Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Turkey wants to monitor and censor Internet use

A draft bill will permit authorities to limit access to the Internet and monitor all actions by individuals online and keep such records for two years, daily Hürriyet has reported.

Three articles about Internet usage were concealed within a longer draft bill on the Family and Social Policy Ministry’s organizational structure and responsibilities, Yalçın Doğan, a columnist from daily Hürriyet, revealed yesterday.

The draft law will permit officials to limit keywords more easily, meaning access to videos on video-sharing websites such as YouTube that include keywords deemed problematic by Turkish authorities will be blocked.

All individuals’ Internet records, including details about what sites they have visited, which words they have searched for on the web and what activity they have engaged in on social networking websites, will be kept for one or two years, according to the draft law.

Web providers will also be forced to become members of a new Internet union to be formed under the control of government, Doğan wrote.

The draft bill is designed to “protect the family, children and youth from items on the Internet that encourage drug addiction, sexual abuse and suicide,” according to daily Hürriyet.

And the records of what people do in the Internet are no doubt also meant to protect the family - the family of thugs that is running Turkey.

I received 252 visits from Turkey over the last month, which is not a significant percentage of my readers but which places it at #29 out of 174 countries that visited EoZ. Hope none of my Turkish readers get in trouble.

In other Turkey news, the government is also acting to place the judiciary under its control.

Iran's Khamenei complains about "Satan's" enmity towards Iran

The Supreme Leader comedy show keeps adding new material.

Nuclear negotiations with major powers had revealed U.S. “enmity” towards Iran, the Islamic republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday the official IRNA news agency reported, hours before the resumption of talks in Geneva.

“We had announced previously that on certain issues, if we feel it is expedient, we would negotiate with the Satan (the
United States) to deter its evil,” Khamenei told a gathering.

“The nuclear talks showed the enmity of America against Iran, Iranians, Islam and Muslims,” he said.

Don't expect to see this in the mainstream media, which has lately adopted a new meme that Iran and the US have many strategic interests in common.

Let's not publish any of that "Satan" stuff - it just muddies the waters of how we want things to be.

01/09 Links Pt1: Unilateral Palestinian statehood - threat or ‘big bluff’?, The Latest "Zionist conspiracy"

From Ian:

Why do Leftists Attack the Only Liberal Country in the Middle East?

What is the most rightist doctrine in the world today? It has to be radical Islam. Islamists don’t allow women to go out of their houses alone, nor do they permit women to drive cars. Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a member of Taliban for advocating education for girls, lists incident after incident describing the oppression of women in her book, “I Am Malala.”
Radical Islamists are also ferociously anti-homosexual. Homosexuality is a capital offense in nine Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, parts of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
And so, leftists have decided to support ultra-rightists—radical Islamists. Radical Islamists hate Israel, and so groups like the ASA, and individuals like Sarah Schulman, have endorsed extreme anti-Israel policies—opposing Israel under all circumstances. Leftist groups that have passed BDS resolutions have never said that they would end their boycotts if Israel did X or Y or Z. The BDS Movement has no demands, and so its demands cannot be met.

Unilateral Palestinian statehood — real threat or ‘big bluff’?

According to Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Palestinian threat of a unilateral statehood drive is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. “This is a big bluff; it’s just an empty threat,” he said. “So the Palestinians will go to the International Health Organization, the International Postal Union and the Civil Aviation Authority. So what? That won’t give them statehood. It won’t make a difference, because Israel is still sitting in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and any change can only come about as the result of a negotiation process.”
And there is no cause to fear a Palestinian onslaught against Israel in international forums, averred Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada, as such attacks have been going on for years. “There are 20 or so anti-Israel resolutions at the UN at any given moment, so how is this night different from any other night?”

Egypt top newspaper's weird "Zionist conspiracy" theory

Today, the most widely circulating Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, has run a front-page report headlined in red and bold, ''Israeli conspiracy on Sinai's underground water.''
In a black bold lead, the report stresses that ''liberating Sinai and restoring its territories from Israeli occupation was not merely our dream; the dream was to develop this region to be our real exit from all economic troubles.''
However, the report claims, ''the ship of the state is always besieged with conspiracies.''
"Unsatisfied with their crimes in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 in Sinai, Palestine, and South Lebanon; Zionists brought Prosopis juliflora, a kind of Mesquite [shrub or tree] which is considered so dangerous, to Sinai.'' (h/t Bob Knot)

Peacenik Israelis meet rock-throwing reality in Ramallah (updated)

There has been a bizarre private initiative to have ordinary Arabs and Israelis get together and see if they could agree to a peace plan.

From a press release:

The Israeli and Palestinian leaderships apparently do not have a working strategy to cope with their conflict. So, the time has come for the two peoples to take matters into their own hands!

On January 9-10, 2014 an Israeli delegation, a Palestinian delegation and an audience will negotiate solutions to the conflict. The Congress will have a historic first being held in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Each delegation will include 20 people from all walks of life: Israeli generals, Palestinian commanders, Israeli settlers, Palestinian ex-prisoners, academics, business people, and students; reflecting the entire political spectrum.

The congress is co-chaired by Dr. Sapir Handelman – an Israeli who received the Peter Becker Award in Peace & Conflict Studies; and Mr. Ibrahim Enbawi – a prominent Palestinian leader in East Jerusalem. The chairmen have five sessions to lead the public assembly to reach peace agreements.

This historical event is an important step towards the establishment of a major Israeli-Palestinian Public Negotiating Congress with political power. The congress is designed to involve the people in the peacemaking efforts and motivate the leaderships to conclude agreements.

So how did the meeting in Ramallah go today?

Palestinians threw rocks Thursday at a West Bank hotel, shattering windows and breaking up a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

The conference was cut short and three dozen Israeli participants were rushed out the back door, put on Palestinian police buses and driven to safety, organizers said.

About 35 Israelis and 50 Palestinians participated in Thursday's gathering, the first the group has held in the West Bank, said Palestinian organizer Ibrahim Enbawi.

After word of the gathering got out, about 30 protesters showed up outside the hotel. Protesters tried to enter the hotel, but found the doors locked, and then began throwing stones that shattered several windows and glass doors.

But did the Israelis learn anything from this episode? Apparently not:

Israeli participant Rami Cohen, a former air force pilot, said he felt uncomfortable after the stone-throwing, but expressed understanding for the protesters.

"There is more anger here than in Israel because the Palestinians suffer more than us," said Cohen, 56, who works for a high tech company in Tel Aviv. "One day, I hope it will be safe for us here in Ramallah as it is safe for us in Tel Aviv."

Come on, Rami - just try again tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. Eventually, either the protesters will understand you as much as you understand them, or you'll be lynched and murdered. But if you are killed, it would be a comfort knowing that you found your death eminently understandable.

(h/t Yenta P)

UPDATE: Come to think of it, is there any substantive difference between these Arabs throwing rocks to get rid of Israelis and the BDSers who use violence, threats and intimidation to get rid of Israelis from speaking or performing overseas?

This is a rare BDS victory! I wonder if they will write this up as a milestone.

UPDATE 2: In the comments, sshender describes his idea of how these wonderful initiatives work.

If previous such initiatives of (Leftist) Israeli-Palestinian discussions are anything to go by, it would probably have looked something like this:

1. A day at the Buffet sipping Lattes and reading Haaretz.
2. A day of historical overviews of the conflict that would make Al-Jazeera blush.
3. A day of Palestinians accusing the Israelis of every conceivable wrongdoing accompanied by a choir of sympathetic head nodding from the Israeli side.
4. Half a day of the Israelis apologizing for everything that the Palestinians accused Israel of on the previous day, plus half a day of the Israelis apologizing for other things that the Palestinians neglected to mention.
5. Half a day of the Israelis saying "let byg ones be bygones" and half a day of the Israelis coming up with unrealistic solutions to the conflict, that no sane Israeli would ever accept.
6. A day of the Palestinians taking the Israelis out on a field day:
2 hours - meeting an obscure NGO representative (funded by millions of US$ by the EU, Soros and the NIF) who laments about the hardships of living under the occupation.
2 hours - meeting Tallal - a Palestinian farmer - to hear about the attacks of Settler whipped wild bores on his crops.
2 hours of the "apartheid" wall, with 1 hour of free time for selfies with the "V" sign and for spraying "this wall will fall" or other such themes.
2 hours of yelling and cursing at IDF soldiers.
7. A day of Palestinians explaining to the Israelis why they can never "let bygones be bygones", especially in the context of experiences form the previous field day excursion.
8. A day of Palestinians demanding that Israel submit to all of their demands as a prec ondition to having any dialogue to begin with.
9. A day of Israelis at the buffet discussing their experiences among themselves and arriving at the unanimous conclusion that no progress can be made unless and until Israel repents for all its past sins and acquiesces to all the Palestinian demands.
10. A day of Israelis going back and issuing a press release that the talks were a resounding success and that huge strides have been made towards a reconciliation and that this shows that if it were not for the intransigence of the Israeli government, peace could have been had long ago, since the "real people on the ground" see eye to eye.

Palestinian Arabs using negotiations to impose a solution, no desire to end conflict (JCPA)

JCPA has a very good analysis of how Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are viewing the current negotiations. Here is an excerpt, but the entire thing is a must-read:

The question, though, is whether the ratification of the 1967 border would entail the end of the dispute. Hopefully, the answer would be yes, with the United States putting its full weight behind the finality of the agreement.20 Yet we cannot ignore certain Palestinian positions which, if they do not change, are likely to generate crises even after an agreement is reached. For example, in an article posted prominently on Fatah’s website, the author discussed – uncharacteristically – the issue of the Jewish refugees. Zionism, according to this author, deliberately sowed terror in Iraq so as to frighten the Jews there and, eventually, settle them in Palestinian areas that were emptied of their residents, who then became refugees. Thus, the right of return is actually the right to return to lands that the United Nations allocated to the Arab state in the partition plan.21

What this means is that, from the Palestinians’ standpoint, the negotiations being held today are about the results of the 1967 war. The Palestinian state to be established along the 1967 lines is not intended to absorb the refugees from the 1948 lands; their proper place will be within the partition-plan borders. After “closing the file” on the 1967 borders, then, the “refugee file” will be opened, and the Palestinians will demand their return to the Arab state postulated by the partition plan. In other words, the real, intended border is not one along the 1967 lines, but the one of 1947.

An internal, strategic document formulated in the office of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and posted on Palestinian websites in 2013,22 states that the aim of the talks is not to reach an agreement but, rather, to create an alibi for imposing a solution on Israel. According to this document, the Palestinians agreed to enter the talks only after receiving a written commitment from Kerry to support the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, and after publication of the European Union’s statement that Israel is to be penalized for the settlements – meaning Europe’s recognition of the 1967 lines is to be imposed on Israel. It turns out, then, that the Palestinian strategy is not to reach an agreement with Israel but, instead, to create breaches in its relations with the United States, after already fostering Israel’s dispute with Europe.

Moreover, there have been repeated signs that the Palestinian leadership has claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines. In 1999, when Yasser Arafat tried to revive Palestinian territorial demands on the basis of the Partition Map that appears in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the PLO Observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, wrote an official letter to Secretary-General Kofi Anan in which he stated:

Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish state in Resolution 181 (II).23

The PLO at the time was planning to replace the Oslo Accords with Resolution 181 and thereby extend Palestinian territorial claims. This was explained by the Palestinian minister Nabil Sha’ath, who said that it was his hope that the Palestinians would also seek to obtain land in Western Jerusalem and not just in Eastern Jerusalem.

This claim is being sustained to this day. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi told Radio Palestine on January 8, 2014, that on the Jerusalem issue the Palestinians will also raise the matter of Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem inside the 1967 lines. Palestinian sources have told this author that the files on Palestinian properties in Western Jerusalem were already prepared at Orient House by the late Feisal Husseini.

Abu Ala, who served as the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly and as a key Palestinian negotiator, stated in al-Hayat al-Judida on December 21, 1998: “It shall be emphasized that the [Palestinian] state has internationally recognized borders set in the [1947] partition resolution.”24

Palestinian reliance on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 continued under Mahmoud Abbas. In September 2011, Abbas spoke at the UN General Assembly and explained that he was applying for UN membership “on the basis of the 1967 borders.” But in the formal Palestinian submission to the UN, in which the Palestinian Authority sought membership, there is no reference whatsoever to the 1967 lines but only to Resolution 181 from 1947. There is a second reference to the 1988 Declaration of Independence that also was based on Resolution 181.25 Thus, there is considerable, cumulative evidence that the Palestinian leadership is maintaining claims to Israeli territory within the 1967 lines.

I had a post (with updates correcting some mistakes) noticing that Abbas didn't define the borders as the "1967 lines" in his formal bid for statehood but did mention the 1947 partition as a basis for legitimacy.

Report: Israel planning gas pipeline into Jordan

From Bloomberg:

Israel, seeking to tap recent natural-gas finds for export, plans to build a pipeline from the Dead Sea to the Jordanian border to supply its neighbor, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources expects to begin work on the 15-kilometer (9-mile) link in 2015 and complete it in 2016, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The ministry commissioned the project on behalf of U.S. gas producer Noble Energy Inc. (NBL) and a Jordanian partner, they said.

The 2010 discovery of the offshore Leviathan field, coming after the nearby Tamar find, proved a bonanza for Israel, which expects the gas to meet its needs for a quarter of a century while also enabling exports. For Jordan, which has seen fuel imports from Egypt disrupted by pipeline bombings in Sinai, deliveries from Israel would help to boost security of supply.

An Israeli Energy Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment, while calls to Jordan’s energy minister weren’t answered. A spokesman for Noble Energy in Tel Aviv declined to comment when contacted by phone.

Israel, which itself imported Egyptian gas until bombings cut deliveries, reached its first export agreement earlier this week, a 20-year deal to supply a planned Palestinian power station. Noble and its partners at Leviathan, the larger of the two fields, said they’ll get about $1.2 billion to send gas to the plant to be built in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Partners in the offshore Tamar field, which include Houston-based Noble, also are in talks to sell gas to Jordanian potash plants for 15 years for $500 million to $700 million, Israel’s Calcalist business newspaper reported last month.

Jamal Sarayreh, the chairman of Jordan’s Arab Potash Co., declined to comment when contacted last week. Noble Chief Executive Officer Charles Davidson said in November the company would prefer to export Israeli gas to neighboring countries than to the Far East, which would require seaborne-tanker shipments.

“We will be able to market more gas regionally at lower capital cost because all of these regional markets are basically using pipes, and in some instances they’re connecting the pipes that already exist,” Davidson said.

The new pipeline will start at Sdom, according to the two people. It will be an extension to an existing link that brings gas to the Dead Sea Works Ltd. chemical plant there.

This is very big news, and it shows the importance of a strong economy to Israel's defensive posture.

Jordan (and Egypt) keep doing an interesting dance, publicly inciting hatred against Israel in their media but privately cooperating with the Jewish state. Deals like this strengthen existing peace agreements but they don't reduce the hate - and this seems to be a governmental decision to keep the old mentality of using Israel to divert attention from internal crises.

The contradictory messages cannot easily coexist, but widespread Arab antisemitism would not allow for the governments to act friendlier towards Israel in public. Note how no one will dare confirm any deals - publicizing them is a dangerous business when the Arab media is so invested in hating Israel and Jews.

Normalization with the Arab world will never happen, even if Israel signed a "peace plan" with the Arab League. From Israel's perspective, the best that can ever be hoped for is detente, not peace. Deals like these (and you can be sure that there are negotiations to export gas to Egypt as well) help strengthen Israel's position in this detente, and other under-the-table agreements will be made, but there will never be peace in the way that Israelis yearn.

Complete list of goods that Israel does not export into Gaza

This is the official list of items that Israel does not allow to be exported into Gaza.

The second list is of goods that can be exported for specific NGO projects, they require more paperwork.

Missile equipment and munitions have been strictly forbidden from entering into Gaza as declared in the Defense Export Control Order of 2008.

Controlled Dual Use Items:

1. Fertilizers or any mixture containing choleric potassium with concentrations greater than 5%.
2. Fibers or textiles containing carbon (carbon fibers or graphite fibers), including:
a. Chopped carbon fibers.
b. Carbon roving.
c. Carbon strand.
d. Carbon fabric tape.
3. Glass fiber-based raw materials, including:
a. Chopped glass fibers.
b. Glass roving
c. Glass strand.
d. Glass fabric tape.
e. S-glass.
f. E-glass.
4. Vessels.
5. Fibers or fabrics featuring polyethylene, also known as Dyneema.
6. Retro detection devices.
7. Gas tanks.
8. Drilling equipment.
9. Equipment for the production of water from drillings.
10. Vinyl esther resins.
11. Epoxy resins.
12. Hardeners for epoxy resins featuring chemical groups of durable or reliable types, including:
a. DETA – diethylenetriamine.
b. TETA – thiethylenetramine.
c. AEP – aminoethylpiperazine.
d. E-100-ethyleneamine.
e. Jeffamine T-403.
f. Catalyst 4,5,6,22,23,105, 140, 145,150,179,190,240.g. D.E.H 20,24,25,26,29,52,58,80,81,82,83,84,85,87.
h. XZ 92740.00
13. Vinyl esther accelerants, including:
a. DMA-dimethylaniline.
b. Cobalt octoate.
c. MEKP – methylethyl keyone peroxide.
d. AAP – acetyl acetone peroxide.
e. CuHP – cumene hydroperoxide.
14. M or H type HTPB, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene.
15. Water disinfection materials – solutions with a concentration of over 11%.
16. TDI - Toluene diisocyanate.

Dual Use Items for Projects (that may be imported into Gaza by NGOs such as UNRWA)

Portland cement (bulk or bags or drums).

Natural aggregates, quarry aggregates and all foundation materials.

Prepared concrete.

Concrete elements and/or precast and/or tensed concrete.

Steel elements and/construction products.

Concrete for foundations and pillars of any diameter (including welded steel mesh).

Steel cables of any thickness.

Forms for construction elements of plastic or galvanized steel.

Industrial forms for concrete pouring.

Beams from composite materials or plastic with a panel thickness of 4mm and thicker.

Thermal insulation materials and/or products excluding roof tiles, plaster/mortar glue, mosaic tiles, building stone/coating stone/exterior stone.

Concrete blocks, silicate, Ytong or equivalent (of any thickness).

Building sealing materials or products which include Epoxy or polyurethane.

Asphalt and its components (bitumen, emulsion) in bulk or in packages of any sort.

Steel elements and/or steel working products for construction.

Elements and/or products for channeling and drainage from precast concrete with diameters of over 1 meter.

Trailers and/or shipping containers.

Vehicles except for personal vehicles (not including 4X4 vehicles), including construction vehicles.

This is it.

Whenever anyone says that Israel is restricting medicines or fuel or medical equipment or pencils or anything else that is not on this list - they are lying.

Video about Israeli Christians joining the IDF

With English subtitles:

(h/t Yoel, Sarit)

Tunnel closings cause Israeli goods to disappear from Egyptian markets!

The tunnel trade between Egypt and Gaza was two-way.

El Arish market

But Gazans weren't exporting their own goods to Egypt - they were exporting Israeli products. You know, the ones that were allowed in despite the "siege."

Egypt's Al Ahram reports that ever since the Egyptian army has cracked down on smuggling tunnels, Israeli products are no longer on the shelves of towns in the Sinai.

The shortages of Israeli goods is felt mostly in El Arish, Sheikh Zuwaid and Rafah.

The Israeli products that were smuggled from Gaza include clothes, foodstuffs, cosmetics and electrical appliances.

This means, of course, that Gaza had a surplus of Israeli goods, not a shortage!

It also shows that there is a demand for Israeli goods in Egypt, and the reason that more Egyptians aren't legally importing Israeli goods is politics, not profits.

In 2012, an Egyptian TV program claimed that Israeli goods found in the Sinai, such as chocolate, coffee, biscuits and yogurt, were causing infertility. One interviewee claimed that Israeli jeans had secret magnets hidden within them that also cause infertility. Now we can see that the goods shown on TV were all from Gaza smuggling tunnels, not from regular trade between Israel and Egypt.

01/08 Links Pt2: This barrier stops fascists, Comparing Islamists and radical leftists

From Ian:

This barrier stops fascists: A response to Bethlehem Unwrapped

Some of you may be thinking, well, the Israelis would say the barrier works wouldn’t they? OK, so what do the Palestinian terrorists say? They should know. Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah said ‘[The Israelis] built a separation fence in the West Bank. We do not deny that it limits the ability of the resistance [i.e., the terrorist organizations] to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks …’ (23 March, 2008).’
Why not project that admission onto your pretend barrier?
Demonising Israel and Israelis by being reductive and decontextualising about the conflict – that is how the intellectual separation barrier works. That’s how it cuts off so many well-meaning European folk from playing a constructive role in promoting peace. It fosters a style of ‘activism’ that turns global civil society into a force that hampers the quest for peace.
You have been inviting people to write graffiti on the pretend wall. I’d take my cue from the great US radical, folk singer, and Dylan precursor, Woody Guthrie. He had a big sticker on his guitar: ‘this machine kills fascists.’ I’d amend that and stick it on your wall – ‘this barrier stops fascists’.

Kay Wilson: Ben White’s attack on terror victim is “tinny, whinging, and bitter”

Ben White, it is an honour to be called a vandal, I take my new-job description with the utmost gravity. You have inspired me to continue to do whatever I can to sabotage and desecrate every vulgar, cruel, pompous, destructive, arrogant, ignorant, presumptuous, pithy lie and falsification that you, and people like yourself are bent on disseminating.
You have inspired me with your hatred. I will return to Bethlehem and spray my price tag of peace on any wall that I can. I will do it for Pikuach Nefesh, the Jewish injection that calls us to be our brother’s keeper. I will do it for all Israeli, Palestinian, Christian and Muslim victim of global jihad. But most of all Ben White, I will do it just for you.

Comparing Islamists and radical leftists (Satire)

Following on from previous posts which looked at the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and what leftists really believe, it is also worth now looking at the difference between Islamists and radical leftists. As the following table shows there is clearly nothing in common between these two groups.

Latest Rafah crossing news that "human rights" organizations ignore

The Rafah crossing is open today, after 12 days of being closed.

Even during the days that it is open, very few people have been allowed to cross.

Human rights organizations are almost completely silent.

Here's the Rafah crossing calendar for the past few months:

S	M	Tu	W	Th	F	S
Oct 27	28	29	30	31	Nov 1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Dec 1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9 (only one bus)	10 (computer problems)	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24 (very few)	25	26	27	28
29	30	31	Jan 1	2 (Italian delegation allowed into Gaza)	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11

34 Gazans who flew into Cairo airport were deported from Egypt through Rafah today. No human rights organizations said a word.

Two youths who were caught sneaking into Egypt were shot by Egyptian security. No human rights organizations said a word.

I am not sure if the Italian delegation that was stuck in Gaza managed to leave today. Here's another photo of one of its members ~~helping the poor Gazans~~ posing for a photo to prove what a humanitarian she is.

The "Miles of Smiles" convoy was allowed to enter Gaza today, though.

The PLO acknowledges the Jewish "right of return"

When the Palestine Papers were released by The Guardian and Al Jazeera in 2011, only stories that fit the narratives of those papers were published. I went through them at the time and found many astounding memos that the media ignored (and still ignore today.)

One of the biggest bombshells was a draft memo from the PLO's Negotiations Support Unit that detailed Jewish land ownership in the territories. I covered it here, but it is worth revisiting because it explicitly says that Jews have the "right of return" to areas they lived in before 1949.

Legally, the "right of return" doesn't exist in the way that the Palestinian Arabs and NGOs claim it does nowadays. However, the PLO realized that if they are going to claim the "right of return,", then Jews must have the exact same claims in the other direction:

Jews who were habitually resident before 1948 in the areas that became the OPT enjoy a right of return. It should be noted that the right of return extends not only to those persons who held the nationality of the prior sovereign, but also to persons who had a substantial connection to the prior state and who, therefore, were entitled to its nationality.3 The right also extends to the descendents of such Jews.

Furthermore, the right of return is separate and distinct from any property right the holder may also enjoy.4 That is, a person may have a right of return even if he does not own property in the home country. Conversely, a person may not necessarily enjoy a right of return even if he owns property in the country.

As of 1948, there were 500,000 to 600,000 Jews in Palestine. Most of them were not nationals of Palestine. Of the 400,000 or so Jews who immigrated to Palestine between the two World Wars, 100,000 were naturalized. So, probably fewer than half of pre-1948 Jews were nationals, but most were probably permanent residents.5 According to international law, Such Jewish Palestinian nationals or permanent residents have a right of residency in the future Palestinian state if they were residents of the areas that became Gaza and the WB.

To be sure, the memo tries to find reasons why it wouldn't apply (and it even mentions that if the PLO recognizes that Jews who were expelled from their homes are entitled to compensation, then Arab countries would have the same obligation - and this could affect relations between the PLO and Arab nations!)

Still, it would be difficult for the UN, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to disagree with the main point - if the RoR exists, it exists for all. Even UNGA 194, touted as the source for the "right of return," doesn't distinguish between Jewish and Arab refugees of Palestine.

What this means is that, if the UN and EU and NGOs are to be consistent, they cannot regard some Jewish settlements as illegal.

For example, the PLO memo admits that Jews owned Atarot and Neve Yaakov and were expelled in 1948. It mentions parts of the old city of Hebron owned by Jews. Much of the Etzion bloc and areas near Maale Adumim are admitted by the PLO to be owned by Jews. And, of course, Jews owned land and lived in the Old City of Jerusalem. Significant portions of Gaza also belonged to Jews who became refugees in 1948.

Yet I have not seen any of these NGOs distinguish between land owned by Jews, land that Jews were expelled from, and any other land in the territories. I've never seen any of them call for the PLO (or Egypt or Jordan) to compensate Jews for land stolen from them in 1948.

On the contrary: the EU has condemned Israel allowing building in Neve Yaakov. The UN has called Gush Etzion "illegal."

So why do the NGOs that advocate the bogus "right of return" not recognize the symmetric rights of Jews?

The answer, as we've seen many times, is that the UN and EU and "human rights" NGOs set their policies irrespective of international law or logic or consistency. They then try to shoehorn bizarre interpretations of international law to their predetermined outcomes.

If they aren't going to be consistent about the application of actual international law, why should we expect consistency when they apply incorrect interpretations of that same law?

01/08 Links Pt1: The Middle East at the Beginning of 2014, When is Incitement “Incitement”?

From Ian:

Barry Rubin: The Middle East at the Beginning of 2014

The Egypt-Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas conflicts, the Syrian civil war, the conflict between the Shi'a and Sunni blocs (the latter including Saudi Arabia), and Turkish-Arab friction are all signs of this. If the West is willing to keep Asad as dictator of Syria, the Sunni rebels will never accept this, and the Syrian civil war will only be intensified in the coming year.
Ammar Abdulhamid, a respected analyst on Syria, has pointed out that "re-legitimating the Assad regime today, after all it had done, will green light genocidal ventures elsewhere in the world." Of course, if the United States helped to overthrow the Asad regime in Syria, there would also be a risk of genocide against the Alawites and the Christians (who make up about 30% of the population).
I hate to say it, but it is almost as if the Obama administration simply wants to keep the supposed "deal" alive until after the 2016 elections, so it can boast a great diplomatic triumph in the Middle East by resolving all problems, only to then let the deal collapse. This could explain why President Obama said there was only a 50-50% chance that the deal would go through. Usually, the president and secretary of state do not talk about the certainty of deals before they are much closer to being completed.

Why Is There Really No Palestinian State: The 1-State Solution

The difference between radicals and moderates was well represented by the remark of the Palestinian Arab delegates in their May 1939 meeting with Egypt's leaders, "We cannot now tell our people, 'Stop the revolution because we got some high posts. . . .'"But that was precisely what moderate Arab politicians wanted: not a revolution in Palestine but a solution to Palestine. And they viewed that as having been achieved in the London negotiations because Palestinian Arabs would obtain "high posts" and thus would be running the country.
The story of al-Husaini and the 1939 London Conference would be reenacted by Arafat at the Camp David meeting in 2000, when Arafat rejected getting a Palestinian state through negotiations because he preferred the illusory hope of getting it all by violence.

Jews, lies and Christian victims

In late December, The Independent published an article about the bleak situation of the Christians in the Middle East. It had the right idea. The Christians in the Middle East are in trouble. They’re being slaughtered in dozens of different places and millions have become refugees or been forced to flee. Amazingly enough, however, the article was devoted almost entirely to their sad situation in Israel, of all places. “Will Prince Charles, the ‘Defender of Faiths,’ stand up for Christians in Israel?” read the astonishing headline.
Blogger Elder of Ziyon has enumerated lies so egregious – and there are many – in this manifest masquerading as an article. They saved me the trouble of having to refute the lies myself. Not a single Christian in Israel is being persecuted because of his religion. There has been no pogrom. Israel’s Christians are fully integrated at the top of their professions as physicians, lawyers and judges. The Israeli Christian community is a minority that in many areas, such as higher education, has made remarkable achievements. Even more so than the Jews. They do not need any Prince Charles or The Independent to defend them. But somehow, the author of the article and the newspaper have managed once again to turn the situation on its head and make truth lies and lies truth.

Guardian writer blames Czech diplomat's death on Israel

This took longer than I thought. But it didn't come from an Arab journalist but from a freelancer who has written for The Guardian and The Telegraph

From Colin Randall, writing in The National (UAE) on Sunday after the Palestinian Czech diplomat was killed by a bomb in a safe:

[A]s the diplomat’s daughter cast doubt on explanations that her father died in a bizarre accident, the manner of his death – reportedly caused by an old embassy safe exploding – recalled murky days of special operations blamed on Israeli agents in European cities and beyond.

...Then the mystery grew with comments in Ramallah by Al Jamal’s daughter, Rana, 30, alleging that her father had been deliberately killed. “The Palestinian official account is baseless,” she told Associated Press. “The safe box has been in regular use — my mom [who lives there] told me that.”

In another interview, by telephone with Reuters, she added: “We believe my father was killed and that his death was something arranged and not an accident. How? We do not know and that is what we want to know.”

She said the safe had also been in use when her father served at the mission for two decades from the mid-1980s. “The safe was emptied and moved to the house. My father had been putting documents inside it and it was open. The explosion took place while he used it.”

Since the 1950s, the fingerprints of Israel’s national intelligence agency Mossad and the internal security service Shin Bet have been detected in a string of attacks and assassinations ranging from targeted shootings to bombings and kidnappings. Allegations of such activities have become rarer in recent years but nevertheless persist.

Although Israel never formally claims responsibility, such events have been seen by critics as acts of revenge and by official sources in Tel Aviv as measures designed to prevent future incidents they classify as terrorism

The history of espionage provides ample reason for observers to keep an open mind until conclusive proof is available.

In 1972, Mossad agents or special forces were suspected of being responsible for the assassination, using an exploding telephone, of Mahmoud Hamshari, the alleged coordinator of the Palestinian group Black September’s killing of 11 Israeli athletes at that year’s Munich Olympics, at his Paris apartment.

Two other Palestinians believed by Israel to have been implicated in the Munich attack were also killed in Paris, in 1973.

And in 1996, Yehiya Ayyash, described as “the engineer” and reputedly the chief Hamas bombmaker, was killed by an explosive device planted in his mobile phone in Gaza in a plot attributed to Shin Bet.

Mossad is also strongly suspected of carrying out the torture and murder in 2010 of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, in his Dubai hotel room. Dubai police said Israel was responsible for the killing, which involved at least 26 agents travelling on false European and Australian passports.

As long ago as 1956, Mustafa Hafaz, an Egyptian agent in the Gaza, was assassinated when a booby-trapped book delivered by a double agent exploded. Israel reportedly believed he was responsible for sending Palestinian combatants into southern Israel.

So the Mossad went after Jamal by secretly putting explosives in his safe, not knowing who would open it? And by sheer coincidence an arsenal of weapons were found?

Of course, Colin Randall doesn't say explicitly that the Mossad was behind it. He just says that Jamal died in a weird way and the Mossad kills people in weird ways. The reader can put two and two together without Randall having to worry about pesky lawsuits.

Since this article was published, the idea that the safe was tampered with during its move into the new residence has been shot down:

No explosive could get into the safe of the Palestinian embassy in Prague during its transport to a new residence of ambassador Jamal al Jamal who died after the safe had exploded on January 1, transport firm head Martin Sousek told Monday's issue of the Blesk tabloid.

The transport of the safe was under a constant supervision and Jamal was present during it all the time, said Sousek.

Jamal's daughter Rana claimed that her father had been murdered and that the explosive could have got into the safe deposit during the move to the new residence.

Sousek ruled it out as complete nonsense.

"The safe was being constantly watched. It was closed all the time," Sousek told Blesk.

People from the Palestinian embassy decided on the safe's placement directly on the spot. The ambassador alone was there, giving instructions where concrete items should be placed in the residential part of the house, including the safe, Sousek said.

The reflexive instinct to automatically blame everything on Israel is quite strong in British journalists.

Work accident! But you wouldn't know it from Arab media... (plus - clan clash)

Ma'an "reports:"

Man killed by Israeli strike east of Gaza City

A man was killed on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli strike targeted the al-Shujaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza City, medical sources said.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma'an that the "remaining body parts" of 32-year-old Muhammad Salamah al-Ijah were taken to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Al-Ijah was killed by an Israeli drone strike, al-Qidra said, although earlier reports said that Israeli tanks had fired into Gaza.

Locals said al-Ijah was affiliated with Islamic Jihad.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said there were "no strikes" in Gaza.

Islamic Jihad media says it was an artillery shell.

Ma'an Arabic says it was a shelling and doesn't mention Israel's denial.

Hamas media, hedging its bets, says that al-Ijah was killed by shells, machine gun fire and that there were Israeli aircraft in the area at the time.

AFP says:

The Israeli military denied carrying out any strike on Gaza and said its troops had not been involved in any other shooting incidents.

"We did not strike in Gaza today and we are unaware of any incident involving tanks or other shooting," a spokeswoman told AFP.

Israel never denies attacks on terrorists in Gaza, and the dead man is very much a terrorist - and a senior member of Islamic Jihad as well.

A hint as to what happened comes from Islamic Jihad itself, which says he was killed while performing his Jihadist duty.

Clearly, al-Ijah blew himself up.

It will be most interesting to see how PCHR and OCHA describe this incident in their weekly reports.

At the same time, two others were killed in Gaza - a nine year old boy and a 20-year old woman - in a dispute between two families. Sometimes these reports are covers for honor killings, but this one seems to be a real clan clash. There are many of these in Gaza and easy access to guns means that they often turn fatal.

(h/t PTWatch)