolf" attacks of the same kind.
Al-Aanisi also reaffirmed Al Qaeda's opposition to participation in democratic political processes, saying that it would be an implicit acceptance of the very western systems the group is fighting to destroy.

Researcher: Swiss Arafat report cannot support its conclusions

Joods Actuel reports that a researcher has asked for more details from the Swiss institute that tested Yasir Arafat's remains for signs of polonium poisoning, but the answers place the entire report into question.

Dr. Rudi Roth asked Professor François Bochud, director of the research center of the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV) that did the tests, why the report didn't publish the margins for error as is standard scientific practice. He also asked why reverse-calculating the original concentrations of polonium based on the Swiss numbers yield obviously incorrect results. Director Bochud replied via email, "Because of the large uncertainties in the models and the measured values, an inverse calculation would not be not meaningful" and the researcher confessed: "Our conclusions were not based on any specific evidence but the consistency of all of the observations."

"The polonium that we did measure is actually the supported kind of polonium, the same kind of polonium that you would find naturally," admitted Bochud.

Independent scientists who looked at the Swiss report concluded that its conclusions appeared to be subjective and not based on the data contained in the report. Dr. Roth quotes Professor Atie Verschoor, Expertise Centre Environmental Medicine (ECEMed) in the Netherlands, who says, "Indeed, Bochud confirms there are important uncertainties in the model used and for that reason, and several others, no conclusions at all can be taken. That had to be the conclusion of the report."

Verschoor further said, “The error-margins are very high and caused by the fact that the material has not been kept in a controlled environment (8 years in a tomb), the decontamination operation and the calculation trying to eliminate the Po-210 quantity caused by radon in the soil. There are a lot of assumptions and they creates important inaccuracies. The researchers must have noticed it but did not document it.”

In addition, Professor Nicholas Priest, who formerly headed the biomedical research unit of the Atomic Energy Authority in Britain and who is familiar with the Litvinenko case, said that there is no real confidence interval provided by the report. He told The Independent that it is “far too dangerous and scientifically unjustified” to calculate how much polonium was in Arafat’s body on the basis of such tiny concentrations of polonium." When asked specifically whether the list of arguments in the report that support poisoning lack scientific credibility, his answer was “yes."

Priest added, "I think the study is seriously done, but their conclusions were to my mind somewhat biased as to please the people who were paying for the report."

Here is Dr. Roth's report summarizing the opinions of several experts that he spoke to along with some who were quoted in the media.

To protest UNRWA cutbacks, PalArabs shut UNRWA offices

I'm sure there is a logic to this, somehow:

The popular service committees of Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank will shut down all UNRWA offices and programs, except clinics and schools, Wednesday and Thursday.

In a joint statement, the committees said the move was part of ongoing protests against "UNRWA's systematic reductions" in services provided to Palestinian refugees in the region.

The decision came following a meeting Tuesday at the headquarters of the refugees' affairs department in Nablus in the northern West Bank. Representatives of the services committees and northern West Bank districts attended the meeting.

The participants agreed that protests for next week would be determined after a meeting scheduled for Thursday in Ramallah with the director of UNRWA operation in the West Bank.

The committees will decide whether to carry out further protests and when depending on the outcome of the meeting.

One of the UN's oldest agencies, UNRWA faces a $36 million deficit.

"UNRWA will be unable to adequately fund its core services -- especially in education, health and poverty mitigation -- and will be unable to pay December salaries of its 30,000 teachers, medical personnel and social workers," under secretary general Jeffrey Feltman told the Security Council.

To protest cutbacks in services they shut down those very services?

Hey, if they do this a couple of times a week, then UNRWA might meet its budget! Everyone will be happy!

By the way, here's what the kids in Balata are being taught by that wonderful agency UNRWA:

UNRWA is reason #4,934 why peace is impossible.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Tom Friedman says Congress more interested in Jewish votes than supporting Obama's wonderful Iran plan

Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times, defends the Obama administration's offering concessions to Iran and has this to say about those who disagree:

Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.

He's certain that members of Congress care little about Iran and are more loyal to the almighty Jewish dollar than to their own country.

Because how can any thinking person possibly believe that giving concessions to Iran is a bad deal? It must be the Jewish money that corrupts their mindset!

Of course, Friedman admits:

If you’re not skeptical about Iran, you’re not paying attention. Iran has lied and cheated its way to the precipice of building a bomb, and without tough economic sanctions — sanctions that President Obama engineered but which Netanyahu and the Arab states played a key role in driving — Iran would not be at the negotiating table. I also understand the specific concerns of the Gulf Arabs, which I’d summarize as: “It looks to us as if you want to do this deal and then get out of the region — and leave behind an Iran that will only become economically more powerful, at a time when it already has enormous malign influence in Syria, Iraq, in Lebanon through Hezbollah, and in Bahrain.”

But our greedy members of Congress aren't thinking that deeply. Only Friedman is, just enough to dismiss it:

I get it, but I also don’t think we’d just abandon them.

You see? Friedman doesn't think anything bad will happen, and by gosh, that's all anyone needs! On the basis of his wonderful track record, Congress should do what he says, not what logic dictates!

There is plenty more to criticize in this column - Friedman makes a bizarre comparison between negotiating with Iran and Israel building "more settlements." Really. He exaggerates the Israeli position in order to pompously dismiss it: "While, Netanyahu believes more sanctions will get Iran to surrender every piece of its nuclear technology, Iran experts say that is highly unlikely." However, Netanyahu never demanded that - no one ha a problem with a peaceful nuclear energy program. And there are plenty of other factoids that Friedman knows he can get away with, because New York Times op-ed fact checkers are not exactly known to care too much about facts.

The bottom line is, though, that Thomas Friedman is insulting hundreds of democratically elected members of Congress, essentially accusing them of disloyalty to their own country. While dismissing any real concerns about Iranian nuclear weapons and how they would affect the world. All in order to defend a single elected president's inconsistent and frightening Middle East policy.

And he does it using an antisemitic "Jews control America" canard.

Iraqi official makes a plea for tolerance: "Baghdad used to be 20% Jewish"

Aswat al-Iraq reports that Iraqi Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture Fawzi Al Atrushi, at a conference on the rights of minorities in Iraq, said that 20% of the population of the city of Baghdad in 1921 were Jews, but now they are just footnotes in archives. He also warned that the same could happen to Iraqi minorities like Christians, whose rights continue to be restricted.

In a speech at the opening of the conference in Baghdad yesterday that "tolerance is not just a word to be thrown around."

"When King Faisal I entered Baghdad in 1921 some 20% of the city's population was Iraqi Jews, and now we are in the year 2013, this component of the Iraqi has turned into a mere archive we are trying to retrieve from the United States after they were repaired and restored."

Al Atrushi ccontinued, "The rights of minorities and tolerance among factions is part of culture and education and must reflect conduct on the ground, and not mere meetings and slogans and allegations about a reality does not exist."

"[Tolerance and coexistence] are the common ground and the common denominator between all religions and laws and international conventions, and it requires first and foremost the concrete embodiment on the ground. "

He said, "Indeed, majorities still prey on minorities, and males dominate, prey and marginalize women because violence is the dominant language among us."

Al Atrushi warned that "minorities in Iraq are in danger, and this is our challenge for advancement of all of us to build a civilized country linked to the world today, not in the past. "

He added that Iraq is "at a crossroads. Either live and come to terms with a state of citizenship and civil rights and democracy, or a divided nation, as happened in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and other countries."

He warned that Christians, who are at "the root of the historical identity of the nation, are diminishing daily. The Mandaeans, who make up one of the oldest peoples of Iraq, are subjected to exclusion and marginalization, and other Iraqi factions as well."

"Even the Kurdish people were threatened by the former regime by a most heinous racist war that threatened their existence."

Atrushi said, "We in the Ministry of Culture are interested in maintaining diversity and pluralism and coexistence between the segments and the components of the Iraqi people, whether ethnic, religious, sectarian or intellectual, because that is the way to weave a national identity of an Iraqi culture of diversity rather than a culture of one type. "

He stressed that for tolerance to be a reality it "must be accompanied by an apology, an apology from the majorities to the minorities, which provides a clean atmosphere and environment for reconciliation, all experiments done by civilized peoples prove it."

I'm not familiar enough with that part of the world to know how anomalous these words are. I have not stumbled onto many speeches like this in Arabic media. Icoul dnot find any mention of this speech on either Iraq's Ministry of Culture website nor on Atrushi's own personal website.